Nourishing the Mother
by Bridget Wood & Julie Tenner
Mothering can be an inspired journey to our most glittering, authentic, passionate, creative and connected selves. Through the mirror offered to us by our children, we are taken to every hurt, unmet need, and also every joy and excitement we’ve ever experienced. We want every woman and mother to give themselves and those around them the compassion, love and healing they so readily offer their children, but rarely allow themselves. Journey with us as we discuss the many layers of being a mother today, where we have come from and where we want to go. Learn tools to connect with yourself, offer compassion to those parts we’d rather deny and get back in love with yourself, motherhood and who you are as a feminine woman.
Episodes
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NTM 570: Beyond Breast Cancer: An Interview with Survivor Ilea on Healing, Identity and Intimacy
What happens when a breast cancer diagnosis changes not just your body, but the way you see your entire life? In this deeply personal conversation, Julie sits down with Ilea, a mother of two who underwent a double mastectomy following a DCIS diagnosis, to explore the parts of breast cancer…
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NTM 569: Already enough: the practice of building self worth
What if self-worth isn’t something you need to build, but something you need to stop bargaining away? In this episode, Bridget and Julie explore the invisible conditions many of us place around our worth: “I matter when I’m productive, when my children are doing well, when people approve of me,...
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NTM 568: Parenting an Autistic Daughter: What 13 Years Have Taught Me
What happens when the parenting advice you were given simply doesn’t work for the child in front of you? As Julie’s daughter turns 13, she and Bridget look back on thirteen years of learning, unlearning, advocating, getting it wrong and slowly coming to understand what this particular autistic...
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NTM 567: 10 ways we parent like its still the 90s - Part 2
Tune in for part 2 where we explore the parts of parenting where we’re still firmly living in the 90s. In this two-part episode, we’re talking about the things we’ve deliberately held onto from the childhood we grew up in: boredom, chores without payment, hearing “no” without a 45-minute...
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NTM 566: 10 ways we parent like its still the 90s - Part 1
We might be conscious parents, but there are some parts of parenting where we’re still firmly living in the 90s. In this two-part episode, we’re talking about the things we’ve deliberately held onto from the childhood we grew up in: boredom, chores without payment, hearing “no” without a…
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NTM 565: How to stop pushing through and start living with Fleur Marks
So many women have built a life that looks successful on the outside, yet quietly feel exhausted, disconnected and like they're carrying everyone else while leaving themselves behind. In this deeply honest conversation, Julie sits down with Fleur Marks, author of The Overachiever's Reset, to...
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NTM 564: Help! I Feel Trapped by My Life and Responsibilities: Part 3
Feeling trapped by your life isn't always about changing your circumstances. Sometimes it's about changing the way you meet them. In this final episode of our three-part series, Bridget and Julie explore what happens after you've identified the stories keeping you stuck. They unpack how to…
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NTM 563: Help! I Feel Trapped by My Life and Responsibilities: Part 2
Last episode, we started unpacking what’s actually underneath the feeling of being trapped by your life. This time, we take the next step: working out whether the thing making you miserable is an unavoidable fact of your life...or a “should” you’ve become so attached to that you can no longer see...
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NTM 562: Help! I Feel Trapped by My Life and Responsibilities - Part One
What happens when you love your children, your partner and the life you’ve created...and still sometimes feel completely trapped by it? In Part 1 of this three-part answer pathway, we respond to a listener who is buckling under the weight of motherhood, work, relationships and the relentless...
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NTM 561: The Hysterectomy Questions Everyone Wants to Ask (But Doesn't)
In this deeply personal solo episode, Julie responds to listener questions about her hysterectomy experience four years after surgery. From the realities of recovery and unexpected complications to the impact on sex, orgasm, identity, and womanhood, she shares the parts few people talk about...
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NTM 560: Perimenopause, Pressure & The Rage Button
If you've ever found yourself snapping at your partner, yelling at your children, or wondering why your anger feels bigger, faster and harder to contain than it used to, this conversation is for you. In this episode, we unpack the silence-explode cycle so many women find themselves trapped in,...
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NTM 559: Helping… Or Just Adulting? The Mental Load & Why So Many Couples Feel Resentful
What happens when one partner feels like they are carrying the invisible weight of parenting, household management, life admin, remembering, planning, and emotional labour… while the other insists they’re helping? In this episode, Julie and Bridget unpack one of the most common resentment loops...
