In today’s podcast conversation with Kat River, we explore the question of ‘how can we disrupt our ideas of what motherhood means, to redefine it for ourselves, through our creativity?’ 
Kat is a retreat facilitator, former couples coach, and speaker who talks about her transition from maiden to mother, drawing on tools of creativity to honour and traverse self transformation through becoming a mother. 
Kat shares her insights on how motherhood has encouraged her to deepen and change her relationship to her work, her creativity, her relationships, and her identity. This involves navigating boundaries and priorities, examining inner fears and beliefs around a loss of independence and taking 'time out', and learning how to facilitate opportunities for our life and work focusses to evolve, change and shift. 
We reflect on how the postpartum period has the potential to be an invitation for deeper self knowledge, the importance of self-witnessing and honouring ourselves in a transitional time, and how it can be a training ground for our lives. We also look at relationships and codependency, fulfilment, and navigating the unexpected sides of motherhood with ‘leaps of faith’; relinquishing a sense of perceived control, while also recognising the structural and contextual challenges mothers also face. 
This is a conversation that speaks to the possibilities of exploring a life of integration between mother, woman, and creator, and allowing fluidity in how we see ourselves and the world. 

Kat River lives in the Noosa hinterland with her husband Tully & two year old son Rafi. 
Kat is a multicreative expressionist, and hosts a slow podcast "Mother Maker" centered towards mother creatives, mother entrepreneurs, mother mystics and intuitive motherhood. 
Those who are finding their own harmony (And often not harmony) between motherhood, and creative/work/career pursuits. She supports mother creatives in their magnificence through Mother Maker, as it evolves from a podcast, to events, retreats and a festival to cultivate community and reimagining the modern village of motherhood... though above all else, navigating the slow days of motherhood, and raising a little wildling. 

You can find Kat on her instagram: @the.kat.river and turn on post notifications if you want to keep up with everything she shares.
Her podcast is "Mother Maker" and available on spotify, Apple Podcasts & Anchor. 
Email is Hellokatriver@gmail.com

76. Honouring the creative potential in becoming a Mother with Kat River

The role of being a Mother offers us the potential for incredible expansion, growth, and power, while also being one of – if not THE – most challenging, undervalued, and taken for granted roles in the world. Motherhood Studies Sociologist, researcher, and single Mother, Dr Sophie Brock hosts The Good Enough Mother (TGEM) podcast with an aim to change how Motherhood is culturally defined and individually experienced. TGEM draws its name from a theorist and pediatrician Winnicott, who highlighted the ways ‘good enough’ parenting is actually what is best for our children – not perfectionism. The podcast centres the Mother as the starting point for conversations with experts and change-makers who are passionate about seeing social, cultural, and institutional change to better support Mothers and therefore our families, and communities.