Company of Two - an introductory interview with Laura & Claire. (Part I)
circling being, balance and business, some growth for us and and an invite for you...
WELCOME back to Company of Two.
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Let’s get to it.
Laura and I recorded an audio chat together this week.
It was a gentle introduction to our backgrounds, where we circle around our themes of balance, being and business in motherhood. We were going to release it into the world as part of the podcast series BUT we had a glitch on the line.
So instead of the audio, we wanted to share the transcript here as a ‘get to know us’ style introduction: we hope it feels a nice connection to you in your motherhood journey.
Remember if you’d like to be our friend or sponsor us for this four part podcast series and the launch of our Substack all the details are in this post.
We’d love to have you along with us within the circle and share more of how you are showing up for yourself and other mothers…
AUDIO TRANSCRIPT
Claire Venus
Welcome to Company of Two with me, Claire Venus and Laura Oldfield.
This is an introductory interview episode and we're so excited to be in our little Zoom room together.
We've never met in real life, but we have seen each other quite a bit on Zoom, so we're excited to be recording this afternoon.
It's a sunny afternoon in May here in Northumberland. How is it for you, Laura?
Laura Oldfield
It's been a glorious morning, it was the kind of morning where you optimistically set out on the school run without a coat, and then the wind blows and you go, oh, no, it's actually still only early May, but it's been the kind of day where you hope you can hang up the washing and then at about 1:00 p.m., a shower comes. That's just been this year, hasn't it?
Claire
Yeah, definitely. And we've got this little microclimate whereby it'll be really sunny here before I leave for the school run, but when I get to the village where my son goes to school, it's cold and then you come back into the sun. It's all very odd. So I totally empathise with that.
So today we're going to go into our little origin stories, I think, aren't we? We wanted to kind of share a little bit more around where the concept came from, how things bubbled up for us when we first became mothers and we were balancing our work as well, what that all felt like.
And we really want to pull out those themes of balance, being and business for each of us. I think we've had very different experiences and different points of reference, and we've got kind of similar ages between our well, you've got three children, I've got two, we've got some similar ages, but I'm sure we've got so much to say on the whole picture of being a company of one and a mother.
Laura
Absolutely. And I was reflecting last night in advance of this first recording and thinking the joy of this is going to be that our values are absolutely aligned, and yet we're quite different people. And I think that's why I'm so excited to do this with you. It's not just going to be two people who are essentially kind of mirror images of each other, it is going to be an exploration into two people living really quite different lives, different paces. Let's delve into our origin story. You've got the oldest child, so why don't you start?
Claire
Yeah, I've got a nearly nine year old, so my origin story started when I found out I was pregnant, which was in December 2013, which just now is ten years ago.
So I've been in this motherhood space for ten years, though, through pregnancy and then through all the iterations of being freelance and self employed.
So, yeah, ten years feels big. Ten years - wow feels like you've got loads to say after that long, doesn't it?
When you hold the container of like ten years of balancing all the things or falling out of balance, which I definitely have a lot.
My daughter is two now and she'll be three this coming December.
There's a bit of an age gap between the two of them, which was purposeful because I just couldn't get the balance. Balance with my career, our home as a yoga studio and before that other parts of our ambition like building an extension on our home and sleeping a full night through!
So years just turned into more years and the age gap was the age gap and it's beautiful and perfect.
I feel like I want to say that from the off, it was the right time because of being freelance and because of managing all the things I was managing.
Laura
And I think this obsession we have about age gaps and timing of everything…one of the things that I've had to lean into as I've become increasingly freelance and entrepreneurial is that although I want to have a plan, sometimes I have to accept that that plan is not going to be an even and rigid one.
There's going to have to be a degree of flexibility. And I think if we broaden that out, we zoom out. That's so much the case of motherhood, you know, that I've had several miscarriages. My age gaps are never what I'd imagined, but they're perfect for me.
And I think it's really indicative of how we get these obsessions with certain things around that whole balance idea. “I'll have this child then, I'll have that child then, and my career will look like this.”
And the reality is part of this wild ride that is being your own company as one is learning how to flex and lean with the inevitable changes and the different changes of rhythm that come when you do bring another child into the mix or another theme or strand of work
Claire
Yeah, I absolutely agree with that.
