Speaker A [00:00:00]:
Hi, it’s Nicky Lowe and welcome to the Wisdom for Working Mums Podcast show. I’m your host and for nearly two decades now I’ve been an executive coach and leadership development consultant and on this show I share evidence based insights from my coaching, leadership and psychological expertise and inspiring interviews that help women like you to combine your work, life and motherhood in a more successful and sustainable way. Join me and my special guests as we delve into leadership and lifestyle topics for women, empowering you to thrive one conversation at a time. I’m so happy that you’re here and let’s get on with today’s episode. She’s been back at work for three weeks. She’s sitting at a desk with an email open. It’s a reply to her director.

Speaker A [00:00:54]:
She’s read it four times, she’s rewritten the first sentence twice, and she’s currently debating whether to add the word just to the beginning of the sentence that doesn’t need it. I just wanted to check. Two years ago she would have fired that email off in 90 seconds and never second guessed herself. Nothing about her ability has changed. She has the same intelligence, the same experience, the same judgment, the same work ethic, and the same values. So why does she suddenly feel like she’s forgotten how to do her job? If you’ve ever found yourself second guessing decisions you used to make instinctively, if you found yourself apologizing more, perhaps holding back in meetings or wondering whether everyone else has noticed you’ve somehow become less capable, I want you to hear this before we go any further. I don’t think confidence is your problem. And I know that probably sounds like a strange thing to hear in an episode that’s supposedly all about confidence.

Speaker A [00:02:01]:
But stay with me, because over the course of this episode I want to challenge almost everything we’ve been taught about confidence. Why it disappears, why we’re trying to be more confident. And often that doesn’t work, and why the real answer lies somewhere much deeper. For over 20 years, I’ve worked as an executive coach and leadership development specialists helping ambitious people navigate change, step into leadership, and rediscover confidence after some of life’s biggest transitions. And I love working with people in this area. In fact, I was asked to contribute to the book Mentoring New Parents at Work on the work that I specifically did in this area. And if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s this. Confidence often gets treated like something you either have or don’t.

Speaker A [00:02:52]:
It’s although it’s a personality trait or something you’re born with something you somehow lose. So we tell ourselves we need to be braver or more positive or believe in ourselves or fake it till we make it. And whilst there can be value in some of that advice, I think that most confidence advice starts in the wrong place. Because confidence is often the first thing we notice changing, but it’s rarely the first thing that’s actually changed. I want you to think of confidence like the warning light on the dashboard of your car. When that light comes on, you don’t cover it up with a sticky piece of tape and hope for the best. Or just say, I’ve got a good car. I’ve got a good car.

Speaker A [00:03:31]:
You kind of become curious. You want to understand what’s happening underneath. And that’s how I’d like us to think about confidence today. Not as the problem itself, but as a signal, a signal that something deeper is asking for your attention. Because by the end of this episode, I don’t want you actually asking, how do I become more confident? I want you asking a different question. What’s changed beneath my confidence? Because that’s where the real answers are. Now. I have created this episode with one particular person in mind.

Speaker A [00:04:05]:
A woman that’s preparing to return from maternity leave. Or perhaps she’s recently gone back. She’s trying to remember who she was professionally while simultaneously discovering who she’s becoming as a mother. She’s excited, she’s overwhelmed. She misses her baby, she misses using a different part of her brain. And she’s wondering whether anyone else has moved on without her. And quietly, she’s wondering whether she’s still the ambitious woman she used to be. So if that’s you, I hope this conversation helps you make sense of what you’re experiencing.

Speaker A [00:04:36]:
But I also want to say this. Even if you’re years beyond returning to work, even if you don’t have children, I think you’ll find yourself in this conversation. Because although motherhood is where we’ll spend most of our time today, it’s where most of the research is. This episode is really about something bigger. It’s about what happens when life changes you. Maybe that change has come through being a parent, but maybe it’s come through a divorce, a redundancy, perhaps a health scare. It could be perimenopause, grief, or stepping into a leadership role that’s asking more of you than you expected. They’re different experiences, but the same underlying question is, I don’t quite feel like myself anymore.

