[00:00:00] Emma: I guess my first love was photography how that could support, engage, really have those conversations visually. And then had my daughter. Life completely changed. So she will be seven in December. And that pregnancy was really difficult, it was poorly. And then she arrived and I was like, I just don't know who I am anymore.
[00:00:24] Aneta: We often hear people wishing us a long, happy, and healthy life, but what if the length isn't what matters most? What if instead, it's the breath depth and purpose of each day that matters most? Welcome to the Live the Width of Your Life podcast. My name is Aneta Ardelian Kuzma and join me weekly as I interview guests who made changes in their own lives to live more fully with intention, gratitude, and joy. Be prepared to be inspired by their stories of how they shifted their mindset, took courageous action, and designed the life that they always wanted to live.
Welcome back to the Live The Width of Your Life podcast. My guest is Emma Benyon, and she's a self-care and motherhood coach and educator who supports busy moms who are juggling school runs with the job and building a business with the tools to be less overwhelmed and have more balance, energy, and clarity.
She's the mom to a six-year-old a qualified NLP, MBIT, and practical magic coach, and also a full-time post-16 educator. She's the editor of Positive Wellbeing Zine for Moms and host of the Self Care and Motherhood Edit podcast. Her passion is to support busy moms to have more time and energy for all the things that they enjoy and have the tools to support and nurture themselves.
It was so fun reminiscing about what it was like to be a young mom some of the things that Emma does and how she supports her clients that I wish I had access to when I was going through that myself. So we talked a lot about how to find more balance, how to juggle multiple roles, and how to not compare ourselves and live with more self-care grace, and compassion as a mom.
And also just the importance of knowing what our intentions are, and our values are, as we try to build a more balanced life, loved our conversation. And I think you will too take a
listen. Emma, thank you so much for joining me.
[00:02:18] Emma: Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to chat.
[00:02:21] Aneta: I'm so excited to chat with you, is it early evening for you right now?
[00:02:26] Emma: Yes, just after 6 p.m. in the UK right now.
[00:02:30] Aneta: Okay. Yeah. It's like afternoon here in Cleveland, but I'm so excited to talk to you today because I know that one of the things that you are so passionate about and that's so important in your life is self-care. And especially for mothers, for very busy moms, because you are a mom, you're an educator, you have this business, you have a podcast, you have so much that's going on.
So tell us a little bit more about your background and how you found your passion.
[00:02:59] Emma: Yeah, so I've been teaching in post-16 education for just over 11 years. I left college, did my degree, and went straight into, being a teacher and educating others in the creative background. I guess my first love was photography how that could support, engage, and have those conversations visually. And then had my daughter. Life completely changed. So she will be seven in December. And that pregnancy was really difficult, it was poorly. And then she arrived and I was like, I just don't know who I am anymore. And I know that's quite common for many of us as mums, we feel so lost, that transition is massive and at that time, it just was not talked about, that period of transition into becoming a mum and all the learning that you will go through and finding yourself again, finding who your child is and, their needs, because they don't come with a manual, do they?
And so you are constantly learning and finding out and problem solving and I was really career driven and my career as an educator, that was my thing. And then that was my passion, my drive. And then my daughter, Isabella arrived and I was like, okay. Like now what do I do now?
And spent a little bit of time about four weeks being like, I need to find something in a space for me that allows my creativity to flow. And so when I first launched the business, it was under a different name than what it sits under now. And it was under Isabella enough, really bringing that journey of my daughter, who's named Isabella, and me into the same sort of space.
And within that kind of, I guess, the first few years of that business, I'm still now, but differently, I was bringing together mums who wanted to share that raw, vulnerable, real version of motherhood because at that time, so much of what I was seeing, and I know so many of the mums that were part of my community at that time were seeing was this kind of glamorized, perfect, pregnancy, glowing skin, incredible birth and, amazing bond and love for your baby afterward.
And those first few months are incredible. And that was very different from my experience. I was not glowing. I was being sick every day. None of that kind of experience that I was seeing. And so many of those conversations were around baby rather than mom.
