Creativity Outlets For New Parents, With Beryl Young

Why (and how!) to have a creative outlet as a new parent 

In this episode of the Learn With Less podcast, Ayelet chats with Beryl Young, a mother, former elementary school teacher, and creator of the Momtography Method® and Recapture Self.

Beryl fell in love with photography in 2009 as a way to document the exciting time of becoming a mom. Now, she’s helped thousands of moms around the world use their creative energy to love their photos and their life.

We cover:

* Beryl’s background and how she came to do the work she’s doing today* The reasons why having an outlet for oneself is important (even/especially in early parenthood!), * How to incorporate room for small moments of creativity into your life, whether you work full-time or home is your work* Beryl’s top tips and resources to help you “recapture” yourself!

QUICK ACCESS TO LINKS FROM THIS EPISODE:

Momtography.club: Capture yourself; create a life you love (Beryl’s website)

CreativeBug: award-winning video classes for makers

Abundant Mama: live and mother from a place of abundance

TEXT TRANSCRIPT OF THIS EPISODE

Ayelet: Welcome to episode 79 of the Learn With Less podcast! Today, I am speaking with beryl young. Beryl is a mother, former elementary school teacher and creator of the Momtography Method®. She fell in love with photography in 2009 as a way to document the exciting time of being a mom. Now almost 10 years later, she’s helped thousands of moms around the world to use their creative energy to love their photos and capture more of what matters in their life. Beryl, thank you so much for being here. Welcome to Learn With Less.

Beryl: This is so exciting. Thank you for having me.

Ayelet: So, I have asked you to come onto the show today to speak to us about, you know, why it’s so important for us as parents and caregivers to actually connect with some kind of creative outlet. But first I would love it if you could just tell us a little bit more about you and how you got into this work that you’re doing today.

Beryl: Alright. So I’m Beryl Young. I live outside of the Washington D.C. Area, kind of in like the northern most tip of Virginia though, not in the city. We actually live in the country. I like to call it my little country retreat and it’s me and my eight year old daughter, and my husband, and we have two cats and a dog and we live a nice little quiet life together. But it wasn’t always that way.

I remember, I know you just, you just released your [second] book recently and I remember those days with a young one at home and… The story of how I found photography is a little bit interesting, because my entry into parenthood was not the easiest. I don’t know if you’ve talked with your members at all about miscarriage and stillbirth and loss, but we… My first pregnancy was a pregnancy loss when I was 20 weeks pregnant.

That was in 2009 so it’s been almost 10 years. And at that time in my life, you know, I was definitely one of those like check the boxes, go through the motions. Like I went to college, I got the job teaching in the public school system right af...