Louise East Coaching and Consulting
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Does motherhood feel different from what you expec Does motherhood feel different from what you expected? 💗 You can love your children deeply and still feel like you’ve lost parts of yourself along the way. Motherhood brings so much change — to your identity, relationships, work, priorities, confidence and the way you see yourself. Yet many of us don't realise that what we're experiencing is part of a much bigger transition: matrescence. I’ve created a free guide to help you make sense of why motherhood can feel so different and remind you that there is nothing “wrong” with you. Inside, you’ll discover: ✨ What matrescence is and why it matters ✨ Why you can feel like you've lost yourself ✨ Why balancing work, motherhood and your own needs can feel so hard ✨ Simple reflections to help you reconnect with yourself Wherever you are in your motherhood journey, I hope this guide helps you feel a little more understood, supported and less alone. 👉🏼 Download your free Matrescence Guide via the link in my bio. And follow me for more conversations about motherhood, identity, career and finding your way through this season of life. #Matrescence #MotherhoodJourney #WorkingMums #MotherhoodAndIdentity #SelfDiscovery
So much of the advice given to women at work focus So much of the advice given to women at work focuses on what *they* can do differently. Speak up more. Be more confident. Get better at advocating for yourself. And yes, there are things we can each learn and influence. But women can’t individually solve workplace cultures, systems and assumptions that make it harder for them to succeed. I recently facilitated a workshop with men in senior leadership roles about the part they play in creating greater gender equity at work. We talked about the everyday behaviours and assumptions that can be easy to miss when you haven’t personally experienced them, and what genuine allyship looks like in practice. Because supporting women at work can’t only be women’s work. Women need to understand what’s happening, trust themselves and feel more able to advocate for what they need. But I also want women to know that when work feels harder than it should, the problem isn’t automatically you. There are workplace norms, expectations and biases that shape women’s experiences at work and create challenges. That’s why I want to be having these conversations with leaders and organisations too. Women can advocate for themselves. Leaders also need to examine what they can influence and change. #GenderEquity #MaleAllyship #WomenInLeadership #WomenAtWork #inclusiveleadership
High-performing women often hide workload problems High-performing women often hide workload problems without realising it. They're organised and reliable. They don't want to let anyone down. So they find a way. They stay back. They work after the kids go to bed. They carry the load in silence because that's what they've always done. And it's not only the load at work they are carrying; it's also the load at home, which affects them at work, and vice versa. From the outside, everything looks fine, and everything gets done. But here's the problem. When capable people keep absorbing unrealistic demands, it becomes harder for workplaces to see there's a workload problem at all. The work still gets done. The cost is simply paid somewhere else. Usually by the person doing it - their energy, wellbeing, focus, capacity, relationships and peace. Harvard Business Review recently argued that leaders need to think differently about workload because traditional measures like hours and deadlines miss the invisible mental load employees carry. I couldn't agree more. You can't redesign work if you can't see what's really making it heavy. And you can't rearrange an unrealistic workload and make it realistic. Sometimes the most valuable thing we can do isn't become more efficient. It's make the invisible visible. Reference: Ruppanner, L., Swenson, H., Mangino, K., Stuart, H. C., Smith, D. G., & Dickens, M. (2026, July 24). The invisible work draining your best employees. Harvard Business Review. #WorkingWomen #WomenInLeadership #WorkplaceWellbeing #MentalLoad #SustainableSuccess
Returning to work can feel complicated. You migh Returning to work can feel complicated. You might be looking forward to using your brain differently again, seeing people you’ve missed, earning your own money or reconnecting with a part of yourself that has felt a little distant. And you might also feel sad about leaving your baby. Worried about how you’ll manage everything. Guilty that part of you is looking forward to being somewhere else for the day. You might even feel relieved. Returning to work after maternity leave can bring up conflicting feelings because you’re not simply returning to a job. You’re working out how work fits alongside a life and an identity that have changed while you’ve been away. You don’t need to decide which feeling is the “real” one. They can all be real. If you’re preparing to return to work after maternity leave, I’m running my Returning to Work with Confidence and Clarity workshop at the Parents Hub, Lilydale on Sunday 13 September. We’ll talk about what’s changed, what you need now, and how to make your return work for you and your family. Link in bio. #ReturningToWork #WorkingMums #MaternityLeave #MothersAtWork #WorkingMotherhood
When did enjoying your life become something you h When did enjoying your life become something you had to find time for? When you’re a busy mum with work to do, people relying on you, and a seemingly endless list of things that need your attention, “make more time for joy” can sound like another task to add to the list. Many women are struggling to find room for the things they enjoy amongst everything else they’re carrying. And when there is a window of time available, it’s incredibly easy to fill it with something “useful”. I know that pull well. There is nearly always something I could be doing for my work, my family or my home. What I’ve become much more conscious of is how easily a life can become organised around what needs to be done. Slowly, the things that bring us pleasure, interest or a help us feel like ourselves get pushed to the edges. So I’m not going to tell you to add “find joy” to your to-do list right now. First, it’s worth noticing whether everything else has been allowed to become more important. And then getting curious about why. What expectations are sitting underneath that? What have you learned about being productive, being useful, or what deserves your time? Because before we can find more time for ourselves in a sustainable way, we need to understand why we became so easy to leave out in the first place. #WorkingMums #MotherhoodAndIdentity #MentalLoad #Matrescence #WorkingMothers
One of the biggest worries I hear from women prepa One of the biggest worries I hear from women preparing to return to work is: How am I actually going to manage all of this? Because going back to work doesn’t make everything you’ve been doing at home disappear. Now there’s childcare drop-off and pick-up to fit around the working day. A baby who might have been awake half the night. Dinner still needs to happen. And there’s the very real possibility that childcare will call tomorrow and someone will need to leave work. If you were someone who used to stay late, take the last-minute meeting or be available when something needed to get done, you might also be wondering whether you can still do your job the way you used to. It can feel like you need to somehow find a way to fit your old working life back into a life that now looks very different. But that’s part of what deserves some thought before you return. What’s realistic now? What support do you need at home? What needs to change at work? And which expectations are you carrying that may no longer work for you? You don’t need to have every possible scenario solved before your first day back. If you’re preparing to return to work after maternity leave, I’m running Returning to Work with Confidence and Clarity at Parents Hub Lilydale on Sunday 13 September. We’ll talk about what’s changed, what you need now, and how to make your return work for you and your family. Info and bookings via the link in my bio. #ReturningToWork #WorkingMums #MaternityLeave #MothersAtWork #WorkingMotherhood #maroondahmums #yarrarangesmums #mumsofthehills #melbournemums
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