About

Franglaise Family: www.FranglaiseMummy.com l Parenting and Life the French and English way

Franglaise Family on New Year’s Eve 2015 in Mauritius

Hi there!

I’m Sophie and I started blogging in 2012 when we were trying for our second baby. I initially blogged about pregnancy, birth, babies and my experience of parenting in the UK versus France, as well as raising children bilingually and bicultural. You see I am English, my husband, Ben, is French, we had our first daughter, Léna, in France where I lived for 12 years, and our second daughter, Clémence, in London, where we lived for 5 years, before relocating to Mauritius at the end of 2015.

But I found myself veering more and more towards writing about life that surrounds parenting, as much as parenting itself. You will find a fair few blog posts with advice on parenting itself but the majority of my posts, and certainly the more recent ones, are on life in general as a parent, often linked to my own personal experiences.

What you need to know about me

Naturally I am a positive, optimistic person, the glass is always full and I will always find that silver lining. But every now and then I do get down. Being a mum is a tough job. Juggling the demands and expectations of life as a mum is hard. I have been a SAHM (Stay At Home Mum), I’ve been a working mum and I’ve been a WAHM (Work At Home Mum), I have felt sad, unfulfilled and guilty in all three jobs, as well as ecstatically happy and fulfilled in all three.

I am incredibly honest and will tell you how it is (I also swear). I am a big talker and an over-sharer. You can follow our life, warts and all on YouTube where I post video snapshots of our daily life in Mauritius every few days.

I have lived in France, I have lived in the UK, I now live in Mauritius. I have lived in cities, towns and villages. I have lived in big houses and tiny flats. I have lived in homes I have owned and places I have rented. I have had times of affluence and times where I have had to count every single penny.

I have an incredible family and in-laws, but I have had times when those relationships haven’t been great. I have some amazing friends, in real life and online, across the world, but I have also had toxic friends who have brought me down.

Despite having oodles of self-esteem and self-confidence there have been so many times when I have doubted myself and lain awake at 3am, wondering if I was worth anything.

My husband, Ben, is the most incredible man, husband and father, but I was heart-broken several times before we got together, including the relationship where the boyfriend I’d bought a house with left me for his skinny, blonde colleague, not to mention the emotionally abusive relationship I went through in my early 20s.

My career has seen me work for a Russian mafioso, a self-professed witch, cleaning up sick from toilets at 2am, have a boss investigated for fraud and theft, as well as set-up my own businesses (several times over in different countries). My CV is as patchwork as they come – I have worked as a shop assistant, a barmaid, made cold calls in telesales, done numerous jobs in customer service (I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve been called a bitch because the client was trying to get one over on the companies I worked for). I have worked as a bilingual PA (French and English), as an English teacher (as a foreign language), I have run my own luxury travel agency, I have worked as a PR manager, as an Account Director in a digital marketing agency, which I gave up to retrain as a childminder, I have written a bilingual children’s book and I have created online courses for English-speakers wanting to learn French and French-speakers wanting to learn English. I have done all this and more.

I have made decisions that make people baulk. Ben and I decided to leave our home, friends, family, job/business on the French Riviera (we lived 2 minutes from the sea in Nice) to move in with my parents in the UK, homeless and jobless, with our (then) 3 year old daughter, in the search for a better life. (It paid off.)

A few years down the track Ben gave up his 6 figure job (£s) to pursue his dream, which meant tightening our belt and living off savings. Then last year, when we were in a position to live anywhere in the world that had good internet, we made the decision to move from London to Mauritius. A small island in the Indian Ocean, in Africa, where we had never been, where we knew no one, where we weren’t sure we would get a visa.

If these are things you want to know more about then you’re in the right place. I share, deeply and honestly, my experiences with you, in the hope that they may help you too.

My life has had its fair share of ups and downs but I have worked to overcome them, and to react the best I can to the cards that I have been dealt.

For the majority of my teenage and adult life friends have come to me for advice. Whilst I’m no guru, and I can’t see the future, I have taken risks where people have thought I was crazy, I have looked fear directly in the face and blasted on through, and over the years I have learned how to make decisions, to face fears, to assess the whys when I’m not happy, and to act.

My aim with Franglaise Mummy, moving forwards, is to help you as you go through the minefield that is being a mum, not just the actual parenting, but everything that goes with it.

I will give you this help through blog posts, through webinars, through guides, through videos. Nearly all my content is free, however there is paid content too which I will occasionally advertise. The paid content enables me to continue giving you high quality free stuff, but also, and more importantly, it allows me to help others less fortunate than us.

One of my key objectives when we moved to Mauritius was to give back, and a percentage of all my profits will go to an NGO, helping people locally (find out more about this on my Charity page).

Following my own experience I am currently putting together a FREE guide to decision-making and facing your fears for my readers. I will share my own journey, explain how I deal with my own decision-making, and how I don’t let my fears win. You can join me on my upcoming free webinar on this subject on Tuesday 26th April at 8pm UK time. Want to know more about any of this? Simply pop your first name and best email address in the box below:

I love chatting and call myself a talkative (over)sharer so if you fancy a chat or have any questions, don’t hesitate to get in touch.

Who’s who:
Léna (L) = our 9 year old daughter
Clémence (C) = our 3 year old daughter
Ben (Hubs) = my long-suffering French husband, living in a house full of females!

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