And I felt like I was in some situations completely invisible. I wasn't seen. I wasn't heard. I was there purely just to support and look after my baby. And I was like, there must be more to this. There have to be other people who feel this way. There has to be another way to do this.
That I am seen, I am heard and my needs and wants are still valid. And so I started to create products, started to just experiment, and be curious about my skills and how I could develop my skills in terms of designing products. I'm also really bringing in these conversations from others. And so I launched the Positive wellbeing team, which became this space of moms, experts in the motherhood space, stories, poetry, illustrations, mum runs small businesses, all together in this one beautiful magazine that became this element of self-care for so many moms that time out.
It was designed for moms to take that time. Five minutes here, five minutes there, not a lengthy thing that you need to sit and read and spend loads of time with. It was the perfect kind of pickup put down, on the school run, and swimming bar. It's the kids go to bed, and just have those little pockets of time.
And then I was like, there must be more. What else can I do to develop my skills and also have these conversations that even further? And so then I started my podcast and guess within all of that space, it was about me finding myself and working out actually how to do motherhood and how to do it in a way that felt aligned to who I was and who I was becoming.
A wild store, so sharing and championing, or the moms who were experts in other fields and who were running their small businesses and who were just wanting to share that kind of raw, vulnerable version of their motherhood. And then about four years ago, I had a conversation with a coach that I was working with at the time.
And I've been coached since I started my business. And she was like, maybe, if you thought about becoming a coach, like you're teaching, those skills transferable into this space too, but yeah, I haven't really thought about it, but then that kind of just sparked something and it's so interesting what can come with it, come from those conversations, isn't it, of what other people can see in you that you can't perhaps see in yourself.
And she's there's an NLP diploma that's running like really locally to you. Why don't you go and see what it's about, I think it would help not just, in how you might grow your business, but you personally as well. And at that time I was a bit like, maybe, I'll see, we'll see.
Like maybe it'll just be that and that'll be it. And there won't be any more to it. But I left those four days and felt completely transformed and just able to navigate life with so much ease. I felt so much calmer. I felt so much peace with who I was. And I was like, Okay, maybe there's more, maybe there's more I need to do.
And then since that point has, really continued to develop and push and challenge me and learn different modalities, complete other coaching qualifications, as well as still teaching, doing the podcast, and all the other things. And all of this has become as much a part of helping and supporting moms, as well as helping and supporting myself and my family with the skills and tools that I've learned.
And also this huge journey of figuring out who I was and a massive part of that which is why I'm so passionate about talking about self-care is this going from a place of burnout and really not taking care of myself and maybe doing it for a bit and then not being consistent with it, and then falling, being ill and then trying to pick up those habits again and struggling because I was probably too much pressure on myself and not doing the things that actually would simply support me to being in a space where I don't get it perfect all of the time.
I've not picked up my journal this week. Life has been busy and that's okay. But to be in a space of actually, okay, I have this really beautiful toolkit of things I can access when I have five minutes, when I need it most, and also tools that I will use day in, day out to support myself, to be more proactive rather than reactive in those spaces when I do feel exhausted and depleted.
And that's such a beautiful gift to be able to share with others in a really simple and accessible way because self-care can become such a word that's banded around. We should do this, we should do that.
We should be taking care of ourselves is how we should be doing it. This is what works for me. So it's going to work for you. We are all so different. We are all at different seasons and chapters of our lives, whether we're a parent, whether we're not where we're at in our business, or where we're at in any context of our life.
What we all need is very different and what we might need now might be different from what we need in two months, a year, or five years. And so it's about making it simple and accessible and starting small rather than setting this, massive goal of, I'm going to do this for my self-care practice.
And it's all these different things that then just become so overwhelming and unachievable. So we don't do any of it. And we feel guilty doing any of it. And then we're about to go on.
[00:11:02] Aneta: Yeah.
[00:11:03] Emma: I don't know if I answered your question.
[00:11:05] Aneta: Yeah, no, I think that it was helpful to get the background and the journey. And I have an Isabella as well, which is fun. So my oldest daughter Isabella, you said something that made me think about it, I remember my kids are older, they're in their twenties, but I think about when I was pregnant and I was also young, I was in my twenties and starting my career.
