Your Confident Comeback
Walk back in Prepared. Not braced for it.
Somewhere along the way, work started asking for more of you than you had left to give.
Most women let the worry or returning build up. Priorities have shifted, identity changed and you are questioning so many things when it comes to returning. But so many women tell themselves to just deal with it and return to work and spend the first three months in freefall, scanning their inbox at 10pm, replaying every decision, trying to prove nothing's changed. Then, if they're lucky, they start looking for help.
You don't have to do that!
You're the same capable woman you were before.
The one who got promoted. The one people relied on. The one who delivered without thinking twice about it. You just don't quite believe that right now, or you're thinking I am capable but how the hell can I make everything work like it did before and your confirmed return date is looming.
This starts before you return, up to a month before, so you cross the threshold already clear, already prepared, already you.
Its playing around your head …
Closing your laptop at six and being back in your inbox by nine, scanning for the thing you might have missed.
Making a decision in a meeting, then replaying it for two days wondering if you got it right.
Saying yes to your daughter asking you to play, while you're already rehearsing the email you need to send tomorrow.
A meeting invite landing with no agenda, your stomach dropping, because you don't know what's expected and you're terrified of being caught out.
Your boss saying take the flexibility you need, and you freezing. Not because you don't need it. Because you don't know if taking it will be held against you later.
Lying awake at 2am trying to remember if you replied to that one person, or if they're sitting there thinking you've ignored them.
And underneath all of it, the quiet fear: that everyone can see you're barely holding it together, and they're just being polite.
You haven't even started yet, and you can already feel it coming.
You think the problem will be your time management. It won't.
You think if you're just more organised, more disciplined, you'll keep up. So you'll work harder. Evenings. Weekends. And it'll never feel like enough, because the problem was never your planning.
Here's what actually happens to brilliant women on the way back.
Nobody resets the standard. So you measure yourself against the woman you were before you had her, the one with every hour of the day to overdeliver, no pickup, no small person needing the best of you at 6pm. That version of you had unlimited time to be exceptional.
This version doesn't. So you do the only thing you know how to do. You work twice as hard to close a gap nobody has actually defined for you. You overdeliver on everything, because you can't tell what matters most, so you treat it all like it does.
That's the exhaustion. It isn't poor planning. It's walking back in without anyone telling you what good looks like now, so you set yourself an impossible standard and drown trying to meet it.
And the cost lands hardest at home. You arrive back already empty. Your family gets the stressed, snappy, run-on-fumes version of you, when they're the whole reason you're doing any of this. The kids are only small once. Time moves faster than you expect, and you don't want to look back in five years and realise you spent their childhood second-guessing yourself and proving a point nobody was asking you to make.
The reason this programme starts before you return is simple. Clarity that arrives in month three only cleans up the damage. Clarity that arrives before day one stops the freefall happening at all.
Your Confident Comeback
Four weeks of 1:1 coaching, beginning up to a month before you walk back in and carrying you through those first weeks, that gives you the one thing nobody hands you on the way back: clarity on what actually matters, so you stop proving and start trusting your own judgement again.
Not a generic return-to-work checklist. Four bespoke sessions built entirely around your actual role, your actual pressures, your actual life, with someone who led HR teams for over 22 years and did the comeback herself.
Week One: Practicalities, Planning and Preparing for Success
90 minutes, online
We start before you're back, getting clear on what a successful return actually looks like for you. We build a personalised plan: realistic routines, the real priorities for your first few weeks, the challenges named out loud before they ambush you at 10pm, and the expectations at home and at work sorted in advance.
You walk back in organised and prepared, not braced for impact, with the uncertainty turned down several notches before day one.1:1 coaching sessions built entirely around your goals and challenges.
Week Two: Career Transition, Identity and Professional Confidence
90 minutes, online
This is the heart of it. Recognising who you are now, as a working mum, and seeing that becoming a parent didn't shrink your professional value. It sharpened the exact skills your workplace is crying out for.
