Coping with mum juggle-struggle - Thriving Woman Project

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Coping with mum juggle-struggle

Episode 2 • 21st September 2022 • Thriving Woman Project • Wendy Griffith

THIS TRANSCRIPT IS COMPUTER‐GENERATED. IT IS POSTED TO HELP YOU UNDERSTAND OR FIND CERTAIN PARTS YOU ARE INTERESTED IN. ALTHOUGH THE TRANSCRIPTION IS LARGELY ACCURATE, IN SOME CASES IT IS INCOMPLETE OR INACCURATE (COULD IT BE BECAUSE OF WENDY’S SOUTH AFRICAN ACCENT?). SO, IT MIGHT GIVE YOU A LAUGH HERE AND THERE!

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You're listening to the healthy and thriving career moms podcast where every week you will learn about healthier habits and hacks to create and support healthy and thriving lifestyle as a busy mom. I'm your host Wendy and I truly believe that the best gift you can give to your family and the world is a healthy thriving you. Let's dive in Hello, Hello lovely and welcome back to episode two of the inspiring mums series on healthy thriving career moms podcast I am so excited for you to hear from today's guest, the lovely Rachel Bloomfield, who is a mindset and self confidence coach for busy moms. And she's also the host of the ones that are podcast because I'm just getting all like my favorite podcast guests to come on and talk to you and to share more with you. Too long Rachel just felt like she was losing herself and these days she's on a mission is to help moms prioritize themselves and to live more in the moment and find joy in all areas of their busy life. And she wants to help more women to just really go on that journey of self discovery. And one thing I love about Rachel is that she's so funny.

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She is so authentic and real. She will always be able to see she's your loyal supporter and your loudest cheerleader, so I cannot wait for you to hear about but before that I just wanted to remind you that tomorrow is happening my nutrition and reset masterclass 12 Easy Ways to reset nutrition now, so if you no worries just make sure you're registered so I can send you the recording and if you'd like to see but this is just a reminder to all of you now get registered for that masterclass because it's happening Wednesday, the 21st of September. Right, let's jump into today's interview. Hi, Rachel, thank you so much for joining me today.

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It's a pleasure to be here. Thank you. I'm so excited to have you also because I have a major crush on your voice with girls go to T avoid I just love listening to you. Oh, that's amazing. Well, I could talk for England. So you know, it's all good. We got to put serious time constraints on ourselves, because we're both such chatterboxes so excited for my audience to meet you. I mean, I say audience you are my audience. You are that healthy and thriving career mom. Just to kind of set the scene. We hadn't even met each other until this past week because we like internet friends that everyone had internet friends during lockdown lockdown Yeah. And I came across you through like a network of machines and then I just started stalking you and following you and I just loved your energy and I love your reels and your tick tock and everything. So I'm just so excited to have you on the podcast today. So just to give us a little bit of a whistlestop

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background Ah, thank you so much. So yeah, well on average, and I am a miser and self confidence coach with any moms. I basically like to work with moms helping them to learn to prioritize themselves more and also to find the joy in all areas of busy mom life. I think for so long. We are not going to struggle, you know where we're just surviving and we're just going from one thing to the next and and so often we just forget to take a step back and just think about ourselves a little bit more and just do it and find that fine, you know, night should be fun. I didn't believe that like shouldn't be so serious all the time. There is always room for fun. So that is kind of what I'm about and just helping and supporting moms on that journey. I am most definitely still on that journey. A work in progress. I spent far too long just putting everybody else above myself. And I realized that it wasn't serving me obviously but it also wasn't serving my family or my friends or my children either.

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Because I was burnt out and I was stressed and I was trying to be everything to everybody and we can't be everything to everybody and it really hit me and I really have taken a long journey over the last few years of kind of resetting and thinking about like what is it that actually I want and what is it that I need? And how can I bring that into my life while still completely being a present Mom, I'm prioritizing my relationship and prioritizing my children, but also just having myself at the center. I think so many

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moms will relate to everything that you said I'm just sitting there like a naughty dog. Everything that you say and I'm all about the self care as my audience knows that tell me you are a very busy mom. So what does that look like? Like how old are your kids? You know all that?

