The Exhausted Mother’s Guide to A Successful Return to Work with Joeli Brearley

0:07Welcome to Motherkind. It is me, your host Zoe. We are proudly sponsored by Wild Nutrition. Women's Supplements. This is the show that focuses on you, the woman behind the mother, because you deserve just as much focus, support and love as your children do. If you're new to Motherkind, welcome. I'm so happy you're here. Welcome to the Motherkind family and welcome to our regular listeners. Thank you for letting me into your world week after week and for sharing the show. It really does mean the world. My guest this week is Jolie Brewley, MBE, the incredible advocate for mothers. She has led childcare protests, changed laws which protect our employment's rights and got the cost of childcare firmly on the political agenda for a decade.

0:56Jolie was the CEO of Pregnant Then Screwed, the charity she founded. She's now set her sights on supporting parents with our return to work with her new business, Growth Spurt. Keep listening to learn the number one thing you need to get right in your return to work, what most employers get wrong and how to advocate for yourself in those years post-parental leave, even when you are knackered and your confidence might be low. And please share this episode with someone that you know needs to hear this support, compassion and incredible advice today. Here's the episode.

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2:49Jolie I am so excited to chat to you and I want to know someone's just clicked play on this episode they might be pushing a buggy driving on the school run on their commute why should they keep listening I think they should keep listening so we can talk in depth about the loneliness of new motherhood and that we are ignoring a huge transition that mothers go through, which is the return to work phase. I feel like we've thought in depth about pregnancy and when you first have a baby, but we haven't had enough conversations about the extraordinary challenge of returning to work after you've become a mother.

3:37Yeah. And you've been at the coalface of, you know, working motherhood and, you know, motherhood in general, and particularly intersecting with policy with Pregnant Then Screwed, which was just an unbelievable decade of activism that you led. And I feel emotional because I feel so indebted to you because you were the one that got childcare, the cost of childcare, structural changes that needed to happen on the agenda. And you've now left Pregnant and Screwed. So when you reflect back on that, what do you feel most proud of during that time? Oh, there's so much I feel proud of. I think probably top of that list would be the number of women that come up to me and say, Pregnant and Screwed saved my life.

4:31And they mean that in the sense that they experienced pregnancy or maternity discrimination. Something really brutal was happening to them at work when they were at their most vulnerable. And we gave them a lifeline because we gave them the free legal advice and the support that they needed at that time. And as somebody who's been through that myself, I didn't have it. and I know what that means to women to have a shoulder that they can cry on and somebody who will give them the advice and the information they need at the right time. So that's probably top of my list. That kept me going for a decade.

5:09But second to that would be getting childcare changes over the line. We've still got a long way to go. It's not finished, but we move the dial without a doubt, alongside many other brilliant campaigners and organisations. And then other legal changes and other legal shifts like flexible working, redundancy protections. We played a role in the miscarriage leave bill that's going through non-disclosure agreements. I think Pregnant Then Screwed and not just the organisation, but the community that it built helped to change the narrative around what working motherhood meant and how the labour market just isn't fit for purpose when you have children.

5:52Yeah, I mean, it's just phenomenal. And I also wonder, you know, what's so fascinating about you is that you were going through your own matrescence. You know, you had two young boys and you are out there growing this charity and act, you know, and in a way experiencing what you were trying to change, which was that the system didn't fit. I know at times you felt extremely burnt out. What was the cost to you personally of making the changes and just the huge impact that you had? I started pregnant and screwed a year after my first son was born. And I did it at a kitchen table with a laptop while bouncing a baby on one knee and trying to spoon feed him some sort of mush.

6:40with one hand I built a WordPress site and then I launched it on International Women's Day 2015 and initially it was just a blog it was a place for women to tell their stories of discrimination in a safe anonymous way and I begged and pleaded with people to put their stories on there because people who'd experienced that type of discrimination were terrified and they didn't want to be branded a troublemaker. They were terrified of sharing their stories. Many had signed non-disclosure agreements. And so it was so much work to get people to trust me that I would keep their identity safe. And then it mushroomed from there and I never expected it to end up where it did.

