the mothering
FOR THE WOMAN BEHIND ‘MUM’
Modern motherhood asked you to become a lot of things.
This is where you decide what stays.
A six-month small group for the person who existed before she was somebody's mum — and is ready to meet her again.
Next group begins in March.
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— HOW IT STARTED
Earlier this year, I went looking for something.
Not a mums group, not a personal development course.. and definitely not a circle where everyone cries and we hug and burn sage.
I wanted to find women who loved their kids and their lives but were also interesting people in their own right who wanted to talk about actual things. Women who were almost done with the baby years -or at least for the first time - but hadn't quite figured out what came next. Who wanted to go deep but could also be completely unhinged in the same conversation.
I couldn't find it. So I built it. That's how The Mothering began.
This is not a course. Nobody's teaching you how to be a better mum.
— WHAT IT IS
We're not talking about your kids except when we are, which is sometimes, because they're our lives - but it's not the point. The point is you.
We spend six months doing the kind of reflection and work that actually changes something. Figuring out what you want. What you're carrying that was never yours. Who you are now. Who you're becoming. The patterns you inherited and whether you want to keep them.
What you'd want your kids to say about you at your 70th birthday - not about what you did for them, about what it felt like to be loved by you.
We get to the heart of it. What kind of woman do you want to be, inside your family and outside of it -and what's actually in the way?
HERE'S HOW IT LOOKSEach month has a theme.
MONTH ONE
Remember
We start by asking who you were before motherhood swallowed you whole. Not to go back. Just to remember she's still in there.
MONTH TWO
Reclaim
The things you used to love that got quietly shelved. Your interests, your friendships, the parts of yourself you let die or just hadn't let out of their cage in a while. We go looking for them. Hello, new hobbies!
MONTH THREE
Release
What you're carrying that was never yours to carry. The mental load, the invisible labour, the low-grade resentment that's been running in the background. We put some of it down.
MONTH FOUR
Rest
When did rest become something you have to earn? We look at why mothers are the most exhausted people in the room and also the worst at actually resting - and what it means to rest in a way that genuinely restores you.
MONTH FIVE
Rewrite
The script you inherited for what a good mother looks like. Where it came from. What you're keeping and what you're not. You pick up the pen and rewrite your motherhood story.
MONTH SIX
Rise
After five months of work, this is where it lands. Who did you become? We witness that, we celebrate it, and we close in a way that does it justice - in real life, sharing food, stories and wine at an airbnb (this is an optional extra).
A 90-minute session - we check in, we journal, we discuss. Sometimes hard things come up and we hold them. Then someone says something and the energy shifts completely and we're all laughing again. Both things matter.
No one slips through the cracks. We know who's in the middle of a hard school situation, who's solo parenting this week, who's still in the sleepless nights. We ask. We notice when someone's gone quiet. It's a small group - you're not anonymous in here.
Twice a month we do the actual work.
WEDNESDAY/ THURSDAY
The Deep Work
Fortnightly, alternating between Wednesday 10:30am and Thursday 1pm so the same women aren't always the ones who can't make it. Some months there's something to make and take away with you. Recorded. All times in AEST.
WEDNESDAY
Coffee Catch Up
On a Wednesday 10:30am, in the off weeks. No agenda, just a bunch of mums catching up.
THURSDAY
Book Club
Once a month on Thursday evening, 8pm. Fiction only - no self-help, no parenting books, nothing that feels like homework. One book a month, which is plenty for most of us. (Except Jules, who reads a hundred a year and finds our pace charmingly relaxed.)
ALL DAY
The Whats App
The chat that becomes the first place you go when something happens - good, bad, or completely unhinged. The chat you send the mindless, funny reels to without any context. The one that’s still going long after the group ends.
Come to what you can.
Nobody makes every session - you have kids. Everything is recorded, so you can work through it in your own time and still be right there with us.
I honestly didn't know what this would become.
The first group came together in February. By May they were turning up on each other's doorsteps with food and when someone had a rough month. Nobody asked them to.
Women who were strangers in February were organising catch ups without me. Showing up for each other in the way that only really happens when you've done actual work together and you actually know each other.
Someone says something in a session and you think - oh, that's me too. You didn't know you needed to hear it until someone else said it first. That's what happens when the group is small enough that nobody disappears into the background.
