From Meat based to plant based: how going vegan helped this mum start a community

By Shirin Tahmasebi

After delivering her first baby five years ago, The Superfood Bowl Cafe owner and vegan specialist, Amie Batow, felt undoubtedly insecure about her body and mind.

Being a mum wasn’t enjoyable with the shed load of insecurities pooling around in Amie’s head.

One day while scrolling through Netflix, Amie stumbled across the Plant Based diet docuseries and from that day onward, the food she put in her body, completely changed. 

“I just made the snap decision and I just cut everything out.”

I think many people look at veganism as an excuse to not harm animals but with the diet also comes health benefits such as losing weight, higher serotonin, which in the long run improves your quality of life notably. 

Amie is here to discuss how going vegan did just that for her and how she became inspired to open her very own café.

“My mood had lifted, and I was happier. I could get out of bed, get dressed, go out with my little boy and feel happy to do it.

Whereas before that I’d had a real black cloud over me and I wasn’t really enjoying being a mum, that that then became the main reason for doing it.

And, and the weight loss was like an added bonus that.”

Losing weight doesn’t come easy once you’ve had a child, and a lot of time it’s confusing enough figuring out how to start doing it. Mum of two, Amie found her switch to a vegan diet helped her lose an astonishing three stone but to her, it wasn’t just all about the weight.

“It’s not about fitting into a pair of jeans, it’s just about feeling happier.”

Amie found that the diet helped her mind as well as her looks which she described as an ‘added bonus’. Being vegan helped Amie so much that she began to want to spread the word for other mums or people out there who may be struggling as she was.

“Afterwards I thought, why aren’t people talking about this, mum’s in a position that feel like this, why aren’t we talking about this plant-based diet more, because to me it was just amazing.”

The impact the diet had on Amie is why she then set out to help other mums.

Selling from Home

Before opening her café, Amie had been cooking and selling foods from her house to neighbours and other locals who enjoyed the meals.

She found herself chatting away to mums on her doorstep for half an hour at times. The small home business she had started, grew and grew until Amie no longer had to return back to work.

However, selling from home wasn’t enough for Amie as she wanted to create more of a community between mums, and so while walking through her local town one day, she found the perfect spot for a perfect business. 

“I was walking through town and I saw a little shop for rent. So, I just rang the number, really flippantly and spoke to a lady and ended up going and viewing it and just falling in love.

I thought, this is the next section me to get out there a bit more.”

Not only did Amie want a place for her new community to grow, but she recognised the struggle for mums and where they go when they want to socialise, a coffee shop, a pub or even the dreaded play areas.

Her café would allow mums to eat well, feel better about themselves and also connect with other mums, much like themselves.

Shutting Down

During March 2020, Amie found herself in the hospital with her daughter who had suspected covid which thankfully turned out to be a chest infection.

Due to her focus on her baby girl, Amie struggled to pay attention to what the government were saying in regard to businesses shutting. Nevertheless, she shut her business eventually.

Lockdown became a difficult time for Amie as her landlord was causing problems with his expectations, while Amie struggled to pay rent due to the closure of her café.

These obstacles weren’t quite big enough to stop her.

Amie made the decision to keep her business alive by using her socials. 

“I decided that I was going to stay really present on social media. And so, I started doing Instagram, lives and ag TVs, and I was cooking, sharing recipes.

I was just really, really concerned that I would lose that connection with the group of women that I had built.”

At the same time, Amie’s sister had just shut her own business down and had planned to hibernate during lockdown. But Amie was so focused on keeping that bond with her customers, she couldn’t do what other business owners were doing. 

Looking towards delivery

In the café, Amie had been selling takeout boxes which were kept in a fridge, but some customers couldn’t come in to collect and so she made the decision to start delivering them herself.

However, after hours and hours of driving around, Amie soon came to the conclusion that it would be too much to do every day. 

“This isn’t an effective way to get these meals out, and I don’t enjoy being sat in a traffic parade, I was trying to find all these houses I was getting so stressed”

She then went onto exploring the idea of DPD, which is where the business is at currently. 

Post Lockdown

Amie finds herself at 90% deliveries with her business now, however, still encourages people to pop down and get a drink and some food in order to keep that bond.

“Although we could reopen our cafe. It never ever got as busy as it was before.”

Just before Christmas, Amie’s tenancy was up in the building and so she looked at moving, but the cost of somewhere else was too high. Luckily enough, Amie’s mum came to the rescue.

