Meet the #motherhustlers: Cat Raincock

Women’s self-esteem expert Cat Raincock is passionate about empowering and guiding women to live a fulfilled life. She was an ordinary girl who learnt some key things and now lives an extraordinary life.

Cat is a mother of 2 children, 40 years young, who in her late 30’s thought she had everything she wanted, lovely husband, 2 kids, but somehow it just didn’t cut it. Even though her life until then had ‘ticked all the boxes’ and looked good on paper, inside her head, it was another story. This is a situation that many women can find themselves in. What appears to be a great life to the outer world, can be filled with low self-esteem and feelings of not mattering and not being enough.

Cat realised that when her two kids entered her life, they turned it upside down and brought all her ‘inner stuff’ to the surface. They were the greatest gift in showing her where she needed to work on herself. Heading for a midlife breakdown, she realised it was time to face her stuff and embarked on her own personal journey.

Through a massive emotional detox, guided meditations, and hypnosis Cat has transformed her life and now lives a happy life where she ultimately feels enough, a far cry from where she was, and her mission is to empower as many women as she can to experience the same.

Now a trained coach and hypnotherapist, Cat educates people to eat consciously, clean, wholesome food, to detox emotions and their life – i.e. beauty and household products, social media, media consumption, their wardrobe and home!  She works with clients on transforming health issues and infertility – which often result from a disconnection between the mind and the body.

She has manifested her dream life and has achieved and continues to achieve more than she could have wished for. Cat has learned tools to take life on, shake it up, and can help others to rid themselves of limiting self-beliefs, to be happy, free, living their passion and purpose.

Tell us about yourself, your business, and how you got started!

At 35, life looked good from the outside. I had a beautiful husband and two wonderful kids, a lovely home in Central London but that was a far cry from how I felt inside.

I had dreamt of being married and having kids all my life but when it came to the crunch, I was desperately unfulfilled. I was an angry mother, a resentful wife, an overly sensitive friend, a dependent daughter and needy sister. I thought this was how life was meant to be and didn’t know any other way. Life’s hard, suck it up. What was wrong with me, why did I feel like this when I had everything I dreamt of? That was the moment I turned my ordinary life into an extraordinary one.

Little did I realise that my relatively uneventful childhood (or so it seemed) had taken a massive toll on my self-esteem and self-worth. This is how my childhood looked, a house in central London, a 2 point 4 family unit, two older brothers, a father in the film industry, and an actress for a mother. What more could you ask for? Although having my children was the trigger that sent me over the edge, it had been a slow downward spiral before their arrival. My kids just sparked the impending breakdown a little earlier, it was the bun in the pressure cooker that eventually lead to my breakthrough following my breakdown. Looking back on life before kids, I was functioning in survival mode and only coping by accepting a damaged version of my life.

The reality was, I felt abandoned, not lovable, inadequate: that I didn’t matter. My parent’s busy careers left little time for me: I was largely looked after by nannies and au pairs and when I was with my parents, they weren’t present. Mum, in addition to her acting career, had a house to run (no online supermarket!) and my Dad had lost his parents at an early age, had learnt to survive on his own and lived a very independent life and that was still the case despite having three children.

At 31, after years of kissing frogs and desperately trying to keep up with society’s model of happiness, HAPPINESS = HOUSE, HUSBAND, KIDS (incorrect, not applicable) I found my man, my prince, my hero and had two kids. I had my son at 35 and my daughter 2 years later.  It was then my world started to fall apart despite this being the best part of my life so far.  Where was the fairy tale of motherhood? All I felt was overwhelmed and broken. I was overflowing with anger, resentment and I couldn’t let go of control.

My husband turned to me one day and asked me ‘Are you happy?’   My reply was ‘Yes, of course, I’m just stressed, I have two kids and I’m trying to do everything.’ The truth was, I wasn’t happy; deep down, I was very sad and very lost. This was the start of my journey back to me. I learnt my children were a gift: my son had bought up all my issues to heal and my daughter’s arrival confirmed the work I needed to do on myself.

It was time for a massive self-esteem revamp.

I went on a mission to transform myself, my life, my world. It wasn’t easy; it took great courage and perseverance but I knew life couldn’t continue as it was. I wanted a different future than the one I was carving out. Life isn’t meant to be perfect and calm all the time. Life will knock us down and wind us, but now I have the tools to cope with life’s challenges. I now have an understanding of me, my past and that allows me to navigate through peacefully towards my future.

I’m on other side now but I’m always learning, always growing. I am so grateful for the lessons and very proud that I am now functioning as my authentic self, living the life I dreamt of. I deserve it, I matter.

I am an ordinary girl, who up until 35 was living a very ordinary life.  Some may judge my life and say that because I had a financially stable upbringing and a home in central London that makes me anything but ordinary. This is about having trauma as an adult despite having no big trauma as a child. This is about achieving what society and the media say we ‘should’ have and it not being enough. I have suffered trauma and self-esteem failure despite the type of childhood I had and I discovered tools that transcended my ordinary existence.

My mission is to globally empower women. To show them there is another way, that they don’t have to be ‘damaged’ to seek therapy or healing.  To give them tools to change their life for the better. They deserve to have the life they dreamt of as a kid and to fulfill their potential, to rid themselves of limiting self-beliefs, to be happy, free, living their passion and their purpose. I was an ordinary girl who learnt some key things and now lives an extraordinary life. I have manifested my dream life and have achieved, and continue to achieve, more than I could have wished for. My limiting self-beliefs were stifling me. I was running the same thought patterns and behaviours over and over. I was stuck, trapped and suffocated under the blanket of life.

