#ShowUpAsYou

#ShowUpAsYou

The philosophy behind Maverick Mums

At our full moon sauna and cold dip this week, someone asked me a question I’ve been asked many times over the years.

“What is it that you love so much about Africa?”

It’s always a difficult question to answer.

Of course, I love the wildlife, the vast landscapes, the ancient baobabs, the people, the star-filled skies and the smell of woodsmoke drifting through camp in the evening.

But none of those things are really the reason I keep going back.

The truth is, Africa has always given me something much harder to describe.

It feels like coming home.

Not because it’s where I grew up, but because it’s one of the places where I’ve truly felt able to come home to myself.

The first time I travelled there, in my early twenties, I remember this overwhelming feeling of freedom.

It wasn’t that my worries disappeared or life suddenly became easy.

It was the realisation that I didn’t have to be anything other than myself.

I didn’t have to perform.

I didn’t have to prove anything.

I could simply be.

And I was enough.

Just as I was.

Looking back, I think that feeling changed the course of my life.

Over the years, I’ve realised it isn’t actually Africa that I’m searching for.

It’s that feeling.

The feeling of remembering who I am underneath all the different roles I play.

As women – and especially as mothers – it’s so easy to become everything to everyone else. The organiser. The planner. The emotional support. The taxi driver. The person quietly holding everything together.

They’re important roles.

But they’re not the whole story.

I don’t think we lose ourselves.

I think sometimes we simply stop hearing ourselves.

For me, nature has always been one of the quickest ways back.

Floating in cold water. Sitting beside a fire. Walking through woodland. Lying beneath a huge African sky.

The noise quietens.

The expectations soften.

And I remember.

Not who I should be.

Who I already am.

Gathering in the company of truth

Recently, I came across the Sanskrit word satsang, often translated as “gathering in the company of truth.”

That phrase stayed with me.

Not because I think anyone else can tell us what our truth is, but because perhaps one of the greatest gifts a community can offer is creating enough safety that we can hear our own.

Simply enough space to listen.

I also recently spent a weekend camping in the woods in East Sussex on a residential experience facilitated by Rebecca Wildbear, exploring nature as a guide.

We spent pretty much the whole time in the woods.

Living outside.

Paying attention.

Connecting with nature, with each other and with ourselves.

I’ll undoubtedly bring some of what I experienced there into future Maverick Mums gatherings and adventures.

But one of the things Rebecca shared that stayed with me most was how she described her own role.

She is the assistant guide.

Nature is the main guide.

I loved that.

Because it’s exactly how I see my role too.

I’m not here to tell anyone what they should feel, what they should discover or who they should become.

I’m here to create the container. To support. To facilitate. To offer invitations and possibilities.

But nature is the main guide.

And ultimately, each of us is our own guide.

The cold water might show you something completely different to what it shows me.

A horse might invite one person to soften and another to find courage.

Silence might feel comforting to one woman and deeply uncomfortable to another.

There is no correct experience.

No lesson I’m waiting for you to learn.

No transformation you need to perform.

Your experience belongs to you.

That, perhaps, is what empowerment really means to me.

We don’t become ourselves in isolation. We’re shaped by relationships, friendships and communities.

But healthy relationships shouldn’t ask us to hand over our own inner authority in exchange for belonging.

They don’t tell us who we are.

They create enough safety for us to listen more deeply to our own experience.

To question.

To notice.

To trust ourselves.

To belong while becoming more fully ourselves.

Nature has always understood this.

A woodland doesn’t ask every tree to grow in the same way.

A dawn chorus isn’t beautiful because every bird sings the same song.

Every living thing has its own rhythm, its own place and its own gifts.

Perhaps healthy communities aren’t so different.

Six years of #ShowUpAsYou

As I’ve been reflecting on all of this, I found myself looking back at the words I wrote when I created Maverick Mums nearly six years ago.

A simple hashtag:

#ShowUpAsYou

And our mission:

Maverick Mums is a community which exists to support and empower mums to reconnect with their authentic selves through sharing real stories and experiencing adventures that ignite passion, inspire action and cause transformational shifts. We can help change the future for ourselves and for our children.

I also created five values.

HEART.

Honesty. Empowerment. Authenticity. Responsibility. Transformation.

Looking back now, I smile.

Because I’ve spent the last six years trying to build exactly that.

Not perfectly.

But intentionally.

The words haven’t really changed.

My understanding of them has deepened.

Back then, I couldn’t have fully explained why #ShowUpAsYou felt so important.

Now I think I can.

Above anything else, I want people to feel comfortable.

Comfortable in their own skin.

Comfortable arriving with whatever is going on for them that day.

Comfortable enough to laugh, cry, talk, be quiet, join in or step back.

To know there is nothing they need to prove.

You don’t need to have the experience I think you should have.

You just need to have your experience.

I don’t want Maverick Mums to be another place where women feel they have to perform.

We already have enough of those.

You don’t need to be fit enough, adventurous enough, outdoorsy enough or confident enough.

You don’t need the right clothes.

The right body.

The right story.

You don’t even need to know anyone.

You simply need to show up.

As you.

And know that you are enough.

What are we teaching our children?

There’s something that really gets to me on Sunday mornings.

I love listening to Love Songs while pottering around the house, having a lazy breakfast and generally not doing very much.

And so often, people write in to celebrate the women they love by saying the same thing.

“She always puts everyone else first.”

“She never thinks of herself.”

“She gives everything to everyone else.”

It’s always said as the highest possible compliment.

And every time, I find myself wondering why.

Of course, caring for other people is a beautiful thing.

But when did we decide that a woman’s worth should be measured by how completely she can disappear into everyone else’s needs?

Why are we still wearing self-sacrifice as a badge of honour?