“If it wasn’t for my mum, I think at that point I might have had to stop. I think if there was a point where you would have had to just say, I need to close the business down it probably would have been at that point.”

Despite her struggles with her café, Amie still finds it within her to fight for that connection and bond she first started out with in the first place. The thought of how many people she has gotten to know and the community she built is what keeps her pushing through. 

She is proud to be the owner of an establishment where she is able to help other mums who may be feeling as she was, to feel better about themselves and to give them a place to gossip about their loud neighbours or scary in laws.

The Superfood Bowl café is now up and running, however, Amie finds herself still ‘fighting every month to keep it going’ so if you pass by on your daily walk today, why not stop in and show some support to help keep the doors to clean eating open. 

Thank you to Amie Bastow for sharing this very inspiring story, I think I’ll be taking a look at the vegan options on menu’s from now on.

To find Amie’s recipes and cafe updates, follow her socials below:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/the.superfood.bowl/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/BowlSuperfood

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheSuperfoodBowl

Website: https://www.thesuperfoodbowl.com/

If you’d like to be considered to be included in our online magazine, drop us a line on sparkleupnorth@gmail.com or follow us www.twitter.com/sparkleupnorth www.instagram.com/sparkleupnorth and www.facebook.com/sparkleupnorth

self before help: Focusing on the woman before focusing on the mum

By Shirin Tahmasebi

If someone asked you to run a mile, I bet you would… in the opposite direction.

In hope of changing that, Emma Stott, wellbeing and parenting coach, believes that exercise and mindfulness, can improve your anxiety and stress levels significantly.

“I wanted to help other mums like me who were craving balance and lacking time and feeling lost as I have for many years without recognising my purpose or passion. I don’t think I ever knew that.

Lacking confidence and self-esteem, not coping well but doing everything for everyone else and leaving myself till last. Now I teach mums to put themselves first.”

Working in Education

Emma has spent most of her career life in schools, starting out as an assistant support specialist, to becoming a learning mentor, however, also trained as a personal trainer through her time in education.

This training is where Emma started to recognise her passion for exercise and how it positively impacted her wellbeing, but is also a time where Emma took the pressure of becoming a single mum.

Emma came to notice a common theme throughout her time working in schools; the parents always questioned her about ‘fixing’ their child rather than helping their child.

“I noticed there was a theme underlying, ‘fix my child’. They would say ‘there’s a problem with my child’ but then I remember I was thinking to myself, is it the child? It may be but I thought, we need to work with the parents, and then see if we can get them to regulate their emotions because children copy what the parents do.”

Emma soon took up a job in adoption as a family support worker and has worked there for the last three years. Here she deals with a lot of emotional dysregulation trauma, attachment difficulties and behaviours.

It was here, in April 2020 where the thought of parents found its way back into Emma’s head once again.

“That led me to think again about maybe how we need to do things a bit differently and maybe it’s the parents that need a bit more support, which came to this bit where I wanted to be where I am a parent, wellbeing and parenting coach, so I’m doing the job.”

After April, Emma decided to retrain as a personal trainer and life coach but found herself becoming sick regularly and was experiencing the worst burnout she has had up to this day and never understood why she felt so rundown and sick until recently, when she was diagnosed with chronic inflammatory arthritis. A mix of her being off sick and the pandemic meant that Emma couldn’t return to work until June of 2020.

It was only then that she recognised how much she overworked herself and decided it was time for change in her life.

Time for Change

Emma took on less hours at work to focus on herself, and to avoid the impossible of juggling equal time for her health and work. But balancing work and health also came with the responsibility of being a parent.

Having three children can be hard for some parents, but with one at University, one living with his mum and another being the dream child helping around the house, Emma is currently at that point in her life where she can mostly focus on herself. 

The Pandemic vs the business

Emma had hoped to be a one-to-one coach but was forced to revert to online coaching as the country faced a national lockdown last year. 

“Everything had to be on Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn, if you could do that. Then I was trying to work on three platforms at once which messed with my head because it was too much.

Then I realised that I was going to have to go live, so that means I’m going to have to be more confident in selling things and saying what I do.”

Tackling self-confidence became a prominent factor in the success of Emma’s business.

“I needed to be seen for my business, so that means I need to step out of the comfort zone, and I’m used to doing it at work and training and doing adoption, but it’s different than it is online, just feels a bit weird. I think I’ve gotten over that now.”

Emma found working online a difficult task as body language is an important element when it comes to figuring out and helping someone. Nevertheless, she adapted to the situation and has found a way to help her clients using her own personal experiences.

