Rebecca Hogan is a feminist author, coach and mum, and the author of ME to WE: How to Rediscover Yourself and Truly Thrive in Motherhood. Her work focuses on helping mothers understand the identity shift of matrescence, unlearn guilt and reconnect with who they are and what they want alongside being a mother.
In this episode of The Mothership Podcast, Rebecca and I explore one deceptively simple but incredibly powerful question: why?
Why do we feel guilty for wanting more? Why do we put so much pressure on ourselves? Why does resentment show up? And how much of what we think we should be doing as mothers and women is actually what we want?
We talk about mum guilt, ambition, identity, the pressure of the ‘perfect mother’, seasonal living and learning to work with the season of life you’re actually in — rather than constantly pushing yourself to do more.
It’s a conversation about getting curious about the woman you are now, questioning the expectations you’ve absorbed and giving yourself permission to keep becoming alongside motherhood.
Why Do Mums Feel So Guilty for Wanting More?
There is a question that Rebecca encourages Mothers to continuously ask themselves:
Why?
Why do I feel guilty for going to work?
Why am I resentful that my partner gets to leave the house?
Why am I losing my temper over something seemingly insignificant?
Why am I putting so much pressure on myself?
Why do I feel as though everybody else is managing motherhood better than me?
And why, when I have the children I love, do I still want things that belong entirely to me?
These were some of the questions at the heart of my conversation with author and coach Rebecca Hogan on The Mothership Podcast.
Rebecca is the author of ME to WE: How to Rediscover Yourself and Truly Thrive in Motherhood, and much of her work is about helping mothers question the beliefs and expectations they've accumulated around what it means to be a "good mum".
Because sometimes the first step isn't fixing how we feel.
It's getting curious about why we feel that way in the first place.
Why have we normalised mum guilt?
"Mum guilt" has become such a familiar phrase that we can talk about it almost casually.
We feel guilty about working. Guilty about not working. Guilty about wanting time alone. Guilty about putting our children into childcare. Guilty about losing our temper. Guilty about going out. Guilty about not enjoying every moment.
But Rebecca makes an important distinction.
Instead of automatically thinking that's just mum guilt, what happens if we stop and ask whether we've actually done something that conflicts with our values — or whether we're feeling guilty because we've failed to meet an impossible expectation of motherhood?
Those aren't the same thing.
The image of the endlessly patient, completely self-sacrificing mother who puts everybody else's needs before her own is impossible for a real human being to sustain.
Yet many of us continue measuring ourselves against her.
Motherhood and the pressure to choose
One of the things Rebecca and I talked about was ambition.
There can be an uncomfortable assumption that wanting to be a good mother and wanting success, independence or fulfilment for yourself somehow compete with one another.
For many women, that creates an internal split.
You adore your children.
And you still want to work.
You want to be present.
And you still want financial independence.
You want family life.
And you still have ideas, creativity, friendships, ambitions and dreams that have absolutely nothing to do with being somebody's mum.
Matrescence gives us a framework for understanding why this can feel so destabilising.
Becoming a mother isn't simply adding a baby to the person you already were. It can involve a profound shift in identity, relationships, priorities, body, work, time and sense of self.
Rebecca describes it like throwing a jigsaw into the air. When the pieces land, they don't necessarily fit together in exactly the same way anymore.
The work isn't necessarily about getting the old version of yourself back.
It's about discovering how the pieces fit now.
Human being, not human doing
One phrase from Rebecca's book that really stayed with me was the distinction between human being and human doing.
Before children, many of us become very good at measuring our days through achievement.
Finish the project. Get the promotion. Complete the list. Exercise. Clean the house. Reach the goal.
Then you have a baby and can spend an entire day doing something incredibly important while having almost nothing tangible to show for it.
You've fed, held, soothed, played with and cared for another human being.
Yet the washing is unfinished, the house is a mess and half the things on your list remain untouched.
Motherhood can force us to confront just how closely we've connected our sense of worth with productivity.
Perhaps the question becomes:
Why do I need to have achieved something visible for today to count?
When resentment is trying to tell you something
Rebecca also talks about paying attention to resentment.