7:25I genuinely just thought, right, we'll get people to post their stories. People will read them and they'll go, oh God, is this a thing? Is this still happening? Right. We'll fix that because that's a real problem. You know, somebody would come along on their white horse and they'd fix the whole thing. And of course, that didn't happen. So I kept going. And the first campaign that we did was to extend the tribunal time limit from three months to six months, because that was the thing that had really scuppered me when I had had my experience of pregnancy discrimination. And that law is due to change next year.

8:01So that's how long it takes to change things. 11 years we're looking at of hard campaigning and it's brutal you know campaigning is is losing you're constantly fighting a battle where you know you're going to fight fight fight and then somebody's going to say no to you and that really takes its toll in and of itself which is why I say the support that we were offering women was so important to me because that's what kept me going that was the light to the dark of what we were doing with campaigning and then in addition to that of course as campaigns grow people dislike you they hate you and I'm like a big Labrador I just want everyone to love me and so dealing with people being mean to me being really cruel was really really tough I found that really hard and then of course the pandemic hit and that was a different kettle of fish altogether where it wasn't just about pregnancy and maternity discrimination.

9:05Women were dying. Pregnant women were dying because the government hadn't considered them in policymaking. And it felt like we were the only organization talking about it. And we were in such a privileged position because by this point, women did trust us. They were coming to us and we had a line through to MPs in the government. And so the pressure on us was enormous. And there were two of us at this point who were dealing with our own personal situations with kids at home and families who we were worried about. That took its toll more than anything you could imagine. And I crashed. I became really unwell as a result of feeling that pressure of not wanting anybody else to die.

9:59And then so when we emerged out of the pandemic, I had to get some therapy to deal with the trauma from all of that. But also what, in addition to dealing with pregnant women dying, I'd received death threats, numerous death threats and death threats against my children because of the work we did around the vaccine for pregnant women. him. So the pressure was catastrophic actually on my mental health. And I don't think I ever quite recovered from that. So to answer your question, eventually I had to walk away from pregnant and screw because I was unwell. I was really unwell mentally and physically.

10:44I now I have a long-term health condition as a result of the stress that I was put under from running the organisation. But walking away does not mean that I've fallen out of love with the mission, because this is my life mission to end the motherhood penalty. And I don't necessarily think I'll achieve it in my lifetime, but I will never stop striving for things to change for mothers. Oh my gosh, I was just so into, yeah, the emotion of that and the long-term cost of it. How do we protect our activists better? What did you need that you didn't get? The problem we have in this country is that activists do not get funding.

11:25So they do in America. In America, they have philanthropists who support people with lived experience of a specific issue that can build communities. And there is a mechanism for doing that. We don't have that in this country. And so the only way that activists can actually ensure that they can live as well as be activists is by becoming a charity. And that's a way that you can get the funding that you need. but charities are set up for comfort they're set up for safety they're set up for service delivery essentially I mean they go back centuries they go back to when you had very rich men and their very rich wives had nothing to do and so they wanted to do something with the money but you know the structure hasn't really changed very much since then so you end up in a situation where the only way you can afford to live and be an activist is to become a charity but then the structure itself works against you.

12:23And that's where I found myself with Pregnant Men's Grooge, which is one of the many reasons why I felt I had no choice but to leave. And if you look at the people that are really making change at the moment in this country, it's individuals. So you think about Quajo, their housing campaigner, or you think about Zelda Perkins, who's campaigned on non-disclosure agreements. These are people that have no money. Nobody's giving them any money to do the work that they're doing. But they're people with lived experience, very credible, very authentic, and have this amazing ability to communicate their issue in a way that attracts people so that they lead communities in the work that they're doing.

