YDGM Ep 32: Chantal Challenger, life as a mum and an expat.
You're Doing Great Mom
Chantal Challenger lives a different life from many of us, traveling around the world with her husband and two kids. She and her husband work in the hospitality/hotel industry, and have chosen a life as expats currently living in Jakarta. She shares about how they chose to move from their home in Australia, and how they’ve adapted to raising their family in a different culture.
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YDGM Ep 31: My husband Julian Wiseman talking about his book on Port Vintages.
You're Doing Great Mom
My husband Julian Wiseman and me chat about his new book. If you are a wine lover and you also enjoy port, this episode is so interesting with so much information about wine and Vintage Port. And you will see how much of a port geek he is.
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YDGM Ep 30: Keith Wassung
You're Doing Great Mom
Keith Wassung knows more about chiropractic than most chiropractors. He's been spreading information about chiropractic for over 30 years through his educational material, photos, slides, and website to help people learn more about chiropractic. He's a father of six, so that makes him an expert in fatherhood! Listen to this awesome episode as Keith talks about his life and love for chiropractic. It was great to learn so much about him!
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YDGM Ep 29: Thomas Waller DC
You're Doing Great Mom
Chatting with chiropractor extraordinaire Thomas Waller DC about fatherhood, chiropractic, and his mission in life. Tom’s the kinda guy that you can hang out with, have a beer with, and chat about anything. His energy fuels you each and every minute. He’s also the guy you could call up and ask his advice and he’d stop and give you his 100% with a solid answer. And he’s also the guy you’d see on a stage in front of thousands of people. He’s unstoppable.
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YDGM Ep 28: Craig Peterson, an American living in Rome
You're Doing Great Mom
Craig Peterson is American who lives in Rome Italy. He’s 35 years old and he’s a Network Spinal Chiropractor. He is not a father, and he’s in a relationship with a woman who doesn’t want children. He’s thought about having kids, and it was his current girlfriend who gave him the deeper thought of why he wants kids, and why not live life without having kids.
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YDGM Ep 27: Brendan Waddington on Fatherhood
You're Doing Great Mom
Brendan is a naturopath, soft-tissue therapist, personal trainer, and he also helps miners by coaching them on their health. When I asked him to be on my podcast, he didn't think I'd be interested because he's not a father. Naturally, it's what people would think, but I was very keen on having men who are not fathers to talk about their views on the subject. Brendan mentions that he definitely wants kids eventually, and it was interesting to hear how he thinks and feels about fatherhood.
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YDGM Ep 26: Julian D A Wiseman AKA My Husband
You're Doing Great Mom
My husband and I talk about a lot of things sort of relating to fatherhood.
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YDGM Ep 25: Lillian Lartey
You're Doing Great Mom
Lillian Lartey is a personal trainer, massage therapist, and I consider her a life coach for women because she is so grounded in her values and commitment to having an extraordinary life. As a life coach, she has helped women, many of them mothers, to focus on themselves and to achieve happiness, building back their health, self-esteem, and love for life.
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YDGM Ep 024: Drea Clark
You're Doing Great Mom
Drea Clark lives in LA and works in film. She's my sister's best friend from highschool and we've known each other for a really long time. I asked her to be on my podcast for this current series of conversations with women who are not mothers, and she was totally enthusiastic to participate. I knew it would be a fantastic conversation, a fun one too, because Drea is just so articulate in just about anything. You ask her about anything, and she'll have something to say about it.
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YDGM Ep 023: Angie Dairou
You're Doing Great Mom
Angie is a successful therapist, working with individuals as well as companies, big and small. This episode was awesome, with so many interesting and thought-provoking nuggets of wisdom, ideas, and stories about motherhood and how we can shift our perspectives about it in the context of applying it to roles of leadership and life in general.
info_outlineIn adversity, determination, resilience, purpose and conviction will get you out of it with flying colors.
No one said life is easy, and one of my most important mantras is, "Stop making excuses." As human beings, we are often 'stuck' in our stories, keeping ourselves from creating a life that is meaningful, purposeful, and gratifying.
Rebecca lives by this full-on. She's a perfect example of someone being accountable for her choices and actions.
"Funnily enough, I planned to have a baby that young. I was actually pregnant at 15. So I had my daughter when I was 16. And I thought I had, um I was in love, and I'd been with this person forever and I thought I knew everything and I wanted to be a mum."
Rebecca is the first woman I've met who's chosen to be a mum at 15 years old. To me, that sounds unique. She explains why she thought this was what she wanted at the time, and how she coped with her life as a new mother at 16-years-old.
Her relationship with her daughter's father turned into a domestic abuse situation, which she was able to get out of, and then remarried at the age of 21. Most women at that age are partying at university, with motherhood and marriage even remotely on the radar.
Rebecca chose a different path.
Then, after nearly nine years of marriage, and having two more daughters, she divorced at age 29, and has lived with her girls as a single mom since then.
As she was telling me her story, I couldn't help but think about how downhill her life could have turned. She didn't allow herself to be positioned in a situation of being another statistic of poverty, domestic abuse, and dysfunction. We hear so much about these tragic stories, and Rebecca never saw herself in becoming that.
She admits how challenging it was and how she had to sacrifice valuable time with her daughters for a budding career to support her family. She had the opportunity to step into a career where she excelled and learned a great amount of skill in sales, and chose to earn a comfortable and successful lifestyle.
"It was extremely long hours, on average 16 to 18 hours days. It was hard. I really want to give the girls a good education and the opportunity to do sports and things like that that I might not have been able to do when I was younger. I often thought 'do I keep doing this or what' because you are sacrificing time with them. Sometimes they'd have their, 'oh you know we're at our friend's house and such-n-such's parents baked afternoon cookies and they did this and that' and of course they did have that with me because, you know, I wasn't there."
Then, five years ago, she was diagnosed with a very rare autoimmune disease. She was told that she was only 1 in 19 other people in the world with this disease. Her kidneys were affected, and one day she woke up with nine kilos of fluid accumulated in her body from the waist down. This forced her to take off from work for three months.
She realized that she needed to start paying attention to herself, taking care of her mind and body, and focus on healing.
She shares about how she needed to listen to her body and how she chose to look after her health, which put her on a path to her own self-development and self-discovery.
Tune into listen to Rebecca's incredible story of motherhood, adversity, determination, self-development, and success.
To reach out to Rebecca, visit her website http://www.rebeccamccoll.com/.
You can also connect with her on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/rebecca.mccoll.566