The image of little Omran, the beautiful boy sitting in an ambulance, shell-shocked and changed forever by the battle in Aleppo is burned into my consciousness.

As a mummy I can’t help but fight my instinct to look away as it is just too excruciating to be real. It’s hurting my heart that this war – and others like it – are tearing these lives apart in the most violent way I can bring myself to imagine.

I want to reach through the TV and scoop him up, shower him and all the children and families like his with love and tell them that we’re holding their hands and crying with them.

I want to help. I’m outraged that this is happening right now to innocent families, but I don’t know what’s best to do. Millions of us felt and said this exact same thing when three-year-old Aylan Kurdi’s body was photographed on the beach in Turkey.

But it is hard for us to comprehend when our lives could not be more different…and our natural human reaction is to protect ourselves from imagining this horror and try to shut it out. That’s unacceptable though.

These are children, their innocence gone – obliterated – forever. They have been robbed of that precious and irreplaceable beauty of childhood.

So, other than supporting the crisis appeals and expressing our outrage at the apparent global inaction which seems to border on indifference…what can we really do that will make a difference to this global crisis?

I’ve been thinking about this for a while, and I keep coming back to one thing that I believe we can all do.

We can appreciate and love our own children and families even more than we already do. We can squeeze them harder, play one more minute of trains even though it’ll make us late and we’re already running behind. We can give them that one more cuddle that they’re desperate for to help them settle before we go to work. We can read them one more story, even though we’ve had a hell of a day and we’ve got a squillion jobs to do when they go to sleep.

We can’t change the war. But we can help to change the world a little bit with love. And we can raise children and adults who believe that love is the right way.

The world needs that more than ever.

The other day I had a conversation with my mother-in-law that’s had a really profound and liberating effect on me, and I want to share it with you in the hope that it might do the same for you.

We were just catching up about the blog and how it’s all going, and I was filling her in on how I’ve been working on ways I can help and empower mums in the same position as I am – trying to deal with the monumental shift in our identities and regain our confidence now we’ve joined The Motherhood.

She let on that she’s a little bit in awe of women nowadays and how we (outwardly, anyway) seem to be more able than women who were raising babies several decades ago to balance (ha!) parenting, relationships, career and home life.

It gave me a fascinating insight into how expectations on women have evolved in what is – when you think about it – actually a really short space of time.

Little disclaimer: I’m definitely no historian and I’m sure this wasn’t the way for everyone. I’m just relaying her story to you in the hope that it will help you as it’s helped me.

My mother-in-law had her babies in the early 1970s in the South of England and gave up work after she’d married their dad to raise them. She said this was what society then expected women would do and their cultural and educational conditioning reflected and prepared them for it. Girls studied home economics and needlework while the boys banged stuff with hammers and gathered firewood. Or something like that.

There were obviously many women who built amazing careers, but they’d be more likely able to afford a nanny, she said. If the household couldn’t afford a nanny and the woman went back to work it was perceived that the husband couldn’t support his family with his income alone….which would have brought inconceivable shame.

So society as she knew it had evolved to the point that women were respected educationally and professionally, but for the most part they were also pretty much expected to shelve their academic and career dreams the minute they got married and put that side of themselves on hold. Once the kids were at school full-time, it would be deemed socially acceptable to return to work.

Fast-forward to today and the change in expectation that has happened between a woman who was born in 1948 (my MIL) and me, born in 1983.

This generation – our generation – of women have had very little in the way of support or preparation for becoming a parent and raising a family in today’s world.

We’re taught from before we can remember that we’ll be contributors to society. That we’ll be educated to ever-higher standards and that we’ll carve a fabulous career for ourselves. This is what our culture and educational system prepares us for.

I’m not suggesting that any of that is a bad thing. Of course it isn’t, and as females we’re unbelievably privileged to exist in an era when we’re the beneficiaries of the fight for a voice and freedom and equality that previous generations of women yearned and bled for. Not to mention that we have a state-provided education system that girls are entitled access to.

What this has meant though, is that as a generation we are entirely under-prepared and ill-equipped for our other role, THE BIG ONE……that’s just supposed to slot seamlessly alongside our professional and academic achievements.

It has also facilitated the development of the (IMO) utterly despicable stigma that a mother who does not work is ‘just a mum’. My thoughts and feelings around how degrading and unfair it is to label someone who is the primary caregiver of an ACTUAL HUMAN BEING, tasked with giving a person their entire moral compass and value system as ‘just a mum’, is another blog post (or book!) in itself.

