After longing for space amongst the chaos of her first year of motherhood, Malyssa Tomkinson is passionate about the importance of self-care for mums. At The Mummy Retreat, she encourages mums to regularly check in with themselves, ask themselves what they need and make it happen. By creating a community that nourishes its mothers, this daily practice of self-care makes even the trickier times of parenting more joyful. She supplies beautiful self-care kits and mama affirmation cards, as well as strategies and resources on how and why to create a daily self-care practice.
The passion: What inspired you to set up your business?
The Mummy Retreat was born from my experience through the first year of motherhood and a deep longing to create space amongst my chaos to truly take care of myself. I felt like there needed to be a bigger conversation around self care for mothers and how it is more than a bubble bath or going to the shops alone. I really wanted to put myself out there in all my raw honesty and show other mums my own journey to creating a practice of daily self-care.
Motherhood is a tough gig, but it can become a little easier when we stop putting our own needs behind everyone else’s. A well mother benefits everyone so much more than a mother that is burnt out and handing out the last of her reserves and leaving herself empty. It can be really hard to remember or realise that when we are deep in the trenches with our babies and children and we just want to give them everything! But the thing is, that if you take a little bit of time to care for yourself every day, you will have a much higher capacity to give to your family without the martyrdom, burnout and overwhelm.
Self-care has become a practice for me, meaning that it is something I continuously work on integrating into my life so that I can feel like I am doing better than just surviving motherhood. My Self-Care Kits are a really great starting point to creating a self-care practice and come with a workbook to help build a really great foundation of tuning in to what you need.
The launch: How did you start out in the beginning?
I feel like I am still very much at the beginning of my journey with The Mummy Retreat. I just launched my online store in September and I run my business from the little pockets of time I can find around parenting my toddler.
Yin and Yang: How do you balance work and family?
Instead of thinking of work and family as separate things vying for my attention, I consider them to inform one another and cohabitate. Working for myself and from home offers me a really wonderful freedom to work in the nooks and crannies of my day alongside my parenting. This being said, working with a toddler in tow does come with challenges too! I think finding a balance comes down largely to surrendering to a flow of each thing taking up more time at different stages. Some days I really want to get a bunch of work done but my toddler needs more of me and that’s okay, it usually works that there will also be a day when the parenting load is less and I can do more work.
