Healing Before Parenthood w/ Mindfully Loved Founders Chloe + Michael

Chloe & Michael created Mindfully Loved from a passion to be able to help people more in their therapist and psychologist roles (5:56). During lockdown they created their business (8:23) and now help parents worldwide from the Mediterranean island of Cyprus (31:05).

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Intro

Hi, my loves. Welcome back to The Wanderlover Podcast. This week, we are highlighting client success stories and interviewing special guests, Chloe and Michael founders of Mindfully Loved. They offer a holistic prepared hood programs, supporting couples to heal before becoming parents. And additionally, they have taken their business international booking a one-way ticket, working from the beaches of Cyprus and helping couples around the world. Welcome to the show guys.

Chloe:

So good to be here. Thanks for having us.

Dani:

Of course. We’re so happy to have you on the show. I would love to hear how Cypress is.

Chloe:

It’s beautiful, nice and warm. Too hot, maybe for Mike

Mike:

At times. I love that intro Danielle, it just makes me feel so good. Beautiful reminder of where we’re at, but yeah, and I absolutely loving it here in Cyprus. I mean, you know, the Mediterranean blood within us, I think is really sort of thriving in these spots.

Chloe & Mike’s Story

Dani:

Yeah. And just to backtrack a little, I believe like less than a year ago, right. You guys were in Australia working and unsure of how this life that you really wanted to manifest was going to play out and happen. And here you are working from the beaches. How did that all happen?

Chloe:

Yeah, probably a year, a little bit. Over a year ago, we were living in Melbourne working from home because it was locked down just being in the cold didn’t yeah, it didn’t know what to do.

Mike:

I know nine to five, certainly. And you know, I was living in a very sort of corporate existence in that space. Chloe was working at a primary school, which was something she loved doing, but we both had this sort of side passion that we’re working on at the same time. And it was something we were really deeply sort of passionate about trying to find the time and space and energy outside of a very, for me, very boxed, structured, but you know, way of thinking and day-to-day life. And, and just trying to find a way to manage the, both of them in a way that sort of wasn’t sustainable,

Chloe:

Being able to shift those energies. Was it a bit hot for us by corporate? She like creative, passionate time and space and yeah, it was, we just had finding it hard, you know, made the decision last August, we booked, I want to get one mom, I take it to Cyprus. And we said, well, the women were doing this happened between men now, but yeah, we made it work. We’re here now.

Dani:

And look where you are now. And just for our audience, what are your backgrounds?

Chloe:

So I am a psychologist and he was a therapist. So I’ve been working as a psychologist the last, over 10 years now after working at clinics and schools and communities and have my own private practice as well. And Michael,

Mike:

Yeah. So I’m an allied health professional as a myotherapists and moved into what the last 10 years was in a claims management sort of setting, working with severely injured clients, severely injured transport accident victims, actually. So working closely with them in the hospital settings and more recently studying holistic life and nutrition coaching.

Starting Mindfully Loved

Dani:

Yeah. And so it sounds like you’ve really been able to bring together all of your experiences and your passions and build Mindfully Loved. So how did you first decide to start Mindfully Loved? And could you give us a little more information on what it is?

Chloe:

Yes, of course. So Mindfully Loved started the idea of what started. I think when I, when I initially started coming back from school, working from school and just feeling a little bit hopeless, feeling that I wasn’t making enough change in the lives of the children, that I was working, seeing them once a week, I just felt there wasn’t enough to make that change. In regards to the limiting beliefs, invested the beliefs, the values, the things that they’re holding on to. I was able, we were able to walk through some things, but I knew the moment they left my office, the moment they went back home, the surroundings, the way their parents talked, the wave of the things our parents were holding their insecurities, their own trauma, their own Billy.

Chloe:

So own bodies that we’re passing on to their children. Was it enough for me to be able to change that at that point? So we, we started having that chat, that chat with mark. I was like, well, I don’t know what else to do. I feel like I’m not doing enough just by working with the kids and being able to work with parents. There’s so many of them, like, it’s, it’s, it’s an important work. Being able to work with parents, but the moment you chat with parents, they take it personally, the table that you were talking that it’s not my fault. It’s my fault that I’m doing this switch. So we started brainstorming and I’m like, what you, what if we could work with couples being able to heal the own trauma before they even became parents being able to become aware of what they’re holding on to start their own healing journey before they even become parents as a couple, we went through our own healing journey and continue to go to through that.