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Yeah, it is. It is a busy life. I love it. I actually quite enjoy being busy. But I've got two children and they are 11 and six. So my eldest has just started secondary school last week. So it's a real transition time for our family at the moment because she is lying and she is just doing her own thing and gaining her own independence. You know, she's getting herself up in the morning and making lunch and walking off to school. How does that feel? It feels amazing. I feel really so proud of her and I feel so lucky that she's just getting on with it and she's really just thriving and loving it. So yeah, that's how but so I'm at home working on my own business and my own kind of personal growth journey as well during the days while the kids are at school and then when they pick up from school I am shifting on to being a dance mom and a football mom now as well. So my sons are so

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busy. I've got quite a few friends who got into the dance world and it is hardcore. It is I mean if your kid loves it like to the extreme like my daughter does, it is full on like she does, competitions and why it's hectic. You got to do the hair and the spraying and the I mean you go dark for a week because you're in like competition mode competition rate and like yeah, and the quick changes that you've got to have everything. Sometimes I have to have it like all written down like but this one she needs. This one she needs these things and you have to kind of have it where she did a show recently and she was in about 20 different numbers in this show. And literally had to have all of them kind of stacked up like one after the other and she's come off and I'll be like pulling things off her and chucking more clothes back on air and running after her trying to do it at the same time as she's running on stage.

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So yeah, it's not but I absolutely love it. So yeah, I'm ferrying her backwards and forwards to all her various parties and I'm varying my son back and forth to his football matches, but we're training but then also I find time for myself as well and I love you're very good about that. I just think you've got to you've got to schedule it. That's the only way and one of my top tips. Actually one thing that has been game changing in my life and you know, especially for my relationship with my husband is that we actually have a weekly meeting now that sounds really unsexy

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to say where we sit down on a Friday morning at a coffee and we just look at our diaries for the next week. And we've just chat about who's doing what and where we need to be because it is a juggle, like, as I say quite often I've got to get one kid to one place, one open, but last night, they all started back at their roots and my son was at beavers. My daughter was at dance and I was at a rehearsal. I will say do musicals because I just love to perform. So I can't give that up. So I have rehearsals as well. So literally at 730 There were about three different places that I had to be so it's yeah, you have to so we have the meeting on the workout who's doing well. And

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then I just we have to have a meeting and my mom lives with us now as well. So that's an extra pair of hands. And even though like when I see these women with four kids, I'm like, how do you juggle this and what have just got a weekly memo magnetized thing for the fridge? Yeah, and because the schedule changes weekly so you can't like have something set up there. So then I just rub it out. And then I put on there who's doing what like who's doing going or whatnot. What time do we need to eat because you know the knock on effect of like things going on or

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he's playing football so he can't eat? You know later. I don't know. So there's a whole thing, isn't it? It really is. It really is Yeah. But you always seem to take it in your stride and I love your energy and I love like if you follow go and follow Rachel on tick tock or Instagram you'll see she does these. I love this. What you've been doing with these like five

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minutes are Yeah, the staff care moments. I just think like everybody thinks that we all know like, oh, we must take care of ourselves. We must think about ourselves care and it's all this BS and everyone's probably just like, oh, when they're gonna punch you in the face. Right? And it's become a bit of a cliche. It's like, oh, God, like, four hours to meditate in a forest or whatever. It's like, you know, that's not what is it? And I just think, take it back to basic and I'm all about that like well the latest theory that I've heard is like, Moon bathing. Oh, not out when there's a full moon and Moon Bay. Okay, I would be too cold or Skeeters would get me or you know,

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crazy noises and you'd come running back inside. Yeah, that would work for me. But now I'm all about just taking about two bases. So I've got like a whole, like 30 days worth of like five minute tips. They're all just kind of like little self care things you can do but none of them came one to five minutes. So then you can't say like we're all busy, right? But if we're really honest, we can't say we don't have five minutes because we've got to find five minutes even

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toilet. I got by for you. And even the person I don't know about you. I am laughing because it happened to me this week and I was at the conference with yourself and I went into the loo and then I got stuck on the loo looking at my phone now and I felt like I had to say to the person like I wasn't having a pool like I was having a pool like by the way just to digress I've gotten over like if I've got to have a boo like I'm not gonna apologize like really good sign of health. Absolutely. Yeah. So that was that I do feel like I have to come out and be like, like on my phone Have you ever found on the loop

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either way? No, but I have really close I also want I hit my head hit my phone on my head because I tried to balance it on like one of those like paper towel dispensers. Often is because there isn't actually a place I feel like there's a place to hang your coat. There's not a place to like put your phone and I think there's so many phones down the loo situation I'm waiting for the day it's gonna show it will happen. It's not manifest talking about appearing on the toilet now. Five minutes Yeah, exactly. Even if you have to lock yourself in the bathroom. I have done that before. The kids are like around when they're a bit younger.

