In this episode of the Real Life Real Kitchen podcast, host Zoe Willis interviews Katherine Hale, CEO and founder of Thrive in Motherhood. They discuss the concept of matrescence, the transition from womanhood to motherhood, and the unique challenges faced by corporate moms. Katherine shares insights on the pressures of perfectionism, the importance of community support, and the need for career clarity. They explore the significance of recognizing seasons of life, setting boundaries, and prioritizing self-care for mothers. The conversation emphasizes the empowerment of women through coaching and the importance of redefining success in motherhood.

Welcome to the Real Life. Real Kitchen Podcast with your host, Zoë F. Willis, English mother-of-many, Mum Mentor, and your host at this weekly gathering of real talk, real food, and real family life.

Each week I sit down with someone whose work nourishes minds, bodies, or communities. From the kitchen table to the wider world, these are the quiet voices making a loud difference.

👤 About Katherine Hale

Katherine is CEO and Founder of Thrive in Motherhood. She supports driven, high-achieving career women in early motherhood to achieve career success without sacrificing time with their family or their health. She also works with organisations to strengthen their leadership pipelines, reduce attrition rates and enhance retention by helping them focus on the wellbeing of female talent.

🌐 Where to Find Katherine

1. Website: https://www.thriveinmotherhood.co.uk
2. Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thrive_in_motherhood
3. Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/katherine-allt-4221b726/

🧰 Links & Resources Mentioned

📝 Command the Chaos – The Mum Life Management Planner

https://shorturl.at/bbzm7

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https://realliferealkitchen.myflodesk.com/socials

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🌍 Where Else You Can Find Me

All the links are here ⬇️! Come say hello.

1. 🥰 https://realliferealkitchen.myflodesk.com/socials

Takeaways

1. Matrescence is the transition from womanhood to motherhood.
2. Women experience significant changes in identity and values after becoming mothers.
3. Corporate moms often feel torn between their career and motherhood.
4. Burnout is a common issue for high-achieving mothers.
5. Perfectionism can lead to stress and feelings of inadequacy in motherhood.
6. Community support is crucial for mothers to feel connected and understood.
7. Career clarity is essential for mothers to navigate their professional lives.
8. Recognizing seasons of life can help women manage their responsibilities better.
9. Setting boundaries is vital for maintaining mental health and well-being.
10. Women should prioritize self-care to be the best mothers they can be.

Foreign.

And welcome to the Real Life Real Kitchen podcast.

And I would like to introduce.

My guest today is Catherine Hale.

Catherine Hale is CEO and founder of Thrive in Motherhood.

She supports driven, high achieving career women in early motherhood to achieve career success without sacrificing time with their family or their health.

She also works with organizations to strengthen their leadership pipelines, reduce attrition rates and enhance retention by helping them focus on the well being of female talent.

So Catherine and I, we've actually known each other for a few years, 30 odd years.

So it has been a delight and a privilege to be a part of Catherine's life and see the changes in her careers and her arrival into motherh.

Because this is also Real Life Real Kitchen.

I have a real child who is joining us.

Just to keep it quite literally real.

Thryn, I'd like to just start off with.

So you are a matrescence coach is your specific role, isn't it?

Yeah.

Could you tell me how did you come to this?

Because your background, when I knew you younger, was in the army in the Royal Signals.

How have you gone from that.

To working with solely women?

How has this happened?

Let's talk a bit about your background and how you've got to thrive in motherhood.

Okay.

So I have always wanted to run my own business and I have always had a passion for personal development and training and supporting people.

Generally women and men reach their full potential.

And I certainly got that through my army days, the personal development, leadership influence, all of that stuff.

And I then went into corporate and developed that further.

And the coaching element of everything I did through my corporate life as a transformation consultant led me to realize that that business had to be coaching personal development.

On the birth of my second child, I learned about the book Matrescence.

I learned about the word rather matrescence.

I was recommended a book and that book was life changing.

And I read it twice.

I admit I didn't like it the first time.

I was like what's it going on about?

And I read it again and it was so life changing in how I looked at my career, looked at motherhood, looked at what women needed in terms of support, specifically women in corporate who were approaching the leader going up the leadership ladder, many of whom I was working with in senior leadership and what they needed to benefit them both at home and at work.

And it was a lack of understanding around matrescence that really got me into this.

And I decided then that I would certify as a matrescence coach, having already been certified as a coach for 15 years previously and to therefore develop this idea and spread the word around matrescence.

And that's how.

So could you please.