Chloe:

So we found it so empowering to be able to have each other. So actually the idea of Mindfully Loved came through during our honeymoon.

Mike:

Yeah.

Chloe:

Joining our honeymoon, traveling Europe, we actually made a commitment to ourselves that we’re gonna, you know, take a few years to really go deep into our own healing and only choose to start our journey of conception and pregnancy and parenthood. When we, not just because we feel the pressure from society or because it’s the next step to do, or because we’re married now and really do it because we want to do it intentionally and mindfully. And once we know that we’ve done the work that we need it to do, and we’re not dealing, never stops. We know that most of our healing will also happen as parents, but we want it to at least do the best that we can at that point. Yeah.

Chloe:

Anything else?

Mike:

Perfect. Chloe is totally a creationist when it comes to these ideas. And certainly at the time we were both starting some really deep levels of communication between each other. And we found our out relationship really starting to thrive, really starting to explore new boundaries and new levels. And, you know, usually a she’d come home any day and have this, you know, brand new idea of something that you wanted to try and something that she wanted to do. And most of the time I’d be like, okay, that’s another one. Let’s add it to the pile. And this time she came home with this idea and it just, wow, that one just resonated. And it was something they particularly passionate about. You know, here we are now literally living that passionate idea.

Chloe:

And at the moment Mindfully Loved, we want to be an umbrella, but at the moment we are supporting couples. We’re offering resources for couples to be able to empower them, to start this journey, to start this healing journey through self-awareness, through growth, through healing and using our own journey as well.

Creating offerings

Dani:

Yeah. And I love how you go to the root, right? It’s not about just working what the offspring it’s like, even before conception bringing the awareness that you have to change yourself. And it’s like that saying, you know, everyone wants to change the world, but no one wants to change themselves. Right. But in order to change the world, you literally have to change yourself. And so I just love this movement that you’ve created. So I’m curious, like what do you currently offer in your business suite?

Chloe:

So at the moment we have an e-book that is for expecting parents, which is filled with beautiful journal prompts and digitalized stations and exercise exercises that are focused for experts to parents and couples. And it’s, we, we want to bring that intention when you are in that journey of pregnancy, being able to sit down with your partner and really open up, really visualize how you want to see yourself as a parent, really focused on your own parenting roles around you and what, what personality traits you want to take, what parenting traits do you want to take from the people who don’t do what you want to let go chat with you upon about what you expect each other to be like as a parent, or visualize yourself how you want to target those moments of stress, moments of overwhelm and how you can communicate that?

Chloe:

Our ebook has a whole beautiful, as I said, visualizations and exercises, but at the end, it also focuses on creating an action plan. So we, that action plan focuses for the first few months of postpartum. Really being able to know what you’re doing on those moments of timeless, overwhelmed, stressed, and knowing that you have a plan where you can talk to your partner when you can call for help when you need to. And when you can assign those times for yourself for self care. So we really need self care and self love here, monthly loss. We, we are big advocates of putting in order to be able to model our children’s self-love we choose ourselves rather than just tell them for sure.

Chloe:

So that’s our ebook. And then we offer a course for couples. So you don’t have to be a couple expecting at the moments or a parent. It can be for any couples, any part of your relationship status, and with it’s an intro to that self exploring exploration and that in a healing. So we tapping you things like, well, I use limiting beliefs in a childhood, really forgiveness, accepting who you are communicating with. So we talk getting all those major things that we believe that is the most important part to get. You started with this, the healing journey, our program, which is a 12 week program.

Chloe:

And it is for expecting parents that are out of starting the pregnancy now. And we go through a whole, it’s a big program. So we, we tap into the self-exploration that in healing, but also we going into more slowly and how we can support them to start taking care of the bodies of themselves, of their environment in a slower and more intentional life. So there’s your little live out there, and this is just the beginning. There’s so many more things that we want to start doing and face-to-face stuff, but this is it at the moment.

The Mindfully Loved Podcast

Dani:

I also know that you launched The Mindfully Loved Podcast while we were working together, right. To reach even more couples and help them on their healing journeys. Can you tell us what your podcast is about?

