Young Whaingaroa mums in need of a little break to go for a surf or swim can now do just that every Sunday “while the sun shines”, thanks to an initiative by a woman who reckons she knows just how hard it can be to get that me-time.
Amelia Borofsky – back from O’ahu in Hawaii – is hosting weekly afternoon meet-ups at the main Ngarunui beach car park, from where local mums pair up to ‘in turn’ swap child-minding for surfing. Each mum gets an hour in the waves; her children safely looked after on shore by the other mum.
The clever yet simple model for me-time is based on the Surfing Mums Australia group started in 2018 by a mother who subsequently moved to Hawaii and set the scheme up there. Amelia at the time was a single, working mum in Kailua suffering major postpartum depression and anxiety, and reckons the meet-ups were a life-saver.
“I found my tribe,” she recalls. Amelia then proudly went on to co-found the not-for-profit American Surfing Moms organisation which now has 30 chapters from New York to California, attracting widespread media attention.
“We were on The Kelly Clarkson Show and The Today Show, we had newspaper publicity and did an Amazon Fashion shoot with the kids,” Amelia remembers. “We were shocked how it all grew so fast,” she added. “Surfing Moms spoke to the isolation felt by young mummas and their need for connection.”
A psychotherapist and mother of two, Amelia says it’s the free childcare which in turn allows time for oneself that gives Surfing Mums its point of difference. “It’s all about the (care for) mums,” she insists. Or maternal wellness is another way to look at it.
“And as surfing mums we are being good role models,” she adds.
Amelia recalls how her now eight-year-old daughter Yinale would sometimes tell her “you’re grumpy, you need to go for a surf”. Son Charlie is just a year younger, and she says parenting on her own with little time out was a huge challenge back in Hawaii when they were respectively just one year old and three months.
But then the Surfing Moms group became a reality – and with that, says Amelia, “I became more of a surfer” because the ground support made it less intimidating. “So I made surfing a habit every week, rain or shine.”
Friend Ciara Verhees, who came along to Ngarunui for the first Sunday meet-up recently, says she’s keen to “meet other mums and programme in a bit of me-time” even if only for a swim.
Ciara, who’s new to Te Mata, explains her hubby works overseas a lot so swimming and surfing herself as a mother to daughters Daia, 3, and Arta, 4 months, is not easy.
But buddying up with like-minded mums keen to swap time in the surf and taking care of the kids will make things a whole lot easier, she reckons.
*Whaingaroa Surfing Mums meet in the car park above the beach at Ngarunui, Sundays 2-5pm.
