You Can’t Pour from an Empty Cup with Miranda Cheney
This week’s guest, Miranda Cheney
A Personal Branding Photographer & Mom of 2
Episode Description
Do you have a sacred time of day? A time that’s for just you?
Personally, I think there’s something to be said about taking the time to sit in stillness – to intentionally decide where our day should lead instead of running around from 0 to 60 in total chaos!
For today’s guest Miranda Cheney, a mother of two young kiddos and a personal branding photographer, her morning routine is when “her soul gets fed” – which as a mom, is critical, because, in her words, she can’t pour from an empty cup.
My conversation with Miranda is beautiful and honest, and I think we can all benefit from hearing her story and reflecting on how we can feed our own souls every day.
Something else was going on
It was apparent soon after the birth of her second child, her daughter, that what Miranda was experiencing wasn’t the “baby blues” she had with her first. She remembers watching her daughter in her bouncer, thinking:
What did I do?
It was the kind of thought she didn’t feel she could say out loud.
“Oftentimes people say, ‘how are you doing?’ And what are you gonna say? I mean, you can’t say, ‘I hate my life right now. What did I do?’ Because that sounds so awful, and like you’re not thankful. It’s a weird position to be in, because you can be thankful and also depressed at the same time. You can’t say, ‘I’m not doing good,’ because everybody thinks you should just be so blessed to have a baby. And you are. You are blessed. It’s just that something else is going on,” Miranda says.
Luckily, Miranda had the wherewithal to see these were totally not normal thoughts. When her doctor prescribed medication at her six-week follow-up appointment, the improvement in her well-being was drastic.
A lot of moms don’t realize the grip postpartum can have. For the first year of my daughter’s life, I was in a fog. I thought to myself, I don’t want to do this; but this is the choice I made, and I can’t back out of it. It was awful.
When I got out of the fog, I remember being shocked at what a state of disconnect I was in. I was so wrong about my whole situation. I had a lifeline, I had the support, but when you’re in it, experiencing it, it doesn’t always feel great.
Miranda has since been moved to illustrate the postpartum experience in a photography exhibition called “Unveil Postpartum Depression.”
Creating a career that’s kid-friendly
Coming out of postpartum depression, photography was Miranda’s creative outlet. It started with taking photos of her children.
“It just really gave me a fun, creative outlet, and a way to look at my kids in a different perspective, not just as their mom, but as an artist trying to find their little beauties, and their little things about them. It really did just help. It was therapy in itself for sure,” Miranda says.
Miranda Cheney Photography focused on family photography at first within a local radius, but when her husband started his own business allowing him to work remotely from home, she began traveling to clients out of state. In 2020, she integrated personal branding into her work.
Starting her own business enabled Miranda to create her own rules and set her own hours that revolve around her family. She only works with clients who respect this.
Sometimes the kids shadow Miranda and her husband at work. She says they get a lot out of it, learning how to problem-solve, how to be creative, and how to respect other people’s time.
Quiet moments to fill our cups
Recently I began googling “self-care.”
Much of the results involve what to do in moments of stress. But for me, the purpose of self care is to avoid getting to that moment of stress.
How can we feed our souls as moms, and do it every single day?
Miranda’s self-care ritual happens in the morning. She drinks a cup of coffee and sits quietly, meditating on her faith and the jobs she has to do that day.
Previously, she’d been using this sacred time to exercise, but she wasn’t enjoying it, which was unusual for her. A few weeks in, she realized the resentment had little to do with working out and more to do with sacrificing her morning time.
Morning’s my time, too. I wake at 5:30am, before the rest of the house, and journal in solitude, taking inventory of my own thoughts and feelings and what’s giving me pause. Everything feels a little less challenging when we lead with intention in our days.
And self care doesn’t have to be “fancy” or even cost money. It’s the simple rituals that can be the most impactful.
According to Miranda, “sometimes when you ask that question, what do you do for yourself?, people think it has to be this big thing, like, ‘I get weekly facials!’ And that’s great. But sometimes it is just, I give myself 30 minutes in the morning to just be still and be quiet. As moms, our days are never so quiet. So I feel like it doesn’t have to be this huge thing to recharge ourselves with this huge thing of self-care. It can be simple and grounding and fulfilling.”
Notable Quotes from Miranda Cheney
“Sometimes when you ask that question, what do you do for yourself?, people think it has to be this big thing, like, ‘I get weekly facials!’ And that’s great. But sometimes I give myself 30 minutes in the morning to just be still and be quiet. As moms, our days are never so quiet. So I feel like it doesn’t have to be this huge thing to recharge ourselves with this huge thing of self-care. It can be simple and grounding and fulfilling.” (33:27)
“Oftentimes people say, how are you doing? And what are you gonna say? I mean, you can’t say, ‘I hate my life right now. What did I do?’ Because that sounds so awful, and like you’re not thankful. It’s a weird position to be in, because you can be thankful and also depressed at the same time. You can’t say, ‘I’m not doing good,’ because everybody thinks you should just be so blessed to have a baby. And you are. You are blessed. It’s just that something else is going on.” (44:35)
Resources & Links
Check out Miranda’s Instagram highlights for a glimpse into her postpartum photography exhibition.
You can find Miranda’s work at Miranda Cheney Photography and on Instagram.
Learn more about Project: Mom and follow us on Instagram at @projectmompodcast.
Do you want to share your motherhood journey on the podcast? Email me at projectmompod@gmail.com.