During her time coaching and helping people, Emma finds herself relating to many of the issues that come up with the fellow parents. 

“Lots of my clients are saying that they’re really grateful. I think because I’ve experienced what they are currently going through, I just get it. You just understand. So, you know when they’re talking and you say, ‘Oh, I bet you felt like that, didn’t you’ and they say, ‘Yeah, how did you know’ and I reply with; ‘because I felt it too’. 

You can’t tell them what to do, unless you’ve gone through it yourself. That’s how people know you’re genuine because they know exactly that you felt what they felt to or are feeling separately.”

Well-being and Parenting

Emma currently offers a one to one coaching and therapeutic programme which uses CBT and EFT and the tried and tested, personally by herself, techniques such as tapping, meditation and mindfulness.

The programme is targeted at mums who struggle with stress or anxiety or just general feel overwhelmed and hoped to calm them initially.

The process of the programme looks at the different stages your brain goes through when experiencing anxiety or stress. Emma discussed the stages with us:

“Your brain will go into fight, flight, freeze mode and it thinks that it’s under attack, so you have to come up first because that part of your brain will let you access the logic. Here, you’re in your primitive brain, and you’re just absolutely out there and you don’t know what the hell’s going on. 

So, we have to get them come first and into the next part of the brain, which is the limbic brain. This part is all about attachment, belonging, love, support, and then you move them into the logical brain, which is where you can process things and kind of help make sense of everything that’s happened.”

After these stages have been identified with the client, Emma intends to go through a time management plan and talk through what the client hopes to achieve within the time they have in the programme.

What Emma hopes they will achieve is being able to manage and discipline those intrusive thoughts of self-doubt and self-loathing and for mums to be able to go be at home with their kids and project none of those anxious feelings onto their children.

After the nineteen weeks of the programme are up, clients will then be offered a ninety-minute consultation where a plan will be made with scheduled actions then can do daily for themselves to keep up the positivity. For example, one of these actions may be the likes of mindfulness, meditation or tapping techniques, already taught within the programme. 

“My mission is to empower mums to create time and balance and find themselves again. I focus on the woman first then the mum.”

Thank you to Emma for sharing your story with us!

To find out more about Emma’s wonderful campaign, Follow her Instagram and join her Facebook group below:

Instagram:https://www.instagram.com/wellbeingandparenting/

Facebook:https://www.facebook.com/groups/gettimebalanceandcontrol

If you’d like to be considered to be included in our online magazine, drop us a line on sparkleupnorth@gmail.com or follow us www.twitter.com/sparkleupnorth www.instagram.com/sparkleupnorth and www.facebook.com/sparkleupnorth

Self-Doubt to Self-Belief: Finding your way through a maze of doubt and reaching for the stars

By Shirin Tahmasebi

From cutting men’s hair in the middle of Liverpool to becoming a coach for self-belief and confidence, Jan Ockendon joined us to talk about her struggles with her own self confidence and a new coaching programme she is due to release this year.

With heaps of self-doubt going through her mind, the qualified psychodynamic therapist mum of four, thrives in the world of mental health as she fought her way up through her own struggles, to creating a programme to help others with theirs.

However, since the dreaded pandemic hit the world in early 2020, eager not to have someone else’s ‘targets and expectations’ on her back, Jan came to the realisation that her ideal work involved her being her own boss and so began to set up her own business, whilst working full time.

“I’m in the process of launching at the moment. I think working from home in the pandemic finally made me realise this is what I want. To work from home but as my own boss and not have someone else’s targets and expectations”

Jan told us while discussing her plans for her future launch of ‘Self-Doubt to Self-Belief’.

The start of self doubt

Jan has tackled many different types of jobs; one being working and riding horses. However, it seems a common theme that stuck with Jan throughout her working life, was that she was never good enough to pursue these as life careers. When talking about her time with horses, she told us:

“I know that I was a good rider, I know I had a really good seat, but I was so lacking in confidence, so I never did anything with it.”

This lack of confidence carried through into Jan’s eventual ascent into her mental health career.

Mum Doubt

When delivering her first baby, Jan experienced her first feelings of self-doubt as a new mum. Back in the 90’s, they had a group of professionals walk around the hospital, making decisions on which care would best fit each patient.

It is here where Jan was so cold-heartedly told she was a “failure”.

“I lay in that bed, very sore because I’d had a caesarean, then a baby who was not feeding and then when she didn’t feed, she would scream because she had bellyache, because they were stuffing me full of antibiotics. All I heard from the midwives was ‘Caesarean section, because she failed to dilate’.”