Okay, well, number one, I will put the link to the book underneath in the show notes.

Number two, could you please define what is matrescence?

Yeah.

Matrescence is the transition from womanhood to motherhood.

And it is all about the psychological, the social, the economic, the physical, the biological changes that we as women go through on birth.

It doesn't have to.

The changes don't necessarily happen at the point of giving birth.

It happens throughout your motherhood journey.

So we change as women quite significantly as a result of having children.

And that change is as big as adolescence, believe it or not.

But birthrescence has not got traction.

I believe over the next five years it'll become talked about like the menopause is now.

And it is a life change like that that obviously 83%, 87% of women go through when they have children.

Yeah.

So I suppose it's a concept that really until about 70 odd years ago, when more and more women started to go into the workforce, it was just a kind of an understood thing that of course you get married, you have children, this is a huge change.

So there was an unspoken, with a lot of kind of women's work, women's roles, there was an unspoken acknowledgement that of course this is a huge change.

But then with that shift into.

With women going into the workforce, there was a sort of muddying of the.

The waters.

Would that be kind of a fair thought on that?

Yeah.

So the word itself only entered.

So it's a very, very recent word, possibly linked to the social changes that women were going through with more and more women, as you say, going into the workplace.

Wow.

Okay.

Such a new word.

I think the fact that women are now juggling some quite serious big careers and having children later, and the social pressures that women can do as well as men in the workplace, combined with that transition into motherhood does make it a bit more challenging for women.

Yes, Yep, yep, yes.

And it would have been in the academic intellectual spheres being bandied about, but those sorts of things take time to, to come down.

So.

No.

Okay, it's so interesting.

I'm going to mull on that for a little bit with the corporate mums, because I am working with mums who are not necessarily as high powered and as high leveled as yours, but they still, they'll be juggling work, maybe part time work, they've got school run, they got all of, all of just the life, the responsibilities, a lot of these external pressures coming in and coming onto family life that they have to try their best to bat off or incorporate.

What are the special stresses for your corporate mums?

What is it?

What's the kind of, the extra that they have?

So I think firstly it's probably a feeling of confusion and feeling torn their career and motherhood.

So the majority of women, because of where I'm working with them in terms of their seniority, they have probably spent 20 years in their career to date graduating.

So they're, you know, they're around the 40 mark.

Therefore they have had their whole identity revolved around work and their career up to the point of motherhood.

And suddenly you throw in motherhood and perspectives change, you, values change, everything changes.

And therefore they get a feeling of feeling really torn between who they were pre children and who they are post children.

So there is a worry around career clarity, there is confusion about next steps.

They're worrying who they are now because they have changed so significantly.

So there's that element which I think perhaps where people are working and they have paid role versus motherhood, Their identity isn't wrapped in that paid role.

Whereas a career who is climbing corporate ladder will probably put more emphasis in terms of that career space.

The second thing that I think is perhaps a bigger difference is the rate of burnout.

So these women, you know, are generally breadwinners, they're often breadwinners in their family.

They are juggling the responsibilities, you know, of leadership at work, they're doing the juggle that every mum does at home.

They're also financially perhaps you know, being the security blanket for their families.

Therefore role and career is obviously out there, is fundamentally important for financial reasons.

So they will go, go, go, push, push, push all the time at everything they're doing and therefore then, you know, that's when the burnout.

Yeah, yeah.

Because is there, I'm going to presume there's a temperamental element to it.

It's quite a sort of driven, focused, academically, very successful, very good at reaching the goals.

There's that sort of a. I don't, do I want to say perfectionist.

Yes, there is a perfectionist and a lot of people I work with, you would be on that Perfectionist scale.

And as you and I both know, you know, when you become mums, you can't be perfect, because what is perfect, we are out of control so much as mums.

And I think that is also the challenge where these women are very like, being in control.

They generally get what they want because they'll fight for it.

And then suddenly motherhood throws that control element, the judgment, the comparison that, you know, mums, you can be very critical of each other.

All of that comes into play, which they're not used to.

And again, that is the, probably the third stressor that these women are, Are going through.

And I suppose as well, with motherhood, when you have a baby, there is a presumption before you have your first one.

This is completely natural.

I'll just be able to pick it up.

Just like breastfeeding, all of that.

And there is this learning curve which is beyond anything.

It's like.

It's like, whoa, I wasn't expecting that.

And so when you are already quite kind of vulnerable physically, you've just had a baby, just had a baby, hormones, just everything.

There is so much you have to learn on top of that.