Speaker A [00:05:21]:
And if you’re a dad listening to Today, I’m Especially pleased you’re here because although much of today’s conversation focuses on mothers, there’s some interesting research about fathers that doesn’t get talked about enough. And I think it might help explain some of the things you’re experiencing too. So whether you’re listening from walking the dog, driving to work, grabbing a rare hour to yourself, thank you for spending this time with me and I hope you find it useful. What I’d like to do is stay connected to that woman sitting at her desk for a moment. The one that I said at the beginning. That’s right, in this email. The cursor is still blinking at her. The email still isn’t sent, and if she’s anything like the women I coach, she’s already started telling herself a story.

Speaker A [00:06:11]:
Maybe she’s saying I’ve lost my edge. Maybe I’m not as sharp as I used to be. Maybe everyone else has moved on whilst I’ve been away. Maybe I’m just not as good as I was. And that makes me really sad because it’s such a human conclusion to reach. When something feels different, we naturally assume that we’re the thing that’s changed. We kind of look inwards. We ask ourselves, what? What’s wrong with me? But before we answer that question, I want to acknowledge something.

Speaker A [00:06:44]:
If you’ve taken time away from your career to have a child, it’s completely natural to feel disconnected from the professional version of yourself. And that’s not because you’ve become less capable. It’s not because you’ve somehow lost your professional brain, but because for a season you’ve been using your brain differently. Think about everything your brain’s been doing. Instead of preparing for board papers or presentations, you’ve been learning to understand a tiny human who can’t tell you what they need. Instead of managing projects, you’d probably be managing sleep deprivation, or feeding schedules or nursery visits, health appointment and the endless invisible mental load that comes from becoming a parent. You’ve probably become an expert in reading non verbal cues. You’ve learned to adapt to constant unpredictability.

Speaker A [00:07:35]:
You’ve made hundreds, probably thousands of decisions every single day, often while running on very little sleep. Your brain hasn’t stopped working far, far from it. In many ways, it’s been working harder than ever before. It’s just been doing different work. And then almost overnight, you’re expected to switch back into your professional world as if no time has passed to remember the systems, the acronyms, the projects, the politics, the relationships. Perhaps thinking strategically to contribute confidently and to Pick up exactly where you left off. It’s. It’s like hardly surprising that for a while you feel like you’re reaching for a part of yourself that feels out of practice.

Speaker A [00:08:26]:
And many women tell me that they’re worried that somehow they’ve lost their professional edge, that they don’t feel perhaps as quick in meetings or it takes longer to organize their thoughts. But everyone seems one step ahead. And then there’s another layer. Whilst you’ve been immersed in one of the biggest transitions of your life, your workplace has kept moving. Projects have been finished, people have been promoted, teams have changed, new priorities have emerged, and there are conversations that you just weren’t part of this context. I suppose that everybody else seems to have relationships that have evolved. And it’s completely understandable if that leaves you feeling like you’re playing catch up. But I want you to hear this.

Speaker A [00:09:10]:
Feeling rusty is not the same as becoming less capable. Feeling unfamiliar is not the same as being incapable. And feeling behind is not actually the same as being behind. They’re different things. If this was the whole story, I’d expect people to reconnect with that professional part of themselves over time. And for some people, that’s exactly what happens. But for many parents, something still doesn’t come quite feel right. Once they remembered the systems, once they’ve settled back into their role and found a new routine, the confidence still isn’t where it used to be.

Speaker A [00:09:47]:
And that’s because reconnecting with work is only part of what’s happening. There’s something else. Well, there’s actually. There’s actually two more things. The first sits outside of you and the second sits within you. So let’s start with the one outside of you. Because confidence doesn’t develop in isolation. It develops in relationship with the world around us.