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A lock for the bathroom although I have to put put it up high because not to lock the bathroom door. So then mommy's stuck. I've locked it before and she's come knocking and she's like, Mommy, why have you blocked the door? You know, we don't lock doors in this house. And I do. Mommy does sometimes. Mommy needs Yeah, exactly. We all need that time. But yeah, and I think that's it. It's about just finding those little moments even if you just like if you're gonna go to bed at like 11 got to bed at five to 11 Have yourself five minutes then or like get up five minutes before you would normally get out so it's not going to impact your life massively.

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Are you a morning person or night out? Well, I'm shifting I think I would have said to you categorically up until about a couple of years ago. I am a night owl. I am definitely not a morning person. I could never get up. Hated the mornings. I was grumpy. And yeah, left. It's the very, very last minute but I know that my day goes so much better. When I get up earlier. And so actually earlier look like the moment I get up at half six and so crazy early, but it's enough so I can actually I don't have to get my son up until about half seven. As I say I'm lucky now my daughter sort of sorted herself out at the moment. So she kind of gets herself up. She actually gets up earlier than me at the moment which is hilarious. You're in her room at half six and she's dressed in a uniform and anyway, so yeah, I thought about heartaches and I actually uh, my kids were actually my whole family just laugh at me because I've got this like swing down in my garden and at the moment whilst I'm still clinging on to the fact it's not freezing cold in the mornings. I go out there like every morning with my little like green juice and I sit out on my swing and just have some time to myself outside and my family are always like, Oh, I'm your swing would you agree?

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Oh my God and I deliberately bought it so that I could line it like sort of a hammock style. Yeah, you do that. Honestly, I love it. And it's something about that like your gentle rocking motion in the morning and just kind of does that with your green shots. You'll bring my green shot exactly. And one thing I'm getting really much better at now if I try to do against five minutes I set a timer for five minutes when I get out there and I don't do anything that first five minutes and then select drink my drink. So then I'm not like straight on my phone and I'm not like writing out my to do list or anything like that. It's just literally that's because we get to carry on

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you and I are in the personal development world and we like to you know, you and I sort of build junkies we read our books and all that. But there is something I feel just a bit like in a state where these people are like you need to meditate in the morning and I do have a morning routine but it's a shift day to day and I think I feel like I need more something than something else or absolutely but I think just even that like five minutes of calm. Yeah, because they there is that link with the light and it sets your circadian rhythm for the day. So it actually ironically, getting into like first thing in the morning is what's going to help you sleep better at night. Yeah, no,

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that's yeah, it's not. But it does make a massive difference. And especially I think as we go into winter when there's less light and stuff, so I think it's absolutely I think that's the key ones, don't you and I have like little accountability during winter. That even when it's such sun worshipers Yeah, we actually go out there for five minutes in the cold. I think it's great and I did it I have stayed into it. Because I don't know about you know, you know, the whole cold water swimming or when? Yeah, I do actually I quite often finish the shower on a cold setting. I do quite like it.

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I do like doing that as well. I used to think you had to do with cold the whole time to get in the cold and that when I changed it from that to start it on you know have your shower, but then lost yourself for a minute on cold. Yeah. Now that the cost of electricity is so much I was talking to a friend this weekend he said like next year that estimating that you know 10 minute hot showers gonna cost about two pound 50 It's about having a gym membership and showering at the gym. Yeah, I read something it's not about like making yourself a cup of tea at home is going to cost you more than going and buying one in a cafe.

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To me, let's talk about hot drinks because you got me hooked. Like the one I remember was post on your social media that Wednesday about having a pretentious Coffee order. So when I met you for the first time this weekend, which was actually in Starbucks Q funnily enough, I was really bored me through your pretentious coffee odor. And you told me and I was like that sounds nice. And you let me have a sip of yours. I was like that. And now you've got me hooked on your pretentious Coffee order. So tell us oh my god I love so a bit of background with that is that I didn't use drink coffee. I wasn't a coffee drinker at all. And then I kind of started to get into it on sort of like flavored coffees and I started to experiment a little bit and I found one that I really liked. But then a few years ago I switched to like a plant based diet. And so then I stopped having dairies and stopped having milk. So then I was like, Ah, now what do I do because there's no like, I'd have like a latte and so I tried it with various different like nut milks and oatmeal and stuff and I couldn't. I couldn't find one that I quite liked. So I was like, Yeah, can't get it quite right. And I was like, ah, am I going to have to give up coffee and I didn't really want to give up coffee. I'm not addicted. I just like it.

