Changing the narrative around who needs ‘support’

What went through your mind as you prepared to return to work after becoming a parent – first, second, third time maybe? Did you feel conflicted or challenged in any way, even unable to see how to fit back into a system that once felt so comfortable, predictable?

When I returned after my first child, everything had changed. My energy, my resources, my ambitions, my direction. My work had shifted too: I’d left teaching to become self-employed in research, a move that also took me from London to Bristol to support my new family. I made the change in the hope it would be more family-friendly – something teaching, in reality, often isn’t.

Surprisingly for me, my purpose was also turbo-boosted – my working life now needed to be doing something tangibly valuable for others. It had to mean something, and my contribution had to be visible. I found a drive in the responsibility I felt towards my growing family. I found a new entrepreneurialism and creativity - and whilst I may have been tired from the lack of sleep – I felt startlingly alive and ready to work out what this new chapter in my working life looked like. I felt enormous impetus.

After the arrival of my second child the goalposts had changed again, and I was now overwhelmed by the fear of working out how our two self-employed incomes were going to be able to sustain a growing family. Like so many mothers I witness now, I was yet another making it work simply because I had to. I was regularly living in my last £100. Gulp.

It was in this period of greatest fear that I found my greatest courage - and decided to set up a coaching practice and business that would enable me to make choices about how I worked. I wanted greater control over what my working future looked like. I wanted to design a working life around my family and be able to parent in ways that felt comfortable and necessary (to me). It was my own version of success, one where I could respond to the change happening in my life, rather than battle against it.

Parenthood is the cauldron where values shift, priorities jostle and ambition can look and feel different than ever before. Our new, and often competing, responsibilities at home, at work, and elsewhere mean we can often feel out of control of the lives we have created around us – often at the mercy of other people's needs, deadlines, and expectations.

Making time for reflection and strategic thinking about what has changed – and how to centre yourself at the heart of the life whirring around you – is why MAMA Coaching exists. What I do provides the necessary (and too often overlooked) time and space to notice what has changed, what you need (as woman, as mother, as professional), and what you want things to be like as a working mother.

I have been there. I have felt things were out of my control, and worked out what would help to make things feel more in my control. I have felt let down and disappointed by 'the system' that didn't seem to notice or care what was different about me now - and the gifts I was bringing back with me from my experiences of parenting.

The messy, emotional and unpredictable period during which we move from full time mother, to working parent after a maternity leave – is familiar to me, and thousands of others. I have heard so many stories that make my toes curl and the feelings of injustice rise. Women who have done so much to create life, family, community – and who want to continue to have a professional identity and portion of their lives where they can contribute, financially and otherwise, in ways that are important to them.

MAMA Coaching exists to support mothers – not because they are weak or in need, but because the systems they are returning to are not designed with them in mind and are not nearly as welcoming or accommodating as they could be. The problems are systemic. The victims are mothers being shut out of opportunities because the system hasn't recognised what a cost it is to lose them. Time for change.

When I came back to work, I was changed for the better in many ways - and yet the structures around me failed to notice and didn't seem to care! It is not mothers who need the 'support' here. It is organisations and employers who can't see what they are missing out on – and who stick their fingers in their ears and cry 'la-la-la' when women ask for what they need.

I am here to support mothers, but also organisations. I want to work with those companies who want to be part of the movement for greater diversity – and an actively inclusive environment where they don't lose the mothers they employ. That would be madness.

If you would like to know more about the ways MAMA Coaching could support you, or the people you work with, please get in touch.