And when you are used to, I'm going to learn, you know, I've got a problem to fix, I'm going to learn how to do it.

You might read the books, but then you have a temp, a child whose temperament just goes, nah, nah, you see those books, you see me.

No, we are not connected completely.

But that's part of, part of this.

The issue, though there is that society makes out that you're giving birth easy, motherhood's easy, you know, breastfeeding is easy, you know, and it.

None of it is culture, it needs to be learned.

And if you've not seen it, if you haven't seen it and you haven't been surrounded by all the families, how.

You feel lost, you feel isolated.

So, so many people I speak to feel that in this space because, as you say, they haven't experienced it and they're not seeing people go through it.

People don't open up about these conversations.

Everyone says, yes, how's your day doing?

Fine.

Yeah.

But realistically, you know, a lot of women are struggling and don't like it that we need support or we're vulnerable or it's a sign of weakness, you know.

Yeah.

And especially if you have been in a position that has been one of strengths and big leadership, all of a sudden say, whoa, this is, this is hard.

And actually, I am lonely.

This was a topic I was Talking to a lady, Vanessa Coulters, who's a parenting coach.

It's one of my earlier videos, all about loneliness.

And again, one of the big challenges of motherhood is when.

When you're at work.

Okay, so my theory.

You ready?

Catherine?

You've heard some of my theories.

Here we go.

Here's one.

But women, we do well.

We do.

We're about community.

We're about kind of sitting in circles and having a chat and doing the knitting and, you know, cooking.

And there's a baby.

Men generally are like, next to each other.

We're hunting a saber tooth tiger.

We are focused on the saber tooth tiger.

That's my generalization brush.

I know there's a spectrum, but anyway, we do community.

And what happens is at work, that is our community.

But the thing is, when you are a mother and you're at home with the baby, Your community is 9 till 5, they're still at work.

And you have to create a new community from scratch, often because you're usually not living close to family.

You have to create that from scratch.

You've got to get out there when you're feeling low and not great and find your people.

It's really.

It's so hard.

It's.

Is it a pressure?

I mean, I do think it's a necessity, but there's an extra thing that I think if women were aware of.

Maybe you take maternity leave 2 months, 3 months before you have the baby, so you have time to make the community.

I don't know.

I don't know.

But I think that's a huge.

We don't realize how invested we are in our community at work.

And then that stops.

And then you're going crackers at home with this lovely baby because you're on your own.

Yeah, we definitely, as women need a tribe, our tribe.

I think it.

When you go back to work, the challenges have.

When you have to merge those communities so you know who you were in your community at home on Matlab and who you are in your work capacity.

You know, fundamentally we should be the same person.

But, you know, deep down, you know, we put everyone puts on Personas at work or.

And people don't want to bring that home, community, who they are, baby experience, to work.

Because, you know, on paper, sad as it is, but, you know, mothers are disadvantaged in so many ways.

And therefore, yes, the community at work then perhaps doesn't work when these women go back.

And that again, leads to loneliness.

So I feel there is lack of female role models.

You know, I look at the.

The Women that I aspired, you know, to be, you know, when I was in corporate, you know, there was only one mother, you know, out of the four women that you.

I was sort of working towards and highly respecting and stuff.

And it's like, well, they're making choices that are very different to me.

So there is lack of role models for women who want to mix your career and motherhood successfully.

Yeah, it is interesting, the changes in role models I was talking to.

Actually, it's a mutual friend of ours, I'll leave you to guess.

And we were talking about women we think are awesome, and we were actually saying about the same thing, and we both agreed that we think Anne Widdicombe is just amazing, and we want to be Anne Widdicombe when we grow up.

I know she doesn't have children, but she is so ballsy.

Doesn't care, just cracks on.

But she's postmenopausal, so she's like, I have nothing to prove here.

I don't care what you think, young man.

And I've been listening to some podcasts with her recently, and it's so funny.

These younger chaps are interviewing her in their 30s and 40s.

They think she's marvelous.

They're just like, oh, you're great, Anne.

So, yes, in terms of role models, mine shifted completely.

I'm.

I'm like, yep, I'm aiming to be Anne Widdicombe one day, but with, like, more children.

But.

So that must be really interesting, talking to your clients about that, helping them see different.

Different options.

So can you talk me through that kind of piece of the piece of the puzzle?

So I work with clients in a number of ways, but I think the career clarity piece is something that is.

Comes up time and time again.

And so fundamentally, as.

As you.

You may well know, but lots of women, you struggle to reconnect with themselves, you know, children.