13:06So what we need to do first and foremost is find new funding models for activists and trust those activists. Stop putting barriers around their work. Just say to them, Here's some money, you go do your thing. And if you screw up, you screw up because you're a human. You're a messy, messy human. And that's okay. But we trust you to lead the change. And secondly, they need support as in mental support. They need mentors. They need people who will be there when it all collapses around their ears and will give them the love that they need at that point rather than telling them you've screwed up. They need community around them.

13:46Yeah. And I just cannot imagine receiving death threats on your children is an unbelievable cost to pay. How did you make the decision to leave Pregnant Then Screwed? Because, you know, not many people listening would have started an activist organization, but many, many, many people listening will find themselves in situations, whether it's a relationship or a job or a business, that no longer fits. and I'm wondering what that process was like for you. How long did you know before you really knew, before you then took action? I knew a year before. There was a moment that had happened 12 months before I resigned where it was the first time it had crossed my mind, I don't think I can do this anymore.

14:36At that point, I got signed off by the doctor with burnout. out. I got signed off for three months and I returned to work after three weeks because I felt this enormous pressure to go back. The team were great. The team were brilliant and kept saying to me, you need that time off. But I felt pressure from other areas that I had to return and I returned too fast. And that whole year I was miserable. I was exhausted. So just getting out of bed every day felt so draining and every conversation felt challenging and every problem felt like it span and span and span in my head and I couldn't find a solution to it.

15:18You know, when you wake up in the middle of the night and there's, you have a problem in your life, whether it's a personal problem or a professional problem, and that problem just feels massive in the middle of the night, like completely intractable. You cannot solve it and it's going to cause so many problems. And then in the morning, when the light comes in, you think, oh, actually, it's okay. I can handle that. I can deal with that. I felt like it was the middle of the night constantly for a whole year and I couldn't solve anything. I was crying a lot. I just felt lost for a full 12 months.

15:57And it just got to the point where everybody who knew me personally in my life was saying, you just can't keep doing this. You can't keep going. You're going to kill yourself if you keep going. But of course, Pregnant Men's Creed was my third child. I'd given everything to it. It was built from my trauma. And so walking away from that was the most painful thing I've ever done. But it felt like I got to a point where it was my health or the charity. And it became that stark. So that's where I got to. And that's why I walked away. What would you say to someone who is feeling that way that you did when you got signed off and you went back too early.

16:47I think that is quite common. I've heard that a lot where people are being given time to rest or recover from either an organization or in their family unit or wherever it might be. And they don't take that. What would you say to that woman listening? I'd say it is not selfish for you to rest and recover and that work doesn't love you back. and when you're in it, you feel like you have no choice but to return. But once you extract yourself and you look back on it, you think, good God, what was I doing? Why did I do that? You know, I left for three weeks and the world didn't collapse and it will not collapse without you.

17:34Like the world does keep running without you being there. Organizations can function without you, you working when you're burnt out is not only bad for you, it's bad for your team and bad for your organisation. So you need to take that time and you need to rest. And if a doctor tells you you need three months off to recover, take those three months to recover. If you can, I mean, part of the problem, of course, that people experience is they then go on sick pay, which is an absolute pittance. So financially, they can make it quite challenging. So I would say to people that are listening that manage people and that have a responsibility for others that you need to make it so that people are able to take the time off that they need to rest 100 it's so true what you say you know when I think back to some of the big organizations that I've worked for and you know the hours I would work way above what I was ever paid contractually to work because at the time it felt so important and I was this kind of manager and now looking back and think, wow, that's, you know, I would never do that again.

18:38Even on my own business now, I do not do that because yeah, you just have to realize exactly that, that life goes on when you step back and that we are, you know, our health and wellbeing is the most, you know, we're at the top of the triangle, right? Yeah. If we break everything below you breaks. Yeah. And we are not built to work like that. We are not made to do 60, 70 hour weeks in an office working. So eventually you will collapse if you keep going like that. And since then I've spoken to so many women, it's nearly always women actually, because they tend to also be propping up things in the home in addition to propping up work who have long-term health conditions as a result of just, I've got to keep going.

