Work Series: If you're feeling low in confidence, listen to this - with Lauren Currie

0:07Welcome to Motherkind, it is me your host Zoe Blaski. We are proudly sponsored by Wild Nutrition women's supplements. 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 world leading experts and thinkers to give us new ideas, new tools, new support, new inspiration for our lives as mothers and we span everything here from work to relationships to mental health and healing to parenting and I am very happy that you are here. This is the Motherkind work mini-series And I have such an important episode for you today because it is about confidence.

0:48A 2022 LinkedIn survey found that 67 % of women reported a significant drop in confidence when returning to work after maternity leave. This drop in confidence is huge. I would argue it's almost universal. And yet it is vital for feeling like we can handle not only the transition of back to work, but the years that come after it and often reimagining how we need to work. Confidence is the skill that unlocks our ability to think about what does this mean for me now? So today's guest is one of the leading thinkers on confidence and women. Lauren Curry OBE is the founder of Upfront. She has been named by Elle as one of the 30 women under 30 changing the world and by management today is one of the top 35 UK businesswomen under 35 and she is on a mission to boost confidence for 10 million women worldwide through her organisation up front.

1:47In this episode you are going to learn what real confidence is. It is not something that you have or don't have. It is a skill you learn and in this episode you are going to know the exact steps that you can take to go from questioning yourself and staying small to building unshakable confidence. And when I look back at my career, what has made the biggest difference for me is hands down developing this skill of confidence and anyone can learn it. You just have to know how. And that is what this episode is going to teach you. I am so excited for you to hear it. please do share this episode if you loved it.

2:27Be that mum, be that woman, be that person sharing these empowering, positive, possibility-inducing content and ideas because there's so much negativity, there's so much judgment, there's so much pressure on us mums. We have to lift and support each other up. So please do share the episode if you loved it. Here it is.

2:55Lauren, I am so excited to be chatting about confidence this afternoon with you. You are my confidence guru. And I think if one thing holds us back, you know, when we come off maternity service or when we've been out of the paid work for a few years, what I hear and my lived experience is that the number one thing that takes a hit is our confidence, is our self-belief. tell me what you see you have such a good vantage point on this what do you see with mother's work and confidence I think I see the truth the truth that you just shared that confidence is the consistent theme the consistent topic of conversations with new mothers but also mothers with children of any age you know I think because it's such a it's such a presence in our lives as women as we are navigating the world as we're building our careers as we're navigating parenthood and we live in a world that is fundamentally unkind to mothers and I think for a lot of women when they become a mother for the first time that can be a very confronting upsetting often quite shocking revelation and I do see what comes next though is the fun bit or the the exciting bit which is you know the truth will set you free what is it they say the truth will piss you off and then it'll set you free because there's so there's a lot of power and freedom that comes with understanding that you know this is a systemic issue and confidence is a structural issue you know we need to start treating it as a structural outcome rather than a personality trait and so you know me and you I've had lots of conversations over the years about how motherhood and confidence intersect.

5:04And I think it's a huge, a huge conversation that's so important. And I think it's amazing that you're zooming in on work and thinking about confidence in the context of work. I'm excited to have that conversation. What is confidence by your definition? Because I think you just said there, it's systemic, it's not a trait. And I think that is the first place that we get tripped up because mothers will say to me, I'm not confidence. that sort of fixed mindset so what is confidence true confidence so at Upfront we define confidence as learning to trust yourself and we believe that confidence is a skill that you can learn and it is a muscle that you can build so the same way we learn to breastfeed and change nappies and manage to get to the school run on time every day, most days.

6:02It is a skill that you learn and it is a skill that you learn through practice. I think confidence as a practice is the message I want to get to every mother who's listening today. It is a practice that you form rhythms and rituals around and that practice leads to behavior change both big and small because the other thing that we hear all the time to build on what you shared that you hear this you know I've lost all my confidence we also hear I'm never going to get it back because when you motherhood is such a transformative experience in both good ways and bad and you know the mother's listening will I'm you're really able to identify with those scary moments where you feel like you've lost yourself you realize you're not the person that you were before you had your babies and that can come with this narrative of I'll never get that confidence back and that can be a really scary idea to hold and so I want to say to everybody listening you can get it back and you will get it back because it's a muscle that you can build and it's a skill that you can practice how how do we get it back and i would say even stronger than before of course of course and stronger than before and in different shapes and sizes and forms as before like i always say confidence isn't something that you can graduate from like i can't give you a gold star in confidence if i could i would be that woman giving everybody a gold star because it's a practice it means that there is there's no final destination we'll never wake up one day and our confidence work will be done like I have been doing work around confidence building up front for nearly 10 years and you know the world is totally different than it was when up front started 10 years ago but we still women are still walking through the world with this deep seated belief that low confidence, lack of self-belief, low self-esteem, imposter syndrome is their fault.