And lots of people listening to this will be thinking, you know, who am I?

Et cetera.

And that throws lots of questions up, especially when you're thinking about your career.

You helping women to have headspace.

Have a mentor who's been through this, you know, providing a structured framework.

Some of the problems.

Think about emotions, think about what's really, really important to them, and then what's holding them back.

And we.

We touched on it to start with, helping redefine what success is because the mother is very different to your children version of success.

These are all things that help women do to get that career clarity to avoid that burnout.

You to find that Better balance.

Every woman is craving.

Are you talking to women as well about.

I mean this is something that comes up so frequently but talking to women about seasons of life, that there are seasons when you do need to step back a bit.

I'm thinking, look, I've got small, slightly spluttery child on my lap as we speak.

So there are seasons of life, you just kind of have to step back.

We have also talked about the responsibilities of looking after parents who are not as young as they once were and one has to step back.

Do you talk to these ladies about that concept of seasons?

Interestingly, Zoe, I think think the conversation about seasons of life I first learned from you.

No, about.

I think yes.

And it's not a new.

But I'd never thought of life in that, that way that I do now.

Yes, people do realize, you know, especially, you know, women going back after maternity leave had a client call this morning and the season of life is, you know, she needs to understand that, well, accept rather that she can't do everything that she wanted to do pre children fundamentally she needs to be able to delegate better, prioritize better.

So a lot of this comes then down to leadership advancement and improvement in a certain season of life so that you can achieve what you want to career wise, but also be there and leave the office when you need to to do said nursery pickup or whatever.

So yes, I think people do are slowly beginning to realize that seasons of life is really important to think about and just it releases a little bit of the pressure that women are under when they look at it like that and think.

I think, I think as women as well of our generation, kind of educated in the 80s 90s, noughties of joining this career ladder.

So I remember when I was doing my postgraduate work and my PhD studies, I remember I had an academic, one of these old school ones with a.

This is in art history.

I had a knitted tie, a silk knitted tie.

And he specialized in 13th century art of Rome.

You know, this kind of thing.

Fabulous, fabulous.

But he had a really blunt conversation with us in our third year at university.

It's all girls doing art history.

He said, girls, girls, girls, you know, just be aware, just be aware.

If you go to art history or academia at some point you will have babies and there'll be some chap in the department who's not as good as you, but he'll write a book in the year that you're away and he will overtake you and bear in mind as well that you're going to be doing your studies during your fertile years.

He didn't use.

I'm paraphrasing here, your fertile years.

You're going to have, you know, once you got your PhD, you then have to apply for postdocs, and you've got to be traveling here and there and everywhere before you get a job.

So just be aware.

I mean, I don't think you could get away with a conversation like that these days.

At the time, it didn't land.

It stuck.

Didn't land.

But a few years later, I was looking at those women who were trying to finish their PhDs with children or with babies, trying to get academic jobs, and it suddenly struck me that the career ladder, be it academia, be it the corporate, it is built around male biology.

It's a straight line, which, you know, of course, this is like hundreds, if not thousands of years in the making, maybe 2,000 years or 3,000 years of just going on.

Because those responsibilities, that take us to the side, so be it.

The babies, the old people, you know, the looking after, cooking, cleaning, all of these basic things, they happen to the side.

Others like us, sitting in our little circle spinning our yarn, the women will be doing that.

And what has happened with career advice, education.

We have that piece about seasons, flexibilities, the realities of being a woman.

We have the privilege of fertility, but that means we've got to take time out.

That has been ignored.

And so we have forced ourselves, without realizing it, into this kind of corporate or career ladder, which is not fitting with our biology and needs, needs as women mothers.

Not in society's interest either, really.

That we forced ourselves into it.

I think society has led us to.

No, I agree.

Sorry.

That's quite correct.

We didn't realize.

We didn't realize.

I mean, I'm a great.

Coming back to Anne Widdicombe, I'm very much one for women coming back later into the workforce.

One of the reasons I wanted you.

I was invited you on, rather than, well, I want you, but I invited you on is I love the fact that with your coaching, you're encouraging these career pivots, but also saying, suggesting to women to think about using their skills and talents to set up businesses that fit around their needs and their life.

And I think that is such an important option for women to be aware of that you can still have the work, you can still have the intellectual stimulation, because that's a big part of it as well.

You can have control in certain elements of your life, but you can make it more bespoke to your Life and neat dinner's burning, the washing's multiplying and someone's crying.

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The links in the show notes.

Yeah, so I, I love supporting women on that career pivot journey.