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NTM 558: Perimenopause Unpacked: Hormones, Burnout & Your Next Evolution with Naturopath Charmaine Newmark
Perimenopause can feel like your body, mind and identity are shifting beneath your feet - but what if this season is not simply hormonal chaos to survive, but a profound invitation into your next evolution? In this powerful conversation, naturopath and counsellor Charmaine Newmark joins us to...
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NTM 557: Attraction Isn’t Betrayal
Attraction doesn’t switch off when you’re in a committed relationship — but what it means, and what you do with it, is where everything changes. This episode reframes attraction from something dangerous or disloyal into something deeply human, and explores how to hold that energy with integrity,...
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NTM 556: When You Know You’ve Cracked the Generational Pattern
There’s a quiet, almost surreal moment when you realise… it didn’t pass through you. The reaction that used to be automatic doesn’t land the same. The pattern that shaped your family line stops with you. This episode explores what it actually feels like to break generational patterns - not as a...
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NTM 555: Follow on from the Perfect Parent Trap convo: The Guilt/Shame spiral
There’s a particular kind of fall that happens after we’ve tried to be the perfect parent - not just good, but better than what we had growing up; more conscious, more patient, more healed. And when we inevitably hit our edge, it doesn’t just feel like a bad moment… it feels like a collapse of...
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NTM 554: The Perfect Parent Trap with Lisa Taylor
In this episode, we’re joined by family therapist and author Lisa Taylor (The Perfect Parent Trap) for a deeply honest conversation about what’s really happening underneath our parenting. Lisa brings over 25 years of clinical experience into this discussion as we unpack the difference between...
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NTM 553: Long-Term Love: The Difference Between Wanting Out and Waking Up
This one goes right to the heart of what so many long-term couples quietly sit in but rarely say out loud; the moments where you question everything, where disinterest creeps in, and where part of you starts scanning for the exit. Julie and Bridget unpack the truth that these seasons don’t mean...
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NTM 552: Friendship Drama at School: When Do You Step In… and When Do You Step Back?
Friendships are one of the first places our children meet the raw edges of relationship: loyalty, exclusion, conflict, repair and belonging. And if you’re a parent watching from the sidelines, it can stir up everything. In this conversation, Julie and Bridget unpack the emotional complexity of...
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NTM 551: Why Some Friendships Don’t Survive Motherhood
Adult friendships can look very different once life fills up with partners, children, careers and shifting values. In this conversation we explore what it really means to navigate friendship as grown women: the grief when friendships change, the beauty of seasonal relationships, and the quiet…
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NTM 550: Parenting, Pressure & Protecting Your Partnership
In this honest, grounded conversation, we unpack what it really takes to sustain a long-term relationship through parenting, midlife shifts, sexual differences, resentment, novelty, and the quiet drift that can happen when life gets busy. We share personal stories from our own marriages - the...
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NTM 549: The Emotional Load No One Talks About in School Systems
In this episode of Nourishing the Mother, Julie and Bridget dive into the invisible labour of advocating for your child inside school and medical systems; especially when your child is neurodivergent, anxious, or simply doesn’t fit the mould. They unpack how our own history with authority shapes...
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NTM 548: When Masculine Defensiveness Meets Feminine Overwhelm
A simple ask for help on the sidelines becomes a powerful mirror into long-term relationship dynamics. In this episode, Julie and Bridget unpack a very real rupture between Julie and Nick, revealing how moments of overwhelm can activate old attachment wounds, masculine defensiveness, and feminine...
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NTM 547: Creating Back to School Calm (Without Losing Your Mind)
Back to school isn’t just a diary change…it’s a full nervous system reboot. In this episode, Julie and Bridget get radically practical about what actually creates calm in the return-to-school season. Not mindset hacks. Not “just be more organised.” But the real, lived strategies that reduce...
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NTM 546: Who They Were Depends on Where You Stood; Family, legacy, and the limits of knowing the people we love
In this episode, Bridget shares her experience of her grandfather’s passing, and the reflections that surfaced in the aftermath. Together, Julie and Bridget explore how our understanding of the people we love is always shaped by proximity, role, and family narrative. We unpack the idea that we...