8:28And it's something that we internalize as a failing on our part. And of course, agency is important. We all have personal responsibility and we all have far more agency than we realize. but a huge part of this conversation is systemic and is structural it is very difficult to be confident when you are exhausted when you're depleted when you are showing up every day without the support that you need and we know from all of the data that that is the case for many many mothers all over the world you know mothers are not getting the resource and the support that they need emotionally, financially, structurally.

9:12And so it's a ripe conditions for our confidence to start to disappear in those moments. And so how you get it back is by doing. Confidence is, it's a practice and it's about the actions that you take day after day, month after month, week after week, and these actions and these mindset shifts and these beliefs will start to change how you show up in the world and you know we've had over 11 000 bonders have gone through our bond our six-week bond program which teaches confidence and there's so many stories that i could tell you about what the consequences of those actions are whether it's you become somebody who sends emails without second guessing and over analyzing and sending them to three other people to read before you send whether it's you become the person that got the tattoo that if you wanted to get since you were 18 whether you become the person who leaves the toxic relationship who builds the business or who actually just starts to ask for the flavor of ice cream that they want even though they know that there's not much of that flavor left like it's it's from it's the really big significant visible things to the much smaller micro moments and I'm always really interested in those micro moments like those moments where you stop saying sorry unnecessarily like that's one of our missions up front and when you join a bond there is a rule we only have one rule and the rule is you are not allowed to apologize for six weeks and I am blown away every single bond by the power of just that even if you just do that and nothing else that will change your confidence 100 because we think that these little words like just is one that I've really tried to take out of my language I'm just a mum or can I just speak or I just need to it's like so like I'm making myself really small and I've just completely taken that out of my language because language is so important isn't it where else can someone starts.

11:27So I am picturing someone who they want to get back into paid work. They're not in paid work at the moment. They want to get into paid work. I think I'm picturing this mother who had a successful quote unquote, whatever that meant to her career before, but she just feels like she hasn't got the words. She hasn't got the, she's lost her skills. She feels like, and she's so nervous of even starting to look for work again. How would you coach her, Lauren? Like say she was sat in front of you now what would you be saying well of course the first thing i would say is come and join our bond because that's exactly what our bond is for and it's totally free for women who are on maternity leave always has been always will be but i think what i would say to that woman i think there's something really powerful in lowering the bar like i really wish we would all just lower the bar for ourselves like just a little bit because especially when you are a mother there is so much stress and pressure and judgment and expectation and whether that's perfectionism whether it's overworking whether it's people pleasing there's so much put upon us by society and so when you then put on top of that your expectation that you're going to come out of the most intense physically challenging experience your body and your mind have ever gone through and you're going to land your dream job with double the salary and a flexible working and purpose-driven and I'm like whoa okay let's let's take a step back and think about this properly it's really difficult to be excited and creative and to show up from a place of expansion and abundance what might I do where might I go what might the change I make in the world look like when you are absolutely exhausted and cranky and starving and pissed off and sleep deprived and stressed and so I want you to think what would it look like for me to lower the bar and maybe I find a job I call them bridge jobs okay so it's a job that might not be your dream job, might not be your dream salary, but it is a bridge to get you there.

14:02It's a bridge to get you back into the workplace, to get you back into the routine of talking about yourself, your skills and your work with your colleagues, with the world, on LinkedIn, whatever that looks like. And it might not tick every box, but it's the job that you take, that you know you're able to do and that is where you start to re almost heal recover reset refuel and maybe it'll last one year maybe it'll last two years maybe it'll last three maybe more but then there will come a day where you have the energy and you have the capacity to really start thinking about okay i do want to build this business i do want to go for that top job I do want to go for this promotion whatever that looks like for you so the short answer is to lower the bar I love that and I think I did a bridge job you did tell us about it well I had the vision and the dream and I had the passion and the fire for mother kind and I did start it straight away actually when I came off maternity service at about 15 months but I bridged it with what I used to do before so that I didn't have to earn me any money for about two years, which was brilliant because it meant that I didn't have that extra pressure of, this has got to earn money, this has got to pay the bills, this has got to cover the childcare that I'm spending on to have the time.