The whole concept for the podcast in the space, this company of two idea, it's me and you, but it's also us as mothers with one or more of our children, isn't it?
With my son, I was also managing freelance life and then once he was in school, things shifted and changed - felt calmer and easier somehow.
So I went back into that company of two with my eyes wide open with my second child.
Once I knew she was coming I said to myself - okay, how do I do this differently? So once I knew she was coming, I was like, how do I set this up in a different way?
How do I set this up in a more spacious way? How do I give myself more time?
Because the first time around as I was pregnant, I just sort of thought, oh yeah, I'll go back to work after three months of having my son, that sounds fine.
I'll have got my head round it and I think I treated it like a project.
It was so glorious, but motherhood is so intense especially in those postpartum days. So it's definitely not a learn ‘how to do it’ and then just go back to business as it was. Well, it wasn't for me. My whole being had shifted and I was running to catch up and falling down a heck of a lot too.
Laura
So how did your being change when your son arrived? Were you prepared for that? And how did you feel when he came on the scene?
Claire
Oh, I love that question. It's so lovely.
I was such a yogi at the time.
I met my husband at yoga class. I was just into yoga, so, so much, there are lots of really cute photos of me doing my yoga practice and there being like a baby on the mat or a toddler in the room (and that’s before we were sharing that stuff online). 😚
Yoga was a big part of who I was as a person and how I'd found balance with this kind of quite fast paced, arts cultural sector festival work that I was doing.
So the two things seemed to balance out quite well, and it was medicine, really, away from all of the kind of bright lights and that energy of kind of just relentlessness that the cultural sector can bring.
So I think I had balance that way. But what I wasn't prepared for was the sleep deprivation. My son really didn't sleep well till he was about three, so I was up multiple times a night with him and I had no clue why - he couldn't tell me.
I didn't know what was going on. And actually, now we know he's neurodivergent and he's actually very sensitive to lots of different sensory inputs, and that's why, obviously, during the nighttime, there was so much going on for him, it was too dark, too light, his tummy hurt or his pyjamas are uncomfortable etc…
Working where I was working at the time, nobody else had children so I kind of kept that part of myself away from them because there was a real disconnect.
They probably just thought I was addicted to coffee. I probably was addicted to coffee!!
Dave would bring my son along for feeding because I was still breastfeeding at the time. And then they would go off again and they'd go on their adventures together, father and son and I’d smash some more coffee and work. I felt there was so much distance between me and everything - like I couldn’t quite see it all properly? I was in it but I couldn’t see it. I was the slimmest I’d ever been I was just burning through life…
The level of intensity (when I reflect) was just another world. I want to go back and tell past me how well she did and reassure her, tell her to turn off her phone and that she’s already enough.
So when I knew I was having my daughter in 2020, I wanted to do things completely differently, and I wanted to set things up where I felt like she could be part of the work that I was doing. It needed to be calm and spacious and I was also responding to haven fallen pregnant right at the start of the pandemic (March 2020)
Which is why I set up Creativity Island for Mums and got the Arts Council funding for that project in 2020.
Laura
So when you had your son, how soon was it after that you started to dip your toe back into heady heights of the cultural sector? 3 months?
Claire
Yes when he was three months old, I did try. I was supposed to be running an event and I just had to make a massive apology and say, look, I had really thought that I would be able to get hold of this celebratory event, but I can't.
And I kind of I think they maybe knew before I did, I’d prepped it well before I went off and they had a team of people and that was all fine.
I remember that really well, just feeling so far away from even being interested in being in any spaces. It was such a shock to the system.
So I think, yeah, probably like bits and bobs, very part time, very in and out for the first kind of three to six months and then my body was telling me, okay, you're going to have to do this differently.
I was working on an Arts Council application for a venue and when that came off and we got the money, I had a bit of downtime around the decision, did another funding bid and then when I felt stronger and more balanced went in and delivered that work.
But I'd learned a little bit more about myself at that point and I knew what I needed in terms of other people to support on that. I wasn't running a business other than being a freelancer at that point. I felt like I had a lot to offer, but I was doing similar gigs, project management, a bit of fundraising, a bit of consultancy.