Mike:

Yeah. So, you know, shout outs, shout out to Danielle because I mean, you were totally the inspiration for us to kick this off. You know, this was something we spoke about, I think for a couple of years and sort of brought that up with that idea up a little while ago. And I guess we sort of continue to float the idea we started working with you and naturally, you know, you sort of asked that question or why don’t just start it now. And, and, and well, you know, we’re 26, 26 episodes in now and yeah, it’s, it’s a, it’s, it’s an interview based format. So we, we work a lot with interviewing with others, but we also have a lot of discussion-based episodes ourselves as well.

Mike:

And we, we, we really deep dive into the type of work that we’re offering them, the type of work that we do. We talk about quite quite deeply. We talk about our own personal experiences through this healing and growth journey. And we talk about the type of things that we offer through our course as well and through our offerings. So

Chloe:

We, we, I think things that we want to learn as we going through this journey. So the people that we choose to interview on our podcast are people that we find interesting ourselves and that we want to learn more around like the other day. We might, you know, we interviewed a Walkman for station coach just because we believe so much about it. And we want other couples to learn more about it. So there’s a range of it, but it is targeted to future parents. Cause we want to take it anyone at anytime that any age that my want to be apparent in the future, because those skills, we want them to be passed down. We want published twin boarded this cause we want it to keep going. We know it’s things that we went at plot or models.

Chloe:

So we are here to change that generation and just steer generation feel good, all this knowledge.

Mike:

So the wonderful thing about the podcast is it’s it’s as healing for us as it may be for others, as I think it gets part of our journey. Really?

Chloe:

Yeah.

Becoming conscious of your limiting beliefs

Dani:

So for our audience members who might not even be aware or conscious that they have limiting beliefs or their self-sabotaging, and this is usually how it gets passed down, right. Because you’re unaware, you think you’re doing the best, but only to your ability. And it’s only until you work with someone else that can see your blind spots where you’re like, oh my gosh, like, this is what I would have passed down. If I didn’t notice it, if I didn’t work on it or think about it, what are some common, I would say, scenarios of your subconscious limiting beliefs, or maybe like childhood traumas coming up into your present life scenario that you might not be aware about.

Dani:

Are there any trends that you see that just go unnoticed?

Chloe:

So the number one is around feeling emotions and being vulnerable and being able to articulate how you’re feeling. So the number one thing that we found, even with once you become parents, you parents don’t freak out when they hear the kids cry or when they’re expressing emotion. Yeah. That’s the number one of the parents that you cannot see a parent just jumping into, save them or quiet them down, or just don’t know how to respond to that big emotion. And this is the number one thing, especially our generation that’s experienced at that. We were never taught or let, to feel emotions and without judgment, just letting them know that it’s okay to feel your emotions.

Chloe:

Emotions are not bad. We that our generation, I believe that we have this unconscious belief, that feeling emotions make us look weak, make us look that we’re complaining, make us look like we just, I don’t know. So it’s more reframing all this, that resilience and feeling strong comes through feeling our emotions to feel emotions non-judgmentally. So it’s really important to go back and tap into a simplest, think of ourselves as children. Were we ever allowed to feel emotions? Well, we, our parents, our family around us telling us when we’re crying, when we’re raving a voice, when we were showing our anger where we talked to feel our anger in a healthy way.

Chloe:

Yeah. What, what, what, how did our parents feel their emotions? How did parents communicate fight between them? So it’s how did they respond to stressful situations? So we start by reminding, reminding ourselves what we were modeled and then tapping into how do we respond to emotions at the moment? How are we in a situation? How are we when we feel proud of ourselves, do we openly celebrate it or do we hide it? Why don’t we minimize it? So all those things, we start to tap into those major events in our life and reflect on how we felt our emotions. And then he goes into a relationship. How do you, do you communicate to your partner when you are feeling stressed and you needing help or what what’s holding you back.

Chloe:

What’s the underlying little inner voice telling you when you want to ask for help, but you can’t, we’re going to be weak. I don’t want, but that I’m struggling. He needs to know. He should know, you know, all the expectations that we putting on that in a voice. And then we start challenging those thoughts. We start reflecting on those thoughts. Okay. When did that come from? Your parents told you that you can never trust anybody. You need to, if there’s a problem, you need to deal with it yourself. Don’t show anyone that you hurt. You just need to have a soft face and just figure it out yourself and being able to like, well, is this a belief that you want to help them to? Because if it’s not that’s okay. It wasn’t your belief. It was something that was, you can recreate your own belief, so you can start.

