Holding it together - Motherhood, Private Practice and Life

Our co-founder, Aisha Gordon ~Hiles describes how she made single motherhood with a newborn work around setting up private practice and being a carer.

Before I found out I was pregnant I had a really clear idea of where I was going in my career. I had just changed jobs having successfully acquired a job where (I believed) I would be working fewer days for more

money, and I had every intention of staying there for the foreseeable future.

I had a small private practice alongside this and did some facilitation and consultancy work too. It was a nice mix and I enjoyed it. Everything was going to plan until one day, a week after breaking up with the person who is now my son’s father, I was surprised with the news of being pregnant.

Having not long started my new job, I knew things were about to get complicated. I had always wanted to be a mother and had become increasingly worried that I would never get to be one. But the circumstances under which I was becoming one was something that would leave me with many sleepless

nights.

• How would I cope as a single mother?

• What would co-parenting look like?

• How would I be able to afford having a child?

• I lived miles away from any family. Who would be there to support me?

• How would I juggle work, a child and other life commitments?

  
  

The questions were endless.

After the dust had settled and my son’s father agreed to our co-parenting arrangements, the next hurdle was money. I wouldn’t qualify for maternity pay, and the statutory allowance wouldn’t even cover one month’s mortgage. The only way forward was to save. So I worked every second I could for the nine months that followed to ensure I had enough money to take a year’s maternity leave and still cover the bills.

My plan was to use my savings and start back in private practice with a few of my clients from whom it would not be suitable to take an extended break.

The unexpected

With this second hurdle over and my due date approaching, I started my maternity leave. Unfortunately my unborn son didn’t get the memo – he arrived weeks later than planned, closing the gap between my ‘birth’ day and the day I was due to start back working with clients.

In total I had about three weeks off before I started seeing my clients again – just two to three a week, most on a fortnightly basis. In hindsight I think this was too early, but at the time I felt able to make that commitment. Part of me wonders if that’s because of my own past traumas and the curse of the strong Black woman.

Between sleep deprivation, breastfeeding on a two- to three-hour schedule, fitting in my son’s five naps a day and ensuring I was not in a client session at a time he needed a feed, I believe I pushed my tolerance for stress to a new level.

After some time things got a lot easier to juggle. My son’s feeds spaced out, his naps became less frequent and after a few ‘keeping in touch’ days at work, I was ready to see how the next phase of

my motherhood journey would go. Then came hurdle three...

After viewing several nurseries and looking at their fees, there was just no way I was going to be able to go back to work. I would make just about enough to cover the nursery bill and nothing else. Not to mention that the nursery closed at 6pm and I was supposed to work until 7pm at least one day a week.

My manager looked at various policies and possible ways around this hurdle with me but unfortunately, as the primary carer of my son and the only one of the two who drove at that time, with no other family around, it just wasn’t going to be possible. So I handed in my notice. Welcome hurdle four: generating enough income from my private practice to stay afloat.

Income generation

Juggling keeping my son, myself and my practice alive was no easy ride. I wasn’t used to being unable to work when I wanted to or needing other people to be around so that I could work. In the beginning, family and my son’s father would muck in and help so that I could see clients here and there, and when I

decided to do my supervision training – online – they were there to support me in between running during breaks to pump or feed or turning off my camera so that I could have some privacy if a section of the day had run over and I was late to give my son a feed.

But when our son was just nine months old, my son’s father was diagnosed with bowel

cancer and needed emergency surgery. I was introduced to a whole other level of ‘hard’. Now I was juggling hospital visits multiple times a day with feeds, naps, weaning and cooking from scratch, clients, supervision, supervision training, speaking engagements, seeing loved ones, my basic needs for months

on end. This has been the hardest thing I think I have ever done.

Turning point

However, something really unexpected happened. My ability to prioritise, compartmentalise and process were at an all-time high. People often ask me ‘How did you do it?’, and honestly I don’t think I would have been able to without my online calendar: everything was scheduled in my diary down to the minute.

Meals were prepped and planned in advance, and at times I had to call in for help with things like cooking and cleaning. I always knew I didn’t want to work full time and have children, and so in

some ways everything that had happened up to this point was a blessing. I couldn’t work full time – it

just wouldn’t work.

I also always knew that I wanted to take a whole year off for maternity, and in some ways I still got

to do that. Where I was only seeing a couple of clients a week and leaning heavily on the savings I had put together while I was pregnant, I was able to wait until my son was one year old before putting him into any childcare.

In the beginning we could only afford one day of childcare a week with his dad unable to work. But when it was possible, this was raised to two days a week. These two days became my private practice days, and I was able to see more clients and take on supervisees. I finished my supervision training, which started before my son’s dad’s diagnosis. I wanted to see it through despite the additional load I was carrying post diagnosis.

Weirdly enough, when I started it I was in a much different place on maternity leave and intending to go back to work, so I had reasoned that it was unlikely that there would ever be a time in my life where I

wouldn’t be juggling employment, childcare and my responsibilities as a mother, daughter and friend. I just felt that if I went back to work I wouldn’t be able to do my supervision course alongside everything else. But in life’s true fashion, it just gave me something else to replace that commitment.

