Book Tour ~ Guilt Free Motherhood: A 5 Step Guide to Reclaiming Your Time, Health & Well-Being

Title: Guilt Free Motherhood: A 5-Step Guide to Reclaiming Your Time, Health & Well-Being
Author: Amber Khan
Publisher: Rethink Press
Genre: Nonfiction/Parenting/Motherhood
Format: Paperback/Kindle

Own your happiness. Reclaim your well-being. Make a guilt-free lifestyle, your choice of living!

• Do you think being a ‘super mum’ is your only option?
• Do you neglect your own health while caring for others?
• Do you struggle to maintain a happy work/life balance?
• Do you often feel stressed and burnt-out? Then you may be suffering from ‘Mummy Guilt’.

Guilt Free Motherhood will guide you to:

• Ignite your passion to bring balance to your life;
• Take practical steps towards self-care;
• De-clutter your space, schedules and relationships;
• Let go of the ‘super mum’ and the ‘control freak’ inside of you;
• Practical ways of recharging your batteries.

A mother’s journey should not be, and need not be, a GUILT trip. Guilt Free Motherhood gives you the tools you need to start living a more contented, healthy and energised lifestyle today – right in the midst of motherhood.”

For More Information

Guilt Free Motherhood: A 5 Step Guide to Reclaiming Your Time, Health & Well-Being is available at Amazon US & Amazon UK.
Pick up your copy at Barnes & Noble.

About The Author

Amber Khan is a Lifestyle Mentor, Speaker, Author, sports enthusiast and a proud mum of three. She is the founder of Guilt Free Living which provides tools for the mothers to help them live a fulfilling, healthy & energised lifestyle. She has ran retreats, given talks and written articles on the importance of wellness and how to re-energise the tired minds and bodies of mothers.
Amber currently resides in London, UK with her husband and their three children.
Her latest book is the nonfiction/parenting/motherhood book, Guilt Free Motherhood: A 5-Step Guide to Reclaiming Your Time, Health & Well-Being.

For More Information

Visit Amber Khan’s website.
Connect with Amber on Facebook and Twitter.
Find out more about Amber at Goodreads.
Visit Amber’s blog.

Book Excerpt

I think you’ll agree that the most important emotional issue a majority of mothers face, especially twenty-first century mothers, is the feeling ofguilt. The spectrum of guilt is wide and varied, ranging from feeling guilty about not doing enough for your children, to feeling guilty about spending time or money on your own well-being, with hundreds more guilty feelings in between. I believe that a mother’s journey should not be, and need not be, a guilt trip.

The purpose of this book is to show how a mother can live a refreshing, blissful and blossoming lifestyle through a guided five-step process by letting go of the mummy guilt that makes us sacrifice our health, career and relationships.

Mummy guilt can be defined as the feeling of self-condemnation that we experience when thoughts of spending time and money on ourselves seem selfish. It can also be understood as the constant worry we feel for our kids which eventually turns into guilt. In fact, anyone caring for children is bound to experience similar guilty feelings.

Mummy guilt can start as early as when the pink stripes show up on your pregnancy test. I used to feel guilty about anything when I was expecting my first child. The first trimester was very tough. I could hardly keep food down, felt nauseous and weak, and worried constantly how it would affect the growth of my baby. Guilt sowed its seeds in me at the very start of my motherhood journey.

Later on, if I left kids at home with hubby for an hour or two, I felt guilty. When I went to work after dropping my baby at the nursery, I felt guilty. When I decided to be a stay-at-home mum, I felt guilt about abandoning my career. When I wanted to join the gym (to lose the extra 20kg I had gained during pregnancy) and regain my self-confidence, I felt guilty about spending that time and money on myself. Even going out (once in a blue moon) with friends, always turned into a guilt trip. Is a mother taking care of herself to keep her sanity and health, really a selfish act?

Well in my case the lack of self-care eventually turned into health problems. Back problems, weak joints, weak and injury-prone muscles, and I was only in my twenties! Problems that, you’d normally associate with old age, maybe. For almost a decade I neglected my health; it eventually took my left knee giving way to make me realise that if I didn’t take care of myself now, I would soon end up miserable, in pain and maybe even run out of recovery options. What good would I be to my family then? Will husband have to quit work simply to look after me and the kids?

