Anna Whitehouse on Divorce, Burnout and Rebuilding

0:07Welcome to this episode of Motherkind. We are proudly sponsored by Wild Nutrition women's supplements. I am your host Zoe Blaski and this is the show that is going to grab you by the hand and be your guide through the wild ride that is modern motherhood. Every week I bring you incredible experts and thinkers to give us new ideas, new tools, new support, new inspiration for our lives as mothers. We span everything from career to relationships to mental health and healing to parenting and I am very happy that you are here. I have a powerhouse guest today, Anna Whitehouse, aka Mother Pucker. She is a mum of three, an author, presenter, and of course, is a tireless advocate and activist for flexible and inclusive working.

0:51This is an incredible episode. It is going to make you laugh. It's probably going to make you cry, but it is definitely going to leave you feeling energised, galvanised, and very, very seen. We talk about how Anna knew it was time to leave her first marriage, the reality of divorce and what happy endings really are, not in the Disney way that we have been sold and packaged. We talk about the lost generation of women, sidelined and ignored just for having a baby and how Anna needs us all to galvanise, to change the systems, which quite frankly, do not work anymore. Before we get onto the episode, can you do me a quick favour?

1:34Make sure you subscribe to the podcast. The mental load is high enough. So you want Motherkind to just be there in your library, ready to go. You will get a notification when there is a new episode live. So you don't have to search. We don't want to add that to your already too long list. It helps you and it helps me because the more subscribers we get, the bigger and the better we can make the show. And quite frankly, I love this job. So help me keep growing and growing the podcast. Here is the episode with Anna. I hope you love it.

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3:17Anna, I feel like you've been on the podcast many times, but you actually haven't. So I'm so excited because I feel like I've known you from afar and close up for a few years and you've been through so much and so many iterations. And I'm wondering, sat here this morning, how are you? Isn't that the most terrifying question to any mother? You're thinking, how vulnerable and real shall I be? You know, because I think, you know, you instinctively as a mum say, you know, I'm fine. Like overall, I'm fine. And I think, you know, we've seen the memes, we've seen the blogs, we've seen the news stories around women saying I'm fine.

4:01And then there being this kind of underbelly underneath that where quite simply, it's not that you're lying. It's just, you don't know which thread to pull out because if you pull at one thread, does it all then come tumbling down? So, but I can say I am okay. And that is something I don't think I could have said maybe even two, three years ago. I am okay. I feel, I think happiness is a really utopian concept. Contentedness is maybe more realistic. I feel content and I think it is quite hard also as mothers. I think sometimes we always sort of go to the lowest common denominator. I'm exhausted.

4:45Of course, I'm exhausted. You know, I barely see my partner, of course, our relationships are kind of all over the place, like anyone. I'm worried about my children's mental health. I'm worried about if they're thriving in their new schools, there's a complete weight of like concerns. But I do think it's the first time in my life, probably as a mother, I can say, you know, I feel content that my girls are happy, that I am finding space for myself. I mean, I say that it's one minute every so often during the day, but I'm taking a moment, taking a beat, slowing down in a way that I think I didn't see possible before.

5:26I think you can tell as well, your energy is kind of grounded. And it is, it is. And it's interesting. And, you know, it's been hard one to get to that place because you've talked so openly about burnout and so openly about divorce and all these hurdles and things that you've had to get through. What do you think is the biggest lesson, hard question, that you've learned through all of that that you've lived through, learned from? So ironically, my ex and I wrote a book called Where's My Happy Ending? I have read it. I read it purely on the title because I was like, this is the most genius title ever.

6:07I'm going to read this book. I mean, the writing, you know, was somewhat on the wall, but I think probably that book helped me find my way to where I am now more than anything. And it was the most unusual interview that got me there. You know, interviewed romance novelists, psychologists, therapists, everybody. And the final interview I did in that book, ironically called Where's My Happy Ending? And it wasn't in the book, was with a 96-year-old Welk fisherman called Derek West, who had been married for 75 years. And I went into that interview and wasn't maybe expecting much. And he gave me more wisdom than I could ever hope to sort of garner in a lifetime.