Speaker A [00:10:10]:
So we often think about confidence as an inside job, that if we could just believe in ourselves a bit more, we’d feel confident again. But confidence is constantly being shaped by the messages we receive from the people and systems around us. And some of those messages are obvious. You know, we might get praise or recognition, we might get the promotion or like positive feedback, but many are so subtle we kind of barely notice them. It can be like who’s invited into opportunities, who do ideas, are recognized in meetings, who’s assumed to be ambitious, who’s assumed to be available, who’s given the benefit of doubt after making a mistake. Our brains notice every single one of those signals long before we’re consciously aware of them. And that’s why I wanted to Share the research on working motherhood back in 2007. So nearly 20 years ago, researchers Shelley Correll, Stephen Bernard and In Peg carried out a study that has since become known as the penalty of motherhood Penalty research.

Speaker A [00:11:18]:
And they created pairs of job applications and the applicants had the same qualification, the same experience, the same competence. The only meaningful difference was that one applicant was identified as a mother. And the results were striking. Mothers were rated as less competent, less committed, less suitable for promotion. They were recommended lower starting salaries and held higher performance standard than women without children. The researchers then repeated the study with real employers recruiting for real jobs. And they found the same pattern. And I want to be really careful here.

Speaker A [00:12:00]:
I’m not sharing this because I want you to feel discouraged, nor am I suggesting that every manager or every organisation behaves that way. I’ve worked with many organisations that are deeply committed to supporting working parents and creating those inclusive cultures. But unconscious bias doesn’t disappear simply because our intentions are good. And bias doesn’t have to be big or dramatic to change how we feel. Sometimes it sounds like we didn’t want to put you into too much pressure, or we assumed you wouldn’t want to travel now you had children. Or perhaps you’re simply no longer the first person people think of for a high profile project. None of the these moments on their own, I suppose, are particularly significant. But our brains are extraordinary pattern recognition machines.

Speaker A [00:12:49]:
They collect data, they’re looking for meaning, and eventually they begin to tell us a story. Maybe not I’m not as capable anymore. Maybe people don’t see me the same way. Maybe I don’t belong here anymore. And what then can happen is that external story quietly becomes our internal story. And now it sounds like your own voice. And. And because of that, it feels like it started with you, that like you’re the problem.

Speaker A [00:13:14]:
But often it didn’t. I sometimes say to clients that the stories we tell ourselves are often a reflection of the stories the world has been telling us. And that’s why I believe it’s really important to understand that context. Not because it removes all personal responsibility, but because it helps us taking responsibility for the things that were never asked to carry. Now, that’s only one part of the picture. Because even if you’ve worked in the most supportive organizations in the world, there would still be other reasons. Your confidence feels different. And for me, this can be the missing piece of almost every conversation around confidence.

Speaker A [00:13:50]:
And it’s called retrescence. Now, even if you returned to the most brilliant, supportive workplaces, even if your manager was brilliant, and every colleague welcomed you with open arms. I still think your confidence might feel different because something else is happening. And that matrescence is might be not a word you’ve heard before, although it’s now probably more widely understood than it ever was. But it certainly wasn’t a number of years ago. The term was first coined in the 1970s by an anthropologist called Dana Raphael, and has since been developed further by psychologists including Dr. Aureli Athan. And retrescence describes the process of becoming a mother.

Speaker A [00:14:38]:
So it’s not about giving birth, not just about caring for a baby, but about becoming a mother. And that’s an important distinction, because becoming a mother isn’t a single event. It doesn’t happen just when you give birth. It’s developmental transition. It involves hormones and neuroscience. And it’s exactly the same way that adolescence is. In fact, the word is deliberately similar to adolescence if you say them together. Adolescence and matrescence, they’re similar for a reason, because they both describe periods of profound transformation, periods where your body changes, your brain changes, your relationships change, your priorities change, and your identity changes.

