In this episode of The Pregnancy & Postnatal Entrepreneurs Collective Podcast, I’m joined by Parnuuna Thornwood, guide and teacher behind Feel Good Rebel, for a calm, grounding conversation about visibility that doesn’t ask you to override yourself to grow your business.

What I loved most about this conversation was Parnuuna's tone - calm, warm, and deeply respectful of the fact that visibility can feel genuinely hard, especially for birth and postpartum professionals. There’s no pushing, no “just get over it”, and no one-size-fits-all strategy. Instead, we explore visibility as something that can be built incrementally, at a pace that feels safe and sustainable.

We talk about how many people say “social media just isn’t for me”, and how often that belief is tied not to capability, but to fear, past experiences, or a lack of safety - both online and in real life. Parnuuna brings a nervous-system-aware lens to visibility, reminding us that if your body feels unsafe, forcing yourself to show up more will only create resistance or burnout.

A big part of the conversation centres on why blindly following someone else’s strategy doesn’t work for so many people. While structure and guidance can be helpful, growth rarely comes from copying, instead , it comes from being supported to develop your own way of showing up. This is where coaching becomes so valuable: not to remove fear entirely, but to stop fear from keeping you invisible and stuck.

We also name something that often goes unspoken, the reality that there are genuinely unsafe things in the world, and it makes sense that visibility can trigger fear. At the same time, we explore how much energy gets lost worrying about what friends, family, or the imaginary person in the corner might think...the people who were never meant to be your clients in the first place!

Instead, this episode invites you to gently shift your focus:
away from posting for posting’s sake,
away from external pressure,
and towards relationship-building, connection, and service.

In this episode, we explore:

• Why visibility feels easier for doulas, lactation consultants, antenatal educators and women in general when it’s calm, gentle and incremental
• How a lack of safety — not laziness or confidence — often sits under resistance
• The nervous system’s role in showing up online
• Why following someone else’s strategy can disconnect you from yourself
• The difference between fear that needs compassion and fear that needs boundaries
• Letting go of worries about friends, family, or imagined judgement
• Why visibility works best when it’s about relationships, not performance

It’s a reminder that visibility doesn’t have to be loud, constant or performative — it can be human, relational, and rooted in safety.

🎧 Listen now and explore what visibility could look like when it’s built on trust rather than pressure.

Parnuuna has kindly shared a free calming 3 day reset, to boost your sense of
confidence, time and energy, you can sign up here:
https://feelgoodrebel.kit.com/0d761c0f86

🎧 Download The Birth Workers Business Mindset Toolkit — a free resource with affirmations, guided visualisations, and a supportive guide to help you shift your mindset and grow a sustainable, aligned business.
✨ Perfect for doulas, IBCLCs, antenatal educators and all birthworkers ready to feel more confident, abundant and grounded in their work.

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Have you ever been offered something in your business that looked brilliant on paper — but felt wrong in your gut?

A collaboration, a speaking gig, a brand opportunity, a new direction for your work — and instead of excitement, you felt unsettled, conflicted or quietly uncomfortable.

If you’re a doula, lactation consultant, antenatal educator or birth worker, this experience is far more common than you might realise.

In this episode, I’m talking about mission, principles and values in your birth work business — what they actually are (not the fluffy corporate version) and why they quietly shape every decision you make, whether you realise it or not.

This is not about branding or writing something pretty for your website.
It’s about clarity, alignment and confidence in how you run your business.

Episode Timestamps: Mission, Principles & Values in Your Birth Work Business

01:10 – “It looks good on paper but feels wrong”
Why so many birth workers struggle with business decisions despite being highly skilled

02:40 – Why strategy alone isn’t enough in a birth work business
The missing foundations beneath marketing, pricing and Instagram tactics

04:10 – What mission, principles and values really are (not the fluffy version)
Why this is about clarity and alignment, not branding

06:00 – What happens when your business feels misaligned
How saying yes to the wrong things slowly disconnects you from your calling

07:30 – Using your mission and values as a decision filter in business
How to decide what to say yes and no to as a birth worker

