Mumbelievable started as a blog with a mission to help a million mums regain confidence and recognise how incredible they are.

I knew in my heart that it had to become a business to do something to help the many people who felt the same way I did after becoming a mum; a bit lacking in confidence but determined to combine a great and fulfilling career with loving and being there for our kids.

Last year, among other product launches I started running events and workshops to support working parents.

It began focusing on the return to work phase, but it was important to me that I didn’t pigeonhole myself so things quickly expanded to incorporate support for anyone at any stage of parenting. Every event is different and they now include dads and carers too, many of whom face similar challenges.

I’ve worked with companies and individuals since then, and talked to hundreds of employers and parents with kids of all ages about the issues they face and the solutions they’ve engineered to make things work for everyone.

Mumbelievable is becoming a force for good, and it feels like I’m right where I’m supposed to be.

At some point earlier this year, it hit me that although I LOVE what I’ve been doing until this point, there’s a bigger picture here.

Supporting working parents themselves doesn’t actually solve the problems they face.

Sure, it helps them massively. But the root causes still remain. And if they don’t get sorted, nothing will change.

Too many parents are leaving our workforce because they’re struggling to make their career and home life work. Too many businesses are losing brilliant talent, haemorrhaging cash on unnecessary re-recruitment and ending up with a gender imbalance that affects their bottom line as much as it does their reputation.

I don’t think it has to be this way, and I’m going to change it.

There are literally hundreds of ways an organisation can increase communication, awareness and flexibility and truly champion people with kids and/or caring responsibilities, and earlier this year I started to document the conversations I was having with managers and parents to create a cheat sheet for businesses wanting to increase their support infrastructure for their parents.

I’ve spent the summer working on formalising a new consultancy offering that leverages everything I’ve witnessed and learned since this all began. I’m doing this in collaboration with a truly brilliant organisation because I recognise that this big picture is BIG and I can’t do this alone. (More than that, though, I don’t want to – it’s more fun being part of a team!)

My goal is to encourage businesses to get key functions (leaders, HR, comms and marketing, etc) working more closely together to bring policies to life, increase awareness of the emotional and logistical challenges of being a working parent and support line managers to become more empathetic, consistent but flexible in how they support the parents in their teams.

More announcements and details of the collaboration partner will be coming soon, but I just wanted to get this out there as I realise I’ve been quieter than normal on here and also I’m very, very excited about this!

That cheat sheet I mentioned is now complete. So if you run a business or work in a business you think might benefit from a few tips on how to exemplify best practice when it comes to supporting working parents, just send me a message and I’ll get it sent out to you. I’m giving it away for free as it’s important to me that this stuff is done right in every organisation.

More coming soon!

P.S. This doesn’t change anything for Mumbelievable. It’s just an evolution. The blog will continue as a space for confidence, honesty, empowerment and solidarity for mums, and I’ll revive my social media mojo once I get over the line with launching this thing (sorry and thank you to everyone who has messaged me to ask if I’m ok and to say they’re missing my posts!)  I’ve got more plans for later in the year to create something to help every single mum feel more confident and incredible, so watch this space!!!

Back in March at the Blogosphere cover reveal part I met the brilliant Noughty Haircare PR team over a chat about making the move towards more natural beauty and haircare products.

It turns out that Rachel Parsonage, the MD of KMI Brands (the company that built the Noughty Haircare brand) is an inspirational powerhouse and I am thrilled to feature this interview with her as part of the Mumbelievables series. Read on for her honest and emotive words about mum guilt, letting go of perfection, and what drives her to work so hard for her gorgeous family. Thanks so much, Rachel. You’re a legend.

This September marks a new phase in my life as my son Joseph starts school.  The last four and a half years have been incredible, exhausting, rewarding, depressing, and every other emotion I can think of. But I wouldn’t change a minute of it.

I wanted children and I wanted a career however I often ask myself now whether women really can have it all. I think it’s unrealistic to think that you can have everything in equal measure.  You have to make choices all through your life, and of course when planning a family, lots of decisions and questions have to be asked.

