EP 30: Grief, Healing and Taking Time for Yourself with Andrea Herbert
I loved talking to Andrea. She brought incredible openness to our conversation about postpartum anxiety, navigating grief, her journey with balance, and her continual self-discovery. I was both inspired and touched by our conversation.
Postpartum anxiety, book talk, and self-help. Discover ways to look at grief and how to approach the healing process after experiencing a miscarriage.
It was such a pleasure having mom, marathon runner, and health coach, Andrea Herbert, on the show to tell her story and to learn more about the healthy habits that started her on a larger journey creating space for herself and her emotions.
Andrea and I covered the discomfort of pregnancy can be and how it can be hard to find joy in pregnancy when everyone assumes that you are loving it. She dives into her experience with postpartum anxiety and how to lend support to someone struggling during the postpartum period and provides the questions and tools that can be used to help mothers experiencing heavy emotions.
Going to her ultrasound at her 9-week appointment for her third pregnancy, Andrea noticed something was off with how she was feeling. Andrea shares her intimate experience of learning she experienced a miscarriage and explains her grieving process, how she turned to her support system and took it day-by-day to heal. She discusses how she held space for her emotions so they wouldn’t bubble over. It was during this process she discovered how much kids pick up on emotions.
During her recovery period, her normal coping mechanism, running marathons, was temporarily taken off the table. Back to running now, Andrea is currently pursuing her goal of running a marathon in all 50 states, an activity she fell in love with for its physical and mental challenge and as an outlet for some healthy competition. After taking another pause from marathons during the pandemic, she highlights how having her kids there to support her for her first race back provided an opportunity to model her own passions and opened up conversations about struggle and perseverance, and hopes that they will one day join her!
Having kids with big emotions, Andrea emphasizes the importance of acknowledging their big feelings and affirming those emotions. She found that showing her kids her own struggles and being candid on how she approaches them has been a powerful tool.
“Feeling deeply and expressing those feelings honestly IS brave. Letting your heart be seen IS brave. If you are sad or angry - that's because you're paying attention.” says Glennon Doyle, one of the authors Andrea and Celeste discuss during their book talk said.
Andrea also gives tips on how she’s managed to balance her business with motherhood. During COVID, she made a commitment to getting up before her kids in the morning, and to use that time to read a book a week. Those two goals led Andrea to create her company, Gold Ivy Health Co., alongside her cousin Brooke, to focus on the importance of health and wellness.
“What I’ve learned is it all depends on where you’re at, tuning into what you need, and being honest about it.” By planning ahead and being intentional with her time, Andrea acknowledged that she was not happy with the balance in her life and decided it was time to open up her own company, start a podcast, and continue her work as a health coach. She champions being honest about what you want and accepting that everyone’s path is different. We end our conversation with a discussion about what acceptance means and what it means to let others see us for who we are.
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