Challenge Your Guilt

What happens when the pressure to be a calm, patient, endlessly capable mother collides with the reality of modern motherhood? In this episode of Challenge Your Guilt, I’m joined by clinical psychologist, author and maternal anger specialist Dr Caroline Boyd to explore one of the most taboo and shame-filled parts of motherhood: maternal rage. We talk about why anger so often feels incompatible with being a “good mother”, why guilt and shame rush in after we snap, and why maternal anger needs ...

In this episode of Challenge Your Guilt, I’m joined by Rachel Vecht, founder of Educating Matters, to talk about working parent guilt, perfectionism and why “good enough” parenting may be far healthier than trying to get everything right. Rachel has spent 25 years supporting parents, carers and organisations at the intersection of parenting, education, wellbeing and work. She is also a mother of four and speaks honestly about the gap between knowing the parenting theory and living the reality...

In this episode of Challenge Your Guilt, I’m joined by writer Caro Giles, author of Twelve Moons and Unschooled, for a deeply honest conversation about motherhood, care, shame, identity and what happens when families no longer fit neatly within the systems designed to support them. Caro is a single mother of four daughters, two of whom are autistic and unable to access mainstream education. In this conversation, she shares what it means to be not only a mother, but also the default advocate, ...

In this powerful episode of Challenge Your Guilt, I’m joined by the brilliant Tamu Thomas - somatic coach, speaker, founder of the Live Three Sixty brand and author of Women Who Work Too Much. Together, we explore one of the biggest lies modern women have been sold: that being a “good” woman, and especially a “good” mother, means being endlessly busy, endlessly giving and endlessly available. Tamu names how womanhood and motherhood have become conflated with martyrdom, and how the cultural ce...

In this episode, I’m joined by award-winning science journalist and author Melissa Hogenboom to explore maternal guilt through a powerful lens: biology, psychology, and culture. Melissa’s work has deeply influenced my own thinking, and in this conversation, we unpack one of the most important truths about modern motherhood: Much of what we experience as “personal failure” is, in fact, systemic design. We explore why women are still carrying too much, how deeply embedded gender norms shape our...