So at the time when many women are starting to have their families, they might be early on in their career or just a few years in and maybe focusing on that. And so you have that trajectory and path that we've planned for and that we're very vested in. And then most of the literature and even what we learn about pregnancy and what we learn about motherhood is around how to care for your child, what to expect with the pregnancy, and what may happen to you physically.
But as I think back on it now, I also had that feeling that I've lost myself in this entire process. I know that I'm a wife and a mother, and I know I'm this corporate citizen working, but it would have been so helpful, I think, to have some training or some coaching or education around what is your intention.
What does being a mom look like for you? And what does your life, a big, fully integrated life look like for you? And what are some of those things that are within your control that you can think about? And it might be outsourcing some things that you do. Maybe you have someone that comes to the house and does some laundry or cleans.
If you must have more quality time, maybe you find a sitter. In advance so that you and your husband or your partner can continue to have a date night because that's something that is going to be important from a relationship perspective, but it's almost like doing this coaching beforehand.
And before you have to make those decisions, because once you're in it, you're in it and it's survival mode and you're not sleeping well, and you're taking care of everyone else. Like you say, but wouldn't it have been interesting to have some sort of support before, maybe you even choose to conceive and plan things around that and also the early stages of pregnancy?
[00:13:28] Emma: Absolutely. And I think the narrative and support around that is changing, massively. And that is such a positive because it's showing, those different versions of motherhood and how actually what works for one person isn't necessarily going to work for another. And that is okay.
All of our context in terms of how our life looks is very different. And so I think it's about, now taking what you need from each, rather than it being this prescriptive of do this because this works. And I said that it worked. I guess it's about that a mixing bowl is coming up as an analogy for me. Putting all those ingredients that work.
And sometimes that's trial and error as well, isn't it? And actually, put that in, I use it for a bit and know it doesn't work. So let's take it back out again and maybe I'll need it again, but actually, maybe I won't. I think for me, that's been such a learning curve in terms of approaching the motherhood journey and also running my business, with much more ease and compassion for myself than still learning.
And I'm probably never going to have it all figured out because my daughter's changing all the time. My business is changing all the time. And the same for my clients as well. Their lives are changing all the time. And I think if we can come at things from that perspective, it's so much more freeing, and actually it removes some of that pressure, and I think also it helps to remove some of that need for this balance, and the balance of the scales being, completely, balanced, and it removes the pressure around that too.
[00:15:05] Aneta: Yeah. How do you define balance?
[00:15:08] Emma: I think balance is really interesting, isn't it? Because I think we look at it in terms of this flat like they're both at the same level. And that's what we want. And actually, life isn't like that, sometimes our kids take priority. Sometimes our business has to take priority, and sometimes another aspect, our relationship or whatever it might be has to take priority.
And so I think it's more about easing into where the scales move to and slide to and however you want to look at your scale. And easing into that rather than fighting against it. I know for me that the run-up to Christmas is going to be super busy. My teaching career is within that role is going to be busy.
And my daughter has tons of stuff at school. It's also her birthday just before Christmas. And there are other family commitments around that time. And so I know that actually during that period, my business has to take a bit of a backseat and that is okay.
And I was in a space where actually I would beat myself up for not doing all those things at Christmas and looking at what other people were doing and, really adding that pressure and expectation of you should be doing that because you're running a business and you need to be doing this all of the time.
And all that kind of like negative internal chatter. And now I'm like, actually, and I get to make a choice here and my choice is that my presence and my attention is with my daughter and my teaching job. And in a week my attention can also bring back in my business and I can plan for that.
Okay, these are the bits that I need. To do that is absolutely nonnegotiable during that time. And actually, this other stuff is just going to have to wait. There was a period when I was working on my business like on Christmas Day and Boxing Day. Like I'd pick up my laptop, we'd have Christmas, and I'd be sat there working and I look back and I'm like what were you doing?
