I was talking to a friend recently when she paused halfway through our conversation and said something that stayed with me long after we had both gone home. "I don't really know who I am anymore." She wasn't unhappy. She wasn't struggling with her marriage or her career. She loved being a mother. From the outside, her life looked much like she had hoped it would. And yet, there was a quiet sadness in the way she said those words. It wasn't that she disliked the life she had b

Nothing particularly difficult happened. There wasn't a crisis to manage, bad news to process, or a problem demanding your immediate attention. In fact, if someone asked how your day had been, you might simply reply, "Busy, but fine." And yet, beneath that answer, there can be another truth. A feeling that everything seems to require just a little more energy than it used to. That even the smallest decisions feel heavier. That your mind never quite settles because it's alread

The belief that before we make a decision, change direction, or begin something new, we should first have the entire plan figured out. We wait for certainty. We tell ourselves that once we know exactly what we want, the next step will become obvious. That one day we'll wake up with complete clarity, a detailed roadmap, and the confidence to move forward without hesitation. It's an appealing idea. It's also one that rarely reflects how life actually unfolds. When I look back a

There is a moment, often sometime during those first weeks or months back at work, when many women find themselves thinking something they weren't expecting. "Why does this feel so hard?" From the outside, everything may appear to be falling back into place. The childcare arrangements are organized, the laptop is open again, meetings are back in the diary, and colleagues have welcomed you back. Life is moving forward. And yet, underneath the practicalities, there can be a qui

There are moments in life when nothing appears to be wrong, yet something doesn't feel quite right. You may be doing well at work. Your relationships may be stable. The things you've spent years building are largely in place. From the outside, life looks successful, or at the very least, exactly as it should. And yet there can be a quiet feeling that's harder to explain. Not unhappiness. Not crisis. Just a growing sense that you're moving through life slightly disconnected fr

Motherhood changes everything. Many women find themselves struggling to go back to work after maternity, not just because of practical challenges but because their sense of self has shifted. The idea of returning to who we were before having a child can feel impossible, and that pressure often leads to frustration and guilt. Instead of trying to fit into an old mold, it helps to understand matrescence—the profound transformation women experience as they become mothers—and emb