Ready or Not

Welcome back to Witching Hour: the show that looks at what's exciting, delighting, intriguing, and frustrating us as we make work, work alongside parenting. It's Ready or Not's loose little sister coming to your ears every Monday. In today's episode, we cover: Beers and Braids is the best thing we've ever heard of. What does sport have to do with career success for women? “As a mother”: the worst...

From deciding on a whim to pack up her little Mitsubishi and leave Brisbane for the glossy magazines of Sydney, to the stone she received from a magic healing man in India that remained taped to her body throughout an entire pregnancy, Bronwyn McCahon has tales to tell, so it's no wonder she's spent the good part of her career in magazines and media. She's edited some of the biggest titles in the...

Welcome back to Witching Hour: the show that looks at what's exciting, delighting, intriguing, and frustrating us as we make work, work alongside parenting. It's Ready or Not's loose little sister coming to your ears every Friday. In today's episode, we cover: The kindness that actually pays off at work (and it's not what you think) and how to give and receive feedback. The UK women over 65 combat...

When Ceci Jeffries and her husband received their infertility diagnosis, she hit rock bottom. She resigned from her job, withdrew from her friends and she was living what she describes as a quietly miserable existence. But then she learned how to set boundaries, prio ritise her mental health, and focus on what she could control. Now through Fertility Collective, she's helping others do just that:...

Welcome back to Witching Hour: the show that looks at what's exciting, delighting, intriguing, and frustrating us as we make work, work alongside parenting. It's Ready or Not's loose little sister coming to your ears every Friday. In today's episode, we cover: How a construction industry giant tripled the number of men taking parental leave. Recent research indicates that Millennial fathers dedica...

Picture yourself living the good life in Bali. You pee on a stick thinking you'll quickly quash any fears that you might be pregnant, but those two lines appear. The test is positive and you're keeping the baby. Only, you're doing it solo. You work for yourself, you don't tell your clients that you're pregnant for fear of losing the work and the much needed income, and maternity leave isn't a thin...

Welcome back to Witching Hour: the show that looks at what's exciting, delighting, intriguing, and frustrating us as we make work, work alongside parenting. In today's episode, we cover: Michelle Wolf's having it all analogy has us re-thinking our affinity for the breakfast buffet. The professional women who are leaning out, and why the term itself needs a rebrand. Can't we all just get along? Ins...

How do you return to work after a pregnancy loss when you support pregnancy, mothers, and babies for a living? This is the situation that Lactation Consultant, Midwife, Naturopath & Educator Joelleen Winduss Paye found herself in when she lost her baby girl 16 weeks into pregnancy. She experienced labour, her milk came in, and she somehow got through what she didn't think she could. Here, Joelleen...

Welcome back to Witching Hour: the show that looks at what's exciting, delighting, intriguing, and frustrating us as we navigate making work, work alongside parenting. In today's episode, we cover: Are you my momager? The burnout that millennial managers - particularly women and mothers - are experiencing in managing their team's emotional wellbeing, not just their workload. Plus, where do we draw...

An hour in conversation with Amy Pearson feels a lot like a session with a business coach, which comes as no surprise given she splits her professional time between brand design, education, and mentoring. She's incredibly knowledgeable when it comes to her work, but more than that, she's generous and honest when it comes to making work, work alongside parenting. She's a mother of two, She's the fo...

[Just a heads up, there's a few swear words in this ep] Welcome to the first episode of Witching Hour, coming to your ears every Friday. Think of Witching Hour as Ready or Not's loose little sister: a place to share what's exciting, delighting, intriguing, and frustrating us in the world of parenting and career. She might be Lucinda on Ready or Not, but she's probably more likely to be Lu or Luce...

If you're an avid consumer of lifestyle and travel media in Australia, there's a fair chance you've pored over the intelligent words of Caroline Clements. As one of the first editorial leaders in the very early days of Broadsheet, Caroline helped shape the publication into the authority on Australian city culture that it is today. Since then, she's worked in editorial and production roles with som...