Not everyone I work with wants that so I can give people tools and techniques to stay in their corporate roles and to step up and enhance their leadership and the way they operate rather than doing a shift.

So you don't have, I don't personally believe you have to do a shift.

I think it requires a mindset change and having tools and techniques and strategies to make things work, you know, in a full blown senior corporate role.

So please get that right.

Yeah, I want everyone to take that away from the career pivot side.

I think a lot of women are nervous about it because it's the unknown.

You know, I talk about it all the time.

You only learn from being out, taken out of your comfort zone.

Setting up a business or whatever isn't for the faint hearted.

Faint hearted.

You have to put the effort in and I think a lot of women question that when they're, especially when they're feeling vulnerable, they're suffering imposter syndrome, they're lacking confidence, they've got a baby to look after, all of the things are going against them and they think, oh, I'm not sure whether I want to do this career pivot or change roles because actually I'm in my safe space here.

It might working out great, but I'm in my safe space.

I know everyone, I've got a job to do and I know what I can do.

That's your anchor in a time when everything else seems out of control.

Often for a lot of these women the work is an anchor because they can control that much more than clearly, as we discussed, crying baby or you know, toddler running around, being sick or whatever it might be.

Yeah.

Sorry, I can't remember your question, but I guess, yeah, people need to think slightly differently in certain seasons of life and if that involves a career pivot, it is not.

I don't believe it's failure.

I don't believe there's anything wrong with it.

It's about being open minded and accepting that you've changed.

Yeah.

You know, and looking back on what you really, really want, you Know, I had to really deep down look.

And I was like, when I married my husband, I hadn't hurt my children.

There were two things in life I wanted to do.

One was run my own business.

And one is to redevelop another property, which I've done two already.

And I'd love to do those.

My goals, those are my life goals.

Not, you know, to earn X salary and on X bonus.

Because that feels good, you know, And I think that's where people need to perhaps deeply re.

Reflect and think about, Reconnect with what actually they really, really want.

Yeah.

And a big part of that is having the space to.

Making the space to kind of step to the side and say, right, what is it I want?

Having that peace, finding that piece.

Because we don't have time to think as mums.

And I think sometimes without accountability and guidance from someone external, you.

You get locked in your autopilot.

You're on a hamster wheel.

You can't get off because you're not.

You're not investing in yourself.

Very easily done.

And I have those sort of conversations with people all the time.

It's like, well, no, actually, you need to get off that hamster wheel because you've got to have time to think about what you want.

You are a human here, you know, you brought other little humans into this world, but you're still a priority.

And you have to have your cup half full.

You have to be motivated, fulfilled, empowered to be the best mum you can be.

Cause otherwise, you know, your motherhood journey will fail.

Fail.

You know, you won't be as good a mum as you want to be because you don't feel good yourself.

Yeah, yeah.

And I mean a big part of that.

Creating that space, having the reflection.

Okay, two things.

Number one, you are like the.

The village elder, the wise woman who would have been sitting in the circle saying, oh, Margaret, you're struggling, aren't you?

Let's have a chat.

You tell me, you know, do you see what I mean?

But those kind of coming back to role models, that community.

You haven't.

Women don't have the sort of.

The older ones, unless they go.

Not even the older ones.

The ones who are like a couple of steps ahead, you know, Unless you go seeking for them and go, surely this has happened to someone else before.

I can't be the only one completely.

Unless you go seeking for that.

I think this is one of the things that I find so interesting.

There are so many women who go, oh, I must be the only one.

And you go, Hang on.

Statistically, how many billions of women have there been born?

Just probably like at least one.

At least one completely.

Yeah.

But as I said before, these are conversations that you don't discuss on a basis.

You don't really discuss either with your mum, you know, all your closest girlfriend, and therefore, you know, being able to talk these through and see that you're not alone is so empowering.

Yeah.

I work predominantly in groups and so my tribe or my community or the Dell Diako, but I do work in groups and I love it.

And women come to those groups and feel inspired by what they hear and seeing the wins of other, other women in those groups, but also hearing their challenges and learning from how they're adapting to those challenges and what they can learn from them and put them into practice themselves is really, really fulfilling and motivating for so many women.

Huge.

It's huge.

I used to go to, with my first, I went to a mother.

Mother's group up in Stoke Newington, up in east northeast London, run by a lady called Naomi Stadlin.

And she wrote a book called what Mothers Do.

She was a psychoanalyst.

And this was based.

Did you remember you shared that book with me on the birth of my first child.

That book sitting in my.