Chloe:

And now we start with, you know, emotions. Then we go into relationship. We’re going to money. We’re going to marriage. You know, one thing that I’ve realized coming back to Cypress is that idea around marriage, it’s a negative thing. You know, it’s like, he was like, oh, like once you get into a marriage, you like just, oh, like everyone talks about being married, such a prominent.

Dani:

Wow. And they openly say that!?

Chloe:

It’s just even the younger generation. And I was just very shocked. I’m like ish, but it’s something that I guess in generation that just pass down or, you know, you openly bag your partner, you know, just, you know, just something that you do. And I’m like, it’s just, you know, it’s not the ability that we will not teach our children around marriage. It’s such a beautiful partner that you want to say, being able to change all that. Sorry.

Mike:

Yeah, no, sorry. So opening up that level of self-awareness is something that we’re really passionate about because it’s really exploring that default mode. Who are we in those moments? Who are we when we’re exhausted, exhausted, and where did those sort of beliefs come from? And most of the stuff just isn’t challenged generally, and we just sort of go, well, that’s the way it is. You know, I, I know I certainly did that for a long time as well. And, you know, even just, you know, growing up, you know, into a man challenging those beliefs I’ve, you know, will told from so young you’re, you’re a big boy, Don fry, you’re a big boy. Don’t cry. And, and you know, that, that really just has, you know, it has such stunting effects on our emotional development as men as well. So, you know, there’s certainly, certainly so much space in that self-awareness to what we were, what we were modeled, our parents, even just communicating with each other, let alone with other people forms the basis of how we say a relationship and, you know, just conditions, that whole response of what we think marriages or partnership is.

Chloe:

Yeah. And it takes, it takes a whole lifetime to be able to, you know, recognize all those things. And in our course, we really teach that those tools of self-awareness and how to do, because once you suffer where you’ll be able to notice a loss and the goal is not to be fully healed, you know, because it’s healing, this is growth and healing is the purpose of life. So it will take us a whole lifetime to be able to do it by being able to have that awareness and those tools to maneuver those beliefs that pop up all the street, guests that come in there and doing it non-judgmentally. So it’s not about blaming yourself every time you fall into that pattern, it’s about kind of non-judgmentally realize it, become aware of it and then can look, okay, what can I do about it?

Chloe:

What can I do about it? I know that, that we humans as well.

Dani:

Yeah. And giving yourself permission, right. To challenge the status quo and challenge all the thoughts and beliefs that are so ingrained in you from a lifetime of habit. And so what I love about your programs is it gives individuals and couples permission to challenge and create a new reality. So I feel like this trickles, it’s so much bigger than just individuals, it’s like couples relationships and also shaping their lives and businesses and what they’re capable of. Right. And when you change that narrative, then that’s how you change future generations in your programs. It also sounds like there is a north star that people can follow of.

Dani:

This is the healthy way to act, right? Because some people were never modeled that and they have no idea, even if they wanted change, like how do I create a healthy environment is just something so outside of their frame of reference, but because of the work you guys have done on yourselves with your clients and within your programs, you’re really able to model like, Hey, why don’t you try this? And when they get those results, it’s just more and more incentive to continue doing. So

Chloe:

Exactly. And as you said, we’ve done, we’ve done so much work as us. And what we teach in our courses. I think we’ve tried. And we embedded in our life on a daily basis. And we truly, we truly believe this works as well as everything we’ve learned in our own studies.

Mike:

You know, there’s still so much work that we’re doing ourselves. We find ourselves fall back quite regularly. And, and it really is about being kind to ourselves and in those moments, but the word that you said that really resonates with me is environment. We are. So I I’m, I’m so particularly passionate about creating an environment that’s conducive to the type of growth that you want. It’s not about, you know, striving for perfection and beating yourself up in those moments. But once you do start to create that environment of self-awareness and have a wonderful supportive partner, who’s there on that journey with you as well. It makes those moments easier. It starts to, you know, it’s like meditation, you start to that mental training.