Like actually, that time is not for that. And yes, that probably served me at that point in my life. But there was a constant need to do and just add more and more. And now I'm in a space where actually, I get to choose with how I want to run my business. I get to choose about how I want to show up in the world for those days.
And that previous version of me is not how I want to show up at all. And I think that comes from learning. And by all means, if you want to work on Christmas Day and Boxing Day or any other day of the year that, someone says that you shouldn't be working, if that feels right, then do it. If that's what you feel you need to do.
But for me, it's allowed me to, all of this learning, and I guess all of the bringing in that ease and a balance in a way which feels aligned for me, to be able to make a better choice and to be able to make a better choice for me and my family and my business and my teaching role in a way that works for me.
And maybe that'll change in five years. Maybe it won't, but actually, that flexibility to have that kind of like ease and flow rather than constantly fighting against things. It brings that kindness, that compassion, and I guess that contentment with where things are at right now.
[00:18:18] Aneta: I like the word alignment better than balance because I think that it's easy to know when we don't feel imbalanced. We tend to figure that out afterward. We're stressed. We're not sleeping well. Our digestion could be off or in the fight or flight. But if you know what your values are and the most important things, and then you make choices daily that align to those values and it could shift, but if you're still in alignment.
I think you're doing pretty well. And like you said, for some people, if their work is really important and that's one of their top values, maybe they do work on the holidays and that feels okay to them and that's fine. There's no judgment there, but it taps into understanding what's important for me, what works for me, for my family, for the values that I have.
And then I also say, once you make a decision, then go all in. Don't second-guess yourself. Don't regret it. Don't begrudge it while you're doing it. Don't, think about was this the right thing to do. Because that's where so much suffering happens. If you decide I'm going to do this, I'm staying in, I'm not going out, or I went out and I'm enjoying dinner and I'm not doing the work.
Then enjoy the dinner and don't do the work, but don't punish yourself twice. And so that's one thing I've always told my kids. And I remind myself all the time, too. This is the decision I've made with the information at hand. And I'm going to be fully present and not second guess it. And it does make everything so much easier to give ourselves a little bit of grace and compassion and kindness and and just be where you are, right?
Just to be so present and be where you are.
[00:19:51] Emma: Absolutely. And that flows with so much more ease.
[00:19:55] Aneta: Absolutely. And I remember I look back and I was working full time. I was in the corporate world when my kids were small and I call some of those years, the dark years because I don't remember many of those times. Like I see photographs and I saw myself in a photograph. So I knew I was there, but have zero memory of the day.
And that makes me so sad. That's horrible because physically I was in one place, but mentally I was thinking about email or work projects or God knows what. And you're just cheating yourself in life when we do that.
[00:20:33] Emma: Absolutely.
[00:20:33] Aneta: Yeah. So what are some of the things that you coach, really busy moms to do for themselves in terms of self-care or, just things that they can do just to take better care of themselves or to make sure that they are listening to their needs?
[00:20:49] Emma: So a lot of the clients that I work with, they struggle with that consistency in terms of, a, how to bring that self-care practice in because it can feel so unachievable, and also then how to be consistent with that, really build it into a healthy habit. And so in terms of whichever, self-care practice they're bringing in, and there are some that I teach my clients because I think they're absolutely beautiful and really simple and easy go-to self-care practices.
And then there might be some that the clients come with, that they want to go to a gym class or they want to get out for a walk or whatever it might be for them. But the key I think for whatever we're doing and however I work with my clients is to start simple and to add it to something that you're already doing, whatever that self-care practice is.
And I think there's this a misconception that self-care, needs to cost something, And also needs to be the time that we are solely on our own and we're not disturbed and it is this massive block of time that we are completely on our own and that's not the case.
Self-care might be things that we do with our children. It might be something we do with our partner, or a friend. It might be, a group that we go to. It doesn't need to be a spa day or a bubble bath or, whatever, those, societal expectations that self-care is.