The juggle

Some wonder how I was able to juggle everything that was going on and still hold space for myself, my son, my clients and my supervisees. Sometimes I ask myself the same question. The truth is, we are still in the thick of things: my son’s dad is doing much better and my supervision course has finished, but I am still juggling the lion’s share of the childrearing alongside hospital visits, clients, supervisees and running my clinical supervision membership.

All I can do is take each moment as it comes. I used to be someone who was always planning something in advance, and now I only have the capacity to think about things a few days to a week ahead. Paying attention to how I feel and my capacity has been crucial in all of this. I once said to my business partner –

before we started our business – that I was glad for all my life experiences that had kept me in hyperarousal because motherhood had my nervous system constantly activated. I remember bringing my son home from the hospital and every little creak in the house would wake him. I had never thought of my house as loud before then!

The years spent in the profession were also a massive help. I have/had never been more grateful for my time in personal therapy, supervision and extensive therapeutic training. They all played a massive part in getting me through each day. I also had to be brutally honest with myself and make changes to the ways I did things.

Gone were the days that I could see clients back to back. I now had to take time before a session, not just to read notes, go to the loo and get comfortable but to take a moment’s meditation, ground myself and shut out the noise of the chaos of my life outside those four walls.

I was more aware than ever that my personal life could interfere with my ability to be present for my clients and the work that we did. I had to put things in place to protect that. The other thing that helped was allowing the identity I had formed for myself in my community over the years to shift. Allowing myself to ask for help with things allowed others to see that I didn’t always have it all together. This

included being totally transparent with my supervisor and realising early on that I no longer had the capacity to start new projects on my own. I wanted to carry on working towards my dreams, but the

‘I can do everything myself’ version of me that I had been up until this point had to be left in the past. I needed a community and I needed to collaborate with others to achieve the things I wanted to achieve. Maybe one day this will change, but for now this is where I am. And to be honest, I like it this way.

Collaboration

Working collaboratively with my business partner on our clinical supervision membership business has been such a beautiful experience. It also means I have someone who sees me regularly and can keep a secret eye on me, making sure I am not burning myself out, and supporting me if I am looking that way.

My supervisor was great for this too. She understood everything I had to juggle and the need to get the bills paid, and she has never once made me feel bad for taking on too much at times but supports me to support myself. I will be forever grateful to her for this.

I am also grateful to my clients, because being able to sit with them in their worlds was a perfect way to get some rest from my own. Some days it was a struggle to stay present, and in those times I paced myself, I would write a few more notes than usual, I would have items that ground me to fidget

with around my desk out of sight to keep me present, and I even started peer supervision to make sure that I was covering all clients and doing my best to not miss any blind spots. I also did more regular mini reviews with clients to check in on our work together. Fortunately I had worked with them all for some time so I knew them well.

Network support

When I felt ready, I tapped back into my referral network, advising all who were part of it that I was ready to return to practice, still two days a week alongside some evenings here and there. I was

overwhelmed by how much people still thought of me for client projects and more.

This was a crucial step, I think, because without this network I really would have struggled to fill the spaces I had without having the time or capacity to market myself properly. I slowly increased my hours of clinical contact and kept an eye on my mental, physical and spiritual capacity. Within a month

I was full with some amazing projects on the horizon. This was such a relief – I needed my income to be stable, something I could have some control of when everything else was so much outside my control. I then started to put things in place to safeguard my practice and my son, such as updating my personal and professional wills, getting various insurances to protect my practice income and my son in the event

that I ever became incapacitated, and protecting my future by making contributions to my pension.

I wouldn’t wish my last year on anyone, but I will say that like a lot of the experiences we go through as counsellors, I can see how the past two years as a whole have helped to enhance my practice and the service I offer. Becoming a mum has helped me understand the nuances of the stress my clients and my supervisees face, and also allowed me to be flexible with my sessions to make the service I offer more

accessible.

It has also enhanced the way I assess clients and the questions I ask during assessments. My son’s dad’s

cancer has taught me more about oncology and the human body than I ever thought I would know, and I have been able to use this knowledge to support my supervisees, especially those in training, but also to ask questions of clients I never would have known to ask before when they have shared concerns

about their health. It has strengthened both my personal and professional networks and forced me to take risks I probably would not have taken, such as starting my supervision training and leaving my employed job.

Meaning for you

If you are thinking about or planning to become a parent and are wondering how you might navigate the challenges of private practice alongside this, I hope my story provides some helpful insider context and gives you some hope and faith that you can do it. If you’re already a parent and juggling private practice,

then I hope that somewhere in my story you will find that you are not alone.

If you know a parent juggling private practice in any capacity, then I hope my story will provide some insider context that might help you understand and support that person in a new way.

Ultimately my story is one of many and, as we know, no one person’s story is the same. Not all stories of juggling motherhood and private practice will look like mine, but I hope that in sharing my story, others will feel more able to share theirs and keep a very important conversation going.

This article was first published in Therapy Today, the journal of the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy