What You Took Back Podcast

It's 5:15 a.m.; Skye has a squat weight on, and then her back goes. That's how this episode starts, and it's a pretty fitting warm-up for a conversation about how much we do, how much we compare, and how hard it is to stop.
In Episode 30, Skye gets honest about the batsh*t truth of modern motherhood: somewhere along the way, it became a competition. Nobody announced it, and nobody signed up, but here we all are, keeping score.
In this episode:
The footy sideline moment that showed Skye how quickly we start comparing exhaustion
Who decided motherhood came with a scoreboard, and why the prize is another tired woman saying "Yeah. Me too"
Why we measure ourselves against women living completely different lives
Where Skye's own scoreboard began, from becoming a mum at sixteen to juggling five kids and every sports ground on the coast
The woman underneath the mother, and why being needed isn't the same as being valuable
A small "Try This" exercise: three things you did because you wanted to, and three you did because you thought you were supposed to
Your hard doesn't cancel out mine, and mine doesn't cancel out yours. You don't have to become less of a mother to step off the scoreboard.
The question to take with you: What expectation of motherhood are you ready to put down?
Come find us:Website: whatyoutookback.comJoin the What You Took Back community and keep taking yourself back, one piece at a time.
If this episode sounded like your life, share it with another woman who needs to hear it.
*Contains strong language.

Last weekend I had a conversation with a friend I see most Saturdays, and I haven't stopped thinking about it. She's fought cancer twice, had a stroke, gone through seven years of menopause with no medication to help, lost her daughter to suicide, and left a marriage after twenty-five years — and she's one of the happiest, most switched-on people I know.
Closing out the Survival Mode series, this episode goes into her story, what real psychology says about resilience and growth after trauma, and practical tools for the moments it all feels like too much — plus a reminder that your path is yours to set, and nobody else's opinion gets a vote.
This isn't about pretending the hard stuff doesn't happen. It's about what's still yours once it has.
Ready to figure out what's actually draining you before you can build anything back? Take the free Power Leak Checklist™ and start identifying where your power's been quietly slipping away → [link]
And if this episode has you ready to go deeper, the Power Receipt Method™ is where you turn what you've survived into proof of what you're capable of. Learn more inside What You Took Back → whatyoutookback.com

We are all two weeks away from becoming homeless.
I heard my university lecturer say that years ago and thought, surely not me. Surely not the women I know.
I was wrong.
This episode started with a conversation with a 56-year-old friend going through a divorce after more than 20 years of marriage. She has worked most of her life, yet now finds herself without a home or car, living with her niece while she works out what comes next.
It made me think about how quickly a life we believe is secure can change.
This isn't an episode about blaming men. It isn't about telling women to leave their relationships. And it isn't about living in fear.
It's about knowing your own life.
Do you know every account you have?Do you know the debt?Do you know what's happening with your super?Do you know where the important documents are?Do you know what would happen if your circumstances changed tomorrow?
I've been on the other side of that question myself. I know what financial free-fall feels like, and I know the shame that can come with suddenly needing help.
So this conversation is serious — but it's also about something much more useful than fear.
Self-trust. Awareness. A foothold.
It could be your mother. Your sister. Your aunt. Your best friend.
It could be you.
Sometimes taking yourself back doesn't look dramatic.
Sometimes it looks like finally knowing exactly where you stand.
What You Took Back™
Take it back. Then go live it.
 
www.whatyoutookback.com

Episode 27: The Woman Who Carries Everyone (Emotional Load)
If you're the one everyone hands their feelings to — this episode is for you.
Most women carry an emotional load nobody ever names: reading the room, smoothing things over, tracking everyone's needs before working out their own. It's not a personality trait. It's a job you were handed without ever being asked, and you've never once clocked out.
I get specific about a moment with my own adult kids — a family holiday, an incident, and the choice to do absolutely nothing about it for the first time—no fixing, no managing, no absorbing. Nobody was hurt. The collapse I'd been protecting everyone from for years simply never happened.
If you're ready to see exactly where you're still carrying weight that was never yours, take the Power Leak Checklist™: Click on the link here
What Will you be taking back? 🎙️

