things.

But there's a couple of threads, right? One is the patriarchal thread that runs through everything, which is how we have been conditioned as women.

And that we are conditioned to be nice, be nurturing, take care of everybody else, worry about everybody else, put yourself last.

That's how we're conditioned and that that is your place in society.

And we don't talk about that.

That's not in common consciousness of women as they're going through their lives every day, but that is the architecture of the world that we live in.

And if you start to just look for it, you'll see it everywhere.

beautiful love this I think it's so important for mums in general to have this tool

What do you think it is about motherhood? I mean, do you think it's motherhood that accelerates the identity loss that I think many women feel? Or does it just kind of expose what's already

there within us? Such a great question.

I know, gosh, I've written and talked and researched so much about this.

Look, I think it's multi-layered.

Patriarchy and gender norms... patriarchy created gender norms you know have have a whole special flavor for mothers right like patriarchy tells women all of the things you know and all of the paradoxes be a good mother but don't work outside the home you know be confident don't be too confident be empowered but in systems that disempower you and the projections of what an ideal mother look like looks like feeds into women's internalized patriarchy.

It feeds into the inner critic that most mothers have, which say, I need to be the ideal mother and I'm never good enough at it.

So it's created and it exposes all of that when we come into this phase of our lives.

I connect a lot with the fierce independence I always have been and I've been a very typically single woman for most of my life by choice but I crave part I want partnership and I know that's what I want for my future how I Does someone have that vision for partnership? How would you start to ask those questions to remain

Um, has that whole process of going idea, come up with the, the outline, or has it been that way the whole way through?

It, it's kind of been that way.

Like, I remember my first book, Getting Real About Having It All, um, I literally sat down...

I remember it so clearly.

It was Australia Day.

I came back from Byron Bay.

I'd been on holidays.

So thinking about that, how, how has that, um, affected your creative process? Does that mean more s- quiet, still time?

Was there something that you like, something that happened or was there a light bulb or did you learn something? You're like, right, this is how I listen to myself so I can come home to myself.

Yeah, it's really about paying attention.

You know, like I think it really starts with like if someone's listening to this going, I have no idea what you're talking about.

It's really about that awakening that happens when we start paying attention to our lives and asking ourselves, how do I feel? Not what do I think.

How do you feel in your body? How do I feel in my body? How do I feel about this person? How do I feel when I enter this room? And these people here, how do I feel when I go to work on a Wednesday morning? How do I feel when I'm having a meal with my partner? How do I feel when I'm parenting my kids? How do I feel about the business that I'm in? Like what's actually going on? We start to pay attention.

And for me in corporate, I knew that after my burnout, there had to be another way.

But it took another seven years for me to leave because I had to wake up.

So what would be some advice, again, for women who this is all very new to them in terms of like tapping into your intuition?

They're still on that treadmill and go, go, go of how to just find that couple of minutes to really tune in.

Yeah, and I love what you just said, right? And that space is so important and being present is so important and not having noise.

is so important.

I mean, I'm the same.

My TV goes on maybe half an hour a day or an hour a day when I want to actually sit and watch something and that's it.

So what I always say for people is look at where you can start to cultivate some silence and some space for yourself.

And specifically with a meditation practice, five minutes.

That's that

Congratulations.

Thank you.

Yeah, it feels like I never did anything before that, right? But I had an 18-year corporate career before that.

It's like, what? So, yeah, my business is all around supporting, empowering women.

And whether you want to call that Helping Women Rise, which is really what we're focused on in Women Rising, which is my, you know, women's leadership empowerment career, life experience, company, or through all my work and research and writing around feminine wisdom coming home to ourselves.

And that's a sort of a circular journey.

It's all around that I started my business after leaving 18 year corporate career.

Like what happens when women do do this, when they do start to kind of connect in with their feminine wisdom? What does that, what does it look like?

[laughs]

Yeah, [laughs] exactly.

Like five hours for this question.

Well, um, no, I'll keep it grounded.

Um, who am I? I'm a mother.

Um, I've been a single mother m- most of my son's life.

He's 25.

Um, [laughs] yeah.