15:29And I think, I wish that we spoke more about that, these sort of parallel careers that we do, especially when we want to make a bigger shift, which a lot of mothers do when they come out of matrescence. You did, I did. A lot of mothers come out on matrescence and go I want to do something of more purpose and I think social media can make it look like overnight you're suddenly running these big businesses and I think that is so rarely the case it's so rare that someone is able to do that the reality is much more complex and messy and bridging bridging lots of different things totally and I think it's always the case where you see this surge of as you say purpose creativity it almost for a lot of women brings this clarity of like I've got a different value set and I can see clearly now what I want my future to look like and I see I was actually just having a whatsapp conversation with a friend of mine who's got three under five, one baby, her youngest is still very young.

16:35And she is tormenting herself because she's like, I want to write a book and I want to build this and I'm doing this and I'm doing this. And I keep saying to her, none of this is going away. And I have, my son's seven and I still have to have this conversation with myself because I sometimes get the, you know, we all do it. We imagine if I didn't have my son, my business would be in a very different place my working patterns would be very different and I was saying to her and I say to myself your creativity your energy your drive for this purpose is not going anywhere you're building a lifelong relationship with your ambition when you look at your whole life this is a tiny tiny part of it we're talking five years max right and it feels huge at the time it's difficult like i've not figured it out it's really difficult that's why podcasts like mother kind and these conversations are amazing because we need to keep telling each other these things and we need to keep having these conversations but i think i see so much fear of like it's almost urgency and franticness of like i have to do it now or else and you don't have to do it now it's not going to go anywhere it's not going to run out you have to honor the season that you're in and sometimes that is shitty because it's contradicting about what a big part of you wants to do but it's not going anywhere and how does confidence intersect with that because something that I've seen and I there's a study that I can't quite grab, but there is a statistic around the longer that you're out of paid work, the harder it is to get back to the level that you were and your confidence erodes.

18:25So what can you do? You know, you were talking about that sort of five year and I agree with you, you know, if you decided to take that time to focus more on family life, what can you do to keep your confidence high so that when you do decide to get into paid work again it is not this it's not an unsurmountable challenge which so many mothers tell me that it is especially if they've had multiple children and they've had a decade out they tell me it feels like a big wall and I just can't seem to get past it I think it's about and it's it's tricky isn't it because it's so different for each of us and we all have unique circumstances and we will be coming re-entering with expectations and dreams and wishes but I do think the core of it is self-compassion and I know that that's frustrating because it's not like do these five things and then it will feel better but I think the reason that it feels so difficult is that we give ourselves such a hard time and such little grace so to take your story for a walk it's like okay I've been out of work for 10 years and I've got this job now I'm starting and I feel like I'm an idiot feel like everybody's laughing at me feel like I'm not going to wait it's like you need you're going to need to work extra hard to be kind to yourself to ask for help to build a support network and that needs to be you like you need to do that it is your responsibility nobody else is going to come and do that for you you need to take charge of what are the stories that I'm telling myself about my value about my skill set about my worth how am I asking for help during this transition how am I being realistic about what I can achieve in this first year at this new job after being out of work for 10 years and I think for people who are in the midst of those 10 years it's figuring out a way for you to keep your spark sparking that's how I think of it is we all have voices podcasts books activities maybe it's drawing maybe it's singing maybe it's going for long walks in nature hanging out with friends you need to really listen and pinpoint what are the things that you can do that you can consume the people you can spend time with that make you feel alive and that bring you that spark and I think that's an amazing thing about the internet and podcasts and knowledge being the way it is now is that we can have motherhood, parenthood experts from all over the world in our ears.

21:28We can listen to TED Talks. We can read books. And, again, it's your responsibility to figure. And maybe it's not about consuming. Maybe it's about cooking. Maybe it's about spending time with your grandma. Maybe it's about, you know, you need to find what that thing is because I think what happens to many, many women is they are so focused on their children. And I know that you've done so much work on this Zoe, that they forget to focus on themselves. And so the end of that, they find themselves facing that new job with a totally, they're just so far away from themselves. They've lost themselves because they haven't stayed connected to their spark.