11:10 – My own mission statement as a birth worker
How evidence-based care, human rights and social justice shape my work

13:30 – Why your mission is more than a website statement
How it guides your services, marketing and long-term direction

15:10 – What values are (and what they are not)
Why values are not personality traits or buzzwords

18:40 – Fear vs misalignment in business decisions
How to tell the difference between nerves and true value conflict

20:30 – What happens when you ignore your values
Cognitive dissonance, regret and ethical drift in business

22:40 – What a values-driven organisation looks like in real life
Lessons from working in a homeless charity with lived organisational values

25:10 – Stewardship and quality as working business values
How real values guide everyday decisions, not just big ones

27:30 – How this shaped how I run my own business today
Applying organisational values to a solo birth work business

29:00 – Saying no to misaligned opportunities (even good ones)
Why I declined a major speaking opportunity on ethical grounds

34:00 – How values guide content and visibility decisions
Why I sometimes don’t post things that don’t align, even if they’d perform well

36:20 – Why mission and values make business simpler, not harder
Reducing decision fatigue and overwhelm in self-employed birth work

38:00 – Using your mission and values when you feel unsu

🎧 Download The Birth Workers Business Mindset Toolkit — a free resource with affirmations, guided visualisations, and a supportive guide to help you shift your mindset and grow a sustainable, aligned business.
✨ Perfect for doulas, IBCLCs, antenatal educators and all birthworkers ready to feel more confident, abundant and grounded in their work.

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As birthworkers, visualisation is something we trust deeply. We use it every day with clients to prepare for birth, reduce fear, build confidence, and support emotional and physical readiness.

But when it comes to our own businesses, many of us stop using this powerful tool altogether.

In this episode, I explore how visualisation can support you as a birth worker not just in birth preparation, but in business growth, confidence, decision-making and sustainability. We look at why so many of us under-utilise visualisation in business, how it’s used in sports psychology, and how belief often needs to come before evidence.

The episode finishes with a guided future visualisation designed specifically for birthworkers, helping you connect with your future self and the business you’re building.

In this episode, we explore:

Why visualisation already works in birth work

• How birthworkers use visualisation to support confidence, reduce fear and build trust in the body
• Why “the mind rehearses and the body follows” is something we already believe in
• The parallels between birth preparation and business growth

Why birthworkers often abandon visualisation in business

• The pull towards logic, strategy and constant action
• Waiting for proof before believing in ourselves
• Confidence being tied to bookings, income or external validation

Visualisation is a core, evidence-based tool in sports psychology – not something considered “woo” or vague.

We discuss:

• Mental rehearsal and neural pathways
• Why athletes visualise the process, not just the win
• How the brain responds to imagined experience as if it were real

Why this matters for birthworkers in business

• Visualising staying grounded when things don’t go to plan
• Preparing your nervous system for visibility, pricing, launches and quieter periods
• Moving from hoping things will work out to trusting that they will

Visualisation as identity work, not wishful thinking

Guided visualisation for birthworkers

The final part of this episode is a guided future visualisation created specifically for birthworkers building their businesses.

You’ll be invited to:

• Gently move one year into the future
• Connect with the version of you whose business feels aligned, sustainable and abundant
• Notice what matters most to you – values, impact, ease and fulfilment

This is a practice you can return to again and again:

• before launching a new service
• during periods of uncertainty
• when confidence dips
• or whenever you need clarity and grounding

Just like birth preparation, repetition matters.

Key takeaways

• Visualisation is not about pretending or bypassing reality
• It’s about training your nervous system and decision-making for where you’re going
• Birthworkers already know how powerful this tool is – this episode invites you to use it for yourself

If you enjoyed this episode, I’d love to hear what came up for you during the visualisation.
You can always pop

🎧 Download The Birth Workers Business Mindset Toolkit — a free resource with affirmations, guided visualisations, and a supportive guide to help you shift your mindset and grow a sustainable, aligned business.
✨ Perfect for doulas, IBCLCs, antenatal educators and all birthworkers ready to feel more confident, abundant and grounded in their work.

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