The Morning Nobody Talks About

I dropped my daughter at nursery for the first time this week.

I sat in the car afterwards and didn't move for a few minutes. There was this strange heaviness in my chest...not quite grief, not quite fear. Something in between. The absence of her in the back seat felt louder than it should have.

It was a quiet moment. It was also, in its way, enormous.

Not just for Alana. For me.

I've spent twelve years working inside large organisations as a Consulting Principal. I've led behavioural change programmes, supported leaders through significant transitions, and thought carefully about what it takes for people to show up fully at work.

And nothing quite prepared me for the particular weight of that car park.

Because what happens in the weeks and months around a return to work after maternity leave is not simply logistical. It is not solved by a phased return schedule or a KIT day or an updated flexible working policy, however well-intentioned those things are.

What is actually happening (neurologically, psychologically, and in terms of identity) is one of the most significant transitions a woman will navigate in her professional life. And most organisations are not equipped to support it.

The research is clear on this, even if the conversation in most workplaces is not.

Matrescence (the developmental process of becoming a mother) rewires the brain in ways that are comparable to adolescence. A woman returning from maternity leave is not the same person who left. Her priorities have shifted. Her relationship to work has shifted. Her sense of self has shifted.

She will often not have the language for any of this. She will perform competence, because that is what the environment expects of her. She will say she is fine. She will sit in meeting rooms and say very little, and her line manager will think everything is going well.

And then, six to twelve months later, she will hand in her notice. And cite personal reasons.

I built Rooted and Rising because I kept meeting these women. Capable, qualified, quietly falling apart... not because they were not strong enough, but because nobody had created the conditions for them to land properly.

The morning I sat in that car park, I was both the coach and the client. I knew exactly what was happening in my nervous system. I had the frameworks, the training, the professional vocabulary for it.

And it was still heavy.

Which tells you something important about what women are navigating alone, every day, in the organisations you lead.

If you are responsible for people in your organisation, I want to ask you one question.

When your returning mothers say they are fine, do you believe them? Or do you know, somewhere, that fine is the most practised word in their vocabulary right now?

The support exists. The conversation is possible. It just has to be offered before the resignation letter arrives.

I work with organisations who want to get this right. If that is you, get in touch.