I wrote a book for every woman who has experienced events (big or small) during their childhood, which may have taken its toll on their self-esteem. We all need a boost, we have all had our confidence knocked at some stage in our life. This book has been written to educate, empower and enlighten women across the globe. 

My story is here to show women that there is hope, they do matter and there is more to life than what they are experiencing. This book has been created for the women ready to upgrade their self-worth, transform their self-esteem and rebuild their confidence.

What inspired you to start your own business?

To help other women transform their life like I have. Life needn’t be hard. I had to share my message and help other women transform their lives.

What struggles do you face when it comes to balancing your work and family and how do you deal with them?

I have a great support system in place with a wonderful nanny to support me and the running of the house, plus a cleaner to help keep on top of things. I ensure I have clear boundaries of when it is ‘mummy on-duty time’ and when it is ‘work time’. I focus on what hours of work will allow me to be a present mother and an entrepreneur.  

What do you think is the secret to raising a healthy business and a healthy family?

Balance and clear boundaries and ensuring you have a good support system in place. 

What is one piece of advice you could give to help other mompreneurs out?

Set up a good support system and clear times to work and be with family that you feel represent the goals that you are wanting to achieve in the workplace and family. Get what is important to you really clear and stick by it.

What words of encouragement do you have for your fellow mompreneurs?

You’re doing a great job, trust yourself, you are far more powerful than you give yourself credit for.

Do you have any great / inspiring stories from your own experience that you would like to share?

Following my own personal journey from self-esteem collapse to a large confidence revamp after a couple years of self-exploration, one of the symptoms of my low self-esteem was negative self-talk which was mostly aimed at my body and this multiplied following two kids.

I had little confidence anyway and my body was the perfect vehicle to self loathing.  After every diet, juicing endlessly, rigorous exercise that I loathed, I realised it was more than just a physical issue but an emotional one. One of the many things I learnt was to choose a form of exercise that you love.

Constantly pounding the streets with thoughts of ‘I hate this, I hate this, I can’t wait until it’s over’ was never going to create flow and harmony in my body but resistance.

This was all part of my devotion to self love, amongst other things of course!

With this in mind, and after much deliberation about which form to take up – roller-blading (apparently Kylie got her tone butt from this), trampolining classes, netball (my teenage love) and I even contemplated aerial acrobatics, I chose ice-skating. I had never done it, except on the odd occasion at Christmas, when I hung on to the sides for dear life! I wanted something where I could learn something new whilst exercising, expand my mind, enjoy the exercise I’m doing rather than hating it and resisting it and making constant excuses why I shouldn’t do it. 

I invested in all the gear with no idea but what I did learn very quickly was a far greater lesson than just pirouettes on the ice! I had an epiphany recently as I took to the rink, when my teacher asked, ‘Are you in control at the speed you are going?’ I, of course, thought I was and promptly replied, ‘Yes, I like to go fast!’ ‘Yes I can see’, she responded with a smile before she educated me about ice-skating etiquette which is all about accuracy, precision, and control.  

I gave it a go, slowed down, concentrated on the refining the skill and do you know what, it felt quite good (although not fast enough!)

Then it suddenly dawned on me, do I do this in everything I do in life? The honest answer is yes although I don’t really want to admit it!

Rewind the clock to my first lesson, I could see more advanced skaters doing their turns, crafting their way across the ice with elegance and I looked on longing to be there but I knew I was away from that. By the second lesson, I was longing for that freedom on the ice even more and even got rather frustrated with myself that I couldn’t skate on one leg yet. By the third, lesson I was chomping at the bit and was actually stifling my growth, instead of focusing on where I was, I kept looking ahead.

Where else was I doing this?

Of course, we must all have life goals but it’s important to set your goal and then take daily, baby steps to refine the skills you are learning so that you can reach your goal but also, arrive at your goal proficient. Ice skating is all about precision and gentle elegance – as a reformed perfectionist this might come naturally to me but actually, I was only a perfectionist in terms of taking on massive tasks and doing my damnedest to achieve them at all costs including mine and my family’s happiness.

This came in the form of making homemade, three-tier birthday cakes that danced and sang, hosting all birthday parties whilst taking on the catering and nursing a newborn – the list goes on, you name it, I would set outrageous tasks that I invariably failed at as nothing was good enough for a perfectionist.

It was, therefore, the highest form of self-abuse.

But what if I set myself smaller tasks to achieve? What if I chose tasks that I was proficient at instead of embarking on something new and unknown?

I am all for pushing boundaries and learning more and perhaps this is why I used to set such audacious tasks but what I have learnt is, if I set a goal, big or small I must focus on the journey and not focus on the end game. Build your muscles, train your brain and hone your skills and the goal will come and it will be A* worthy, not the half-hearted C grade result that leaves me unsatisfied and ultimately feeds my old wound of ‘I’m inadequate, I’m not enough’.

You see it’s bringing this awareness to your life and noticing where you are playing out certain patterns of behaviours. Once you have an awareness then you can make the changes to the choices you make and the way you live your life. If we keep doing the same thing, we get the same results, so make the change.  

Now when I take to the ice, I focus on the hour I’m wafting across the frozen floor, embed my new skills until I can do them in my sleep and then, and only then, I move on to the next task, feeling confident that I have nailed the foundation. I prescribe it to all my clients during sessions and now I take a daily dose of my own medicine, in everything I do. Slow down, breathe and focus on the task at hand.  Contrary to my old belief, fast isn’t always best.

Where you can find Cat:

Learn more about Cat and her business over at Cat Raincock. Make sure you check out her free mediations and follow along with her on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.