That matters because mothers aren't always given much permission to admit to emotions such as anger, jealousy, resentment or frustration.
We can immediately layer guilt on top of them.
Instead, what if we became curious?
If you're furious when your partner announces they're going to the gym, is the real problem the gym?
Or are you desperate for some time that belongs to you?
If you're disproportionately angry during the chaos before dinner, is the problem really what somebody just said?
Or are you overloaded, trying to meet several people's needs simultaneously and needing your family to operate more like a team?
Sometimes the thing that finally makes us explode is simply the last in a long accumulation of things.
As Rebecca explains, we may need to ask "why?" several times before we reach what's actually underneath the emotion.
That isn't about excusing behaviour that hurts other people.
It's about understanding ourselves well enough to change what keeps creating it.
Who decided what a woman should look like?
Our conversation about "why" moved beyond motherhood too.
Rebecca talks about the money, time and mental energy women can spend meeting beauty expectations.
Hair. Nails. Clothes. Skincare. Supplements. Treatments. Appointments.
None of those things is inherently wrong.
The more interesting question is:
Why am I doing it?
Perhaps you genuinely love having your nails done. Perhaps that hour is something you look forward to every month.
Great.
But perhaps you're spending money you don't really want to spend because you've absorbed the message that looking older is something you should fear.
The point isn't to create another set of rules about what women should or shouldn't do.
It's almost the opposite.
It's about questioning the rules we've already been given and deciding which ones we actually want to keep.
Motherhood doesn't move in a straight line
Another important part of my conversation with Rebecca was seasonal living.
We're surrounded by a fairly linear model of success: work consistently, keep progressing, achieve the goal and move onto the next one.
Motherhood doesn't always cooperate with that model.
Neither do our bodies, energy, families or lives.
Rebecca's approach encourages women to notice their own rhythms rather than assuming they should operate at maximum capacity all the time.
There are seasons for doing.
There are seasons for creating.
There are seasons for resting.
There are seasons when our children require more from us.
And there are seasons when more space begins to open up again.
That can be particularly important for ambitious women.
Slowing down doesn't necessarily mean abandoning the bigger vision.
Sometimes it means accepting that not everything has to happen in this particular season.
Matrescence doesn't end after the baby years
One of the important ideas in the conversation is that identity continues to shift as our children change.
The mother of a newborn faces a different life from the mother whose child is moving towards secondary school.
With every new stage there can be both loss and possibility.
Something ends.
Something else opens.
Rebecca describes this through the idea of seasons of matrescence — and talks about experiencing both grief and opportunity as her own daughter reaches a new stage of independence.
Understanding motherhood as an ongoing evolution can remove some of the pressure to finally arrive at a finished version of ourselves.
We're allowed to keep becoming.
Why community matters
There's another thing that makes all of this easier: other women.
Rebecca and I both talked about the enormous value of spaces where mothers can have conversations that go beyond the surface.
Sometimes we need deep conversations about identity, relationships and ambition.
Sometimes we need somebody to say, "Me too."
And sometimes we simply need a coffee, a walk and a moan about the week we've had.
Modern motherhood can be extraordinarily isolating. Families live further apart, friends become mothers at different stages, paid work structures our days and the spontaneous support networks previous generations may have relied upon aren't always there.
We shouldn't underestimate what happens when women realise that something they've been privately struggling with is shared by somebody else.
So, what do you actually want?
Perhaps that's the question underneath this entire conversation.
Not:
What should a good mother want?
What does Instagram tell me I should want?
What did the old version of me want?
What would make everybody else happy?
But:
What do I actually want now?
You don't have to know the answer immediately.
Motherhood is a huge transformation. There isn't a deadline for figuring out the woman you're becoming.
But asking yourself why with curiosity rather than judgement, is a very good place to start.
Listen to the conversation
About Rebecca Hogan
Rebecca Hogan is a feminist author and coach and the author of ME to WE: How to Rediscover Yourself and Truly Thrive in Motherhood.
Her work helps mothers unlearn guilt, reclaim their identity and reconnect with who they're becoming.
Website:www.rebeccahogan.co.uk
Instagram: @rebeccahogan_