This left Jan with an overwhelming sense of defeat, right after she had gone through a tough time in delivering her baby girl.

“They often talked like that and it fired me up.

I thought, do you know what, it’s no wonder that women go home and get post natal depression and think that they’ve they’re failures because they’ve had a c section, or because they’ve had to have a forceps delivery.

Because that’s how we’re talking about them.

Dynamically that’s going to transfer into that woman’s head. It’s bit like manifesting. That was what started my self doubt as a mother”

However, Jan pushed through the doubt and continued her work as a nurse, but soon took an easy five years out of working as a nurse when her second child was born, but became a childminder during this period.

Finding her way

After the five years, Jan decided to return back to her job as a nurse and was back to working with a mental health service again, before settling down in primary care.

“I wanted to be in primary care. I wanted to work in a sector where I felt I could make a big difference. Particularly to people who self-doubt.”

Jan’s journey for her dream occupation working with people who suffer with self-doubt began as she was determined to not ‘do anything by halves’ and went straight for the top, Tavistock Clinic based in North London, to do her training.

“Eventually I did my degree. I managed to get a 2-1. Then I could go on and do a master’s level course and that’s where I got into therapy. I trained and did a foundation course in that, and I never do anything by halves, so I had to work at Tavistock Clinic.”

Despite the pass marks for the Tavistock test being significantly high, Jan managed to secure a spot on a training course with the clinic and start the process of qualifying as the psychodynamic personal therapist she is today.

Being a therapist is enough for her, but she wished she could experience the more ‘in depth’ areas of therapy, as she believes the sixteen sessions patients are given isn’t enough.

“It doesn’t go into that real in-depth stuff that I really like.

A slow getting to know somebody; getting to know how they think, being able to think about why this is affecting me the way it is and if it’s affected me like this, does that mean something about the patient.

You can do a bit of that but it’s not as extreme, just not as meaty, I suppose”

Nonetheless, the restrictions at her workplace didn’t stop Jan from getting those ‘meaty’ sessions with patients.

Though the pandemic has been a real struggle for some, Jan thrived during her time off from work as she has begun to branch out on her own, letting go of her own limiting beliefs as well as helping others with theirs.

Becoming her own boss

During lockdown, Jan started to complete a coaching course, this opened up a world of creation for her and who is now creating her own belief programme so that she can help other women let go of their own negative beliefs.

The programme is to last eight weeks for each individual that joins.

Branching out on her own has not only made time for Jan to kickstart her own business but to also work on her social media skills. She now runs her own blog in which she never thought she would do due to her self-doubt problems.

“It’s also allowed me to set up my own instagram, my website and do blogs on my website.

I would never have done that before, I would never have written blogs because I would have thought, who wants to listen to what I’ve got to say? What can I say that nobody else can say?”

Jan discussed the plans for her programme with us. It looks at how doubt starts in our minds and how identifying what is ‘poking’ these feelings into action and then separating said thoughts and feelings and how the voice in your head often pulls you down. In Jan’s words:

“I want to ask lots of questions; what does this mean to you, how it has affected you, how can we change that. What would it be like to be different? What are you looking forward to about being different? How’s it limiting your life? And what would it be like to change that? 

Getting people to imagine sitting in that different belief and then rewriting the story and saying okay well this is what I want to believe so.

Not, I am going to believe it just because I want to, but how do I get there.”

In due course, Jan hopes to help people either eliminate those feelings or at least start the process of getting rid of them.

The feedback she has received since putting herself out there has been phenomenal, her audience are as excited as we are to start Jan’s programme. It took the twenty-nine years after her daughter was born for Jan to start feeling more confident in herself, but she is now blooming in the world of social media, as her own boss.

Thank you Jan for sharing your wonderful and inspiring story with us.

If you would like to find out more or see when Jan is to release her programme follow her on Facebook and Instagram below.

Instagram:https://www.instagram.com/clearspacecoachingandtherapy/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/clearspacetherapyandcoaching

Or visit her website: https://www.clearspacetherapy.org/?fbclid=IwAR2WYsr5iE1FNpU4Zh8GrS0hNg7FcREInejX5rL5BQmMVF2NbkEZ0kVkLZo

If you’d like to be considered to be included in our online magazine, drop us a line on sparkleupnorth@gmail.com or follow us www.twitter.com/sparkleupnorth www.instagram.com/sparkleupnorth and www.facebook.com/sparkleupnorth