expensive life, I found myself stuck in a job, a slave to the dollar and with my children shipped off to other places for 5 - 6 days a week. After the solitary time at home alone with just 2 boys, my awareness of mothering's depth increased. Then, as the yoga way of life showed me even more of the spiritual links between mother and child, my needs and desires for activities outside the home decreased. Rather than feeling like my career or my social contact would be sacrificed by becoming a stay-at-home-mum, I then set about creating a lifestyle which encompassed all that I wanted for myself and my children. Not surprisingly they were similar - I did not see the children's needs as requiring a different world to mine, nor my needs as requiring a different world to theirs. It may be this basic disparity which drives many women to seek so many activities outside of their home.
   In a similar way to having a natural pregnancy and childbirth, moth-erhood can be a powerful lever for expanding your awareness of alterna-tives rather than norms. If you go deeply - into your instincts, your true feelings, your wildest dreams - you will discover the possibilities within yourself that motherhood can awaken and manifest in your life.
   Nowadays in my teaching, I advise women to be bold, to take a leap and enjoin their own needs with those of their children rather than to separate them, to work on creating a life which is not disparate between ideals and practical reality. This may sound radical or impossible to some, but I am not the only one to suggest such things, nor the only one to have manifested them.
   In these high-tech times, Internet based businesses, high-speed trans-portation like overnight door-to-door couriers, flexible residential zoning, home-based tertiary study, locally based retraining courses, etc, it is becoming increasingly easier to marry career interests with domestic ones. For a woman who wants to stay home raising her young children; who wants intellectual interaction beyond toddler talk; who wants an income which supports her lifestyle; who wants to use her creative skills in ways other than "homemaking"; who wants to have a satisfying input to her society; I believe it really only takes a bit of thinking outside the square to envisage and then create a satisfying life which accomplishes a better balance for yourself and your family.

   A change from non-motherhood (or from earlier motherhood) to new motherhood often precipitates changes in the many different types of relationships we maintain. As your day to day priorities change, so too do your relationship priorities. For first time mothers the breadth of change in many of their relationships usually come as a surprise. Sometimes friendships just drift away through lack of time and attention; sometimes friendships bust apart due to the sudden changes that perspective 

motherhood can cause; and sometimes new ones form along the way as your new direction in life unfolds.Then there are the existing relationships which remain, but which need to evolve due to the circum-stances. Some of these will grow spontaneously but others will need lots of effort.

Relationships of Advice and Guidance
   As soon as (and often before) your baby's feet have left the womb, advice will come from all