I felt like a melancholy feather before motherhood awakened my passions. I had floated through various jobs and careers, kind of liking some of them, but never feeling that spark or "flow" the lucky amongst us (unintentionally?) brag about.
It wasn't motherhood itself that became my full passion, but it ignited the discovery.
I owned a home organizing business before and during my pregnancy, and had to hire other women to take on my clients when my belly became a barrier between myself, and all the stuff I had to move around on the job. While my cut of their organizing sessions was decent, it wasn't enough to adequately supplement my husband's booming teaching income.
I've never been good at working for other people, and I'm addicted to newborn smell, so it was a no-brainer for me to be a stay-at-home mom that worked for myself. But how could I work if I always had a human feeding off my body?
I became obsessed with childbirth after my son arrived, and because I didn't want to be the one to continue giving birth I became trained as a HypnoBirthing childbirth educator, teaching classes out of my home office.
Many of my clients requested deeper support, so I spent 400 hours becoming a Certified Hypnotherapist through a Hypnotherapy college that allowed me to do a distance learning program, so I could breastfeed, clean up poop, smell my baby, and shed some (happy? tired?) tears in between studying.
Nurturing and transforming the mind (of myself and others) coupled with supporting the birth of new life was intense. The intensity pushed me to restart my writing practice, which led to me submitting my work to parenting and spirituality websites and publications -- and people actually started paying me for weaving words.
Oh, and I've also been working on a book proposal based on all this for the past two years -- it's way harder than birthing a baby. Feng Shui Mommy: A Guide to Harmonizing Your Life Before, During, and After Childbirth -- coming at you, sometime in... hopefully before my son goes off to college.
Hi, I'm Bailey and I'm a mom, writer, Hypnotherapist, HypnoBirthing practitioner, amateur smoothie chef, and part-time crazy person.
I lost money the first year I began this web of work. (Training and marketing.)
But now, I'm making enough to contribute to the basics and facilitate yearly ski and surf trips we can't afford.
That will change -- I have big plans, and I will not stop slogging through the barriers.
I've finally (ready for a juicy cliché?) found my calling.
I relish every second of the work I do and credit my son for lighting that fire.
The passion makes the very-real struggle worth it.
I usually write two sentences at a time, in between pulling my son out of the Tupperware drawer, dodging plastic (sometimes metal) toys flying at my face, and cuddling, because my wily offspring is so delicious.
I'm constantly shuffling the scheduling of my clients and childbirth classes with the schedules of my very busy husband, mother, mother-in-law, and teenage babysitter. (And praying my son gets into one of the pre-schools we've applied for.)
If a client wants to chat on the phone I have to first find childcare.
If I'm on deadline, I have to sedate my child. Just kidding. But I'm not above a little Curious George in desperate moments.
My husband thinks I'm insane for juggling so much, though he would never say that out loud.
Those balls we're juggling occasionally knock us out. If he made enough money I think he would prefer me be a pure stay-at-homer. Actually, I think he would prefer I made enough money to allow him to be a stay-at-home dad. I'm not opposed to that.
I adore my role as mommy, but think I would lose a big dose of my enthusiasm if I weren't able to stoke my creative fires through the work I do.
It's so hard, but so worth it. I hope I'm setting the example for my son that even when faced with struggle you can carve out a beautiful nook for yourself in this world- all you need to do is listen to your intuition, dip into your creativity, and find really awesome childcare.