And so a lot of the clients I work with, we will do breathing, we will do breathing exercises that might just include, some simple deep breaths. It might also include a visualization alongside that. And our breath is such a beautiful way to easily and, accessibly, calm our nervous system, support to soothe ourselves, to ground us in that moment, especially when we are feeling, completely exhausted, when we are in flight or fright, when we are in that space of, I feel overwhelmed, overstimulated. And I'm starting to maybe get a bit impatient with the kids or impatient with, it might even be emails that are coming in terms of our business.
Whatever it might be, and just coming away, taking a bit of a pause, taking some deep breaths can just allow us to reset ourselves. And it's also a tool, that we can use with our kids, that we can use with those around us as well. And it doesn't cost us anything. And it can be 30 seconds, 60 seconds, five minutes, however much time we have.
And we can add that to, as we boil the kettle in the morning to make our morning brew, as we sit and turn our computer on, as we arrive, at the school pickup, we can add it to each of those little things that we're already doing. And I think with that also, that breath, a few deep breaths can allow us to transition into those different chapters of our day.
If we've done the school run in the morning and we're coming back home to work or we're going into the office, actually that time just to reset and refocus and regroup into that next chapter can also be a really beautiful way to bring the breath work in. And another key thing that I do with a lot of my clients is journaling.
And again, I think that is quite a common misconception of you have to write loads and it should be this way and you should keep the journals and it should look like this it can look like however you want it to look, whether that's some bullet points on your phone, whether that is, notes in a journal, whether it's using a journal that you buy that already has the prompts in, whether it's pulling, cards from a card deck, whether it is voice noting yourself on your phone, whether it's two minutes, whether it is a list of all the things we're grateful for before you go to bed, whatever it might be.
Journaling is another way to allow us to start to dig deep in terms of what's going on for us, but also to keep that mental note of where we're at on that day. Set our intentions for the day, identify and bring in what we're grateful for, what our learnings are, what we might want to bring in tomorrow, and what we might want to let go of. And so those are the two, and they're so simple, can be so simple and so accessible, and can be used in a variety of different ways as well.
[00:25:02] Aneta: I love those practices. I facilitate breath work, and so I'm obsessed. It's so good, and you just need a few really good breaths to turn things around. Also, this notion of transitioning from meeting to meeting from task to task from work to play to home. All of that. It's so important to just be intentional with those transitions and it just causes us to pause and to be more present.
So I love that. And journaling, a huge fan of journaling. I've been journaling since I was small and it's so important to be able to look back. Sometimes I like to reread them and just see if I recognize my voice, but it's also nice to look back. I have journals when the kids were small and to look at all the things that I worried about and just to say, wow, I was so worried about something that was nothing.
And it does later on help put perspective around other things as well. So sometimes it's just good to capture some of those thoughts that we have that are heavy or dark and just come back and go, okay, yeah, this didn't turn out to be anything. And I just spent a lot of energy worrying about it.
But tell me more about the magazine that you have, the positive well-being zine for moms. And you said that you've designed it in a way where people can just pick it up and put it down as they need to. So tell me more about it and do they subscribe? Is it a physical magazine or is it just online?
[00:26:29] Emma: Yeah, I started as a physical magazine and so before it was that, moment of self-care for mums, full of all this, gorgeous inspiration, words of wisdom, expert advice, beautiful illustrations, and poetry alongside small businesses, sharing what they were doing and they were all mum run businesses. And I produced the 19th issue last year I think that was the August issue, so August 2023.
And I haven't produced any since because I'm in a space where I'm really happy with what they are and what exists in the world. And they aren't dated. They aren't subject-specific. They have a theme. However, They can be picked up and read at any point, there's something that any mum on her journey would take from every single issue, whether that's, looking back and reflecting on her early days of motherhood or whether it's something that would be relevant to her now.
And so you can grab them on the website and they're all available as digital downloads so you can download them on your device and read them as and when. And there are also a couple of paper issues left of Issue 18, which was the last print-based issue. And one of the main reasons why it transitioned from print even, to digital was, after COVID, everything went up, and financially, I couldn't print the copies anymore.
Which was sad, and it was part of the grieving process of that kind of, transition into a different stage and a different chapter of my business and also a different way of life. And actually, the fact that anybody across the world can now download a copy and just read it as and when like that is such a beautiful gift to put out into the world.
