Good Enough Mama

Bio

Ali is a Psychotherapist and Coach who specializes in Matrescence and Perinatal Wellbeing.

Similar to adolescence, matrescence encompasses the enormous physical, psychological, social, and cultural changes in becoming a mother, and yet this transition isn't widely recognized or understood in society. Instead, many of her clients are trapped inside the 'Perfect Mother Myth.' They try to be completely present and loving with their baby/child but find that the demands of modern parenting without a supportive village make this an impossible task. This often leads to feeling anxious and doubting themselves in almost every area of life: feeling like they are failing their baby/child, jeopardizing their relationship, unable to find any time for self-care, and not performing well at work.

Ali helps clients make sense of the changes they experience in matrescence, feel calmer and more confident about their parenting choices, integrate different aspects of their life, and trust their ability to be a 'Good Enough' mother. She uses insights from her extensive experience in Mindfulness, self-compassion, and Somatic (body-mind) approaches to give clients tools to take into their own lives to feel safe, whole, grounded, and at ease with themselves and their experience of motherhood.

Ali does this work because the birth of her daughter when she was 40 years old challenged everything she knew about herself. She had studied psychology and trained as a therapist many years before, but the impact of having a small person who was completely dependent on her was beyond anything she could have researched and prepared for. She read all the parenting books and found that her daughter did not conform to any of the expert advice to teach her to self-soothe. She looked around and saw other mothers who seemed to be handling it so much better. She felt like a complete failure. These difficulties prompted her to do the deep work of finding acceptance with who she was as a mother and who her daughter was as a unique person rather than a set of markers on a developmental milestone chart.

If you work with Ali, her main aim is to help you realize that you are not alone, to make sense of your identity as a mother, and to focus on what really matters for your family, rather than what you think you 'should' be doing. She covers a wide range of issues, including:

* pre/postnatal anxiety and depression
* loneliness
* identity issues
* intrusive thoughts
* managing anger
* difficulty bonding
* grief (including motherhood without a mother)
* childhood trauma and re-parenting
* birth trauma
* difficulty conceiving
* relationship changes
* parenting choices
* emotional regulation
* attachment styles
* return to work
* work-life balance
* perfectionism
* mum/mom guilt

Ali is qualified as both a Psychotherapist and Somatic Coach, so she can safely hold clients who have experienced trauma (perhaps from their own childhoods) while also enabling them to move forward. She offers space to explore where issues may have come from and provides practical tools to change patterns.

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