Rebecca Bull and Zoe Weir on the pressure to be super

Bec and Zoe have been best friends for over 20 years. In that time, they’ve ridden the waves of womanhood and motherhood together. And while they’ve lived parallel lives when it comes to navigating motherhood and career, over the years, they’ve regularly found themselves coming back to the same conclusion: that it’s exhausting to try and be it all. To have it all. To be a superwoman, whatever that means.

And so they brought their unique minds and journeys together – through Not Super. Woman – a podcast that explores the pressure to be super.

And journeys, they have been on. Bec lost her mum to a six year battle with cancer when she was just twelve years old, and I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that it entirely influenced the way she wanted to show up as a mum. She was desperate to fill the void that she so deeply missed, and in her own words, she took on the martyr role, left her work in television, and felt that pressure to be super.

Zoe on the other hand, felt a little more ambivalent towards motherhood. But, as the saying goes, when it rains, it pours and after loosely discussing trying to conceive with her partner, Zoe became pregnant just as she started a new job. But there wasn’t just one baby in there. There were two, and while navigating pregnancy with trying to put her best foot forward in her new role, it was at 24 weeks pregnant that Zoe was put on bed rest in hospital. She wouldn’t leave that hospital for another 10 weeks, when her twin girls came into the world. She wrote out rosters from the hospital bed, she felt like she was letting everyone around her down and after what felt like a lifetime, she was navigating life as a twin mum while desperately longing to return to paid work.

Here, we hear about the best friends’ journeys and relationships with paid work after children, why women need to take their creative and professional projects more seriously, and why we all need to rethink what it means to be super.

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