22:13spark yeah it's so true and I love how you say that the sort of simplicity that actually can be finding that spark and I heard this phrase the other day that I loved and it was make sure you take sips of yourself and I loved that just little sip of yourself whether that's as you say like is it a book is it a podcast is it a friend is it an idea is it writing a quick poet like whatever it might be art drawing how can you continue to take those sips of yourself so that you don't end up a decade in you know with very low confidence and very little sense of self that's I absolutely love that it's so true and I think there's something about understanding as we talked about at the start as confidence as a practice so it would be really easy for your listeners to look at you and I and think oh well they've got this all figured out and they're on camera and they're speaking on podcasts and they're really confident it's like we are both choosing and actively doing things every day to maintain that spark the confidence the curiosity it's like I am doing things that often feel uncomfortable you know whether that's therapy or difficult conversations I'm doing things that you know the classic of going for a run don't want to go can't be bothered make myself go always feel better at the end of it we're choosing to put on the playlist that hypes us up before we have big conversations like this it's like you you're in charge of curating that for yourself and once you figure out what those things are it's actually really special because you end up with a toolkit it's almost like you've got your own little buffet of these things that you know will tickle you when you need it yeah And I think that's so important to highlight because it goes back to the idea that you were saying that you're either confident or you're not.

24:09And it's so not that. It is not binary. The truth of it is, is that when I first started doing this podcast, I couldn't listen back for a year because I knew if I heard my voice, I would be sick and I would never release another episode. So it's choosing. It is a choice. it is a choice every single moment to do the the hard thing and I think that's why confidence as a muscle I love that analogy because I know that I'm starting to lift weights right and I know that building muscle is really painful yeah and I think so is growing confidence because you're constantly putting yourself out your comfort zone into your strength zone exactly it's like to build that muscle you have to go where you don't have any confidence to build it and there is always new places for you to go it's like michelle obama taylor swift they are finding places to go where they don't have any confidence it's like there is no limit and that feels really fun for me to think about

25:24So for mothers, when we go somewhere where we have no confidence and we are met with the internal fears that we have, which might be, I can't do this. I'm not welcome here. And we are met with that in a very real way externally. How do we deal with that? Because it's not the case. Is it like you said, you know, we live in a world which is unkind to mothers. It's not like you're going to get in your first board meeting as a mum and everyone around that table is going to be asking you about your children and how are you managing this. And potentially, you know, that is not going to be a kind environment.

26:03How do we continue to own and build that confidence in these unkind systems and structures? I think the core answer to that question is community. and I think that community might be one or two other women in your whatsapps or it might be a wider community like the upfront community or the mother kind community it might be a physical community that you have in your local neighborhood but that's what you need in those moments is the reminder that you are not alone because when you are in that room and you might be the only mother in the room you might be the only woman who looks and sounds like you in that room it's so so easy to feel isolated and isolation kills confidence that's one of the most common patterns that we see in the bond and why we've built the bond that centers community is that it's community that keeps your confidence buoyant over those ebbs and flows but again then it's about this personal responsibility piece to to ask for help and to articulate it so if I talk about the new mum that I was texting with this morning she's actively she's messaging me saying I feel like I'm not good enough and I'm worried this is going to fail please help me and so I can help her and I know that you've done a whole range of episodes on this before around why it's so difficult often for women particularly mothers to ask for help so I think in those moments it's keeping the narrative in your mind that this is a systemic structural issue and you are operating in spaces that were not designed for you and that's why you feel like an imposter because you literally are one like that is often the case you're challenging the status quo just by being who you are in the spaces that you're in and by asking for help and nurturing that community you know I think especially when it comes to things like money it's like women talking openly and honestly to each other about what they're earning about the bonus packages they're negotiating about their pensions about how they negotiated flexible working or their maternity leave policy like that is a radical act because those systems were not built for mothers and so we need to take it into our own hands and have those conversations and spread that information and build communities and welcome other women into those communities because I think another big part of this conversation that doesn't get talked about so much is internalized misogyny and how often it can be other women that are bringing the most judgment and negativity and harmful behavior that can really break your confidence in those moments so community and asking for help I think that's absolutely brilliant and so true about reaching out it can be as simple as sending that whatsapp and I'm so glad that you talked about pay because something that I hear a lot from my community is, you know, I actually feel so grateful to have a job or I feel so grateful to be doing this work.