19:26I've got to keep going. That mentality that is really bad for us and will eventually make you deeply unwell if you're not careful.

19:41At the start of the podcast, we talked about this return to work moment. And I really want to dive into that because I think as you said you know it is this moment that's absolutely critical in a mother's kind of path through her matrescence journey and yet is pretty underlooked there's lots of organizations paying lip service I think to that return moment but actually you know what does real support look like and so why is that moment so critical do you think and then two follow-up questions is what do the organizations who get it right do right and what do the organizations who get it wrong do wrong okay so i think it's so important because if you think about having a baby we know how important that is we talk openly and freely about how what a monumental change to your life it is becoming a mother.

20:43And we know about the brain changes that happen when you have a baby. So your brain completely rewires. It's a change that is as significant as puberty, which is why, you know, matrescence has become a thing. Grey matter increases, your white matter reduces, and it's preparing you for caregiving, obviously and your new role as a mother it's worth saying as well these brain changes happen to men if they are deeply involved in caring which is why it's so important that we extend paternity leave and so you spend you know on average women take nine months off when they have a baby and they're in this new completely new world where you are selflessly giving yourself entirely to this new baby who, let's be honest, is completely useless.

21:34And you are there to give it absolutely everything it needs. And maternity leave is such a weird period. Weird. It's so weird. It's so lonely. It's so brutal. I found it so difficult. I really struggled. I didn't enjoy it. Both my kids didn't sleep so that I wasn't sleeping. I definitely had postnatal depression, but didn't identify it. They would cry during the day. I remember one time just with a crying baby, just putting him in a cot, going downstairs, cracking open a bottle of wine and the emergency cigarettes and just sitting outside and drinking out of a bottle of wine and chain smoking cigarettes on my own because I just was beside, I couldn't cope.

22:23I had never told anybody what was going on, never spoke a word of it. My partner would come back, how was your day? Yeah, fine. Yeah, no problem. And when I was deeply unhappy and then you look to go back to work and I was elated to go back. I know not many women are, but I was really looking forward to it. And despite the fact that I was looking forward to it, when I got back to work, I cried in the toilets every day. for three months. And I had a really supportive employer. He was really good and tried his best to help me as much as he could. But it was like everybody was speaking Klingon. I didn't know what people were saying.

23:02It was words. It didn't make any sense to me. And I was struggling a lot. So if I'm somebody who was desperate to get back and had a supportive employer and had that experience, for the women that don't want to go back and don't have supportive employers, it can be catastrophic that period where you return. And so I did a survey of five and a half thousand parents who returned to work in the last three years and 89 % of them said returning to work was hard. Three quarters said they didn't get the support they need and one in four, 25 % left their job as a result of a lack of support. That's devastating.

23:43It's devastating for the women because if they had the right support, they could get through that really difficult period and come out the other end. It's devastating for companies because they're losing these brilliant, talented women who, if they got it right, would be way more dedicated and better than they were before. And it's devastating for the economy because they're out of the system. Yet, I didn't know of anything really that existed that was working to help women through that period. so I asked them what they needed and there were very clear things that people wanted they they were lonely they desperately desperately wanted peer support they wanted to talk to other people that were going through the exact experience that they were they wanted career coaching because you get back to work and you have all these big philosophical questions who am I why am I here Does this matter anymore?

24:40Is this what I want to be doing now? So you need somebody to help you unpick that. They wanted mentorship. They wanted somebody to do one-to-one support with them so they could be themselves and be really frank about their experiences. And they needed help with the practical stuff because there's loads of mental load issues that happen when you return to it. You've got childcare to think about. You've got all the domestic labor to do. you've got to think about what you're going to cook every evening like this whole new stream of stuff that you haven't had to think about before as well as adapting back into work so I thought I think this is solvable I think we can fix this and so that's what I've turned my hand to now when you put it all together like that you know you've got this whole new way of living really it is a whole new way of living when you become a parent and then you're going back to work You never had to rush home on a deadline before.