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NTM 545: New Year Reset: 10 Questions to Meet the Year Ahead (Without Forcing It)
You don’t need a quiet house. You don’t need a fresh journal, a candle, or the “right headspace.” In this episode, Bridget and Julie walk you through 10 gentle New Year reflection questions in real time - the kind you can answer as you listen. Sitting in the car. On the couch. With a notes app…
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NTM 544: When Sex Feels Like One More Job: Christmas, Exhaustion & the Loss of Erotic Self
The post-Christmas crash can leave many women feeling not just tired, but disconnected — from their bodies, their partners, and their erotic selves. In this deeply relieving episode, Julie and Bridget explore how the adrenaline of December masks exhaustion until it drops, and why that comedown so...
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NTM 543: The Christmas Collapse: Why Women Fall Apart When the Doing Stops
In the final week before Christmas, when the lists are finished and the adrenaline drops, many women don’t feel relief…they feel flat, teary, irritable or quietly undone. This episode is an emotional temperature check for overstretched mothers asking, “I should be happy… so why do I feel empty?”...
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NTM 542: Coping with Festive Season Sensory Overload in our kids and us!
The festive season looks magical on paper: twinkly lights, long lunches, sparkling moments with kids… but for so many families, it’s actually a sensory avalanche waiting to happen. In this episode, we unpack what’s really going on beneath the meltdowns, the indecision, the clinginess, the...
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NTM 541: Resentment vs. Love: The Energy Behind Your Words
Resentment is quiet… until it isn’t.And when it leaks through your tone, your silence, or the way you half-turn when he walks in the door, it can change the entire ecosystem of your relationship - even when you don’t mean it to. In this episode, we dive into the real energetic difference between...
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NTM 540: The Birth You Feel Again: Why Our Children’s Birthdays Bring Up Old Stories
Julie and Bridget dive into why mothers so often feel their children’s birthdays in their bodies - not just as a date on the calendar, but as an emotional echo of who they were when that child arrived. They unpack the surprising way the body holds onto birth memories, how milestone birthdays can...
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NTM 539: The Sandwich Generation: The Emotional Load No One Talks About
This week, we’re opening the door on one of the most invisible seasons of womanhood — being in ‘the sandwich generation’. The stretch between raising children and caring for ageing parents can feel like living two lives at once: one full of growth and beginnings, the other shaped by endings and...
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NTM 538: The Guilt Trap: Why Good Mums Feel Bad
If guilt were cardio, every mum would be an Olympian. But what if guilt isn’t proof you’re failing — it’s proof you care? In this episode, we unpack the emotional weight mothers carry and how “mum guilt” has become a badge of honour we never asked for. From the cultural conditioning that tells us…
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NTM 537: When They Dig Their Heels In: How to Stay the Steady One
In this episode, we discuss what to do when your child slams the brakes on; from “I’m not going to school” to daily battles over getting dressed or leaving the house. We explore how to stay grounded when their storms threaten to pull you in, how to use play and connection to move through...
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NTM 536: Redefining the Fertility Journey: let’s discuss infertility with fertility coach Liz Walton
In this episode, Julie sits down with Fertility Coach Liz Walton to redefine what fertility really means. Liz, founder of the Australian Fertility Summit, brings her own lived experience - ten years of “failed” IVF rounds, deep personal healing, and eventually conceiving her daughter naturally at...
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NTM 535: The Sexiest Thing Your Partner Can Do (Hint: It’s Not in the Bedroom)
What really turns mothers on isn’t roses or lingerie….it’s partnership. It’s not having to carry everything alone, not having to think about one more thing, not feeling swallowed up by kids and needs with no solo time left. In this episode we explore why sharing the load is the ultimate...
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NTM 534: Creating Space for Your Own Dreams When You’re a Working Mum
Bridget is a full-time working mother navigating the reality of decreased time and increased pressure — which demands a new level of discernment about what can and can’t be held. In this episode, we explore how to protect your energy, bring more equity into your relationship, and create room for...
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NTM 533: Getting Your Business Up and Running as an Intentional Mother
So many of us step into business with huge hearts and deep skills, then crash into the reality of motherhood — where hustle culture doesn’t work and “balance” is a myth. In this episode we explore what it really takes to grow your business as an intentional mother: creating rhythms that fit your...
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NTM 532: The Brave Season: Parenting, Letting Go & Redefining Yourself
This episode is raw, tear-filled, and honest as Julie shares what it was actually like to say goodbye to Heath as he left for the United States — the pride, the ache, and the messy middle. We walk through the good, the bad, the ugly, the learning, and the letting go. It’s matrescence at the other...