Episode 26: Survival Mode — The Woman Who Looks Fine Isn't Fine
You can look completely fine and be completely hollowed out at the same time. This episode opens our September series on Survival Mode with a claim I stand behind: almost every woman 20+ is running some version of it right now — and calling it normal.
I share the stretch of my own life where my mum was dying, my business still had to run, my kids still had sport every day — and the one place I let any of it show was alone in the car between one thing and the next.
We get into the part most "burnout" content skips: sometimes there is no clean way out. You can't leave a dying parent. You can't leave your kids on the sideline. So what do you actually do when you have to keep going and there's no exit? How long can you keep going like that — and what changes when you stop carrying it alone?
If this episode hits home, take the Power Leak Checklist™ to find out exactly where survival mode is draining you: [link]
What will you be taking back? 🎙️
Skye 
www.whatyoutookback.com
 

I'm Skye. And this is What You Took Back. A podcast for women who've spent years surviving on fragments of themselves. I'm here to hand you back the whole damn thing.
I thought rediscovering myself was a one-off. Find her once, hold on tight, done. I've since confirmed that's not how it works.
I was a single mother first, raising my daughter and my son on my own. Then I married and had my youngest daughter inside that marriage. That marriage ended in divorce. Then I remarried, and took on my husband's two children full-time as their step-mother, while learning to co-parent my own three across two households at the same time. Four completely different chapters. Same woman underneath all of them — and every single one required me to become someone slightly different to actually do it well.
This episode closes out the August series and brings in narrative identity theory, real psychology from researcher Dan McAdams, showing that people who can flexibly update their life story after a major change actually have better mental health than people who cling to one fixed version of themselves. You are not behind because you've had to rediscover yourself more than once. That's exactly what a healthy identity is supposed to do.
In this episode:
Why life isn't linear, and what that actually looks like lived out across four different family structures
Narrative identity theory — the real research behind why revising your story is a sign of resilience, not failure
Rediscovery as an ongoing practice, not a one-time project — and the single question to ask every time your life changes shape
Take the free Power Leak Checklist at whatyoutookback.com/power-leak-check-list-sign-up, and if you're ready to go deeper, The Noticing and The Awakening are both built for exactly this kind of rebuilding.
What will you be taking back? 🎙️
 
www.whatyoutookback.com

If you didn't have anyone needing anything from you tomorrow morning, what would actually get you out of bed? Not your job, not the school run, not the list. The real version. For a lot of us, that question goes very quiet, very fast.
I did all the work — found myself again, built an identity separate from wife, separate from mother, separate from everyone. And then I woke up one morning and thought, okay... now what? Turns out there's a second wall right behind the first one. I knew who I was again. I still didn't know what I was for.
What actually shifted it wasn't dramatic. It was one conversation, at a kitchen table, with a woman who said, "I don't even know how to explain what's wrong. I just feel like I disappeared somewhere." That conversation — not a business plan, a kitchen table — is the honest, unglamorous reason this podcast exists.
In this episode:
Real research from Carleton University showing a strong sense of purpose predicts a measurably lower risk of death, regardless of age — this isn't a soft finding, it's a genuine risk factor
Why purpose disappears so fast for so many women — because it was never built, it was borrowed from a role with an expiry date
A two-part exercise for finding your own direction, without needing to "find your calling" by Friday
Take the free Power Leak Checklist at whatyoutookback.com/power-leak-check-list-sign-up, and if you're ready to go deeper, The Noticing and The Awakening are both built for exactly this kind of rebuilding at https://whatyoutookback.com/programs/
What will you be taking back? 🎙️

