The standards expected in motherhood are impossible. And most of us don't even notice we've signed up to it until we feel burned out and miserable. .

This episode starts with a poem Jacky wrote called 'Yummy Mummy' - all the ways in which we can try to show we have 'got out shit together' as mothers, whilst nothing goes according to plan. Because that's what it's like when you deal with frustration by 'upping your game'. YOu keep trying. It looks like effort. It looks like caring. And underneath it is one quiet, relentless message: if I can just do enough, I'll feel okay.

Jacky introduces the frustration triangle - the three places we go when frustration hits. The blamer. The self-shamer. The up-your-gamer. And explores the one she lived in for years. The one that motherhood is particularly good at triggering. Because nobody gives you feedback in motherhood. Nobody tells you you've cracked it, and that lack of validation can trigger old 'not enough' wounds.

In this episode:

What the up-your-gamer actually is

The moment Jacky realised she was doing everything 'right' and connecting with nothing

Why motherhood is such a perfect mirror, showing you every wound you thought you'd dealt with

The despair magnet - how one rupture can pull in every previous failure until you're not just feeling bad about today, you're tallying evidence against yourself going back years

The shift from perfect to present.

What the up-your-gamer is really asking for underneath all that effort - and the four things worth getting honest about.

'Matrescence' is a word that has been around since 1973. It only made it into the dictionary in 2022. That gap tells you almost everything you need to know about how well we've been holding the experience of becoming a mother.

Lucy Wylde is a matrescence activist and coach who works with women navigating the identity shift of motherhood - before, during and long after. She's also a poet. And in this conversation, she and Jacky go deep into the places most parenting content never reaches: birth trauma, the inner split of wanting to be two people at once, feeling unseen in the experience that changed everything.

This is an episode for anyone who has ever felt like they were supposed to be grateful - and found something more complicated underneath.

In this episode:

• What matrescence actually is
• How poetry became Lucy’s way of telling her truth about the traumatic birth of her daughter Matilda, the loss of the woman she was and the parts of motherhood that no one validates
• The ‘inner split’ - wanting to be fully present as a mother and fully yourself as a person, at the same time
• How ‘premenstrual tension’ is actually ‘premenstrual truth’ - what surfaces when hormones that act as a buffer shift and change
• Why “you matter” isn’t a platitude - and what it actually takes to feel it

| "My scar is amazing. My stretch marks are too. They remind me of growing and welcoming you... well done, strong mama. Please know you'll recover. Birth trauma is real and we must help each other." — Lucy Wylde

Website: https://www.lucywyldecoaching.com

Do you ever feel the urge to cry out, but swallow it back down instead? That specific, lonely feeling when you want to howl but it feels pointless, so you gulp it down instead — and there's no one to reason out your sadness, your guilt, your fear with.

This episode maps the journey from that swallowed feeling all the way through to hope using the unexpected power of poetry to witness, name, and navigate what we're really going through.

In this episode:

• Why we need our own vocabulary, and how making up words can be the first act of self-understanding
• The Frustration Triangle: the three places we instinctively go when change gets hard: blamer, self-shamer, or up-you-gamer
• What's really underneath blame
• How writing your shitty first draft of emotions can unlock the vulnerable wound hiding behind the vitriol
• What happens when someone who harmed you never takes accountability and how we end up turning that inward
• Why the blank page is the perfect therapist: it doesn't answer back, doesn't charge you anything, and never fails to witness