Parkes knows what she’s talking about; at one point, she had three children under the age of three and a half, which she said was “tough”.
“I just wanted women to know that I see you, I hear you, I’ve been there.”
She said women tended to put on a brave face and keep moving forward.
“We put on this mask and we pretend that everything’s incredible and everything’s amazing, and inside it is just such a confusing place.”
She said this often left women seeing themselves as the rock of the family and the farm.
“We feel like we need to be the mum, the partner, the calf-rearer, [in charge of] the administration.”
“There are so many things that pile up on the mum’s plate.”
Parkes also refers to differences in the time before children and the farm, or “BC” as she calls it, when women had their own lives and careers.
“Suddenly, in a flash, life just changes.”
She said women put pressure on themselves, often prioritising others’ needs before their own.
“We don’t want to say we can’t do it all, but gosh, I remember so clearly having one kid crying and one in my backpack, trying to feed calves and just going, this is not the picture I imagined, but pull it together, because husband’s having bugger-all sleep during calving-time.
“You’re trying to just keep the peace for everybody else, but inside it’s bloody tough.”
Parkes has also had her own mental health battles, struggling with depression and going through a “dark time”.
She compared herself to others going through what she considered tougher situations, which made her feel worse.
“It wasn’t helping me at all; it just further pushed me down.”
She said she knew that she needed to ask for help, but wasn’t sure how.
“I didn’t quite know how to be really clear and say how much I was struggling.”
Listen below:
Now Parkes is a life coach, keynote speaker, and workshop facilitator who draws on her personal journey of overcoming depression to empower women and rural communities.
She also drew on Farmstrong’s Five Ways to Wellbeing, using it as a guide for those mums who were “in the trenches”.
“One of the Five Ways to Wellbeing is ‘take notice’.”
She said this was especially important for busy mums.
“Take notice is a really great place to start - it’s looking at gratitude.
“When we start looking at everything that is going wrong ... that’s where our tension is.”
She suggested flipping the narrative by working out what was going well, then diving “a little bit deeper into the why”.
She had advice for husbands and partners who were wondering how to help.
“Don’t wait to be asked, you know — offer — sometimes the offer of help, knowing that they’re in with the trenches with you - it can be huge.”
Catch up with Deanne Parkes on her Facebook page here.