Jemmason Power is an Aboriginal & South Sea Islander mother who lives in Meanjin Brisbane with her husband and her son. She works full time as a consultant & facilitator in indigenous cultural responsiveness, she was a lead actor in Stan's recent original series Black Snow, she's a model, and in a former life, she was also a professional netball player. She was born into a Pentecostal church, she...

You might not find a more honest conversation on motherhood and career than the one you're about to hear. Ava Chandler Matthews is a mother and the co-founder of Ultra Violette, a skincare brand stocked at some of the biggest retailers in the world. She went back to Ultra Violette at three months postpartum, she travels a lot, and while she loves her son to no end, she's open about missing her old...

Naomi Chrisoulakis is a freelance writer, postpartum doula, and a mother of two. In the early days of her career, she cut her teeth in the magazine industry, working for the likes of Marie Claire and Cosmopolitan before a move to Los Angeles would lead her down the freelance route. Moving home a year earlier than her husband to take an editor role at Women’s Health, it was during a four-day trip b...

That daycare Q&A episode I've been rudely promising for three weeks now is finally here, and I am finally back from my holiday. Given this episode is a bit different in nature, I also share a reflection on the first trimester of pregnancy number two and a recap on travelling to Bali with a toddler. I mention sex, the perhaps naive surprise of this pregnancy, my disenchantment with pregnancy this t...

Manon Pietra is a diversity, equity and inclusion partner at Canva. She's also the "other mum" as she puts it. That is, the non-birthing person in a two-mum family. What I love most about this conversation is the reflections around what we assume to be a gendered experience, because while Manon and her wife may be similar when it comes to biology, that doesn't mean that Manon would go on to unders...

Picture this: you're a mother of one, you're newly pregnant and you're at your dating scan. The sonographer goes a little quiet. There's not one baby in your tummy, there's not even just the two. You're pregnant with triplets. This is what happened to now mother of four and litigation lawyer Silje Andersen-Cooke. I can physically feel the shock and worry of it all: wondering what this means for yo...

Alison Rice is a mother and a journalist turned career and business mentor. She cut her teeth at The Walkley Foundation for Excellence in Journalism before going on to lead and launch some of the world's largest digital women's media titles into the Australian market. To some, she had it all. But, a realisation that her work was perpetuating a kind of desire culture and leading women to question t...

Tina Randello is the Chief Commercial Officer of global skincare brand Alpha-H. She’s also a mother of two and the founder of The Encoreship — a return-to-work program providing opportunities for women and mothers who have been out of the workforce for an extended period. She’s held down massive roles, she’s worked both full time and part time alongside her parenting journey, and she’s learned a l...

Elise Addlem is a feminism and philosophy educator for mothers and parents. She's also a mother herself, and through her work, she breaks down complex topics into digestible bites. She makes the daunting interesting and she is deeply passionate about educating others on the intersection of motherhood, feminism, patriarchal parenting, and neoliberal capitalism. Here, we talk about the perfect mothe...

Publicly, a burgeoning business that led her to New York for a meeting with Anna Wintour and to sharing the stage with Richard Branson on multiple occasions. And privately: eight years, 18 rounds of IVF, and a friend willing to carry her baby, all in pursuit of becoming a mother. This is an incredible story of how Collective Hub founder Lisa Messenger has made work alongside her challenging journe...

Sophie Walker is the host of hit podcast, Australian Birth Stories. She's also a published author, the creator of the birth class, and a mother of three boys. It was Sophie's traumatic first birth that inspired the podcast, which at the time of the interview had over 11 million downloads, but at the time of publishing, she's up to 12 million. That's nearly half of Australia. The expansion of her b...

Vomiting 30 times a day while trying to run a shop. No parental leave after the birth of her son Remy. Owning a retail business in Melbourne during a pandemic. Navigating her husband’s cancer diagnosis and treatment. And then, after falling pregnant with the baby that the doctors said would be nearly impossible to conceive without assistance, a pregnancy loss. Navigating motherhood and career for...

When I tell you that journalist and mother of two Melanie Dimmitt’s son has cerebral palsy, what kind of life do you imagine? Do you imagine someone that’s a bit angry at the world, do you picture their life at home to be a little sad? If your answer is a shameful yes that you don't really want to admit to, you're not alone. Melanie would've said the same once upon a time. But, her life is actuall...