I know most of us are constrained by financial or support issues. I should know! Aged twenty-three, new mum, in a new country with no friends or family — that was me over a decade ago. I tried to be a ‘supermum’ thinking I could manage it all. Even when my husband offered to help I’d often decline, thinking I could do it better because a job half done, or not finished to my standards, would only frustrate me more. I neglected my health, and felt stressed and exhausted most of the time. I was trapped by mummy guilt.

INTERVIEW

Amber, thanks for being my guest today. Please share with our readers about you. 
Well, I was born in Sydney, Australia, to parents of Pakistani origin. My parents moved back to Karachi, Pakistan when i was two, where i remained until the age of 16. I returned to Australia for higher education. Later on I married a Londoner and moved to London to live with him.

I worked in IT and Finance for a number of years until I decided to take a plunge into self-employment. My calling came after the birth of my second child. I knew then that i wanted to do something which brings positivity not only to my life but the lives of other mums too. So, Guilt-free Living was born.

I now offer lifestyle mentoring to mums & have recently started offering business mentoring to people in health, wellness, fitness, and coaching & food industries.

I currently reside in London, UK with my husband and three children.

What inspires you to get out of bed each day?
The thought that I can help someone else succeed & be happy in life with the knowledge & experience that I possess.

If you could hang out with one famous person for one day, who would it be and why?
It would have to be Abdul Sattar Edhi who owns & operated the world’s biggest social welfare services & the world’s largest ambulance network in Pakistan.
Why? Very simply because there’s no other like him currently in this world who has done & continues to do so much for free for the poor, sick & the dead. Who stays humble, lives in a hut & never got greedy with the millions of dollars he receives in charity from people around the world. He truly spends every single penny of it in the right place. He is a true icon & an angel in human form.

What’s the story behind your latest book?
The inspiration for the book comes from my own experiences. I became a mum at the age of 23, in a country I had only been living for a year with no family around & no friends yet either. So, the only thing that seemed right at that point was to adorn the super-mum cape & ignore the overwhelm I was feeling.

I also thought, I’m young so I can take this pressure & stress, it won’t do me any harm. But the fact of the matter is that stress & burnout doesn’t care about how old you are. When they strike, your well-being can really spiral down a big hole & for some it might even get too late before they realise that they need to climb back up that spiral staircase of life. I was in that hole for quite some time and it took lots of health scares for me to realise that It is time to finally STOP being a super-mum. But then how can you be a good & effective mum without being a super mum, most mums would ask?

I took that thought as a challenge & started to bring about changes in my lifestyle which other mothers started to notice & became curious. My health started to get better; I became more jovial & social person. Life started to seem easier though responsibilities had only increased over time but it’s how you deal with them, dictates yours & your family’s well-being.

Every time I’d be a part of a group of mothers, they’d ask me about tips & strategies on how to be a guilt-free mum. So, we’d discuss & share & then one of the mother’s suggested that why don’t I write about it so I can reach many more busy mums who might also benefit from making similar tweaks in their lifestyle.

Initially i ignored that comment but the more I thought about it the more it made sense. Rather than me answering the same questions over & over again (in mummy groups), why not write about them in a methodical manner that will be easier to understand & implement. Mothers will be able to access that resource whenever they like & implement changes at their own pace. Finally I mustered up the courage to start writing about it couple of years ago & at one point I thought it will never happen as it has taken this long but here I am today with finally publishing the work that I hope would benefit the busy mums of the 21st century.

 

What are you working on next?
I’m working on another book but that it is not on parenting anymore actually. It is about business along the lines of “how to stop selling time for money”.

Who are your favorite authors?
Among non-fiction: Tim ferris
Among Fiction: Stieg Larsson & Khaled Hosseini

What do you like to do with your free time?
Mothers never have any free time hehe.. but I do take me time out to go out with girl friends or for a pamper treatment like a massage

Where can people find you on the web?
http://guiltfreeliving.co/
twitter: @thatamberkhan
Facebook: facebook.com/GuiltFreeLiving

Thanks for being my guest today Amber.