That part of our conversation was over in just a few minutes, but I’ve been thinking about it ever since.

It’s so obvious to me now.

The way I feel about my inability to achieve that utopic ‘balance’ is not necessarily just about the pressure I heap on myself. It’s there because society has evolved at the rate of knots and the support for women to back up that evolution is just lagging behind a bit.

OF COURSE we’re going to feel overwhelmed by all the plates we’ve found ourselves spinning. There’s more expected of us by our society than of any other generation before us.

OF COURSE we’re going to feel like we’re winging it every day as a mum. Our education has endowed us with the skills to tell an isosceles and an equilateral triangle apart. But it hasn’t helped us to understand the reality of parenthood in the 21st century.

OF COURSE our confidence is going to take a battering. And the fact that it does isn’t our fault. We’re just used to feeling like accomplished, successful women who have their sh*t together, because that’s what our culture demands of us.

Society is not doing women of our generation justice. So it’s left for us to do that for ourselves.

We’re proving every single day that it’s possible. But we must redefine how we see and feel about ourselves.

If we could do that, just think what a legacy we’d pass on and what our daughters and granddaughters might accomplish in the world.

A couple of months back I posted a rant on my Facebook page about a run-in I had when out with a friend in Waitrose café.

We’d been sharing a proud mum moment while watching our two toddlers play together when an older gentleman (I use the term loosely) came over and gave us a delightful little lecture about how our kids were an embarrassment to society.

Those kids were playing peekaboo and practising little ballet moves. They were laughing and learning how to be friends.

The sort of thing that needs to be stamped out immediately, right?

I’m not quite quick-witted enough to think of clever responses in confrontational situations like that one. I spend ages mulling over conversations in my head and always think of brilliant things to say after they’re finished. Super useful.

My friend and I were so shocked by his ridiculous demands for silence that my blood started fizzing, which didn’t help my frantic search for the right words to stand up for our children and their right to be kids to this Victorian throwback.

Plenty of people saw what happened and were really supportive and kind – including some of the staff – but I still avoided Waitrose café for a few weeks. I’m pretty good at second-guessing my parenting decisions and abilities myself…I don’t need anyone to give me extra fuel for that fire, thanks.

I went back there one day recently and – gutted as I am to report this – a very similar thing happened.

It was late afternoon/witching hour/wine time and Xav was knackered. He’d also hurt his back at the playground and he was really whiney, clingy and nothing was helping snap him out of it. I tried everything. No amount of face-pulling/distraction/bribery was working. He just wanted mummy.

You know the feeling you get when someone’s watching you? There was an older couple (in their 60s, I reckon – though I am RUBBISH at guessing peoples’ ages so this could be either hugely insulting or a massive compliment to them) two tables away from us and they were talking in a too-loud-for-me-not-to-hear ‘whisper’ about how I needed to “get my son under control”.

Xav was crying out for cuddles, empathy and love from me. That’s what he was telling me he needed right then. My choice is to treat him respectfully and to try and understand the root cause of his behaviour. It’s not always an easy choice, but I believe that if I show my son respect and kindness, he will learn to be respectful and kind.

I didn’t jump down his throat the moment he made a noise in public. I didn’t choose to tell him he was being silly and to pull himself together and behave. Because it’s our prerogative as parents to deal with every situation we face every single day in the best way we can.

Obviously this couple had nothing better to do than to sit there and judge what an awful parent I am.

There’s a passage in Stephen Covey’s book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People that talks about assumptions we make. There’s a guy on a train with his brood of children who are annoying all the other passengers with their feral behaviour. Someone tells him he needs to sort them out, and the dad replies by saying that they’re on their way home from the hospital where their mother has just passed away so yes, they’re not perfect – but he’s going to let it go.

The bottom line: we can’t and shouldn’t ever assume anything or judge any situation that isn’t our own.

I want to make something clear. I’m not ageist and this is not a dig at older people. We’ve all experienced judgment from people of all ages (the crazy trolling of parents in the public eye is a sad example) and it’s everyone’s right to hold their own opinions.

Times have changed immeasurably, and across generations that’s not easy to understand or accept. I get that. But this harmful finger-pointing does nothing but spread insecurity, hostility and ill-feeling. In a world that’s full of that already, why add to it?