6:55He said the issue is that most people in any relationship, whether that's marital or friendship, are putting a lot of pressure on that one person to be their one and only till death do us part feels like more of a threat than a vow. You know, Clinton cards, you know, happily ever after feels so weighty. And he said, what I think people are getting wrong today is they're not reaching out to their community. They're not looking up. They're not looking around. They're putting everything on one person to be the best friend, the funniest person, you know, the manager of their life. He said, because when I'm out at sea and I'm fishing those whelks, if I fall overboard, it's not actually my wife or even my best friend or my mum or my dad that I reach out to.

7:47It's the lads on the boat near me who haul me overboard. It's my community. When I go to the shop, the corner shop, and I haven't got enough change, it's Maureen at the corner shop who's saying, by the way, don't worry, pay me back tomorrow. He said, just look at your neighbours, look at your community, whether you're a mother, father, you know, single, it does not matter. But we've stopped being part of, ironically, you had Michelle Kennedy on from Peanut recently. We've stopped being part of that village. And And I think I started reaching out more and putting less pressure on my now partner, Ollie, to be everything.

8:23My children to fulfil me fully. My job to be the thing that makes me thrive. I've started looking up and looking out and that has absolutely changed everything. That's so beautiful. It's so true as well, isn't it? It's so easy to forget, I think, in the sort of humdrum of, you know, up, kids, work, back, dinner. it's so easy to not reply to the whatsapp to think i'm too tired for the mum's night out and i know i did that for years as well and it isn't natural actually to just be sat with the same human every single night and then expect to fancy them and you want to go and you know it's just it's not it's not natural glennon doyle who is this author that i i love she talks about first marriaging things and second marriaging things and how different they are and that's i really heard you say that actually one of the big differences is putting less pressure on it.

9:15What else feels different this time? What feels different now is it's a really simple thing that I have been doing. So again, coming back to the pressure. So me time feels like way too much pressure. It's another thing to do on my list, you know. And so what I've started doing is when I say taking that time, it's realistic time. So after every kind of module of activity, whether that's school run, speak to Zoe on the Mother Kind podcast, have lunch. Everybody in their day can divide it into little modules of compartments almost of what you're doing. And between each thing, I did it just outside.

9:54I literally put my phone down. I take one minute and I think about something that morning that either lit me up or made me happy or something I haven't even said to somebody. Like my partner this morning, he just brushed his hand against the back of my back and it just made me feel really like comforted. And it was small. It was a little inflection as a tiny punctuation point in my day. But you know what, I'm going to let him know that that mattered to me. Because those are the tiny little punctuation points, the full stops, the commas, the, you know, exclamation marks that actually make up who you are and who the people around you are.

10:33Like, if we don't communicate the good bits, then all we send a sit in is sometimes the bad bits. So I've been taking those moments. I think anybody listening right now, if you are feeling the pressure of, you know, respite needed or me time or spa days, it's like, it's not about that. It's those moments. One minute, anyone can do it between the school run and your next meeting, between the school run and talking to the tax man, between the school run and going to the doctor. It does not matter what those two modules are, but take that minute and put your phone down, look up and think about something that has lit you up.

11:06It's so true. And I started doing weights class and the PT keeps saying the rest in between the reps is just as important as what you're doing in the reps. And I'm like, huh, that's an idea for life. The rest in between is just as important. You'll find me just horizontal on the floor. Yes, exactly. I'm like, I'm going to start the next one. There'll be so many listeners who will be thinking in that sort of first relationship, really considering thinking about divorce or changing the shape of that. What would you say to the Anna a couple of years ago who I would make up was kind of fearful, uncertain?

11:44What would you say to her now and in turn to that listener who's in that same place? Well, I think there's two things. One is that this is absolutely not a divorce club. I'm not here to... You don't want to be the poster girl. It is the most traumatic thing I've ever been through. You know, it is not all about, you know, all the single ladies off you go into the hinge hinterland and, you know, find you're happily ever after. It is categoric trauma. It's rough. And I have to preface this conversation with that because it would be wrong to do anything other than that. I think for me personally, I can say that I knew the blueprint for my daughters as my relationships did wasn't the blueprint I wanted them to see.