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coffee every day like I don't even say guilty as everyone knows, like, guilty, so that's my thing. And for me, I will hurt you. Yeah, exactly. So yeah, eventually I kind of went across various different combos and now I have I've mastered that the absolute ultimate and it is an almond milk cappuccino, and you have a sugar free caramel syrup. So it's got that like sweetness in the Caravelle yesterday. That was definitely after we had the party on Friday night and all the delegates may have may have been celebrating my birthday with all my friends too much. But anyway and it was just that little hits of goodness and I need to reach out as well. But then I was like I can only go to like the cut. I tried to go to like the same couple of shots right so that they know my audience and I don't have to keep asking for it because they like Rachael

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Ray. The Rachel haircut. Oh, yeah, I did. Yeah, I did. I had all the weird like highlights and the strange layers. Yeah, I had a few times in my teens. Is that like your favorite sitcom ever? Absolutely. I was absolutely addicted friends and then my daughter's now got massively into it as well. So and she's laughing and I'm like it's so relatable no matter what generation Oh, yeah, it's so so so good. I love it and what what's like, your second favorite kind of show on telly now like friends will always be the ultimate. The ultimate Well, I think I might give it I might get a bit emotional when I talk about this but she I'm an AI love neighbors. And if you watched the last episode, I comedy

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was over. It was just my little like I said guilty, you know, not guilty. I know moment of just esteem it was so rubbish. It was such rubbish TV but I've watched it since I was a little girl like I've watched. Yeah, and I just kind of carried it on and it was just so quick. It was like a little kind of by the time you fast forward for the adverts. It's like 16 minutes or something and it's just perfect. I get it all just have a quick sit down. I used to work in Africa back in the day. Anyone who's from South Africa. You remember this? There were two daytime soapy shows that we have neighbors and Home and Away and most of us who had lived in Australia she was addicted to those. But I used to watch and everyone thinks it's a joke. I'm frightened and Socrative was a real thing. Days of Our Lives. And the Bold and the Beautiful and if anyone remembers that episode from friends where Joey host that party on the roof and Monica is getting on O'Brien stuff. They were the real actors from Days

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of Our Lives in that and I was very lucky my husband was like you are just embarrassing. I feel like that would have been proper trash TV in a great way. It was absolutely brilliant. And when he does all this like Dr. Dre memoria and like brain transplant seasons, right like that has to happen in their lives like they was killers. I mean it went I think it came off the air recently as well like neighbors but Iran's I mean, I've barely five years or some brilliant areas. I do love a bit of telly and another one that I love is ships Creek. Yeah. A lot of people have recommended that actually I haven't watched that one yeah

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so so good and sex education so the one of the guys was from chips Creek is going to be in the news series a sex education so that's really good. Do a little quick fire round with you now okay, Katie, any heads up of this because I want like the first answer that comes to all right. So what is your favorite song? Like it just gets you like every time? Oh, okay. It kind of depends on what mood I'm in. I guess I really like hungry eyes from desk dancing. Obviously just like when you hear it's just so nostalgic. It's just like that if I was like out and it would be like this song that would kind of be like, this is a fart and would get me up it would probably be like an S pub. Seven song or something like it just really exaggerated just takes me back to my my university. It was always playing at our uni nights out and stuff and it was that like moment where there's like one of the raps and it's like want to see Rachel do her thing and I'll be like,

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yeah, oh, amazing. I love it. I love it. Right? movie of all time. Our desk dancing without a shadow. You are the second guest in a row who has said that? That is I mean, I think that's everyone's favorite. Definitely, it's like, I've never watched it. I'm sorry. I don't think we can be friends anymore. What is that? Oh, if you have not watched the gospel, please do me because I want to know who could be wiped out. Your favorite drink beautiful. Oh, Prosecco. Not champagne Prosecco. Yeah, see, I love champagne, but I find it much easier to drink. It's like much the writer

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I my friend borders stunning bottle of passenger. There's like a purple label round and we need to get some of this and I looked at how much it was. I was like, No, I think we'll probably just stick with a preceptory for now. Yeah, I like the pink champagne. Your favorite easy go to supper. Quick, easy, like quite an easy okay, we make this kind of like for to show I think which is a bit of a fancy name. But basically, it's like a salad. You just kind of chop all the bits in it's got like cucumber, pomegranate, spring onion, garlic, all kinds of stuff like that. And then you also like grip I kind of stick in the oven and some Petter we'd like olive oil on so as it crisps up, and then you just toss that in with the salad and a bit of ceramic vinegar and

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only please can you do a real on this. Yeah, media. So that means NTP is always gonna have chickpeas and everything I love the chickpea thing. And I suppose having that plant based diet I mean has that just made you feel better? Yeah, massively. I just I realized, I don't know whether I mean I've never had any testing but I think I'm possibly like slightly intolerant to some things. I think bread bread is a I can feel it when I've had too much pregnant. So I definitely when I shifted on to plant based. I were at the start of any bread. I really like went full on salads, beans, stews, all that kind of great stuff, but I'm less regimented with it now so I will have a bit of sourdough toast or, you know, some Pinto and stuff out there and also it's got loads, so doesn't have that sort of as much