The nursery of my daughter now.

It's beautiful.

It's beautiful.

She died recently, bless her.

She was in her 80s and I mean, but the way the groups used to run, everybody would sit down, we'd be there.

She'd deal with kind of mums with babies up to age one.

And we'd all sit there kind of, you know, very squelchy and slightly fragile with our cups of tea and biscuits.

And she'd literally go around and say, hello, everybody.

How will you read something about motherhood from the newspaper and say, so tell us your name, age, your baby and your baby's name.

How was your week?

And that was it.

And everybody went round and it would be, you know, one mum saying, oh, my baby rolled over.

And everyone's like, yay.

And then another mum who'd be like, I'm really struggling, my husband's left me.

And we go, oh.

And it was this range, but because we.

It's saying it out loud.

And all of a sudden everything got lighter.

But that was everything from the triumphs my baby rolled over or my baby ate broccoli, Hooray.

I've got one of the best boy boys to, you know, the absolute disasters it was and everything in between, it was just saying, it is so important and to be Heard to be heard by other women.

Really powerful.

Really, really important.

I get that feedback.

Run regular masterclasses once a month for women who are new to my world and I get that feedback all the time.

Being heard in a group of, you know, 50, 100 people on a call.

Yeah.

Is very, very.

Yeah.

Massive.

I mean the thought strikes me.

I mean that's almost something I don't know up in the city, in the corporate world that you have these groups, you could maybe set up actual in person groups.

A lot of these, A lot of women's groups obviously exist.

I think it's the.

The mummy is made.

The mummy side.

Yeah.

Is more and more, I think parenting groups.

I think there is a trend now I say trends, but I think a lot of corporates are starting parenting groups not only going down to the mummy specific, but targeting and supporting parents in a slightly different way.

Yeah.

Which is all good.

It's movement in the right direction, but we still got a long way to go.

I think.

Few things to do now.

Coming back to the women stepping out, having a bit of space to reflect boundaries.

Catherine comes up all with her crap at them.

No.

Women like that can say no easily.

Everyone says yes to everything.

And that comes back to the people pleasing.

They wanted to add value, wanted to make an impact.

The imposter syndrome.

Because we don't feel we're worthy.

All of those things are emotions that women feel.

Certainly even if they haven't pre motherhood, they will feel it at some point in early motherhood and therefore they can't set those boundaries even with a partner.

You, they, they struggle to do it.

Yeah.

Why is it.

How is it that men.

Is it again the saber tooth tiger Focus.

Nope.

I'm looking at a saber tooth tiger.

This is happening now.

And there's no kind of.

I don't know.

I think I've affected a lot, a lot on this, obviously.

But I think women have got constant things on their mind.

You know, switching off for every woman I think is quite difficult once you've got children.

Men, I think have a capacity to be able to do that easier and they're more defined in their responsibilities and they know that this is what I'm responsible for and that everything else is parked.

And I think until.

And it is changing because it's significantly changed since we were kids and our dads and stuff.

But I think until fathers do recognize more the unseen work women do because it is on team.

The buying the birthday cards, they're replying to invitations, the food shopping order, organizing a Delivery, you know, the organizing a cleaner, if you were lucky enough to have, you know, all of that is done, you know, generally by the female in the household.

And, and I think men need to be much more aware of what women do to get that, you know, balance back.

And there's an amazing book called Fair Game.

Fair Game.

Okay, well, a game that discusses all this.

It's about, it's been.

The book's written by Eve Rodisky, I think, and it's all around the motherhood load that we shared better with.

Do you think that a part of it as well is women again, coming back to our needs and setting boundaries is actually saying to these beloveds, this is what I need.

This is, you know, quite clear.

10 o', clock, you're taking little Sally to her ballet class on a Saturday so that I can have an hour's peace because I need this.

Otherwise I go crackers.

You do not have to understand.

You just have to accept is a part of it.

Kind of women not actually being explicit.

It's hard to confront, it's hard to ask for time for you.

That's what it comes down to.

And investing in your wellbeing.

And we deprioritize ourselves all the time.

We're often at the bottom of our to do list.

You know, talking to another client this morning about this, you know, she says, you know, I want to invest in half an hour myself reading Personal Development every day.

But I just, it falls to the bottom and by 10 o' clock at night I'm too knackered to do it.

And therefore I don't do it.

And it's like, yes, it's having those conversations with your partner to be able to say, you know, I need this time, you know, this is for my sanity, it's for my well being, it's to fill my cup up, it's to make me a better mum and utilizing that time effectively.