That was it, that was what people brought me in to do. So I didn't see myself as having a business as such, if that makes sense. I was in a real headspace of ‘lack’ when I look back…
Laura
Oh, completely. And it is such a shift, isn't it, when you go from that feeling of, essentially, I'm doing this but I'm still working for somebody else, to going, I am now the creator of this magic, I am bringing the magic. Totally. I'm in charge of the party.
I don't think I could ever have prepared for quite how overwhelming I found it to not be able to anticipate her [my daughter’s ] needs or understand what she wanted from me.
Looking back, I can see the incredible fight or flight mode that I was in. Not to say that I wasn't enjoying her, I did enjoy her, but there was a constant state of slightly elevated heart.
What's going to happen next? Am I going to be prepared? And certainly for me, my work was a way of avoiding that and not really having to consider that. I don't know if that's something that you resonate with or that you felt like you ever had to explore.
Claire
I really resonate with that, Laura, because the idea of being able to put motherhood down and go back to what I knew and I was so familiar and something that I felt I was really good at.
And you know, when people say to you, oh, you get to learn the babies cries, the hungry cry, the tired cry, the frustrated, the overstimulated. I did not with my son. I did not learn his cries. He literally just cried alot.
He wanted me, he cried, he fell asleep.
Luckily, he did bond with his dad really well in the toddler years.
I did some intense things like a mad trips to London where I went to the theatre with my friends.
He was four months old. And now I just think, how did I do that?
So I’ll unpack that story - I'd expressed milk (which wasn’t an easy thing for me) and my husband was in Trafalgar Square (one of the busiest spaces in London), with a bottle of like 3oz of expressed breast milk, a pram and this, like, tiny four months old baby.
And I *think* just thought I was going back to my old life of being at the theatre with a group of friends and that was all fine. Obviously, all this was all arranged in advance of really understanding what being a mum to a baby meant - mind, body and soul.
Isn’t it just the hardest and most beautiful job in the world?
I very much felt I love this, I love motherhood but I don't want to do it full time or at least show me a break somewhere, when’s the break - it felt so intense and so so hard.
I couldn’t relax in the theatre but I didn’t feel I could check my phone either - I was in some sort of mad limbo - I think if I could have cloned myself back then I would… My husband took the milk into costa coffee and watched as they unscrewed the lid ready to pour it down the sink - he managed to stop them in time to say no it’s breast milk I don’t have formula - I just need it heated up. That was a gut wrenching thing to hear when I came out of the theatre and met back up with them. I literally feel sick thinking about it and my son being without milk.
Laura
And I've realised that same thing with every child that I've had.
There’s been a deeper level of awakening for me…
I'll tell you a little bit about my daughter now.
I had her in summer 2014, taking a little while to conceive. I had polycystic ovarian syndrome, I'd had a miscarriage, I'd had a laparoscopy.
And suddenly she was on her way. And it was really exciting, but I had a very difficult birth experience with her, and I guess that was kind of my experience with motherhood in the microcosm, in that I'd imagined exactly how this birth was going to go.
And I think in the back of my mind, I also thought, I'm going to nail it because I'm mentally prepared, I'm going to be really good at it.
It was the first very brutal reminder that actually it didn't matter how much I had put my head in the right space, my body was going to do one thing, she was going to do another, and my head was going to do a third thing and I just had to get on board.
And I think when we talk about being, it was the first time that I felt so early on so shaken up, okay, I can't control the state of being, what's going to happen? So as I've already alluded to, I spent a lot of time on very high alert. They think sleep when the baby sleeps. I could never do that.
But equally, I was itching to get back to Laura and a month pretty much to the day after she was born, I was in the Albert Hall doing a gig with the Monteverdi Choir, doing a Prom.
And I literally couldn't sit down because I damaged my coccyx. So I had to go around everywhere…I went holding this object..we called it the pile cushion.. but I was so desperate to feel like me.
And exactly as you say, I very much was not a business. I was a freelance singer alongside employment, one of the places where our careers really differ. Until 2023, I've always been in employment in some capacity as a secondary music teacher and always been really proud to be someone who can show up in multiple different roles, chameleon like.