Mike:

It, it slowly increases over time. How quickly you can catch challenge and change those thoughts, those patterns, those beliefs, that pop up and challenge you in any moment. So we really are. I mean, you know, sustainable is a really key word to us. Holistic is a really key word to us in the way that we want to develop this. Self-awareness because it’s, it’s going to be with you for life. It’s going to be something that you’re going to do ongoing, but it most certainly gets easier. And it most certainly becomes more fulfilling the longer it goes on.

Chloe & Michael’s healing rituals as a couple

Dani:

Yeah. Maybe like as a sneak peek, what are some rituals that you guys have implemented in your relationship where it really just made things a lot better?

Chloe:

Well, morning I’m wanting ritual that we do together is a big one. And obviously through the IES, it’s been chopped and come back and coming back to Cypress. Now we recreated it being able to be by the beach help. So it’s more but really doing those little rituals together. So starting with 15 minute yoga sequence and we started and meditate together and grounding being able to put our feet down on the ground, but doing it together, it’s just, it just makes it so much more powerful. You, you feel, you, you feel that you’re doing this work together with your partner, the person that you chose to live together.

Mike:

Yeah. I think communication was a big one for us as well. And learning, learning each other’s communication styles, as well as I won’t get into the love language side of things now, but learning each other’s communication styles has certainly helped us then explore when we do have those moments. You know, we all have those moments where we are feeling deflated and, and, you know, a trigger pops up or a moment pops up where one of us is out of sorts learning. You know, colleagues perhaps prefers a little bit of space and learning that that’s something that helps her, you know, just re-energize after that moment. Whereas I like to attack things straight away and try and resolve within minutes. So learning the balance of our styles and learning what we need to do in those moments. I think holding space has been one of the most powerful tools of rituals that we are still learning with each other as well, learning to communicate in those moments.

Mike:

I mean, this is, we’ve spoke about this recently. This is probably one of the hardest things that we’re still developing, but knowing in those moments, some days I might be feeling a little, a little down on myself, a little down on the situation and might seek Chloe support. She might, depending on, you know, where she’s at that day, she might step in, in the problem solving way, or she might step in on the, on the, just holding space sort of way. And realizing that that’s partly on me also to be able to communicate what it is I need from that situation. There’s a whole bunch of communication methods and holding space methods. I think that have been really instrumental to us really growing that side of our relationship

Chloe:

And trust comes into that. But we do have a lot of those conversations when we sit down and reflect on an argument, excuse me, reflect on an argument. I don’t reflect on something that happened in the week equal, how we felt and being able to sit there and talk about it. And we do, we do that pretty frequently. We both like to just sit there and reflect and figure out things. And yeah, we’ve through the years, if that’s so many things that just brought us closer together and you know, for, for your listeners, you know, I could count ceremony as a couple. You know, it’s a beautiful being able to light some incense and candles and destitute with a cacao ceremony, quick way to kick out.

Chloe:

It’s a very hard opening medicine. So it’s, it’s a beautiful be able to sit there and half discussions just sit there with each other’s presence. Beautiful. Yeah. But with Marco, we’ve been lucky enough to be able to do a lot of journeys together as well. We did a lot of planned medicine, south America together. So we’ve seen each other in a lot of and vulnerable states. So I think it’s, it’s we’ve were able to have, create a lot of tools or spaces together where we just have fun, but at the same time, go deep and spend time being able to open up and communicate clearly, still have a long way to go, but it’s, you know, we have a day, but those are some things that we do.

Dani:

Yeah. And like you said, it’s never, you’re never going to finish the journey, but like, even from this conversation, it’s just so apparent. You’re miles and miles ahead, years and years of experience of doing the work, right. That puts you that much farther than someone who has, who’s just hearing this for the first time and, or a light bulb might go off being like, you know what, maybe I should look into this more, like, how do I get started? I would love to hear more about your program. I know that it’s starts next month. I believe.

Chloe:

Yes. So in Mindfully Healing, it’s a four week course for couples. And it started when I was starting off a session on the 8th of August. So we’ve opened it up from, to all couples because we finally met, it’s such a beautiful offering for couples to start this journey. So if you’re a couple, that’s thinking that, ah, I w like I’ve been wanting to do something with Paul and I to start reflecting on our own things, but as well as a couple, this is a course for you. We’ve, you know, we’ve had a lot of people reaching out. I was like, oh, I don’t, you know, I’m not in a relationship. Can I still do it? It’s beneficial for singles, but we’ve created this container for couples because we found that support from each other.