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of that bloating effect. Yeah, exactly. Oh, that's not amazing. I'm going to try that. I do love a salad. But now we're coming into the winter and now switch to more of the slow cooker, the stews Yeah, I know what you mean. Please, you know that kind of thing. Kind of too much of that. Otherwise, it's dangerous and I Pilates classes. Anyway, Arbonne products. I know you're a big fan of Arbonne products. Oh, it's gotta be the fish sticks. Oh my gosh, just on a different level the flame is so I tend to mix one in with my Greenshot in the morning so that I know I've got that kind of like energy going at the start. Exactly. But then you know if you have that like afternoon slump I never really have I don't really tend to have coffee. Like later on. In the day. And so yeah, I just find like a fist stick in the afternoon. If you're in a bit of a slump is so good. It just gives you

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a load. If you've got stuff going on that evening. Like if you've got your rehearsals and exactly that's sustained energy without that crash. I'm just I don't know how I carry them on. My bags is like a duty to humanity. So men who are tired I'm like, Here you go. Has anything I've given them drugs and I'm like, No, seriously, this is better than drugs.

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It was hilarious at the conference on the weekend. I just met Ron and everybody just like tipping these sachets of physics into the bottles of water and I was like this is a neat space at the top otherwise when a volcano Yeah, no one likes a busy mess, although we've had them. Right. Just finally to finish off. Give me your top tip. I think you've already to an extent share this with the self care. But like what is your kind of top tip or busy working moms? Something that maybe you could go back and wish you could have told yourself and let your hindsight the other small side? Well, I think it's

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really about realizing that. I mean, this is gonna sound like a cliche when I say it, but like self care isn't selfish. And it is like absolutely at the core of everything like self care is not about meditating or going on a spa day. Self Care is literally preserving your own health. And I think that is so important. And if we can focus on that and preserve our own health, then we can be the best parent. We can be the best wife and we can be the best friend and daughter and business owner or work colleague and we can be all those great things but if we don't have our own, how fast then everything else suffers from it. So I think it's really about like health first and every element of health like physical, emotional, mental health. Just at the forefront. It's so crucial.

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That is amazing. And I'm just like that is the clip of me because this is what I'm always banging on about. I'm like, Look, you know, I know what you mean when you say being the best and I know you don't mean like being the best because again, moms that like the best version of you and showing us the best version of you and I know that without my health I have nothing and I just think of all these amazing people in my life and amazing woman and even just like they Deborah James like recently and you just think she would have given everything in the world. Her house, I've been able to live a longer life and so I just think as moms, you know, it is like we cannot serve others when we are not looking after our health at the cornerstone which is why I wanted to create this community because I just feel like in order to be healthy and thriving like your version of healthy and thriving non society tells us what is going to help you feel your best in terms of your emotional physical well being and thrive in your life. I just think that is that is it for me as well. So that's why I just love you know having you in my world I love working with you. I love all the fun that we're having on our sort of journeys as podcasters moms and business partners now which is very exciting. So tell us how can people find you what's the best place to connect

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with you? Amazing so on Instagram or tick tock I am at Rachel Bloomfield coaching, just my name coaching. And on Facebook I've got a Facebook group, a lovely community of busy moms starting their journey on beginning to prioritize themselves and that is the mums Night Out community on Facebook. And then I also have my podcast myself as well mom's Night Out podcast, which I absolutely love. It's like a podcast equivalent of a therapeutic catch up with your girlfriends just chatting over a glass of wine, about life love and everything in between. So yeah, you find I love that you do like short episodes as well. So people will. Yes, because I've had so many people say to me like oh, well, I'd love to listen to the podcast, but I'm here there and everywhere and I just don't have time. And so I started doing weekly coffee catch up episodes that are just five minutes. I'm all about the five minutes right it's all about the

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five minutes blue. I love it. Thank you so much. I know our audience will get so much from hearing from us today. And as I say go for the ride you get one of the top tips and a little reels and her like her self care downloads and stuff is just amazing. Thank you so much for sharing. Thank you so much. Thank you for tuning in today. I'm so grateful for you that this episode has resonated make sure you visit Wendy griffith.co.uk To discover more of my content and my fantastic free resources to support you in thriving. Or if you'd like to continue the conversation further. Drop me a DM by Instagram at Windy Griffith live healthy. I'd love to hear from you. Until next time keep thriving.