In January Allison Pearson, author of “I Don’t Know How She Does It” spoke at a convention in Hong Kong about whether the hand that rocks the cradle can in fact rock the boardroom – her outlook is that you can’t, unless there are a lot of sacrifices.

My career at Board Director level – both before and after becoming a mother – has been with incredible support from my husband.  One of my reasons for working full time since my son was born is so that I can be around for him through his teens, a time when children really need support. I worry more for Joseph and what he will face as a teenager with the world of digital media and how fast the world is changing so I want to dedicate more time to him during these years.

Thankfully, this has worked out well as my husband wanted to start his own business so he could dedicate more time to our son’s early years.

I do have feelings of guilt that I am not physically around for him all the time, as I know many mums do. We all feel like we’re missing out on playing together, drawing together or going to the park.

“The real truth for me is that I actually don’t ever seem to feel like I get the balance right; juggling work and children is an ongoing struggle.”

As a mother and Managing Director it is so important to me that my company supports working parents to make the office a desirable place to work and ease the transition into becoming a working mum or dad.

At KMI Brands we completely value all of our employees and understand the unique benefits that parents bring to the table. I think it is unreasonable of companies to expect parents to adhere to rigid working practices. We offer our employees the opportunity to choose their hours and to work from home when appropriate.

One of my favourite parts of my job is working on Noughty Haircare, a brand I co-founded in 2016 to cater to all women and their families. Being 97% natural, free from parabens and sulphates, and gentle on the hair and scalp, Noughty is a popular choice for many mums.  It’s important to me that Noughty has a sense of humour as I wanted to appeal to mums who want great hair but don’t take themselves too seriously.

“Perfection is unrealistic.”

Through our research we learned that women wanted a natural brand they could trust, that used only the best ingredients and really performed for their hair. A brand that bought as much cheeky humour and fun into the lives of all the family. We all strive for balance in our lives and with Noughty we are addressing the balance between virtue and naughtiness – sometimes you eat salads and go to the gym, some days you eat cupcakes and refuse to get dressed.

I think as mums we all need to be kinder to ourselves (and our hair!); perfection is unrealistic.

Rachel Parsonage is Managing Director of KMI Brands, which since 1993 has been designing and marketing innovative beauty products spanning haircare, skincare, styling, fragrance and colour cosmetics.

Follow them @sogooditsnoughty on Facebook and Instagram

Find out more at www.noughtyhaircare.co.uk

Hands up if you’re winning at the summer holiday juggle! Nope….me neither.

Am loving the extra time together, obviously. And am also sending mega-gratitude vibes to Tim, my brilliant mum and MiL for stepping up and saving my sanity for a couple of days a week and at odd hours when I need to work.

It’s just not easy, is it? My work matters to me and I’m flying the flag for making work work for everyone. But I’m also honest about what a big task that is.

On Wednesday, it will be two years since Tim had a kidney transplant.  It seems impossible to me that so much time has passed.

If you follow me on social media you may have seen that every few months I donate blood. I always post about it when I do, and each time I love that many people message me to let me know that my posts have encouraged them to sign up to donate. You can help or save up to three people with every single pint of blood, so it’s an absolutely incredible thing to do.

This is why I do it.

Since Tim’s kidneys failed and he was lucky to receive a transplant we’ve committed that we want to raise awareness of the importance of organ and blood donation, and this week on his anniversary he will launch a beautiful initiative to encourage more people to talk about and sign up to the organ donor register.

With his tongue ever in his cheek, he’s called it The Offal Good Tea Party and we’re hoping that lots of people will be there this Wednesday when we hold the first one. It’s kind of similar to the brilliant Macmillan coffee mornings; an opportunity to get together over a cuppa and cake and, hopefully to encourage people to think about (without any pressure whatsoever, obviously) whether they might like to sign up to donate their organs when they die, or donate blood if they are able to. He’s created a website where you can find out more: http://offalgoodparty.com/

Tim has organised for the BBC online team to be there and we’re hoping that others will start to hold parties of their own so we can grow this movement and support the amazing charities that have done so much for us and so many others affected by kidney failure.