When I was a teenager my mum and dad had another baby and I remember clearly taking him out and getting loads of disgusted (and very obvious) looks and comments from people of my grandparents’ generation who assumed that my baby brother was my son. There was no thought, it seemed, to how that would make me feel. My mum’s advice to me was to politely let them know that he wasn’t, but that I would be proud if he was.

I vowed from that moment onwards that I would live my life remembering the way it felt to be judged so unjustly, and how it felt to be the subject of such spitefulness. I just wish so hard that other people could do the same.

I think my mum’s advice stands true whenever we receive any sort of judgment from others who think it’s ok to inflict their opinions and criticise people who are just trying to do the right thing by their kids.

Children should be seen, and they should be heard. And we have every right to be proud of the way we’re raising our children.

If the people in Waitrose don’t agree, that’s fine with me. I’m doing my best, and my son is to me – not to mention a hell of a lot of other people – an unlimited source of joy.

If they want to miss out on that, that’s their choice. But I won’t justify myself to them one more time. None of us should have to.

This time last year, I decided to start a blog because I’d found it flippin’ difficult to get back into a regular routine of exercise after I’d had Xav. I figured if I started writing about how I was working on trying to put myself first a bit more, I’d become accountable and stand a cat in hell’s chance of saying yes to running and no to yum yums.

I quickly realised that the reasons why we as mums find it so hard to make time for ourselves is a much broader issue and that THAT was what I actually wanted to explore further through the blog.

My inability to prioritise exercise was merely a symptom of the change I’d gone through in becoming a mum, how my identity had shifted and of the fact that I felt consumed by The Mummy Guilt.

I knew my confidence had taken a battering (understatement) and that I lived in constant fear of being judged by other mums if I opened up and bared my soul about how not-cut-out-for-parenting I was.

So earlier this year, I made the decision to take it all in a different direction.

I’d become really fired up about the fact that so many of us feel so shit about ourselves after we have children when in fact, we should feel like we could conquer the world. We keep tiny humans alive. We’re superheroes in snot-covered jeans.

Exploring all of this, and writing about the issues we face as parents became my new purpose. And from that, came the strapline: Confidence, honesty, empowerment and solidarity for mums.

What I couldn’t have known is that sitting here now, just one little year later, I’d be in a completely different place.

Through this incredible community I’ve met some truly special people – a few of them are now stuck with me as their new mate. I’ve felt the camaraderie and support of other bloggers (some of whom – to me, anyway – are actual, real life celebs and I’m completely dumbstruck by their sheer awesome-ness) and new doors and opportunities are opening up all the time which means that this is slowly but surely *gasp* looking like it’s turning into a business. Girl’s gotta eat, right?

But Mumbelievable didn’t start as a business. It started as a mum-who-didn’t-really-realise-it-but-was-looking-for-a-way-back. Now, if I can create a living that enables me to work around my family while helping even one mama remember what a warrior she is, well – that’s become my life’s work now.

The reaction to the blog has floored me. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve had a life-long love affair with writing, but I wish I was a better writer. I wish I was funny. I wish I could write like a million other writers who are far more eloquent, articulate and generally brilliant.

What I now know though, is that writing has gifted me back some pieces of myself that I didn’t really realise had floated away for a while. This is me; it’s honest and raw and I’m doing what I love. I’ve rediscovered my love of learning (read: can’t keep up with all the stuff you have to know to build a blog) and when I wake up every morning
I’m plotting how I can grab a few minutes throughout my day around Xav/Tim/work/house/family/friends/all the other plates we spin to tick a few things off my MAHOOSIVE Mumbelievable to-do list.

Don’t get me wrong – there’ve been some douche moments. I look back at my first posts and *cringes* THEY ARE AWFUL. But you know what? I don’t care. They’re part of Mumbelievable and this little movement I’m trying to get off the ground.

Ultimately, what I’m trying to say in a waffly way is that I’m happier for having started this little blog and Facebook page (thanks to millions of hours of help from my brilliant and also-oh-so-dishy husband). I feel like I’m becoming a better mummy because I’m starting to feel differently about myself. I’m discovering what I’m capable of, and realising more of what’s important. I’m so grateful to every single person who has ever read any of my ramblings.

(BTW: I know I’m corny and I’m ok with it.)

So if there’s something you’d kind of like to change, start doing or do more of, I’d say to you that you owe it to yourself to get on with it. It might take courage, sacrifice or discipline (or all of the above). But you can do it. You deserve it, and so do your unfulfilled dreams. When you find the courage to be true to who you are, exciting things start to happen. I’ve seen it.

