Women's Health, Energy Levels and The Importance of Art | Feat. Catherine Haigh
Today we are speaking to the beautiful Catherine Haigh - children's author and women's worker. Catherine and I go into a whole range of topics, but just as a content warning: we do talk about women's health; our cycles and periods, how they can impact us, and how we can work with that cycle. We know that might not be for everyone, so just a heads up! We also talk about loads of other things, including the importance of art and the positive benefits it can have on the children in your care.
Catherine's website: https://lillypilliesfdc.weebly.com/
About Catherine:
Hi, I'm Catherine! My passion is health and wellbeing, working with children and women in particular. I started working with children when I left school, volunteering. I then became a nanny in London and in Florida. This is where I discovered the Montessori Method, which aligned with me in so many ways so I studied for my diploma to work with children from birth to age 6. Upon returning to England after several years I wanted to make changes in the early years in schools so I qualified to become a primary school teacher. After having my own children, we decided to emigrate to Australia to give them an outdoors lifestyle. Getting into the school system was tricky so I started back in a Montessori Kindy and works in Early Childhood Centre's as a kindergarten teacher. I was burned out and felt that I could make a difference to provide quality care and be more connected so I set up my own FDC business. Over the 7 years, I found I was trying to please everyone with the long hours, days and in general being holistic to all families. This is where I learned that if I please everyone, I'm not really pleasing anyone so I started to search a little deeper into what I needed. This is when my journey of self-care started. As time progressed, the more books I read and self-development courses I invested in, the more I got clear on my values and who I am as a person. This led me to providing clear and healthy boundaries with parents and improving my communication skills. The interesting thing was, that the more I was congruent with my values, needs and beliefs, the more like-minded people came along. I wrote, illustrated and self-published my first children's book, The Powerful Peacock in 2019 about self-love and connectedness. This evolved into art classes with a circle time for wellbeing, addressing children's feelings. After the Covid lockdown in 2020, art became popular and people wanted connection so I created some art classes for women. These became popular quick and evolved into day retreat style workshops. The more I connected with women, in circle the more I realized how we don't make time for self-care and creativity, that's what I am changing. My art then took me to women's retreats, leaving do's and birthdays, then more collaborations with women's events. By the end of last year my diary was pretty full. Last year, I jumped all in to do my NLP and Timeline Therapy on a 9 day retreat with other women. This was like the icing on the cake - all negative emotions based on past events and life-long behavioural patterns were removed, it felt like I had dumped 55 years of baggage and stories I had been telling myself. My thoughts and words are more positive and I'm currently creating a one to one day for women to help them set up self-care schedules, get to the root cause of their limiting beliefs and remove them so that they can reclaim their self-belief, stop people pleasing and not feel guilty about putting their oxygen mask on first and foremost. Because when we do, we are more productive and can function without running on cortisol (which leads to stress, which leads to illnesses). I also believe that children - and others around us - pick up on our energy and its important to keep it clear at all times.