29:32And I have done this with Motherkind. I feel so grateful that I get to do this. It feels like a gift. Who am I to ask for another, whatever it might be, 5K on my speaking fee, 10K on my, because this feels like a joy and the truth is I'd probably do it for free. But tell you what changed everything for me, Lauren, is exactly what you're saying. I started asking other colleagues of mine, what do you get paid? What do you get? And it completely changed everything for me, because I realized I was selling myself short in a lot of areas. And so when someone has that sort of mindset of, I'm just so grateful to be dot, dot, dot, dot, how do we flip that on its head and change it so that we don't perpetually undersell ourselves and not ask for what we really want and need and deserve it's such a good question because it's so rife i think that phrase i'm just really grateful to have a job i just want enough so we can have this this this it's like okay first of all you can be grateful and demand more and want more at the same time and we are taught that you have to be one or the other, that you're either grateful and a good person, or you ask for more, demand for more, and you're arrogant and greedy.

30:48Now, I wonder where that story might have come from. Hmm. You know, the patriarchal structure and system that does not want things to change. So they need the potential change makers to feel grateful for the crumbs. so I think that's the first thing we need to look at right is how do we hold both of those things to be true at once I can be grateful I can be appreciative and I can also demand more want more hope for more the second thing is the world is not on a budget there is no limit all of this comes from a scarcity mindset around there's not enough if I ask for more money I'm taking money away from another woman if I take up more space I'm taking up space for another woman who deserves that space more than me that's bullshit there is enough money love time clients opportunities for all of us for every single human to thrive and without getting into complex ideas around capitalism which is another podcast for me what's really changed the game for me has been recognizing when I'm in a scarcity mindset so I know myself when I start to think and from a place of scarcity I get really judgy so I get really judgy of myself and I judge others really harshly and now that I know when I hear those thoughts of what am I doing this is not good enough this is a mess why she got that what's she doing I'm like whoa this is I need to have a reset and I need to go and I don't know look at the stars look at the sky look at the sea something that reminds you of the expansiveness of the world and that reminds you that there this narrative that there's not room for all of us is has been very intentionally created so that we don't ask for more and when you ask for more that is a radical act like that is a feminist act and you know we're here today talking about motherhood and I know that especially for your listeners who have daughters like what do you want them to see you doing do you want them to ask for more do you want them to have bigger ambitions do you want them to demand more or is it more important to you that they're just really grateful like I feel like I know what the answer to that would be and so if it feels too hard to do it for yourself do it for your children that are watching you I love that because that this is a shift that I have been on and I feel like that foundation of confidence of trusting myself and trusting my skills.

33:43And I want to end on this of thinking about skills because so many mothers, whether they've taken a step back from paid work or not, I think a red thread that I see is struggling to really own and demand value for the skills that we bring especially those skills developed on matrescence I mean through matrescence my gosh like so valuable how does someone practically do that do you think because that's so links to this conversation around money and worth doesn't it because it has to link to a skill a value that we can add in the world I mean one of the ways I I think about that is how do you I would ask your listeners to think about how do you talk about your work to the world how do you talk about your work to yourself how do you talk about your work to your colleagues like how do you understand the value that you bring to your teams to your organization how do you articulate what those skills are now often what happens in the bond is those questions might make you feel uncomfortable because those questions are asking you to think about yourself in a very positive way in a way that might feel like self-promotion and of course that then triggers I'm not good enough this makes me feel awkward this is really cringeworthy I'm just little old me and so really you know it would be much simpler to say here are 10 steps to do a skills audit and to write them down and to learn how to articulate them like you can google that and find that out the real work to do behind the question you just asked is the emotional work is the heart like the heart work and i'm afraid that's much more difficult but it's so much it's so valuable it's so worth it because ultimately it's about the story you tell yourself about what you're good at so one of the ways we do this in the bond when we have our live sessions every week we always ask what we call a check-in question at the start of the session and those questions vary from week to week and halfway through we ask them we ask the bonders to put something they're brilliant at in the chat box and all the answers come flying through negotiating painting comforting people cooking whole wide range hard skills soft skills everything in between and then we say how did it feel to answer that question and then we get them to do the same thing at the end and the difference is extraordinary because they are working every day on building this practice of I am valuable my skills are valuable my knowledge is valuable my experience is valuable and they are gathering evidence all of the time to back that up that's something called the progress principle this is a scientifically proven method to build self-esteem and it essentially is writing down your progress writing down in black and white in a document in a journal when you get feedback you know when this episode goes out and someone sends us an email which we'd love you to do to say dear Lauren and Zoe this was exactly what I needed it to hear and it's helped me go for a job that I wouldn't have gone for before or it's helped me feel much better like for you and I we would write that down that goes in our folder that we are valuable and that we are good at our jobs and that our work is contributing and helping people and it matters and that's what I would encourage that's the practice that's the behavior that will start to change the story you're telling yourself about your skill set and if it feels too painful and too difficult sit down with a colleague or someone that you used to work with or somebody that knows you well and ask them to do it for you write down 10 things you know I'm great at and they will and it'll be great yeah and to add to that I do actually have this physical file that you are talking about I have printed stuff off it's it's been invaluable to me I think when you're not in paid work, getting that feedback is harder.