I don’t think our children need to see mothers who permanently put themselves at the bottom of the pile.

I think they need to see us sometimes choosing ourselves too.

Resting.

Having adventures.

Nurturing friendships.

Following our curiosity.

And having fun.

Really having fun.

Somewhere along the way, so many of us stop playing.

We become capable. Responsible. Efficient. Busy.

We tell ourselves we’ll have fun when the children are older, when work calms down or when life gets easier.

But life has a habit of filling every space we give it.

Joy isn’t something we should have to earn once everything else is done.

I want my children to see me laughing.

Swimming in a river.

Dancing around a fire.

Trying something new.

Doing things simply because they make me feel alive.

Because our children don’t just learn from what we tell them.

They learn from what they see us living.

And perhaps this is also why the family adventures have become such a natural evolution of Maverick Mums.

For years, much of the focus has been on creating space for mums to step away for a while and reconnect with themselves.

That still matters deeply.

But I’ve also started wondering what happens when we bring our children into some of these experiences.

When they see us being playful.

Curious.

Trying something new.

Resting without guilt.

Connecting with nature.

Building friendships.

Being ourselves.

What might that teach them about adulthood?

About motherhood?

About what a woman’s life is allowed to look like?

Perhaps changing the future for ourselves and our children isn’t only about what we tell the next generation.

Perhaps it’s about what we allow them to witness.

And maybe, over time, that creates a small cultural shift too.

The activities are the doorway

The paddleboards aren’t really the point.

Neither are the wild swims.

The walks.

The saunas.

The campfires.

Or even Africa.

They’re the doorway.

A gentle interruption to everyday life.

A chance to reconnect with nature, with each other and perhaps, with ourselves.

And the truth is, Maverick Mums was partly born because I needed it too.

There was something missing for me.

I wanted a space where I could have adventures, spend time in nature, meet other women and show up authentically.

Not only as a mum, a partner, a business owner or the person holding everything together.

Just as me.

Maverick Mums has always been shaped by my own experiences and my own life.

And it continues to evolve alongside me.

Which means, if #ShowUpAsYou is genuinely what I believe, it has to include me too.

I can’t create a community where everyone else is invited to stop performing while I feel I have to be permanently “on”.

I don’t always want to lead.

Sometimes I want to swim.

To walk.

To sit around the fire.

To laugh.

To listen.

To be part of the conversation rather than facilitating it.

To enjoy the community I helped to create.

As Maverick Mums has grown, I’ve been able to step back a little more.

Not because I care less.

Not because the vision has changed.

Quite the opposite.

This has always been the hope.

The community has now grown and shaped itself enough that more women are bringing their own ideas, skills and ways of being.

My role is to help create the conditions.

To protect the culture.

To offer invitations and possibilities.

Sometimes to lead.

And sometimes simply to be part of it.

I don’t need to manufacture every meaningful moment.

Sometimes my job is simply to create the container, help people feel comfortable and trust what unfolds.

And sometimes, I get to be in it too.

A Wild Homecoming

Perhaps it’s no coincidence that the new adventure I’m about to launch is called Wild Homecoming.

When the name came to me, I knew it felt right.

Now I think I understand why.

Wild Homecoming isn’t about travelling to Zimbabwe to find something that’s missing.

It’s not about becoming wilder, braver, more spiritual or more adventurous.

It’s about creating enough space to come back to yourself.

To wake with the light.

Move.

Rest.

Spend time with horses.

Walk.

Swim.

Sit beside the river.

Laugh.

Eat together.

Sleep beneath the stars.

And perhaps, slowly, begin hearing yourself again.

It’s why I don’t want every minute of these adventures to be scheduled.

I want space.

Space for conversations that weren’t planned.

Space to sit quietly under a tree.

Space to follow curiosity.

Space to have fun.

Space to do nothing at all.

Because I don’t think coming home to ourselves happens when we’re trying really hard to transform.

Sometimes it happens when we finally feel safe enough to stop trying.

Perhaps that’s what Africa gave me in my early twenties.

A wild homecoming, long before I had the words for it.

And perhaps, in some small way, that’s what I’ve been trying to create ever since.

Not Africa itself.

The feeling.

That moment when you exhale and realise…

Oh. There I am.

And perhaps something else too.

I am enough.

Not when I’ve done more.

Given more.

Achieved more.

Become more.

Now.

As I am.

Coming back to HEART

When I look at our original values now, they still feel exactly right.

• Honesty. Showing up truthfully.

• Empowerment. Helping people trust themselves and their own experience.

• Authenticity. Feeling free to be who we really are.

• Responsibility. Each of us helping to create the kind of community we want to belong to.

• Transformation. Not becoming someone different, but remembering who we’ve been all along.

Perhaps that’s the kind of transformation that lasts.

Because if we can create spaces where mums feel comfortable in their own skin…

Where they don’t have to perform.

Where they laugh and have fun.

Where they sometimes put themselves first.

Where they trust themselves.

Where they know they’re enough.

Then we’re doing far more than organising events and adventures.

We’re changing the relationship we have with ourselves.

And that changes how we show up in our families, our friendships and our communities.

It changes what our children see us living.

Perhaps, slowly, it changes the culture they grow up in too.

So perhaps the question isn’t:

“Who do I want to become?”

Perhaps it’s:

“Where do I feel most like myself?”

Maybe it’s the sea.

A woodland.

Around a fire.

Beneath a vast African sky.

Or simply with people who remind you that you don’t have to be anyone else.

You can breathe.

You can be.

You are enough.

Perhaps that’s what #ShowUpAsYou has meant all along.

Not becoming more.

Not becoming different.

Simply becoming more fully yourself.

Come as you are.

Leave feeling a little more like yourself.