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NTM 531: Solo Mumming: Why Sometimes Relationship Feels Harder Than Parenting
Sometimes, being in relationship feels heavier than doing it all on your own. In this episode, Julie shares a raw revelation: while solo parenting her girls, managing sport schedules, interstate travel, and two national award wins — she realised that, in some ways, it actually felt easier than...
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NTM 530: Love on Purpose: Conscious Relationship Tools That Actually Work
Your relationship is a living mirror — not just of your partner, but of the parts of yourself you’ve hidden, avoided, or outgrown. In this episode, we explore the conscious relational tools that don’t just keep your love alive, but help you grow as an individual within it. Because love isn’t...
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NTM 529: How to Stop Becoming Roommates: 3 Keys That Matter Most
Everything you have right now was once a dream — the relationship, the home, the family, the love. But when life becomes a checklist and connection becomes transactional, we forget what we once longed for. In this episode, we take you inside the three relationship habits we see drop off the most…
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NTM 528: Celebration - A Practice in Worthiness, Receiving & Belonging
In this episode, we explore celebration as a radical act of receiving; not just balloons and bubbly, but a mirror for how safe you feel to be seen, acknowledged, and loved. We unpack why so many of us deflect recognition or wait for others to validate what we struggle to honour in ourselves, and...
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NTM 527: What happens when you feel like you’re drowning in their need for closeness…and all you want is space to breathe?
In this episode, we unpack the complex, emotionally loaded space where your child’s bids for connection meet your very real, very human need for separation. Whether it's bedtime, the end of a long day, or another moment when you feel like they’re clawing at your leg and you just have to get away,...
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NTM 526: Breathe It In - How Presence Creates a Life Worth Remembering
Life moves fast…and if you’re not careful, it’ll pass by in a blur. In this deeply heartfelt episode, we share how presence is what makes a moment last, and how the simple act of breathing it in can transform the ordinary into the unforgettable. Drawing on a powerful message from a Honey Club...
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NTM 525: The Guilt Pendulum: When Work and Motherhood Feel Like a Tug-of-War
What happens when your heart is at home, but your body’s at work — or when your head’s in the spreadsheet but your child’s in tears at daycare drop-off? In this episode, we explore the inner tension so many mothers feel between being present, connected parents and being purposeful, ambitious…
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NTM 524: Pressure, Predictability and the Death of Desire
So many couples find themselves tangled in the same painful dance: pressure, predictability, and the slow death of desire. In this episode, we’re unpacking why your sex life isn’t just about sex - it’s the meeting place of both your worlds. Why men often feel sex as devotion (and rejection like a...
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NTM 523: Redefining Capacity Through Motherhood
What if your capacity wasn’t a measure of your worth? In this episode, we dive deep into motherhood as the ultimate redefinition of capacity — where contraction and expansion dance together, and holding more often comes with the relief of letting go. We explore the emotional labor mothers…
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NTM 522: What It Really Took to Mother a Dream into Reality
This is the story behind the Instagram post. The truth of what it took of Julie; emotionally, energetically, and relationally - to walk beside her son Heath as he chased a dream that felt impossibly far away at times. From the heartbreaks to the breakthroughs, from holding the vision when he...
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NTM 521: Unblock Your Sensuality: The 7 Hidden Patterns Keeping You Disconnected from Your Body + Desire
If your sensuality feels distant, your desire feels flat, or you look in the mirror and barely recognise yourself… this episode is your homecoming. In this powerful conversation, Julie walks you through the 7 most common (and surprising) blocks to feminine sensual energy — and how to begin…
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About this show
Mothering can be an inspired journey to our most glittering, authentic, passionate, creative and connected selves. Through the mirror offered to us by our children, we are taken to every hurt, unmet need, and also every joy and excitement we’ve ever experienced. We want every woman and mother to give themselves and those around them the compassion, love and healing they so readily offer their children, but rarely allow themselves. Journey with us as we discuss the many layers of being a mother today, where we have come from and where we want to go. Learn tools to connect with yourself, offer compassion to those parts we’d rather deny and get back in love with yourself, motherhood and who you are as a feminine woman.
Hosted by
Bridget Wood & Julie Tenner
Categories