About six weeks ago, Micky Jones’ book, “Keep the Fires Burning – Conquering stress and burnout as a Mother-Baby Professional”, made its way into my hands, and quickly, her words made their way into my heart.

Stress is an interesting creature. It can burn you up slowly, over years and years, or it can get you in an instant.

In my case, stress has burned through me at a slow pace for a number of years. I’m a huge advocate and practitioner of self-care, and I have a number of practices in my toolkit. However, physical exercise was not a tool I actively used.

One subtitle in “Keep the Fires Burning” changed everything for me – “Move Your Body – Sweat is Your Body Crying Happy Tears!”

I’ve been hearing from birth professionals who are struggling with finding clients and getting hired. These women are very actively marketing themselves. They’re putting themselves out there, making contacts, getting interviews, following up, but they’re just not closing the sale, or they’re not attracting the kind of clients they want – namely, paying clients.

In almost all of these stories lies a similar, underlying message – I’m not good enough.

Balancing your home life while building your birth business takes practice and experimentation. Many birth professionals are also mothers of young children, and much of the work we do managing our businesses is at home while we’re also mothering and running the household. As business owners, how do we make time for it all?