Speaker A [00:15:23]:
So modern neuroscience has shown us that pregnancy and early motherhood are accompanied by measurable changes in the brain. And researchers have found changes in brain structure that appear to help mothers become more attuned to babies and adapt to the demands of caring for a baby. And this isn’t about your brain deteriorating, it’s about your brain reorganizing. It’s preparing you for a completely new chapter of life. And that’s extraordinary, isn’t it? Because for decades, many women have worried that they’ve somehow become less capable after having babies. We talk about having baby brain when actually the evidence suggests something very different. Your brain isn’t becoming less, it’s becoming different. And yet, think about how we treat adolescents.

Speaker A [00:16:11]:
Like when a 14 year old is emotional or unsure of themselves trying to work out who they are, we expect it. We understand they’re going through a major developmental transition. We don’t expect them to wake up in the morning simply being who they were before. We know it takes time. And we give them grace, we give them support, we give them patience. We understand their becoming. Now compare that how we treat mothers. You give birth, you take a few months from work, and then one day you’re expected to return and carry on exactly where you left off, as if nothing significant has happened.

Speaker A [00:16:46]:
As although the person who worked out, walked out on your parental leave is exactly the same person that’s walking back through the door, except she isn’t and that’s not a problem to solve. It’s simply a reality. You have changed. Your perspective has changed. Your values may have shifted. And what success means to you might be different. Your relationship with time, ambition and even your own identity may have been rewritten in ways you’re only just beginning to understand. And, of course, that feels unsettling.

Speaker A [00:17:22]:
How could it not? You’re trying to navigate work while simultaneously discovering who this new version of you is. And here’s where I think so many of us get stuck. We spend time trying to get back to who we were. You know, we hear about bouncing back, or we say things like, I just want to feel like my old self again. And I understand that. Like, I felt it myself and I’ve heard it from countless other clients. But what if the goal isn’t to become your old self again? What if the goal is to become fully acquainted with the person you’ve become? Because here’s the truth. The old self isn’t coming back.

Speaker A [00:18:02]:
Not because you’ve lost her, but because you’ve outgrown beyond her. And I know that can kind of feel uncomfortable sometimes, even, I suppose, a little sad. But I don’t believe it’s something to grieve. I think it’s something to honour. Because the woman you’ve become has strengths the old version of you never needed. She’s navigated uncertainty. She’s developed resilience she didn’t know she had. She’s learned to prioritize in ways she never imagined.

Speaker A [00:18:32]:
And she’s discovered a capacity for love, responsibility and perspective that has fundamentally shaped her. She’s not less than she was. She is more. Different doesn’t mean diminished, it simply means different. Now, I want to be careful not to stretch this idea too far. Retrescence is a specific term. It describes becoming a mother. And I don’t think it can be used to describe every life event, major life event.

Speaker A [00:19:02]:
But I do think it helps us understand something bigger. Because throughout our lives, many have experienced moments that ask us to reconsider who we are. A redundancy, a divorce, a health diagnosis, perhaps losing someone we love, stepping into a new role. Perimenopause like these experiences are different, but they all have something in common. They ask us to let go of an old identity before we fully settled into a new one. And perhaps that’s why confidence feels so shaky during these times. Not because we’re less, like, capable, not because we’re. Because we’re less competent, but because we’re trying to measure ourselves against A version of us that no longer exists.

Speaker A [00:19:48]:
We’re expecting certainty while standing in transition. We might be expecting clarity while we’re still figuring out who we are, while we’re still becoming. So maybe the question isn’t, how do I get my confidence back? Maybe it’s who am I becoming now? Because once you start with that question, it can give you more curiosity to, like, compassionately explore. And that can kind of bring us into what I think is a biggest misunderstanding in almost every confidence conversation. I think we’ve been trying to grow confidence from the wrong place, and we’re neglecting something much more fundamental. So let me explain what I mean, because that might sound a bit cryptic, and I’d like to offer you the analogy of a tree to explain this. So stay with me for a moment because I think this picture explains confidence better than almost anything that I’ve come across. So I want you to imagine a tree, and I want you to imagine it in two parts.