Partner supporting.

You know, I'm really rigid, for example, about exercise with my partner, you know, husband, you know, whenever he does school drop off, I will always exercise.

And you know, I will specifically say that's the benefit I get if you want me to exercise.

And luckily he's very supportive of that, as probably most men would be.

But, you know, that's a win win for both of us.

He gets a bit of time with the children, which is not in the work, working day.

And also I get a bit of exercise time, you know, in the morning before work.

And it's also important for the relationship between husband and wife.

Because, because then you equal.

Because you're getting the time.

And he automatically assumes, I think a lot of men that they can have time and they don't think anything of asking for two weeks to go skiing with work, which my husband's doing now, would I ask for two weeks to go skiing on my own?

No.

I'm lucky if I get two nights away, kid free, let alone two weeks going.

But can I.

Could I also just point out with that as well that there is the reality the little ones, they need the mums more than the dads.

I think that is a.

Certainly when they're very young ones.

Yes, I, but I think that does, you know, post of the obvious, you know, breastfeeding thing.

I, you know, my, my view is fathers can do everything that mothers can do with the exception of breastfeeding.

So I think slightly different view on that.

We shall, we shall love each other and agree to differ.

Okay, so boundaries.

Yes.

And coming back to.

Once you've got those boundaries in place, saying what you need means a better relationship between you and your husband because otherwise you have resentment.

Coming back to the fact that men.

I'm looking at the saber toothed tiger, what cleaning lady.

Whereas you're thinking about the cleaning lady and all of the things there's going to reach this point where you go, I need.

Why can't you read my mind?

Why can't you read my mind?

And that's.

Nobody can.

No, they can't.

And that resentment, that frustration, I see it all the time and it does, if it builds up and builds up, you know, it can lead to obviously relationship serious challenges.

And you know, I think fair Jesus.

I certainly had a bit of resentment in the early, very early days of motherhood.

And I was like, my husband's life hasn't really changed.

Mine has changed beyond all recognition.

But that was from a work capacity, I think, you know, as you go through your motherhood journey, it's as we come back to it, it's more about, you know, having time for yourself and the importance of that and not letting, yeah, your partner, you get everything that he needs, but you put your needs at the bottom because you can't go on like that.

You will burn out.

We're burn out if we don't have something for ourselves.

That's really important.

Yes, it's huge.

And even if you, everybody from kind of the stay at home moms up to the corporate, we just need that little bit of time to step back because you can't see the wood for the trees and Then when you return to the children, when you return to the house and really important, ideally for this to happen outside the home, because if you're in the home, you're like, oh, I'm going to have an hour.

And you look around, you're like, oh, the washing, oh, the school admin, all of this.

That.

No, no, no, you just go and have that space.

I completely agree with that.

I also think that it doesn't have to be an hour.

A big deal here.

This can sometimes be really, really small things.

My husband loves the radio on in our kitchen and when we're in there as a family, he'll have it on and I turn it off so soon as I can, especially when we're as a family, because I just cannot get the sensory overlaid.

I never experienced this before motherhood, but now I'm like, I've got three children running around wanting this, that and the other and the radio playing and my husband popping in and out and I'm cooking dinner.

I cannot cope with that.

So I think there is an understanding of each other's needs on that small micro level, I. E. Turning the radio off and my husband respecting that.

As soon as he walks out the room, I'm going to turn it off because I don't want it on.

Or if you just, you know, 15 minutes in the house to catch up with, you know, it might be admin or your catch up emails you need to send from a work perspective, it's respecting you and having that time, you know, small, small amounts of time to.

Find what you need that bit of control in.

So I mean, those are really, really useful tips generally for, for mothers, I'm going to come back just the corporate mums.

But if there are, for those who have stumbled across this through the magic of YouTube or LinkedIn or wherever, you've found this, what is it that.

What are the first steps that mums can take?

Particularly these corporate mums who are just like, oh my gosh, I am corporate lawyer.

I am, I don't know, equity manager, whatever it is.

Yeah, I want to be a mom.

And I got all this stuff going on in my head is going to explode and I feel so sad and weepy.

What can they do?

Some basic, yeah, basic takeaways.

Okay, three basic takeaways.

The first one is really reconnect with your values.

I've alluded to this, the whole of this conversation, but you change when you become a mum.

So many women don't actually know their own values and they're not living by Them.

And if that's the case, they are often living by values of other people or society.

And therefore, you know, they are not feeling fulfilled.

They're.

They're.

They're in a critic, they're feeling very negative all the time.

