Work Life Balance Success With Zodwa

Work Life Balance Success With Zodwa Shownotes: Today we have Zodwa as a guest speaker.  She is a Mother first and a Midwife second.  Zodwa is a practicing Christian who believes that is it through God's mercy that she has made it so far despite her trials. Find out about her struggles being a Mother of 4 children, working fulltime and how she almost didn't complete her Masters degree. She will leave you with practical ways on how you to can overcome life struggles. Alvern: So hello ladies, Alvern here. Today we have a guest speaker with us, and she's one of my friends. Her name is Zodwa, and I'm first of all gonna get Zodwa to introduce herself. Over to you Zodwa. Zodwa: Hi ladies. My name is Zodwa Lennihan. I am a mom of four beautiful kids, and I'm also a midwife. Alvern: Brilliant, thank you Zodwa. So ladies, as you know, I always try to find interesting ways to reach out to you, to help you in your everyday life. I'm just going to go through a few questions with Zodwa, just so she can share, obviously she's experiencing some work life balance success. So she's gonna just share a few quick tips. I'm going to go through a few questions with her, about seven questions, and she is going to inspire us, as to what we can do, with regards to success in our lives. So the first question for you Zodwa is, why do you do what you do? Zodwa: Well Alvern, I am a mom first, and then a midwife. I love my job, and being a midwife means being most woman. Midwifery is embodied in the experience of being woman. Giving birth is a most unique female reality. In our share experience as women, giving birth is the most natural thing that happens to us. For me, attending to women during this most natural, life changing experience has a familiarity that I understand the enormous physical and emotional experience of pregnancy, labour, and birth. Is something that comes naturally for me as a mom, so the trust and care for this precious work that I do, which is a calling, it's an absolute privilege that I experience it, and that I'm part of it, and that I'm paid to do it. Alvern: Brilliant, thanks so much for that. So I guess for the people who are listening, the ladies who are listening, why do you enjoy ... What do you enjoy most actually about what you do? Zodwa: Well, in my consciousness, as a midwife and a mother, I know that pregnancy and child birth is wholesome, healthy process of a woman's entire being. So being there, or should I say, being part of one of the most life changing experiences in a woman's life, being able to support, and encourage, and empower women to believe in the strength that their bodies have to deliver their babies, and to watch them hold that new life in their arms, with a massive smile, filled with pride, each a different experience, each a different story to tell, is what I enjoy about my job. Alvern: Awesome, thanks so much for that. It just reminds me, of obviously me being a mom as well, of when I had my first child. I actually had a home birth for my first child. I didn't actually have it in a hospital. So the midwife came home, and it was a, I guess a very surreal experience when you have your first born child, natural, but like you said, that feeling that you get when you overcome and you're now a mom, and you have to look after this child. It's really, really interesting- Zodwa: It's beautiful. It's absolutely beautiful, and that's the best part of my job Alvern. Alvern: That's brilliant. So when you are growing up, obviously everyone of us when we were growing up, we always know what we want to do, or we think we know what we'd like to do. For one, I wanted to be a doctor, and I'm not doctor, just in case anybody is wondering. But keep telling me that I can still pursue that dream and well,