Speaker A [00:20:53]:
So you’ve got the top part, and the top part is the branches and leaves. And you’ve then got the bottom part, and that is the trunk and roots. So the top part, the branches and leaves, is what I would call your self confidence. And the bottom part is what I would call your self esteem. Now, we all want to go out into the world with nice shiny green leaves, like a tree full of these beautiful leaves. But the leaves are open to the elements. Now imagine that tree goes through a storm and the wind is going to strip back those leaves. The branches might even bend, some might even break.

Speaker A [00:21:31]:
And from a distance, it looks damaged. But if the roots are deep and healthy, those leaves just grow back over time. So the storm didn’t destroy it, it simply tested it. So just as if somebody comes up and shakes your tree, you’re going to lose some leaves. That is a natural process. And there are seasons of life like autumn, winter, where we lose some of our leaves. And that’s meant to happen. But now imagine a tree with shallow roots.

Speaker A [00:22:05]:
The same storm arrives, the same wind blows, the same leaves fall. But this time there’s nothing underneath it to anchor it and sustain it. So this storm just doesn’t strip away the leaves and some of the branches. It can threaten the whole tree. And I think confidence works in the same way. Most of us spend our lives focus on the tree, the leaves, like the visible part, the confidence that everyone else can see. So we build it through. Well, if I get the promotion, if I get the recognition, if I get the pay rise, if I get the Award.

Speaker A [00:22:41]:
Now, those are definitely ways of building confidence. They’re the bits that everybody else can see. But this is what I’ve come to believe after 20 years of coaching. Those aren’t confidence, they’re expressions of confidence. They’re the leaves. And leaves are always vulnerable to the weather. So when I’m coaching, I’ve got nice shiny green leaves. But put me on the stage to sing and I’d have no leaves.

Speaker A [00:23:10]:
Just as if somebody comes up to me and tells me they don’t think I’m a good coach, doesn’t matter how confident I am, I will lose some leaves. That is natural, that is human. But if I’ve got a strong trunk and roots, I can sustain that. So confidence is context specific. It’s like being in a storm. And every significant transition in life is a storm. So returning from maternity leave, the divorce, the redundancy, the burnout, a failed business, a difficult year. Storms happen to all of us.

Speaker A [00:23:41]:
And the question isn’t whether the storm will come, is what happens underneath when it does. Because beneath confidence sits something more fundamental. Self esteem. Now, people often use self confidence and self esteem as if they’re the same thing and they’re not. Self confidence is about what you believe you can do. Self esteem is about who you believe you are. So confidence asks, can I do this? Self esteem asks, who am I? Now, confident changes depending on the situation. You can be incredibly confident leading a team and completely lacking confidence speaking at your children’s school assembly.

Speaker A [00:24:22]:
So confidence is contextual and self esteem is deeper. It’s your relationship with yourself. It’s the beliefs you carry about your own worth, whether you believe you’re enough, whether you believe you deserve success, whether you believe you belong, whether you still see yourself as capable, valuable, worthy, even when life feels uncertain. And that’s the root system. And here’s why I think so many confidence programs don’t create lasting change. They’re trying to glue leaves back onto the tree. They’ll teach you how to sound more confident, perhaps stand more confidently and communicate more confidently and their values in those skills. Don’t get me wrong, but if underneath all of that you quietly believe I’m not good enough, eventually those beliefs win.

Speaker A [00:25:10]:
Because we always behave in a way that’s consistent what we believe in ourselves. So it’s almost like getting a chop ax out and chopping at our trunk and root or putting poison into our root system. And so that brings me on to someone whose work has influenced my own thinking for many years in this area. And it comes from A very interesting source. It’s a plastic surgeon called Dr. Maxwell Maltz. You’re probably wondering, what’s a plastic surgeon got to teach us about confidence? Well, in the 1950s, Maltz noticed something fascinating. Most of his patients were coming to him with disfigurements, maybe burns or a disfigurement.