And that’s pretty Mumbelievable in itself.

My son won’t remember the day the nation voted to leave the EU.

No matter how his political mind develops over the years, there will come a time in his life when he starts to understand the magnitude of a decision like this one was.

Like everyone did, as his parents we tried to base our decision on which way to vote around the issues that matter most to us. We have a small business and a young family, we use our healthcare system, we’ll want a new mortgage when we move in a few years, we travel….and so on.

It’s of no significance now, but we voted to remain. I respect and understand the reasons behind other’s decision to leave, and now we’re all waiting with baited breath to see how this monumental shift in our tapestry will play out.

I learned recently that in December 2015 proposals to enable 16 and 17 year olds to cast a vote in the referendum were thrown out by the House of Lords. Given that our children (there are currently 11m under 18s in England) will be the ones most profoundly affected by the vote for Brexit, it now seems somewhat of a shame that some of them were denied that unique opportunity to participate in one of the most significant democratic processes in modern times.

Wouldn’t it be amazing if this could now kick-start the important conversation around a global inclination to hear the collective political voice of a generation of people who are perhaps the most informed the world has ever seen?

Before the Leave and Remain campaigns upped the tempo on their respective messaging (now is not the time for me to comment on their tactics…..) I’m a bit embarrassed to admit I hadn’t really stopped to devote much thought to how being part of the EU impacts the life of my family in real terms.

Commenting on Brexit divisions for Opendemocracy.net before the referendum took place, law professor Helen Stalford wrote: “The UK’s exit from the EU could be catastrophic for children in terms of an inevitable and significant reduction in the economic, legal, and procedural provision currently available to them.”

So what does this mean?

As it stands, under 18s in England currently benefit from a wealth of EU protection to safeguard their wellbeing and enable them to access services and initiatives. This covers everything from parental employment rights, child protection and information sharing to best-practise directives and further research into their development and welfare; all of which is aimed at supporting them to reach their potential and live fulfilling lives.

Over the coming months we’ll learn more about how our own government-in-a-new-guise will respond to the need to restructure investment in support for our children and how it intends to adapt and replace the existing protection we’ve known. I feel genuinely scared at this point for our future generations and can only hope that my fear they will be left worse off in many areas of their lives is misplaced.

As they get older, our children will also come to know new ways of travelling, living and working overseas, managing their money and moving towards independence. They may not enjoy the freedom of movement within 28 countries that we’ve never given a moment’s thought to once this divorce is final, and it might not be so simple to take that dream job for a few years. I once studied for a year in Italy as part of the Erasmus scheme. That time shaped my entire adult life and I’m scared the same option won’t be available to the eager linguists, culture-seeking globetrotters and budding international professionals of the future.

They’ll face different challenges when it comes to their financial futures, as we wait to see whether Brexit will trigger a new recession. If that does happen, it’s likely to be our children who will be most affected as corporate belts tighten, banks impose stricter lending criteria and housing markets suffer in an economic climate that has barely had time to catch its breath after the last one.

If immigration were to drop, this wouldn’t necessarily mean it would be easier for people to find jobs. The evidence is clear: immigrant workers contribute more to our economy than they take out, so the economic impact of lower immigration levels could fuel any downturn. Couple that with the changes we could see in the cost of living thanks to the prospective pummelling our pound could take alongside reduced funding from EU initiatives, and again – it’s our children’s generation who would bear the brunt.

To me it seems grossly unfair that the generation who didn’t have a say in this are the ones who are going to have to live with its repercussions. On the day of the result a friend told me that his mother had asked her grandsons how they were voting and promised them that she would vote the same way as it would be them who would truly realise its impact. What a refreshing point of view.

I’m a relentlessly positive person, so I’m doing my best to bury the sense of dread I can’t seem to shake and get to work on how I can play a part in embracing this new reality.

The fact is that our young people won’t really know any different and the one thing I’m sure of is that as a nation we will make this work.

Or rather, they will make this work. I see creativity, diligence, knowledge, resourcefulness, wit, adaptability and resilience in the children and young people I know and love every single day.

Witnessing their brilliance – whether they’re two or 20 – gives me a peaceful sense of calm and trust that they’ll create something better and more wonderful for this country than we ever could. Idealistic? Undeniably.

But if that’s not Great Britain, I don’t know what is.