I'm Skye. And this is What You Took Back. A podcast for women who've spent years surviving on fragments of themselves. I'm here to hand you back the whole damn thing.
Picture it. You're at a function, glass of average chardonnay in hand, and someone you barely know asks, completely innocently, "So what do you do for yourself?" Go on, actually put yourself there for a second, and notice what comes up when you try to answer.
For many, many years, I could not have told you who I was. Underneath all the roles, there was grief, old trauma, heartaches I'd never let myself feel all the way through. On top of that, I did everything society hands you as the blueprint — work hard, buy the house, get married, have the kids, be the good wife. That's the mould. I poured every part of myself into it until, by my thirties, I felt like I was about to explode. My identity belonged to my husband. My kids. My parents. My friends. Every single person except me.
This episode walks through the frozen, non-answer moment near a plate of sausage rolls at a school carnival that showed me exactly what needed finding — and the ordinary morning, two years into being a divorcee, that became the real beginning of taking myself back.
In this episode:
Why some women survive the empty nest and others feel like they've lost a limb
Self-complexity theory — the real psychology behind why one role holding your whole identity leaves you so exposed
The "bucket" test for telling a real hobby from another chore wearing a nicer outfit
One small, deliberately useless thing to build this week, with zero justification required
Take the free Power Leak Checklist at whatyoutookback.com/power-leak-check-list-sign-up, and if you're ready to go deeper, The Noticing and The Awakening are both built for exactly this kind of rebuilding.
What will you be taking back? 🎙️

I'm Skye. And this is What You Took Back. A podcast for women who've spent years surviving on fragments of themselves. I'm here to hand you back the whole damn thing.
Before you read another word, answer this honestly: what did you love, before anyone needed something from you? Not what you're good at now. Not what keeps the house running. What you loved — quietly, for no reason except that it was yours.
I became a mother young enough that I never really got a version of myself before it happened. For years I thought something was wrong with me because I couldn't grieve "the woman I was before I became a mum" the way I heard other women describe grieving her. Here's what I finally understood: you can't lose a version of yourself you never got the chance to finish building.
This opens a brand new series — Motherhood, Identity, Purpose, Rediscovering Yourself — and it starts with the truest thing I've said on this show yet.
In this episode:
Why motherhood was never supposed to be the whole house — just one room in it
The real difference between losing yourself and never getting the chance to build her
Why "building the rest of the house" is the actual work of this whole month, starting today
Take the free Power Leak Checklist at whatyoutookback.com/power-leak-check-list-sign-up, and if you're ready to go deeper, The Noticing and The Awakening are both built to help you find the rest of the rooms.
Checklist here
What have you taken back? 🎙️

I'm Skye. And this is What You Took Back. A podcast for women who've spent years surviving on fragments of themselves. I'm here to hand you back the whole damn thing.
I made a hundred decisions a day without a second thought — what they ate, what they wore, whether that cough needed a doctor. I spent my twenties and thirties living for my children and my husband, and then I became my mother's carer too. Somewhere in all of that, there wasn't room left to ask what I actually wanted.
Five years ago, I finally had to make a decision that was just for me. Not the kids. Not my husband. Not my mum. Just the woman underneath all those roles.
I froze. I didn't trust myself to get it right.
This is the final episode of the July series — Boundaries, People-Pleasing, Guilt, Self-Trust.
Self-trust isn't really the fourth lesson. It's the foundation the other three were quietly resting on the whole time.
In this episode:
Why running a household of other people's needs teaches you nothing about trusting decisions made only for you
The moment I realised I'd lost myself, and what it actually took to start finding my way back
Why self-trust isn't built by being right — it's built by finding out you can survive being wrong and choose yourself again anyway
Take the free Power Leak Checklist at whatyoutookback.com/power-leak-check-list-sign-up, and if this series has stirred something bigger, come find The Noticing and The Awakening — the two programs built to help you rebuild what these patterns cost you.
What will you take back? 🎙️
www.whatyoutookback.com