Speaker A [00:25:50]:
And he would change their appearance. He would remove a scar or reconstruct after an accident and basically recreate their faces in the most beautiful way. And he’d expect that once he changed the thing that they were unhappy about, that they’d automatically feel different. And many did, but some didn’t. Even though their appearance had dramatically changed, they still saw themselves in exactly the same way when they looked in the mirror. Some couldn’t even recognise the difference. And it led him to one of the most influential ideas of his career. And he believed that people don’t live according to reality, they live according to their own self image, this internal, often unconscious picture they carry of themselves.

Speaker A [00:26:40]:
Now, I want to be careful here because Maltz was writing from observation. He’s not a clinical psychologist and he’s not somebody that’s, I think, body of work would, would stand up to rigorous research. So I’m not presenting his work as a definitive science, but I do think he noticed something profoundly important. Our behaviour tends to stay remarkably consistent with the identity we hold about ourselves. If deep down I believe I’m not leadership material, I’ll unconsciously avoid opportunities that might prove otherwise. If I believe I’m not as capable since becoming a parent, I’ll second guess my decisions, I’ll hold back in meetings, I’ll apologise unnecessarily. Not because those things are true, but because my behavior is trying to stay consistent with the story I believe about myself. Which means this.

Speaker A [00:27:31]:
You cannot sustainably grow confidence without paying attention to the story underneath it. And that’s why I think we’ve been asking the wrong question. So instead of asking how do I become more confident? I think we should be asking what do I currently believe about myself? Because if confidence grows from self esteem, self esteem grow some self image. That’s where the real work begins. Not with the leaves, but with the roots. So where do we go from here? If confidence grows from self esteem and self esteem grows from the story we hold about ourselves, how do we begin changing that story? Well, perhaps I should start by saying how I don’t think we do it. I don’t think we rebuild self esteem by standing in front of the mirror repeating affirmations. We don’t yet believe our brains are far too intelligent for that.

Speaker A [00:28:29]:
If I deeply believe I’m not good enough, saying I’m confident and successful 20 times before breakfast isn’t likely to change it. In fact, sometimes it creates more resistance because our brains simply argue back and present us with a load of different evidence. Real, lasting self esteem isn’t built through positive thinking, in my opinion. It’s built through evidence. Like evidence that gradually reshapes the picture we hold of ourselves. And here’s what I’ve noticed through my coaching career. Most of us collect plenty of evidence. We just don’t count it.

Speaker A [00:29:06]:
We dismiss it, or we minimize it, or we explain it away. We might celebrate the promotions, the qualifications, the awards, the big achievements. But we overlook the moments that tell us far more about who we are. Like the difficult conversation we didn’t avoid, the kindness we showed someone else who was struggling, the resilience it took to keep going after another broken night’s sleep. Perhaps the calm we brought to a chaotic situation, the courage it took to ask for help. Perhaps the integrity we showed when nobody was watching. They’re the bits that don’t appear on our CV or maybe rarely make it into LinkedIn. But character is where self esteem grows.

Speaker A [00:29:48]:
So I’d like to leave you with one small practice. At the end of each day, I want you to ask yourself one question. What did I handle today? Not what did I achieve? Not what did I tick off my to do list. Simply what did I handle? Because maybe you handled a nursery drop off when your child didn’t want to leave. Perhaps you handled disappointing feedback or a cancelled meeting, or another day where everything seemed to happen at once. And I want you to ask yourself, what does that tell me about who I am? Not what does that say about what I can do, but who am I being? Maybe handling that conversation tells you you’re courageous. Maybe managing another exhausted day tells you you’re resilient. Maybe supporting a colleague reminds you that you’re compassionate.