And it's full of so many experts and incredible businesses. It's been such an honor to publish and share that and such a gift to be able to give that support and guidance to mums at any stage of their journey. My mum and grandma used to read every issue which was amazing to be able to share it with them as well.
But it's a wonderful resource and it's there and it will stay there on the website as my business changes and grows, as my motherhood journey changes and grows, it will be there for mums to access as and when they need it.
[00:28:48] Aneta: It's so beautiful. I do miss magazines. I can hold magazines. I could just read, bring to the bath, bring outside, all those things on the plane. It's just nice to have them. And even the ones that exist now, or they're just so pared down. There is something special about having something physical and you still have those out in the world, which is wonderful.
So tell me about your podcast. You have a podcast as well. And when did you start it? And what are the types of things that you talk about on your podcast?
[00:29:17] Emma: So the podcast started the following year after the magazine launched, and it was under a different name then, and it's now called the Self Care and Motherhood Edit Podcast. And it's just another way to share those stories, share those words of wisdom, have those conversations around motherhood. There's a mix of solo and guest episodes.
And I spent a lot of time as the business changed and developed, I spent a lot of time previously, sharing the words and wisdom of others, and last year and towards the end of the year before I was like, okay now I need to share everything that I know and I know we're gonna support mums.
And so I spent a lot of time recording a lot of solo episodes to share these simple self-care tips to share how to calm your nervous system share tips about journaling, self-care in terms of seasonal, practices that you could bring in how you might support yourself in different ways and bringing, the different coaching modalities that I've trained in and worked with my clients, from NLP to Mbit to Practical Magic within that space as well.
And so the podcast comes out biweekly and they're always really short episodes. Mums don't have much time, so it's easy just to listen, to 10-15 minute episodes where you can just gain some useful, and simple tools that you can use to support yourself in a really practical and achievable way.
[00:30:48] Aneta: That's beautiful. Are most of your guests experts or are they other moms or do you have a mixture of different types of folks?
[00:30:56] Emma: So all of the guests that I've had on so far have been experts in their field, whether that's motherhood, whether that is in something specific to parenting. And there's, I think there's well over 120 episodes published now and out there into the world.
So the first few seasons of the podcast were all guest episodes, they were all, people who I was inspired with, sharing their story, sharing those words of wisdom, and just those little bits of nuggets that, I think as mums, as parents, we all need.
And as I said before, then we can choose which bits we want to bring in and, use within our journey. Yeah, mostly experts sharing their words of wisdom.
[00:31:38] Aneta: That's wonderful. Well, I encourage people to check it out. And if folks want to work with you what is the best way that they can find you?
[00:31:47] Emma: So you can find me over on social media. I spend a lot of time over on Instagram and you can find me over @emmabenyon.coach on the same on Facebook as well. And if you want to find out more about my coaching, it is all there to have a look at on the website, which is emmabenyoncoaching.co.uk pop me an email or there's a message form or just drop me a DM on Facebook or Instagram.
[00:32:09] Aneta: Wonderful. We'll include all those links. And Emma, you have built a very rich life doing all these amazing things, supporting busy moms. So the final question is tied to the title of the podcast. What does it mean to you to live the width of your life?
[00:32:27] Emma: I think for me, it just means living life from a space of being content, having that freedom, that ease rather than, fighting against the changes, the waves that come just easing into it and knowing that there will be hard times, there will be times of absolute pure beauty. But it all comes together and just take it a day at a time with ease kindness and compassion.
[00:32:54] Aneta: That's beautiful. Thank you so much. It was just my pleasure speaking with you today and my continued success.
[00:33:01] Emma: Thank you so much for having me.
[00:33:03] Aneta: Thank you for listening to today's episode. If today's conversation inspired you to dream again, break out of your comfort zones, or reflect on what it means to you to live more fully, then please follow this podcast because every week you'll hear more stories from people just like you who took imperfect action towards their goals, created more joy and are living the life that they always dreamt of living.