38:14Kids will rarely say to you, you know, mom, you handled that moment with such regulation and grounded us. I'm so proud of you. And that's when I think that practice becomes even more important to start recognizing it for ourselves as well. If we can't always get that externally is to be thinking about, you know, I handled five kids on a play date with ease today. I couldn't handle one kid five years ago. This was an experience that I had recently. I was like, do you know what? I've got five kids in my house and I am handling this so brilliantly and I wrote that down I was like look at how far you've come and I think getting into that practice not just with paid work is so important too isn't it yeah for sure and that's about self-reflection and that's a big part of building the muscle of confidence because you are noticing those moments and you and I have been doing that work for so long that now we notice them in the moment and that's where you want to get to where you have a like huh I just like I had something on Monday morning something went wrong with our product and we only discovered last minute and it was a bit of a stressful Monday morning scrambling and it was sorted but the first thing I did was I thought to myself I handled that totally differently than I would have even two years ago and then I had a conversation with my colleague and said how could I have handled that better did you notice a difference in how I handled it versus when things have went wrong in the past because I am so I'm so committed it's just part of my practice now that I will have those conversations with myself in the moment and then since January of this year I've started a new practice which is a bit more formal and it has a bit more structure where every Friday I sit down on my own and sometimes it's just 10 minutes with my notebook and I write down what happened this week what did I learn what happened this week moves that I made like things that things that I did to progress towards my goal and things that I learned and I am totally blown away by just how much that really simple it's so simple has transformed and improved my clarity of thinking and kind of removed stress from the day to day and I know it's hard because I'm one of these people who like I desperately want to be somebody who journals I want to say to you right now I've been journaling every day since I was 15 look all my notebooks I really struggle with journaling I've not been able to make the habit sticks like I go through phases where I journal every day and then I forget and then I'm like oh and I used to kind of get cross at myself with it but there's something about this routine that I've built of every Friday having that moment to look back is really working and I can see it affecting my own confidence because one of the things I struggle with with my confidence is this feeling of like it's never quite enough like even when I achieve something that externally is impressive in inverted commas or it's a goal that I wanted to achieve, I immediately, well, it could have been this, it could have been that.

41:35And I've been noticing that by literally logging things down week by week, it's like, I can't do that anymore because it's there black and white in front of me in a way that I can't argue with. The progress is right there written down. And so it's quieting, that inner critic is starting to become quieter. Yeah, what a brilliant practice for people to take away as well. Like three simple questions. We'll pop them in the show notes so you can just grab them. And yeah, I do the same. In fact, most successful quote unquote, however that is defined, women that I know, they all have some sort of practice which enables them to self-reflect, which enables them to get perspective and which enables them to keep focused on where they want to go.

42:23I think without that, it's so easy to start to feel pulled in too many directions and you can't see the wood for the trees. So I absolutely love that as a way to kind of bring this to a close. And 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 gift be and why? And I love this question. My gift would be a free place on our bond, of course, to every single mother. and I would also give her the gift of knowing the truth that we live in a world that's unkind to mothers and that means the system is broken you are not gorgeous and where can people find out about up front you how to join a bond yes please so I'm really active on LinkedIn I write on there every day around themes of confidence leadership entrepreneurship you can find me at laurencurry i'm also on instagram at laurencurry up front is weareupfront.com up front global on instagram and i would really really love to hear from anyone listening who has been touched or moved or has felt you know that this episode's brought up questions for them would really love to hear from you because that's what makes this work worthwhile it's true it's very true well thank you Lauren it's been a joy thank you so much Zoe