25:38But now if you're a minute late for that nursery, there is so many new skills that I think we have to quickly grapple with. I can totally understand those statistics. It's kind of one of those surprising, shocking, unsurprising things, which is like, of course, people feel like this. What do the organizations who get it right? They're definitely out there. What are they doing, do you think? The larger organizations have often trialed different schemes to support parents. So Ernst & Young were the first organization to trial maternity coaching. So they offered this for every woman returning to work from parental leave.

26:20And they found that it reduced attrition by 5%, which is massive. and the personal development reviews of the women when they returned previously had deteriorated. Whereas when they offered them career coaching, their personal development reviews improved. So they were performing better. They were more productive. They were happier. And they also do internal peer-to-peer support, which works. That really helps. If you are a big enough company where you can buddy people up when they return, there are loads of positives to that. Of course, it's not perfect because there are always going to be power dynamics in companies.

27:01And you're also going to always going to be a bit wary of being really honest with colleagues compared to people that you don't have to see every day at work. You know, you don't necessarily want to be sitting in a meeting with someone when you've just told them that, I don't know, your nipples gone massive because you've just been like pumping for 24 hours and you don't know how to get it back to the size that it was before. I remember that happening to me. So they have tried these two great schemes, which give us loads of evidence that show these things work. What I love as a policy, what I love to see from companies as policy is carers leave.

27:38I really want to hammer home how important this policy is. And so few companies do it. The companies that offer 10 days paid carers leave see so many benefits in terms of reduced attrition and in terms of increased productivity and unplanned absences start to deteriorate as well and it's because you go back to work and your child goes into nursery and inevitably they're going to get sick it's so cruel that why is that it's so hard babies start licking each other yes yes but it's just so difficult you know you're just back and then you know it's almost the total norm that that happens you then have to have days off because your child can't go to nursery for 24 hours 48 hours yeah and you are already broke because you've just come off the back of maternity leave you're panicking about your job and your performance and so then calling in because your child is sick the guilt oh like it's too much and you know some companies then make you take sick pay and you've just come off maternity leave.

28:47But if you have this policy where you have 10 days paid carers leave, it is your company saying to you, we get it. We get you're going to come back and you're going to need to have time off because your child's sick. And that's okay. You take that time. We're going to look after you and we're going to give you the money to make sure that you're not out of pocket for doing so. And it just changes the culture massively. So, and the companies that do this, Centrica, Tracta, and they found that it saved their company over three million pounds implementing that policy. So this is a policy that is good for businesses as well as really, really brilliant for parents.

29:24I would encourage anybody listening to lobby their employer to implement that policy or any employees listening to implement it. And then really, you know, simple things like you return to work and your employer sitting you down and saying, oh, we're so glad you're back. We've missed you. It's so brilliant that you're here. How are you? What do you need from me? Tell me what you need and I am here to help you. So few people get that and it's so simple and so important. Yeah, it's just that recognition, isn't it, of you haven't been on a holiday, you haven't been on a break. You know, if you've had an experience like you or I did, you have walked through, you know, the most challenging experience of your life and you're different and I think if an employer can recognize that and actually there are some phenomenal things that have happened in that difference many skills that you've developed that are going to make you even better at your job yeah I think if an employer can recognize that it just helps so much to feel seen in that way as opposed to the experience that so many have where they walk in and it's like you're the same person you've got the same values, the same priorities, the same output.

30:37You want to work in the same way and it's like crack on. That happens so often. Women return to work and their employees are like, oh, hello. Yeah, off you go. There's your laptop. I mean, I heard a story from a surgeon who came the first day back at work and she was still breastfeeding. She was placed straight into an 18-hour surgery. And of course, her breast became completely engorged and she was on her feet and had to think very, very clearly you're in surgery. And nobody, when she got back said, okay, let's give it a couple of weeks. You know, let's ease you back in. It was straight in, straight back into surgery.