They're angry, frustrated, et cetera.

And as soon as you start recognizing and reconnecting with what's fundamentally important, you can prioritize better, you can make better decisions, you can decide how you spend your time better.

You know, and this is both work and at home.

It is so important to identify that.

And that's generally where I start with, you know, most women I work with is, do you know your values?

In two minutes, you talk about your life, and I could pick them up.

You know, you can very easily, when you're attuned to listening for them, you know, you can tune into what the values of a person are quite quickly.

The second one we've talked about pressure over the conversation.

There is something here around being kind to yourself.

Don't put all the pressure on you to the everything to everything at one all the time, or to make these drastic big changes straight away because it's a new year or because you're returning to work after mat leave.

You know, these things take time, but as long as you chip away at them every week and you move forward and you have a win here or a win there, and you accept that win and you say, celebrate it, then you will make headway.

So I think, yes, definitely, if you need a hot cup of tea for five minutes, that's what you need.

You need to be able to say, that's okay.

I count it down for five minutes.

I don't need to go all the time.

And then I guess the third one is recognizing what's in your control and what's out of your control.

I often talk to people who are frustrated and angry about something that actually fundamentally is out of their control.

You know, what's the point of wasting that energy on an issue that you cannot control?

If you can control things, then, yes, make sure you do as best you can.

And if they haven't gone, if it hasn't quite gone to plan, it's about like, okay, why didn't that go to plan?

And doing it differently next time and learning from that, again, putting the pressure, but learning and saying, okay, you know, this could have.

Could have been better.

I spoke to a client recently who, you know, does not want to work at all in front of her children, having just gone back to Matley if she's working Nearly.

She won't work.

Doesn't or not want to work, you know, if she's got toddler with her and, you know, she picked up her laptop because she had to do something.

It was, oh, oh, grumpy, grumpy.

You're all right, you're all right.

Keep going.

Wasn't urgent.

Sorry.

This thing was urgent.

And she picked up a laptop and she did it.

She felt so, so guilty and frustrated that she had broken something that was real deep promise to herself.

She was two weeks back after Matt leave.

She's got to get into this new, you know, routine, her new rhythm, what works for her.

She's got to be kind to herself on her when that happens.

And, yeah, okay, that perhaps was a little bit in her control, but it's like, okay, what have I learned?

What am I going to do differently and take that attitude forward rather than dwelling on everything that goes wrong?

And a lot of time that.

That's out of your control.

Yep.

I think it's.

It's the learning.

It's the seeing failure is too big, big a word.

But when.

When.

When the schmozzle hits, the fan is going.

It's.

It's that, okay, that, that.

Whoa.

What can I, what can I learn from it?

What, you know, how.

How.

How am I going to grow from this?

What.

What are the benefits rather than, oh, I messed up again, and, and going into that spiral?

I think, yeah, that's a really important element of it.

I mean, that's also something that comes out throughout your website, actually.

And, and the, the.

When you're talking, it's this idea of constant learning in life, in work, always being open and curious.

And then I think that that immediately means you feel.

You do feel much more in control because you'll go, well, there.

There has to be a solution somewhere.

I can't imagine it at the moment, but there'll be.

It'll be there somewhere.

That immediately lightens things, and it means you're already watching for and listening for other, other ways of doing things.

And that, yeah, you continue to grow as a woman.

And I think that's important in all of this.

You know, we are mothers, but we are, as I say, individuals too, and we need to grow and, and do what?

Yeah, you know, we need to as well.

We do.

We do.

Well, I'm.

I'm looking forward to becoming the Anne Widdicombe one day.

Gonna be awesome.

Catherine.

Catherine.

Where can people find you and follow you?

All the things if they want to get in touch and come to me?

One of your master classes, so.

Oh, thanks.

Well, thank you, Zoe, for having me.

For a start, my website is thriveinmotherhood.co.uk and I'm on Instagram @thriveinmotherhood and you will see me populating things about my master classes, my workshops, all of that on Instagram.

And there's loads of tools and techniques and strategies and stuff to overcome some of the problems we're talking about and challenges on their team.

Right, fantastic.

I'll put links in the show notes below.

And yes, I just want to say thank you very much to everyone who's been listening and watching.

Please, like, share, share with relevant mummies or anyone else you think would be interested and do subscribe because then it helps the algorithm push this out and get it out to more women and mothers who need to hear this.

So thank you so much, Catherine.

Thank you.

Have a lovely day.

Thanks, Zoe.

Thank you so much for having me.

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