Flourish Aotearoa

08/11/2025

It doesn't matter how many years of life I've been working. I still need this reminder every now and then. Maybe you do, too.

Artist credit: Meg Fatharly Printmaking and Collage

08/11/2025

Love Blueprint for Learning

08/11/2025

08/11/2025

A beautiful article giving a powerful future vision and pathway for well being for tamariki

Te Pā Tū Rangatira is a call to action for whānau, communities, and professionals to consciously raise the pou (pillar) of aroha (love), weaving from it a circle of care where the hau (energy) of our mokopuna is nurtured and their hauora (holistic wellbeing) is made strong. In doing so, we create...

08/11/2025

Important to be aware of

Most of what we've been told about burnout is wrong.
And that's why so many educators are burning out, and then blaming themselves for it.😔

Burnout isn't a personal failure. It's a nervous system injury.📣📣

From a polyvagal perspective, burnout happens when your nervous system gets stuck in chronic dysregulation:
⚡Too much sympathetic activation (stress, doing, hypervigilance)
😴Not enough parasympathetic restoration (rest, safety, recovery)
🥶Eventually collapsing into dorsal vagal shutdown (freeze, numbness, collapse)

Understanding burnout through a nervous system lens changes everything:
👩‍🏫Instead of "I'm not strong enough" → "My nervous system needs protection"
👩‍🏫Instead of "I just need to push harder" → "My body is asking me to stop"
👩‍🏫Instead of "A vacation will fix this" → "I need sustained nervous system recovery"

The truth? Prevention is simpler than recovery. And prevention looks like:
✨Honoring your body's signals before collapse (notice sensations!)
✨Building in micro-moments of rest daily (settler practices!)
✨Protecting your nervous system like the resource it is (teacher well-being!)
✨Saying no before you're empty (boundaries!)

Your nervous system isn't broken. It's doing exactly what it's supposed to do: trying to protect you.

⚡The question is: Will you listen?⚡

07/11/2025

01/11/2025

Much of Western culture holds an unrealistic and developmentally inappropriate view that babies should sleep through the night from the first few months.
https://brainwave.org.nz/article/why-babies-wake-at-night/

31/10/2025

Support for māmā at every stage is so important, epecially through those early years of motherhood. Ngā mihi to Little Shadow for the mahi and putting this together ❤️

23/10/2025

“Often in moments of rising anxiety I seek out Mind’s info page on anxiety and panic attacks to read through what I’m feeling. It helps me in finding time to take a moment, pause and take myself out of my head.” - Chloe

What helps you in moments like this?

23/10/2025

Babies can’t self-soothe. That’s where we come in.

Co-regulation = borrowing a caregiver’s calm.
It’s how babies learn to handle big feelings before they have words or skills to do it solo.

✅ Rocking them when they cry
✅ Speaking gently when they’re upset
✅ Holding them close during scary moments

It’s not spoiling. It’s science. And it starts from birth.

More here: https://bit.ly/3GjZStn