From finding support to providing it: Emma’s inspiring journey

Following her award win, we caught up with Emma to find out what the recognition means to her, learn more about her personal journey and discover how Mindful Mums is helping pregnant women and new mums across Bexley.

Firstly, congratulations on your award! How did it feel to hear your name announced as a winner at the Kent Mental Wellbeing Awards? 

I was very happy but rather shocked as there are so many wonderful individuals and brilliant teams working across the area and there were hundreds of nominations – I am honoured to have shared a room with such amazing people.

Hearing different people’s stories of their lived experience, their pain, suffering but also their hope, dedication and resilience was such a humbling experience.

Why do you think your work with Mindful Mums was recognised by the judges, and what does winning the award mean to you personally? 

I think they recognised the passion and drive I have, which is a trait I show in a lot of aspects of my life anyway. In this work context, it shows how I am always trying to find ways to make the service better, reflecting on the feedback we get from service users and always trying to give Bexley mums opportunities to reflect on their matrescence with other supportive people who simply just ‘get it’ (like our volunteers) and hopefully bring a little relief into what can sometimes be challenging time.

Leading the Mindful Mums service for Mind in Bexley is a great honour for me and the award recognition was the icing on the cake. I feel it was a bit of a ‘full-circle moment’ actually and it made me quite emotional.

You’ve been involved with Mindful Mums as a participant, volunteer and now Project Coordinator. What makes the service so special to you? 

The service is so special because it offers mums a chance to be themselves and spend some time thinking about their own needs, their wellbeing and their own identity – beyond just being someone’s mum. We sometimes talk at groups about the honour of ‘wearing our mum hat’. We love the chance to wear it, but sometimes we feel like we can’t take it off and people forget who we are and just focus on the babies’ wants and needs.

Working on mental health is never a linear journey, it has its ups and downs, and I feel like working with such open, honest and empathic Bexley mums (our amazing volunteers included!) reminds me to reflect on my own journey, to revisit some of the CBT tools that have been shared with me in the past and to keep practising the mindfulness and wellbeing strategies that have got me through some of my own challenging times.

For someone who hasn’t heard of Mindful Mums before, could you tell us a little about the support available to pregnant women and new mums in Bexley? 

We know that pregnancy and motherhood, (whether it’s your first-time or fifth-time) can feel like a rollercoaster sometimes. You enter it knowing it could be a wild ride, that it will keep you on your toes and you do enjoy the excitement of it, but the ups and downs can make you feel dysregulated at times, like you need a break. There might be times when you want to ‘get off’ and just take a breath.

Our five-week postnatal peer-support groups, which are in-person during the daytime in various venues across Bexley, offer mums a weekly chance to connect with other women (babies in tow are welcome too!) through facilitated group discussions in a safe, relaxed, open space where there’ll be no judgement or advice – just empathic ears to hold space for you, a space of solidarity, sensitivity and compassion.

In our postnatal groups we talk about the themes of identity, communication, connection and self-compassion, whilst also sharing CBT strategies to help manage feelings of stress, overwhelm, anxiety and control.

Our five-week antenatal peer support group programme, which runs online and in the evenings, offers Bexley mums-to-be a chance to meet other local women at a similar point in life, to start thinking about their new chapter of life from a mental health perspective and to begin exploring what they want from their motherhood journey before they are in a place where they find themselves exhausted and focussing more on their children. It’s seen as a preventative support service, but many mums-to-be continue support with us by then signing up to a postnatal group once their babies arrive – which is so lovely for me to see.

We also run drop-in session and wellbeing workshops for both pregnant women and new mums to attend, which can offer extra support, sign-posting and socialising opportunities too; we share everything we do on our service webpage and via social media too.

What difference have you seen Mindful Mums make to the women who attend? (Is there a particular moment or experience that stands out?)  

One moment that I will always remember is when a mum came to one of our groups and it was the first time she’d ever left the house alone with her baby. She’d walked for 30mins to get to our group and when she arrived, her fingers were pink and her knuckles were white from where she had been gripping the pram so tightly because she was so anxious about so many things.

She burst into tears when she arrived and said “I really want to feel better” and in the five weeks we worked together, the change in her was huge – she left our programme feeling in a completely different place in terms of her mental health. In fact, mums who attend our groups often say things like ‘I didn’t realise how much I needed this’ and one recent mum shared ‘Coming to Mindful Mums each week is MY time to focus on ME – and although baby is here, I can kinda switch off my mum-mode for 90 mins and just be myself again.’

It’s this kind of feedback that makes me feel like all my hard work is worth it. I know there were times in my own perinatal journey where I lost myself and that’s where Mindful Mums supported me – to offer care and support back to others. Now I am six years down the line and am coming out the other side is really important to me.

How has Mindful Mums developed in Bexley, and what are you particularly proud of achieving? 

Mindful Mums Bexley began in September 2024 with me running two in-person postnatal groups a week. I had not yet recruited or trained any local, lived-experience volunteers but I did establish a lovely partnership with the Bexley Children Centres team; and so initially it was just me organising and running the whole service based largely on previous models and success in other boroughs.

Fast-forward just over two years and we now have trained over 10 volunteers in perinatal mental health and group facilitation, supported over 200 women through our group programmes, plus many others through our drop-in and wellbeing workshops. We have had so much fantastic feedback and our data shows just how beneficial our service is to new mums. We also work hard to develop a service that gives mums what they need and so I spend time each year evaluating our offer and programme; our volunteers are a huge support to both mums at group and me as a leader, as so we also continue to expand our pool of volunteers to hopefully be able to offer even more to Bexley families in the future.

Finally, what would you say to someone who might be interested in joining Mindful Mums but feels a little nervous about taking that first step? 

Mindful Mums is here for you. No matter what your mental health history is, no matter what your journey to motherhood has looked or felt like, no matter where or how you live in Bexley, no matter how many babies or children you have had – we are here for you and please know, it’s okay to feel a multitude of feelings all at once. Two things can be true at the same time; you can love being a mum but also love being more than a mum – Mindful Mums is your space to be you. Reach out to us and we would love to welcome you.

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Thanks to Emma for taking the time to speak to us and congratulations again on your award.

To find out more about the Mind in Bexley service that Emma co-ordinates, please visit our Mindful Mums webpage.

There are also Mindful Mums services in Bromley, Greenwich, Lambeth, Lewisham and Southwark – for more information about these locations visit their webpage on the SEL Mind website.