One of my favorite things about the Mental Health & Motherhood Summit promotions are the opportunities to connect with the speakers over video.
It’s not only great for us to officially “meet” but gives you all the chance to see what these incredible women are like long before the summit on October 10-11.
Today I’m excited to introduce you to one of our 24 speakers,
. Watch our quick video and say hello by following her or registering for her talk on the summit site!
Transcript For All The Noise Sensitive Moms Like Me:
Chanel Riggle (00:00)
Hello everyone, my name is Chanel Riggle. I am the founder and organizer of the Mental Health and Motherhood Summit. I'm very excited. This is our second year doing this event online and you can join us October 10th and 11th, 2025.
to do a little online retreat event if you are looking for resources and community regarding maternal mental health. And today I wanted to do a quick meet and greet with one of our speakers. We have about 24 speakers this year. This is Mary Cunningham and I'm so excited to have you.
Mary Cunningham (00:36)
Thank you. I'm so excited to be here today and so excited to speak at the summit.
Chanel Riggle (00:42)
Thanks Mary. ⁓ I would love if you could give us a little bit of background about who you are and what you do.
Mary Cunningham (00:49)
I am a, by trade, I'm a writer. I write for health and wellness companies and science related products, ⁓ consumer packaged good products like ⁓ supplements or functional coffees or things like that. But ⁓ that started when I was diagnosed with MS. And so I put my focus into health and wellness and have worked with some other ⁓ pioneers in the sort of biohacking space and
⁓ that's what I do day to day, but I'm a writer for a Substack called fierce resilience, which I created because it was something coming out of, having a mess. had started creating content around that, but I created this at a point after I had had my first daughter and it was really trying to find my voice as a writer, but then also bringing in the tools of how we get through life's hardest moments. And that's what.
my newsletter focuses on. And I do speaking in relationship to getting through an MS diagnosis, but also just anxiety in general has always been near and dear to my heart as a person who has had anxiety for many years. And I was even a meditation guide for a time working specifically with entrepreneurs at the time because it's that sort of like anxious brain, high creativity.
but where it can easily sort of hold you back. And so I sort of in my talks and in my writing bring all of these things together.
Chanel Riggle (02:24)
Thank you so much. If anyone would like to see Mary at the summit, her topic is resilience, fear and superpowers and motherhood and three steps to release fear immediately. Mary, I'm really excited to hear more about your talk.
I want to ask why is maternal mental health so important to you? You mentioned anxiety. I'm sure that has a big part.
Mary Cunningham (02:48)
It does. I think the words maternal health, mental health, motherhood, like these are powder kegs of emotion. And there are just, know from not only my experience as a mother, but for so many women, I see anxiety spike, either trying to get pregnant, I went through IVF, I went through miscarriages, that takes you on a mental health journey right there. ⁓ But
you know, then those early days postpartum with what could be happening in your body. Also just the shift in life, taking care of someone, the responsibility of a child. And I'm a toddler mom right now. And there are times when it feels like this is the hardest moment because there are just different needs and you're constantly adjusting no matter what phase you're in of motherhood. But the tools to have, ⁓ to get through those like
hard mental health moments, I think are the things that can just help us get through that moment to moment daily grind or those dark periods that happen that I think people feel very ashamed about sometimes. And I think that we're getting better about voicing it, but there needs to be more communication around it. And just the fact that this was this easy sort of like,
three-step process that I used to use for myself with anxiety and I used it in my MS diagnosis and then as I was approaching motherhood and getting through some of those early stages, I found myself using this again. So it's something that I get so excited to teach other people because I think it's very simple, but it can always sort of be there for us.
Chanel Riggle (04:36)
I think something that really surprised me when I became a parent and it continues to humble me is how much resilience you need in parenthood. How much you're not only teaching your child what resilience might look like and regulation, and you're also going, ⁓ maybe I'm not regulating myself as well as I thought I was. yeah.
Mary Cunningham (05:03)
Absolutely. They're the mirror
right in front of you, you know, and they feel our emotions so much. ⁓ I taught my like I've been playing guided meditations for myself ⁓ and my daughter now hears the music start and she starts and I told her I said meditation is breathing and I mean she's a toddler. She doesn't even understand all of the words, but she's she starts to hear the music and just starts taking deep breaths and I'm like
Chanel Riggle (05:33)
with.
Mary Cunningham (05:34)
Maybe, maybe, maybe she will know so much more than I did at my age. Like maybe this will all click sooner for her.
Meditation really is super simple. It feels like, you know, when I see it through her eyes and just breathing and, you know, learning what Elmo tells us, learning what Daniel Tiger tells us, we're just taking some deep breaths. And so these small tools though help us get through hard moments and we teach our kids that. And sometimes we need to remind ourselves that we can use those same tools on ourselves.
Chanel Riggle (06:07)
Absolutely. I am so thankful that you could join me today. Also very thankful for lessons from Daniel Tiger. So I'm excited to hear what you have to say for us moms who are trying to navigate the best way to keep ourselves calm, but in a healthy way. And I'm really excited to hear from all these other speakers.
If you would like to join Mary and I at the Mental Health and Motherhood Summit, October 10th and 11th, we do have tickets on sale. You can go to mentalhealthmomevent.com or you can follow the link below and get your tickets. Thank you so much for joining me, Mary.
Mary Cunningham (06:50)
Thank you so much. I'm so looking forward to it.
If you’d like to hear more from Mary and our other speakers on the topic of maternal mental health, please subscribe for updates and more conversations!
Please also share this with mothers you know so they can access mental health resources at the summit. Tickets start at $25
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