But for me, this Prom represented so much more than just the music.
It was, “I can do this and I can manage everything and I can go back to my old life.”
When she was three months old, I had an extended period of work with them [Monteverdi Choir] in Pisa. So my husband and I took her to Pisa. I remember breastfeeding her on a plane and got breastmilk on this poor woman in the face.
I look at pictures of us and think, how did we manage?
But I think it's so important to acknowledge for anyone listening who is early on in their experience as a mother, what I'm not saying is, please go ahead and try and recreate your old life.
That's not what this is about at all. But do I regret those early experiences? No, because it was what my soul needed at that time. And I think when you run a heart-centred business and you do this work that is so intrinsically part of you, it was as much about reclaiming that bit of my being through my work.
And we all hear so often, you want to work to live, not live to work, which I agree with, but I'm never going to apologize for trying to create the kind of business that gives me a burning sense of joy
That’s what this was.
It was a moment of repose. Sure, I was tired, but I was going to be tired anyway. So if you are listening to this and thinking, oh, my goodness, how did you do that?
It wasn't me being superwoman.
To quote you. It was medicine for me. What I needed at that time, my body didn't, but my mind did.
Claire
I love this and thank-you for sharing that.
I think there's all of these kind of little strands of wisdom, isn't there, that weave in…people say things, and sometimes as they're speaking, I feel like this is really important, like “this is coming from a place of real wisdom, like taking care of, like a mother's looking out for each other thing.”
In the early days I heard things that made me realise, okay, this is bigger than I thought it was. This is a lot bigger than I thought it was, and it's going to take some time.
So my yogi friend with grown up children said to me;
“maybe when you get to about six months, seven months, the sleep will be easier for you both”.
And I think at this point, I was like six weeks in, and I treated it like I was running a marathon with sleep. And any day now, any day now, I just had to keep going, keep going, keep going. And then this six month concept opened up and I just broke.
I was like, I can't do this for six months. I’ll die!
And that's what I mean about that adjustment period, isn't it? There's like bits where you think, I'm going to jump in and I'm going to do that, and it fuels me and it's amazing.
But then there's also this huge learning experience going on of going, okay, but if this is for months and maybe years, then what do I need? I really had NO idea about babies.
Like, how do I get that balance? Can I still do that? Or do I have to put that down? And the reason I say about putting stuff down is because I have that approach now with my second, I'm like, I'm not doing that yet, but once she goes to school, I'm going to look at that again. So that kind of picking up putting down things and holding a more spacious vision.
Laura
And I think this is one of the trickiest things about when you're in. I mean, I'm just going through this early period again. My third is ten months old now.
Claire
Yeah, just ten months is still just. A little dot, such a little gift.
(Part II will be out next weekend, thank-you for being here and sharing in our journey. Read on for some journal prompts that might spark something for you) .
Company of Two
JOURNAL PROMPTS
We’ll share part two with you next week but for now here are some journalling prompts drawn from our conversation if you’d like to think about those…
What can I put down? From expectations, to physical work, to feelings… what can I put down today?
Shifts and magic, magic and shifts…
How did your being change when you became a mum?
What can I test and adjust this week?
How do I set this up (insert thing) in a more spacious way? How do I give myself more time?
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Until next time, you are brilliant,
Claire and Laura
xox
Claire writes
here on Substack and Laura writes . To work with either of them as mentors head over to their websites via the link in their Substack profile.
This was super beautiful to read ❤️
I absolutely loved Laura sharing about how it was what she needed for her mind, but not her body.
I think that in the postnatal care space, we focus a lot of physical recovery and it’s all about lying in bed for weeks and eating lots of nourishing food.
Which is great.
But the mind and the body do sometimes need very different things and I would certainly lose my mind resting fully until my body had healed!
I think I feel guilt about that sometimes because I’m 2.5 years in and still physically not right
And maybe if I’d lay in bed more I would be fine physically but I’m not sure how I’d be holding up overall
It’s a balance isn’t it and I don’t see that spoken about often
Am just sitting down to read with my Mother's Day cuppa. I don't know if I've mentioned this before Claire, but I have a sister who is 14 years older. 🥰