12:33And I have seen my girls obviously go through difficult times with us divorcing, but I've seen them completely lighten. Little conversations they've had with me have gone, mommy, I can see you're so happy now. And that's not to say that there weren't moments of happiness in my past. It's not in any way to demonize my ex. You know, it was 50-50. There were things I did, you know, and there are things he did, as in any relationship. But my little girls have seen me like reclaim bits of myself. And I didn't realize quite how many moments they heard of the crying behind closed doors. And I think that that was starting to significantly affect them.

13:13And when we told the girls that we were getting divorced, I'll never forget, we sat in the guest room, a kind of neutral space. Dr. Martha had said to me, just choose a neutral space. Don't make it somewhere, you know, their room or your room. Just go somewhere neutral. And sort of said, look, for no fault of mummy or daddy, you know, we're just friends and friends don't live together anymore. So we will be, you know, living apart, but we'll still be your parents. And we'd thought about it and we both geared ourselves up for this conversation, bringing positive energy into the room. not negative you're not sort of like sobbing as you're telling them sobbing telling them and my youngest just went okay yeah that makes sense um can I watch mama mia too now that was it and obviously we've held them throughout but um I think the thing I would say to the Anna of five years ago who thought it would be an impossible task yeah it's not impossible but it is something that you need privilege for because financial privilege to sometimes get out of a marriage.

14:17You did an amazing episode on your podcast with the, you know, it's still available a couple of years ago, I think, maybe last year about exactly the financial privilege of divorce and how hard it can be. Yeah. It's not for the faint hearted, but also it's not for the financially, for anyone who's not financially privileged, you know, and I think this is the thing that's really hard to say. And I don't have the solution for it. I'm not a divorce lawyer. I'm not a financial planner. I'm just a woman who went through it with that financial privilege. And I think the one thing I did do an episode on, which will be useful for anybody to listen to, with a divorce lawyer, Georgina Hamblin from Hamblin Lawyers.

14:58And she does offer pro bono one hour sessions with people to establish their case. So there are lawyers out there that you can get a lay of the land from. But yeah, it's not for the faint hearted. And I think what I would love to see is the Disney happily ever after is completely rewritten. That the fairy tales are kind of ripped up and, you know, reestablished because I grew up thinking that boy meets girl and runs off into the sunset. It's because we spent all of our teenage and 20s watching those rom-coms. Totally. And they're really different now. If you watch a modern rom-com now, they are not the Disney ending.

15:37No. But the ones that we grew up on were exactly like that. I thought that's how it would go and how it was meant to be. Well, right now it's boy met girl, boy and girl got divorced, boy met other girl, girl met other girl and boy. Sorry, I'm getting confused. I'll start that again. Well, there's that too. Yeah, there's all of that. So it's sort of boy meets girl, boy and girl get divorced, boy meets other girl, girl meets other boy. and then I've suddenly got a blended family of five with two guinea pigs thrown into the mix and you know that's the Disney happily ever after I want to see I want to see also my sister and her wife who have decided not to have children that's the happily ever after I want to see you know I want to see different iterations of what that happy ending can be and that divorce hate the word divorcee I think the language like broken family no do you know what it's reforming a family the language around it I think was so weighted I am not a divorcee I didn't break up my family I chose myself and I reformed my family and that is the language I want to see used around anyone making decisions that are going to be better for them but better for their children as well

16:56I want to change track to talk about yeah flex appeal because it is 10 years old. Ten years, yeah. A decade. A decade of you. And I remember, I didn't go, but I wish I had a view ten years ago in Trafalgar Square with a little one on your hip. Oh my God, yeah. Back in the day. I remember that day so well because I remember just thinking no one's going to turn up. You know, I'm an angry mother on the street who feels like there's a better way to work flexibly. And that all of my friends at the time had either stepped back from careers that they'd fought for or quietly been sidelined or been one of the now 74 ,000 mothers made redundant on maternity leave every year.