Speaker A [00:30:40]:
And slowly, almost without realizing, you’re beginning to collect the evidence not of your achievements, but of your identity. Like the I am statements. And that’s important. Because confidence isn’t built just from achievements alone. Because achievements can disappear. Job titles can change, roles can change, life changes. But the qualities that helped you navigate the moment, they stay with you. The resilience, the curiosity, the kindness, the wisdom, the courage.

Speaker A [00:31:10]:
They become part of who you are. And the more evidence you gather of those qualities, the stronger your roots become. Because eventually your inner voice starts sounding different instead of saying, I don’t know if I can cope, it quietly reminds you, I’ve coped before. Instead of saying, I’m not the woman I used to be, it can whisper back, no, but look at the woman I’m becoming. And perhaps that what confidence really is. Not believing life will never challenge you, but trusting that whoever you’re becoming will find a way through it. Before we finish, I want to take you back to where we started, to the woman sitting at her desk, that cursor still blinking, the email still open, and she’s still wondering whether to add the word just to the beginning of the sentence that doesn’t need it. At the start of this episode, she thought her confidence had disappeared.

Speaker A [00:32:05]:
She wondered whether she’d lost her edge, whether she’s still good enough, whether everyone else had moved on without her. Maybe you’ve had your own version of that moment. Maybe not after maternity leave, but after a redundancy or a divorce or simply a seasonal life that had quietly changed you. Whatever brought you here, I hope there’s one thing you’ll take away from today’s conversation. Nothing about your ability disappeared overnight. You haven’t become less intelligent, less capable, less worthy. You’ve been through a transition. And transitions change us.

Speaker A [00:32:46]:
They ask us to let go of our old identities before we fully settled into new ones. And that’s deeply uncomfortable, and it’s sometimes lonely. It’s often disorientating. But it isn’t failure. It’s actually growth. So your confidence isn’t simply a reflection of your capability. It’s a reflection of the relationship you’re building with the person you’re becoming. And perhaps that’s the shift I hope you’ll make after listening to today.

Speaker A [00:33:16]:
So instead of asking that, what’s wrong with me? I wonder if you could just begin asking, what’s happened to me? And then who am I becoming because of it? Because they’re very different questions. One looks for fault, the other looks for understanding. And as we know, understanding is where compassion begins. So as you move through this next week, I hope you’ll be a little more curious and compassionate with yourself. I hope you’ll notice the quiet moments that prove your strength. Not just the achievements, the everyday evidence. The conversation you handled, the meeting you contributed to, the morning you kept going. Those moments matter.

Speaker A [00:33:57]:
They’re telling you something important about who you are, and they’re feeding your roots. Roots and roots take time. You don’t plant a tree on Monday and expect this beautiful shade by Friday. Growth happens quietly and often, almost like invisibly until one day you realize you’re standing somewhere stronger than you were before. So if today you’ve been listening because you thought you’d lost your confidence, I hope you leave knowing something different. You perhaps haven’t lost yourself. You’ve just been growing. And growth can feel unfamiliar.

Speaker A [00:34:28]:
It can feel uncomfortable. And it doesn’t mean you’re moving backwards. It probably means you’re becoming someone you haven’t fully met yet. So please be patient with yourself. Trust the evidence. And remember, the storm may have shaken your leaves, but the roots are still there. So until next time, take care of yourself. Because the world doesn’t need you to become the person you were before.

Speaker A [00:34:51]:
It just needs you to become the person you’re becoming now. If you’ve enjoyed this episode of Wisdom for Working Mums, I’d love for you to share it on social media or with the amazing women in your life. I’d also love to connect with you, so head over to Luminate, where you’ll find ways to stay in touch. And if this episode resonated with you, one of the best ways to support the show is by subscribing and leaving a review on itunes. Your review helps other women discover this resource, so together we can lift each other up as we rise. So thanks for listening. Until next time, take care.