How do you care for yourself while balancing multiple businesses, motherhood, and preparing to welcome your third baby? The start of this year has been a roller coaster juggling it all, and I’ve really noticed how much I’ve been craving self care - especially after a really busy last month of work. I’m now on maternity leave and trying to wind down my mind and body to a slower pace in preparation for our third baby, and although I feel like my mind still often wants to race, I’m trying to fight the urge to do too much and I’ve been booking myself in for massages, coffees with girlfriends and spending slower days with the kids.
What inspired Milk, your newest venture, and how does it naturally connect with the rest of your work? Milk was born out of my own experience through motherhood, I was constantly waking up covered in milk and found that element of breastfeeding really challenging with no options out there for a bra which simply captured milk leaks, so together with two friends we set out to invent a leakproof bra and although Milk didn’t come to fruition until I had my second baby, it was life changing for me. I loved creating a product for women which didn’t exist beforehand.
Beyond creating the product, the business feels like a creative expression - another way to express myself and even though it’s quite a different business to my interior design work at We Are Triibe, it feels somehow connected in how it flows together.
How does nature support and influence your creativity and well-being? It’s huge for me. We live in Mullumbimby, in the hinterland of Byron Bay surrounded by nature. We have a big block of land we’re constantly working on (we’re about to start building our forever home here) and we are always in the garden or swimming in the creeks and beaches around us. When I have a stressful day - whether that’s with work or the kids, I always gravitate to the garden and I find it grounds us all and brings us back to the present moment.
Are there any books, podcasts, or mentors that have deeply shaped your journey in wellness, entrepreneurship, and motherhood? Entrepreneurship feels like something that’s always been innately within me, I’ve always been drawn to working for myself, and I’ve never shied away from giving something new a go (possibly even to my own detriment), I love to try new things and for one side of my personality that can means a lot of half started projects all over the house, but on the flip side, it’s manifested into two businesses which I have birthed to life and love.
With motherhood, when I was pregnant with our first son Solomon, I read a book called the Continuum Concept, it’s an old book which was written in the 70’s and gifted to me by my mother’s best friend. It solidified my views on parenthood a lot. The book is about a woman from England who spends a year with an indigenous tribe in South America. In it, she talks about how humans need instinctive nurturing such as touch, trust and nurturing to develop optimally. At the time, pregnant with my first, there was a lot of opinion around how I should mother, and a lot of it felt like a disconnection from bonding with our children, it reminded me to trust my own instincts and do what felt right for me as a mother. It made me not want to buy all the “things” everyone told me I needed, and it steered me away from strict schedules, or sleep training our babies - and instead, inspired me to co-sleep with them, baby wear and really relish in those early days of connection with them.
In terms of mentors, I have so many beautiful friends who are such inspirational mothers, I am constantly in awe of them and learn a lot from them. My close friend Nadine who is a doula and runs a birthing program called She Births also profoundly changed the way I felt about birth, and subsequently motherhood as well. She’s a wise woman and full of deep understanding of women and Matrescence. The conversations we have had around birth and motherhood have been deeply transformative for me over the years. I’ve never met anyone who knows just exactly what to say as she often does. 
Do you have any rituals that bring you a sense of calm and presence? I wouldn’t say I have any set rituals, I think I’ve succumb to the somewhat fast paced life that two kids and two businesses bring, which means every day is quite different. I do crave time to connect to myself though, being alone and painting or playing with pottery. It’s something that I settle into like meditation and it really brings me back to myself and my inner thoughts.
Where do you love to retreat when you need to recharge? My garden or art studio on the property, I love to spend time there alone to recharge my batteries.
How do you invite creativity back in when you're feeling uninspired? I think if I’m feeling uninspired it’s usually paired with feeling a bit burnt out, so when that happens, I try to take time for myself, to connect back to myself through nature or art or by spending time with some of my closest girlfriends, or go on a date night with my husband. This usually fills my cup and brings me back to my creative flow.
What guidance would you offer to someone wanting to build a business that reflects their values while staying true to themselves? I think as a business owner it’s really easy to get into the habit of late hours and doing everything yourself. It’s important to set boundaries for yourself like you would with an employer and to get your business to align with your values. A business can very quickly take over our time and energy and leave us feeling depleted – which for a lot of us is the opposite to why we would have started it in the first place. My business partner and I have this ritual where every January we get out a bunch of different coloured post-it notes and we categorise them into Health, Relationship, Career, Adventure and Finance. We then scribble down all our goals and stick them on the wall in their groupings. Very quickly we can visually see what’s important to us and where we ultimately crave more flow. We then keep each other accountable for that over the year and turn them into actionable goals. This drives how we set up our business too so that it aligns with our values.
As you prepare to welcome your little one, how are you nurturing yourself—physically, mentally, and emotionally—for this next chapter? Mentally, I’ve been spending a lot of time nesting, I’ve been going through my cupboards and doing huge spring cleans, dropping old clothes to charity stores and really starting with a fresh clutter-free space. It might not sound relaxing but I crave this every time I’m pregnant and I feel like once it’s all done my body can just drop into rest mode.
Physically, I have been booking myself in for massages, and spending mornings doing more gentle stretching and connecting back to my body.
For my emotional state, I have been slowly disconnecting from the busy work flow I’ve had in recent months and coming back to a place of calm and retreat. It’s been so nice having my nights back just chatting on the couch with my husband after the kids are in bed or going for brunch dates with girlfriends - and this weekend I have started painting again which feels like something I haven’t had time to do in so long. It all feels really nurturing.
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