17:43So my friends and I were all in this category of being, I would like to back us and say, incredibly hardworking, incredibly talented and being written off and written out for simply having a baby. literally the minute and this is quite blunt the minute sperm hits ovum suddenly a female trajectory career trajectory is halted and you know any too well how that looks and so I remember that day just going is anyone going to turn up and suddenly the optics it went from online to offline and there were just groups of women really angry on the streets going yeah stop writing us off stop pushing us out for pushing out a baby that is the definition of courage to me by the way of showing up with no idea how it was gonna go was it just that sort of passion and anger in you that just got you got you there I don't know like I think I am an accidental activist yeah that I posted one day to my 62 followers like I'm hacked off that I can't work flexibly like I can't do this job because your flexible working request was denied wasn't it yeah because they said we'll open the floodgates was the phrase they said and i'm sure many listeners right now will have had similar responses the business reason given for declining my flexible working request to come in 15 minutes earlier and leave 15 minutes earlier was it will open the floodgates to others seeking flexible working and actually you asked where it came from i was looking around going well where are the people talking about this i could see the facts i could see the figures i was like why are we quietly all these incredible powerful brilliant women why are we quietly going out the back door almost apologetic apologetically saying sorry I'm so sorry I've got to go and pick up my daughter I'm so sorry I can't make that work because and it was like apology upon apology and I was becoming one of those women saying sorry until I actually just stopped one day when I'd said sorry to my daughter's key worker at nursery I'm so sorry I'm late.

19:48I'm so sorry. And I had to pay a pound a minute after six. And I was sat on one of those tiny primary colored chairs meant for an infant apologizing like a child. And I remember thinking it's not my fault. And I can't raise her, my little daughter, four years old with a Paw Patrol backpack on, big Bambi eyes, wondering why mummy is late again. I can't raise her to work hard in her ABCs, to do her GCSEs, to maybe go and do her A-levels, to maybe go to university, to maybe go and get a job. I can't raise her for the same fall that I had. And in that moment, I was like, right, like, we've got to do something about this because I'm setting her up for a fall.

20:24And sad thing in that is I never fought for myself. I was never going to fight for myself. I fought for my daughter. And that is what I think we do as mothers. And actually, do you know what? I want the next generation of mothers to fight for themselves. I did it as default. It was a accidental activism I actually want it to be a maternal activism for me, for you, for other mothers being pushed out, forced out. You know, on maternity leave, when you hear your new cover being told she's probably not coming back. Well, let's, you know what, lead with she is coming back from maternity leave. Let's support women to come back.

21:03And that's where it came from. me feel I'm like so I find it really I find it really emotional because like you just think how many women were quietly written off and uh I was nearly one of those and I don't really want to do the job I'm doing right now I've cobbled it together from various skill sets because I was pushed out I am literally a case study of someone going no I'm gonna do it myself but I'm exhausted doing this. I wanted to be in a job still. I want my daughter to be able to continue her career like our sons will, you know. And so, yeah, that's where it started and other women joined.

21:44And now, as you've seen, other men are joining. That in a decade is a success. It's not about mothers, it's about parents and people. I think you won't recognise and realise yet the impact that you have had. And I know it's cost you a lot. I think activism always costs a lot. And there are many people who, you know, haven't been able to carry on in the way they were because of, you know, they've burnt out and, you know, the toll that it's taken and the trolling and the pushing back. I think people really don't understand what it takes to do something like you've done. And, you know, so much of that comes up in the incredible new book, talking about, you know, the incredible power of social media that you've used to harness and connect and galvanize but also the really high cost of it what's it cost you showing up online and did is that what you wanted to show with the book yeah so the book's called influenced ironically and it's dedicated to my mum and the reason it's dedicated to my mum is because coming back to your point is that it's for a lost generation of women who had no choice.

22:55I remember I was nine years old and I walked into the kitchen and my mum was ironically slumped by the dishwasher, crying in a way I'd never seen her cry. We were of the 80s, 90s generation where tears were not seen, emotions were behind closed doors. And I said, mummy, what's wrong? And she said, I've realised that I don't have a chance to do what I want to do. She was 49, going through menopause, had raised my sister and I. And actually in that moment, I think it's utterly fueled everything I've done since. Now I look back on it. And so the book was dedicated to a group of women or generations of women who were written out, written off, who were at that juncture between almost maternity and menopause were made to feel invisible uh losing hair losing mind losing identity and this book was me writing them back in and doing it via the medium of social media because until again how you and I met how I've met so many brilliant women is because when in the internet landed when Instagram landed suddenly there was a portal for uh our voices to be heard yeah we couldn't be silenced there.