Then it's Thursday night and there's wine and a book and nobody mentions their children once!
That's the balance I was looking for. Turns out it actually exists..
“More intimate than a standard mothers' group, and without the woo-woo of a women's circle. It creates pause for reflection on the parts of matrescence you're desperate to talk about, but don't necessarily have the community for.”
— FELICITY, FOUNDERS GROUP
AT THE END OF THE SIX MONTHSThe Gathering
A weekend together, in person. We call it The Gathering because retreat felt like the wrong word - there's no yoga, no early morning bush walks, no silence practices (we’d fail at it if we tried).
There's good coffee and a fireplace and a long table and heaps of food and wine and staying up too late talking. And finally getting to hug the women you've been on screen with for six months.
By the time we get there, six months of deep work and funny reels means walking in already feels like coming home.
The Gathering is optional. $400, all in - accommodation, all the food, everything we do.
This is for you if✺ You're out of the early years and ready to actually invest in yourself — not just survive.
✺ You miss having women in your life you can talk to about real things.
✺ There's a part of you that got shelved somewhere in the last few years and you're ready to find her again.
✺ You want to do meaningful work and also just have a really good time while you do it.
IT'S PROBABLY NOT FOR YOU IFWhat you're really after is parenting strategies, a fix for something with your child, or therapy. Worth having, all of it - and I can point you to the right room for each.
This is a different thing: the space to find your way back to yourself while you're still in the thick of it.
— WHO’S HOLDING THE ROOM
I’m Fi.
Social worker, mother, and someone who spent years doing this work inside systems that wanted outcomes tracked and KPIs hit.
What I knew the whole time, and couldn't always act on, was that the magic was never in the intervention. It was in the relationship. In sitting with someone long enough for the real stuff to come up. In the conversation that happens when you stop performing the session and just actually talk to each other.
So I stopped waiting for permission to do it that way.
My work draws from attachment theory, developmental psychology, nervous system and matrescence - the understanding that becoming a mother is one of the most significant shifts a person goes through. None of that shows up in The Mothering as a lecture. It shows up in how I hold the space and how I know what a session needs.
I live on the Mid-North Coast of NSW with my husband and 3 beautiful kiddos.
Questions people ask
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We start Wednesday 2 September with a coffee, and the first Deep Work is the following Wednesday. We run through to the end of February, with three weeks off over Christmas - 18 December to 5 January. A program about not having to earn your rest shouldn't be running through the one month you've got nothing left. The Gathering is in March.
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The Deep Work runs fortnightly, alternating between Wednesdays 10:30am and Thursdays 1pm. Ninety minutes, always recorded. The alternating is deliberate - it means the same women aren't always the ones who can't make it.
Coffee is Wednesday mornings at 10:30am in the off weeks. An hour, optional, no agenda.
Book Club is Thursday evenings at 8pm, once a month.
All times AEST. When you join, you get a calendar you can add to your phone in one click, with every session for the whole six months already in it - nothing to write down and nothing to keep track of.
If you're in Queensland: from early October the rest of us shift for daylight saving, so everything runs an hour earlier your time until April. I'll remind you when it happens. The times are meant to keep school drop offs and pick ups in mind!
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You won't! You have small children. Recordings are always available and the WhatsApp group keeps you in it between sessions. Come to what you can.
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Around twelve. The intimacy only works at this size.
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No — and it's worth being honest about that. The Mothering is a facilitated reflective group experience. Sometimes things come up that deserve more than this space can hold. If that happens I'll name it and point you somewhere. But this isn't therapy and it's not a replacement for it.
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Yes, though let's have a conversation first. Some women make it work beautifully. Others find it lands better when their baby is a little older. Email me and we'll figure it out.
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No. Women in the current cohort have between one and three kids. What they share is that they're past the all-consuming early stage and ready to think about themselves again.
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The monthly option exists for exactly this reason — $290 a month is a smaller commitment than $1,600 all at once. If timing is genuinely the issue, reach out. I'd rather have a conversation than have the right person talk herself out of it.
m.
If you've read this far and something in you is leaning in, that's worth paying attention to.
I am not here for the hard sell — just a gentle invitation to listen to that part of you wanting more.