I’m writing this post to raise awareness of the importance of organ donation. But it’s also to thank those who make such a selfless and brave decision in the face of earth-shattering loss and to tell a little bit of the story of what it is truly like to love and support someone who has been through a kidney transplant.

I can’t speak for Tim, so this is purely a little insight into my side of things.

The photo at the top of this post was taken as Tim came out of recovery. The first time I saw that he had survived, having said our goodbyes to each other earlier that day.

To set my eyes on that beautiful, courageous face was one of the best moments I have ever experienced, but there’s no getting away from the fact that that day was the worst day of my life. I spent many hours that day wondering if, by the time it was over, I would be a widow.

Organ transplants are a complicated emotional minefield. They’re miraculous, humbling and life-changing for everyone – not just the person who receives one. They’re also terrifying and there’s absolutely no guarantees that they will work, so I felt that day as though we were literally pushing Tim over a cliff with no clue what was at the bottom.

We are so lucky to have an NHS with the experts able to make transplants happen, and a system that enables beautiful people to give the biggest possible gift there could be if they die: saving someone’s life.

I’ve touched upon the impact this has had on our family before in blog posts about keeping it together when everything is falling apart, and about how our family plans have changed. I feel able to write about this more now because Tim is finally starting to feel well. He has been pretty unlucky and had more complications than many others experience after a transplant, but finally it seems as though he’s going to be able to start to move on. His spark, which was dulled to the point of being extinguished is back.

Of course, no-one should, but Tim shouldn’t have got ill. He was so healthy, respected his body and cared about himself and his health. It came as a massive shock to us all when we found out around the time Xav was born that his kidneys were failing.

I felt so helpless. I tried to do everything I could think of to research ways to help him and things we could do to support his doctors. We kept him as well as we possibly could using natural supplements and desperately trying to cling on to our relentless positivity in the face of ever-worsening results.

When it became clear he was edging towards the need for a replacement kidney, many of our friends and family got tested. It was one of the most humbling and complex times of our lives, the kind of time when your army shows up for you, to soften all the blows. I hope I have the chance to do the same for them, so I can show them what an impact they have had.

The day of the transplant happened very suddenly in the end, and Tim was lucky to receive a kidney from a deceased donor. We know very little about them and would love to have the opportunity to one day meet them and show them the difference that their amazing decision has made – not just to Tim but to everyone who loves him.

I have never been able to allow myself to contemplate what life would be like had things been different. Instead I choose to focus on enjoying this life that is so precious, colourful and fun.

Our lives are irrevocably different now.  It might sound mad, but I wouldn’t change it.

I like who I am now, more so than at any other point in my life. I know that when I need to be, I can be stronger than I could have imagined. I’m fiercely proud of how we have helped each other through it all, and of all the positive things we’ve taken from it rather than letting it rob us of even more than it already has. I love that trivial stuff doesn’t get a look-in. I’m free of sweating the small stuff and I think I’ve got much better at spending my time on stuff that really matters. Obviously I wish we hadn’t had to go through all of this, but it has given us so much – far more than it has taken.

On the day of Tim’s transplant, we said our goodbyes. It wasn’t like you might imagine, with us both talking at a million miles an hour, trying to say everything we needed to….just in case. It wasn’t anything like that.

We both felt pretty peaceful, because we knew everything we needed to know. We’ve been through plenty of tough stuff before, and that’s taught us to try to live showing each other all the important stuff always. On that day we both found out that building our relationship that way has been the right way.

This week we will mark two years since that day, and use everything that it has taught us to try to show as many people as we can how important it is to have the conversation with yourself and with those you love about donating your organs.

Because of organ donation, Xav has his Daddy back. And I can sit here with happy tears rolling down my cheeks thinking of all the days we have spent together and will spend together, thanks to the courage and generosity of Tim’s donor’s family and the heroes of our NHS.

To find out more about becoming an organ donor, visit: https://www.organdonation.nhs.uk/about-donation/

For information about giving blood, visit: https://www.blood.co.uk/