Firestartermum

“I think society has lied to us.”

Across four UK cities, I’ve heard mothers describe exhaustion.

Loneliness.

Identity shifts.

But this mother from Bath said something different.

She questioned the story many of us have inherited.

The story that says:

Do everything.

Be everything.

Need nothing.

She said:

“Humans above careers.”

“My children are more important than my career at the moment.”

“I don’t want to miss their firsts.”

Not because ambition disappears.

Not because mothers stop mattering.

But because seasons matter.

And maybe motherhood isn’t asking women to become smaller.

Maybe it’s inviting us to question what success actually means.

What part of her answer stayed with you?

📍Bath
🎙️The Firestarter Question

Across Bristol, Weston-super-Mare and Bath, mothers kept describing the same invisible shift.

Not just exhaustion.

Not just overwhelm.

Transformation.

In Weston-super-Mare, one mum said:

“She hasn’t lost herself. She’s just adapting.”

In Bath, another mother described motherhood as:

“the biggest psychological change since becoming a teenager.”

And in Bristol, one mother quietly admitted:

“I feel the same actually.”

That moment stayed with me.

Because this project was never really about collecting advice.

It became something closer to witnessing.

Listening to mothers describe identity changes that are usually spoken about quietly, privately, or not at all.

Different cities.
Different voices.
Different emotional weather.

But the same thread kept appearing:

motherhood changes the mother too.

This is part of the Firestarter Mum street interview documentary project.

Making mothers visible again.

Sometimes most powerful thing a mother can say is not „I got through it” but „ IM STILL IN IT”. This mom is incredible, she stopped and answered my question whilst in**ed very middle of mommy chaos with a crying baby. Hugs to you 🧡🧡

A week from today, I’ll be in Bath with a microphone, asking one question in public:

“What would you say to a mum who feels she’s lost herself?”

On the surface, it’s simple.

In reality, it’s not.

Because what happens next isn’t just an answer.
It’s a pause.

A real one.

The moment where someone decides whether they can be honest in public about something they’re still living through.

Across the last campaigns, I’ve heard all of this—often within the same hour:

“it gets easier”
“you’ll find yourself again”
“I think I’m still in it, actually”

Same question.
Same street.
Different truths.

We tend to talk about motherhood as if it follows a clear arc.

But what I’m hearing is something more complex:

Not disappearance.
Not a neat return.

Adaptation. Reshaping. Meaning-making in real time.

👇👇👇

And the bigger gap isn’t just the change itself.

It’s how quietly it happens.

We’re very good at supporting mothers when something goes wrong.
We’re far less good at seeing them while they’re still holding everything together.

That’s what this project creates.

A public moment where a mother is asked—
and actually listened to.

No script.
No tidy version.

Just what’s real.

📍 Bath
🗓 6 May (World Maternal Mental Health Day)

I’ll be out there capturing these conversations as they happen.

Back this up🔥

As this grows, I’m speaking with a small number of partners who want to support it—
not as content, but as a living archive of mothers’ voices across the UK.

If you’re working in maternal health, women’s wellbeing, or community impact, this is exactly the kind of work worth backing.

My inbox is open.

⸻

Because maybe the question isn’t:

“Do mothers lose themselves?”

Maybe it’s:

Why do so many have to figure that out alone?

I started asking this question because I needed someone to ask it of me.

What I didn’t expect was how many women would stop mid-street, pause, and look like they’d just been handed something they didn’t know they were waiting for.

Peanut surveyed over 3,600 women across the UK and found that 72% feel invisible.

Not occasionally. Regularly.

But here’s what that invisibility actually looks like in their own words:

“Everyone asks about the baby. Nobody is looking after me.”
“I have to stop being ME to be someone’s caregiver.”
“I feel like I don’t have an identity outside of being a mum.”
This is not a feeling. This is a pattern.

And yet — every time I ask one question on the street, something shifts. Women exhale. They pause.

They say me too to a stranger.
That pause is the whole project.
You are not alone in this.
You never were.

💛

This isn’t really about advice.

When I ask that question on the street…

something else happens.

Q: “What would you say to a mom who feels she’s lost herself?”

For a moment, she stops speaking to me.

And starts speaking to herself.

Not the version she’s trying to become.

Not the version she thinks she should be.

But the one who is in it.

Right now.

There’s no rewriting in that moment.

No “better story.”

Just…meeting yourself.

And that’s the part we skip so often.

We try to fix before we’ve even seen.

But when you really meet yourself there…

something softens.

Something integrates.

And maybe that’s why the pause is so powerful.

Because it’s the moment before she remembers her.

Matrescence - is a profound identity shift a mother experiences when she becomes a mom. Most people never heard of it - it describes sociological, mental. Emotional and physical changes. It’s not some silly and belittling baby blue- it takes up to 10 years + for a woman to rearrange and recalibrate her self. It’s not that’s she’s losing herself- she’s evolving. And feeling lost is a real experience. Yet feeling lost doesn’t mean you are lost. It means transformation happening ..

This came up in one of my conversations.

Not big changes.
Not finding hours of free time.

Just… 10 minutes.

20 if you can.
Maybe more on a good day.

But something that is yours.

I remember how hard that can feel in reality.

When everything depends on you,
and your time doesn’t really feel like your own anymore.

But I also see how important it is.

Not in a “self-care” way.

In a way that brings you back to yourself, even slightly.

And sometimes that’s enough to shift something.