24:16We could not be silenced. I remember pitching to so many magazines and newspapers back in 2012, it was 2013, around maternity discrimination, flexible working, no one was interested. We only got to wedding dresses. We're not interested in mummies. We don't talk about motherhood. No, oh God, no, no, sorry. And so do you know what? I could surpass those mediums by saying what I wanted to say. And do you know what? People did want to hear about it. Do you know what my 24 year old self is quite interested to see how I'm going to be discriminated against the irony of it all but yeah so to come back to the cost of that social media I will never I will never not be grateful for that medium no job is easy and every single job has a cost the wealth that I have had has been uh in the connection I have with my children I have been and this is I'm the living breathing example for all the burnout and exhaustion everybody's job is pulling them in different ways but I have created a flexible job I've not been given it I've not been it's not been approved it's not waiting for a manager and there is you know my biggest success story has been being able to forge a career that's flexible the financial side you know the monetary side we need money to get by but ultimately like the wealth of my job has been being there for my children.

25:41I want that for every single mother. I want that for my mum who felt there was no choice to continue working because my work is just something. If I'm being honest, I feel passionate about it. I have purpose, but work is my something. My children are my everything and the two can coexist side by side, but don't you dare try and tell me that my family has to come below my job. In Holland, where I had my first daughter, family's at the top of the tree, business comes second in every iteration of work there. This is not some female emotional hunch. It is seismic how family comes above business in the Netherlands.

26:23In the UK, how on earth have we got it so wrong that business trumps family? It makes no sense. What do you want to see in the next 10 years? In the next 10 years, I would love to see a flexible working kind of utopia where humans, people, not just parents, ebb and flow between home and work without someone owning them. Where those with caring responsibilities, those with disabilities are included at the table, because ultimately we've spoken about this. what the companies the male billionaires are saying right now when they say everyone back five days a week what they're really saying is everyone back apart from you and that you is those with caring responsibilities and those with disabilities ultimately what lord sugar what sir dyson what jacob reese mogg what they are all saying is you can't sit with us so it is not for me about flexible working, it is as we've spoken about, it's about inclusive working, including as many people as possible at your table, remotely working from home, core hours, job shares.

27:41I don't care how you do it, but we need to break down this nine to five model and five days a week pinned to your seat, professional sort of seat warming. We need to break down a structure that was born in the industrial revolution where men went out and earned the bacon and women cooked it. Well, do you know what? We're earning and cooking. We're doing it all right now. We don't want it all. God, we don't want it all. But are we doing it all? Yes, we are. Yeah. Oh my gosh. Can you imagine if we got to that place? Oh my God. well you have played us if we do get there you've played a significant significant part in it so thank you well I'd say my mum has and that's something really important to say the women that have gone before us who didn't have platforms who had to accept a status quo that quite simply wrote them off I always ask the same question at the end which is if you could give just one gift to all the mothers in the world what would that one gift be and why it's a really good question And that one gift would be the removal of all guilt.

28:52I think we hear it constantly, mum guilt. And you've spoken about this brilliantly. We never hear dad guilt. And I would, as a gift to mothers across the land, like to remove that from everyone's plate. because there is this slightly fantastical version of what a mother is and just know you are it you are that version of mother that you're meant to be and remove any guilt uh any comparisons otherwise that is so beautiful thank you where can people support flex appeal where can they i mean amazon and bookshops for the new book but anything else that you want to galvanize So the book Influenced All Profits go to Flex Appeal.

29:42So if you buy the book. That's the best way to support, isn't it? Is to support using author. That would be amazing. So the book's available on Amazon and Waterstones. And I think if you could follow at mother underscore pucker, we have a really big campaign around Flex Appeal, around flexible working landing in 2026 that I really hope is going to get us closer to that flexible working utopia I speak about. But fewer words, more action. And I'll need you by my side and it will be very similar to where I began in Trafalgar Square. We will be there. Just give us the date. Give us the time. You are indeed mother kind.

30:19We will be there. Thank you, Anna. Thank you.

30:38Thank you.