In this episode of Challenge Your Guilt, I’m joined by Clare Willetts - gender equality consultant, founder of Not Only Pink and Blue, and former advertising and brand leader.

Through Not Only Pink and Blue, Clare works with businesses, schools and organisations to challenge gender stereotypes and create more equitable cultures - from the playground to the boardroom.

Clare’s work sits at the powerful intersection of childhood socialisation, maternal guilt, workplace inequality, the limits society places on fathers’ caregiving roles and the impact this has on mothers' lives and careers. This conversation connected so many dots for me.

We talk about how gender stereotypes are learned shockingly early, how they follow us from the playground straight into the workplace, and why initiatives aimed at “fixing women” or “encouraging dads” will always fall short unless we address the system underneath.

Clare shares research and real-world insight from her work with businesses, schools and parents - including some statistics that stopped me in my tracks.

In this conversation, we explore:

• Why girls lose around 30% of their confidence by age eight - and why it rarely returns
• How boys as young as seven are taught that anger is the only acceptable emotion
• Why workplace gender equality initiatives often come 20+ years too late
• How caregiving is devalued, feminised, and treated as “lesser” - at work and at home
• Why fathers don’t take up shared parental leave, even when policies exist
• The hidden career penalty mothers absorb - and why men are watching it happen
• How “parenting out loud” is praised in men but penalised in women
• Why rolling back DEI isn’t neutral - it’s a brand and trust risk
• What meaningful change would actually require (hint: it’s cultural, not cosmetic)

This conversation is essential listening if you’re interested in maternal guilt, workplace inequality, gender stereotypes and norms, or the deeper systems shaping modern family life. Clare’s work makes clear that while mothers carry a disproportionate burden, fathers are also constrained by gender norms that limit their emotional expression, caregiving roles and freedom at work - and that meaningful change requires us to address the system as a whole.

Where to find Clare Willetts:

• Website
• Instagram
• LinkedIn

✨ If this episode resonated, please subscribe, leave a review, and share it with a mother who needs to hear that guilt was never hers to carry.

In this episode, I’m joined by Esther Amira-Opie, a natural therapist and women’s health practitioner, for a deeply honest and compassionate conversation about maternal guilt, health anxiety, burnout, and learning to listen to our bodies as mothers.

Esther shares her own journey from corporate healthcare into holistic practice, including how postnatal depletion, stress, and a pre-diabetes diagnosis became a turning point in how she understood health, balance, and self-care. Together, we explore the invisible pressures modern mothers are under - and how guilt so often shows up around our children’s health, our work, and our own needs.

This episode is especially for you if you’ve ever:

• Felt guilty for not doing “enough” for your child’s health
• Questioned past medical decisions with the benefit of hindsight
• Struggled to rest, sleep, or switch off without feeling selfish
• Felt torn between modern medicine and more holistic approaches
• Known what you “should” do for your wellbeing - but found it hard to actually do it

In our conversation, we explore:

• Why guilt is such a constant companion for so many mothers - especially self-employed and working mums
• The pressure to “bounce back” after birth, and how this harms women’s physical and mental health
• Esther’s experience of burnout, hair loss, over-training, and stress - and what her body was trying to tell her
• An integrative approach to health, where modern medicine and holistic support can coexist
• How maternal intuition gets undermined - and why learning to trust ourselves again matters
• The role of sleep, stress, gut health, breathwork, and nervous system regulation in women’s wellbeing
• Why perfectionism keeps us stuck - and how small, compassionate changes really add up
• The powerful reframe of moving from a to-do list to a ta-da list

Throughout the episode, Esther reminds us that when we know better, we do better - and that guilt has no place in decisions made from love, care, and the information we had at the time

About Esther Amira Opie

Esther is a natural therapist and women’s health practitioner who supports women to find balance, wellbeing, and confidence in their bodies and lives. Her work is grounded, practical, and compassionate - focusing on root causes rather than quick fixes, and helping women work with their bodies rather than against them.

🔗 Find Esther here:

• Website
• Instagram

If this episode resonated with you:

• Subscribe to Challenge Your Guilt so you don’t miss future conversations
• Share this episode with another mother who’s carrying too much
• Leave a review - it really helps this podcast reach more women

✨ If this episode resonated, please subscribe, leave a review, and share it with a mother who needs to hear that guilt was never hers to carry.

In this episode of Challenge Your Guilt, I’m joined by Lauren Currie OBE - social entrepreneur, author, activist and founder of Upfront, a global movement supporting women and marginalised genders to build confidence, take up space and feel braver together.

I’ve admired Lauren’s work for a long time, because so much of what she explores - confidence, visibility, shame, shrinking and self-censorship - sits right at the heart of the maternal guilt conversations I have with mothers every day.

In our conversation, we explore how guilt and confidence are deeply interconnected, and how many women - particularly mothers - are trapped in a cultural double bind where confidence is encouraged in theory, but punished in practice.

Lauren explains why women don’t “lack confidence” - and how living in a system that penalises confident women leads many of us to avoid conflict, over-function, and take responsibility for everything and everyone. The result? Guilt, exhaustion and a constant sense of not being enough.

In this episode, we talk about:

• Why the so-called “confidence gap” is systemic, not personal
• How women are praised for being accommodating, but punished for being assertive
• The double bind that keeps mothers stuck between being too much and never enough
• Why guilt often feels safer than conflict - and what that costs us
• Lauren’s idea of “runaway guilt”, and how low confidence erodes boundaries
• How motherhood intensifies guilt even when you intellectually “know better”
• What it looks like to notice guilt without letting it run the show

Lauren also shares honestly about guilt in her own motherhood journey - from early working-mother guilt, to the emotional pull between ambition, presence and rest - and how she now meets guilt with awareness rather than self-attack.

We also talk about Lauren’s children’s book Taylor Meets the Trick, and how giving families simple language to name patriarchy can remove shame, defensiveness and silence - not just for children, but for adults too.

I close by asking Lauren one question I return to often on this podcast:
What is one small act of courage a mother could take this week if she’s feeling stuck in guilt, self-doubt or invisibility?

Her answer is deceptively simple - and incredibly powerful.

🔗 Links & Ways to Connect with Lauren

If this conversation resonated and you’d like to explore Lauren’s work further, here are the best places to find her:

📲 Follow Lauren on Instagram:

Lauren Currie (personal account)

Taylor Meets the Trick (children’s book)

Upfront (confidence & community)

Lauren also writes regularly on LinkedIn and Substack, and I know she’d genuinely love to hear what landed for you from this episode.

📚 Books Mentioned in This Episode

Taylor Meets the Trick
A playful, powerful children’s book that gives families simple language to talk about patriarchy, gender roles and “the trick” - without shame or blame.

Be Upfront: 24 Rules for Life-Changing Confidence (published February '26)
Lauren’s first non-fiction book, distilling over a decade of confidence-building work into practical, culture-shifting insights.

💛 If You Enjoyed This Episode

Please subscribe, rate and share Challenge Your Guilt - it really helps this podcast reach more mothers who need these conve

✨ If this episode resonated, please subscribe, leave a review, and share it with a mother who needs to hear that guilt was never hers to carry.