You reconnect with your strengths and walk in recognising the value you bring, ready to contribute like you believe it.
Week Three: Communication and Workplace Confidence
60 minutes, online
The instinct when you're uncertain is to over-explain, soften every message until it loses its edge, apologise before you've even said the thing. This session rebuilds how you show up in the room: clear communication, healthy boundaries, the hard conversations handled, your ideas put forward without shrinking them first.
You settle back in, able to say what you mean and let it land.
Week Four: Performance, Visibility and Sustainable Success
60 minutes, online
This isn't just about surviving the first few weeks. It's a way of working that lets you perform, progress and thrive. How you prioritise what genuinely matters, make your contribution visible without it feeling like showing off, and build habits that support your career and your life outside it.
You leave with a longer-term plan, and the thing you walked in without: the confidence that you can succeed here and still have something left for the people at home.
Between every session, you're not on your own
Weekly voice note support, including in the run-up before you're back, so you're never sitting on a problem waiting for the next call.
A personalised action plan after every session, so the coaching becomes something you actually do, not just something you talked about.
Practical tools and resources you keep.
All of it tailored to your return. Nothing off the shelf.
What you get back
The woman who knows, without question, she's doing brilliant work. Not hoping she is. Not waiting for someone to confirm it. You walk into the meeting certain that what you're delivering is exceptional, and when people say "I don't know how you do it," you finally feel it too.
You leave on time without the guilt, because you know you've overachieved, not scraped by.
You come home with something left in the tank. Present at dinner. The fun mum who suggests something spontaneous on a Tuesday because you're not running on empty. Your partner stops tiptoeing around your moods.
And the guilt on both sides, the "not doing enough" at work and the "not doing enough" at home, finally goes, because you know, genuinely, that you're doing more than enough in both places.
That hour you take for yourself stops coming with a side of guilt. It energises you. You take it without apologising, because you've already shown up fully everywhere that counts.
Why work with Mum & More?
I spent over 22 years in HR leadership. I'm a qualified Career and Leadership Coach and an Extended DISC practitioner. But credentials aren't the reason this works.
I've watched brilliant women come back from leave and slowly dim, and I know exactly how it happens, because I did it myself. I walked back in determined to prove nothing had changed, and exhausted myself proving a point nobody was actually asking me to make.
I'm a working mum to a three-year-old daughter and a step mum to two boys. So when we talk, it's practical and personal at the same time. A safe space to work through the hard bits, and someone who helps you think strategically about where your career goes next.
You don't need all the answers before we start. That's my job, helping you find the clarity, the confidence and the practical strategies to make your return work for you.
When I work with someone, I'm all in. I believe in this work, and I believe in the women I do it with. That's the whole reason I built it.
Your Confident Comeback
2x 90 and 2x 60 minute 1:1 coaching sessions: bi weekly
Self-discovery workbook: Use to support your sessions
Session notes and bespoke toolkits
Between-session support: Dedicated 1 x day per week voice note support to let you work through things as they pop up.
£995 or pay in 3 available
Employer funding available; templates to request this are available. Click here to learn more
Places are limited each month, so I can give every client my full attention.
Employer Sponsorship
Many of my clients have their coaching sponsored by their employer, and it's far more common than you'd think.
This isn't about performance management or admitting weakness. It's about excelling in your current role, having real impact, and thriving professionally, rather than quietly burning out and becoming a retention risk. For employers, investing in their people with experienced, neutral support is a genuine no-brainer, and I can give you everything you need to make that conversation easy, from programme details to ready-to-send email templates.
Your questions answered
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2x 90 mins and 4x 60-minute sessions online via Zoom
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A link to book your sessions will be shared after you’ve booked your coaching package
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This is outlined in your coaching agreement, but 24 hours notice is required
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Happy, Confident Clients
Ready to walk back in prepared, not braced for it?
You don't have to keep running on empty. Let's find your confidence again, together.