Chloe:

So beneficial. It’s really lovely to be able to have someone that’s going through the same thing, to be able to kindly call you out or pull you out when you are doing this work together. So it’s so much more powerful being able to do it together. So our course goes through four modules and we started with self-exploration, as I said, we’re going through our beliefs, our values, eliminating ultimating thoughts are holding us back. It’s a bit of an intro assigned to reflect, okay, what have I been holding on for all these years? Well, you know, what have my parents told me about this and this and this, and are they smart? And then we focused on in a child, we focus on exploring what in a child, what in a child’s meats are there that are match and how can we, reparent our inner child, how can we connect with any child?

Chloe:

And we use hypnosis and visualizations to do all those things. We go through forgiving and acceptance and forgiveness as the loss selves, that of pasts selves, that might’ve done things that I would just been holding on to it, being able to really let, go and forgiving our partner. Really, we do a lot of, it’s a very sacred space, and we were a lot of exercises and visualizations and techniques. So we, we see our course as workshop really. Cause our sessions will be just more like visualizing, okay, close your eyes listed. It’s let’s be like, sit down, chat with your partner. So it’s not just us talking at you, it’s more an interactive workshop.

Chloe:

And we go through being able to do, what can you do in the future to grow, to let, go to change what you’re going to make? What changes are you going to make into your future? So we created a little actual plan together, and we’re also focusing on your communication as a couple. Do you know how to communicate with your couple, if not let’s role play, let’s figure out things that you can come up with at the moment to be able to call him, to tell him when you’re feeling overwhelmed, when you’re feeling stressed, because that is a hot spot that we found in our, and in the relationships around us, when we’re struggling, we struggle to ask for help. We struggle to tell our partner that something’s wrong.

Chloe:

And the clock, you know, in a panic says what’s wrong. And we say, even though the so many things that being able to actually say, no, the son

Dani:

Articulate that. Yeah, it’s difficult.

Chloe:

And we all do it. And you know, we’re not saying that you’ll never do it again, but trust that your partner is there, you know, and the create that create that bond to be able to say, okay, I trust you enough. And I know there’s not going to be judgment. That to be able to clearly articulate my needs. Cause I know you’re not going to judge me. I know that you’re not fully accepting maybe regardless of all the, my insecurity, regardless of everything that I’m holding on to, and this is why we create this space in this, in this course, to be able to do it. And through this course, you also get a one-on-one session with us. So you’re able to privately talk about anything that we can help you with as well as we have a WhatsApp, we’ll have a WhatsApp group where you get to chat with other couples, as well as our Facebook community, where you can be able to talk about your struggles with other couples.

Chloe:

And you know that every other couple of that’s, it it’s on the same page with you. They want the thing, they thriving for something better for the relationship for themselves, for the future, for a future family.

Working with Chloe & Michael

Dani:

Yeah. What a beautiful container and where can our audience sign up?

Chloe :

Yes. So we’ll be giving you the link if that’s okay and you can put it down in the notes and they can, they can read all about it as well. And they can sign up. We actually, yes. So they can sign up up until the end, just before, up until the 7th of August. And we starting for four weeks starting from the 8th of August and yeah, they can sign up and they can even relate more on our website. Mindfully Loved dot com or Mindfully Loved reach out to us. They can book a connection call with us to see if we’re a good fit as well. And ask us any questions. We love chatting with our followers and our new couples.

Chloe:

So any, any other questions just yet?

Dani:

Will you be running this from Cyprus?

Chloe:

I guess we will.

Dani:

Yeah. So if you want Mediterranean vibes, if you want to really up all possibilities for your life, right. Learn what you don’t know. You don’t know from people who have done the work who are living the dream, check out their website or their Instagram. I’m going to link it in the episode description. If you would like to also fast track your success and build a freedom-based business, you can apply for PRIVATE COACHING on The Wanderlover website, Chloe and Michael. Thank you so, so much for being on this show.

Chloe:

Thanks for having us.

Dani:

Of course see you guys in the next episode, have an amazing week.

~~~

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