Matrescence Unfiltered

Rose Soffel and Bianca Bass
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Matrescence Unfiltered is LIVE, a new podcast exploring motherhood, career, identity and ambition. ✨ We made this for the woman who loves her career and may be dreaming of becoming a mum, expecting, or already raising little ones. For the woman who couldn't find content that spoke to both motherhood and ambition at once. We're Bianca and Rose. A Chief Marketing Officer in her third trimester and a coach, consultant and organisational psychology researcher specialising in matrescence and sustainable high performance. We've been friends since we were teenagers, the first of the great neurological shifts of a woman's life, as it happens. Matrescence is the transition into motherhood. It is as neurologically significant as adolescence. And it is almost entirely absent from the professional conversation. That's what this podcast is about. 💡 Motherhood isn't a hindrance to your career, it's a accelerator. Research proves it's a neurological upgrade. 💡 Each episode, we take one thing about motherhood and work that doesn't hold up under scrutiny and break it down properly. Research, lived experience, and honest conversation about what it actually means when your identity is shifting in the middle of everything else. If this helps even one woman feel a little less conflicted and a little less alone, it will have been worth every second.

  1. 1 day ago

    We’re Back! What We’ve Been Learning This Summer + Listener Questions

    We're back from summer, and we're doing things differently: for the first time, we're answering your questions. This episode moves through the six-week check and why the conversation stops at exactly the point it should start, trad wives and what that fantasy is actually offering, Rose's summer project born from a chat outside the vet, and a stretch of listener questions that gets more honest than we expected. Six weeks after a C-section, you're signed off and sent on your way. Bianca got behind the wheel that week and found out exactly how ready she wasn't. We're retiring another term this episode: postpartum recovery is out, postpartum transformation is in, because recovery implies heading back to a previous version of yourself. Bianca also brings the August research on care beyond six weeks, making the case that the six-week appointment is asking the wrong questions entirely. We get into trad wives via Yesteryear, Caro Claire Burke's novel about an influencer who wakes up in 1855 and has to actually live it. Bianca has worked out what she'd genuinely want back from that era, and it isn't what the algorithm keeps offering her. Rose has her own theory on what those accounts are really selling. Rose spent her summer finishing her dissertation, then fell down a rabbit hole after a conversation outside the vet with a woman called Joan, who wanted a cat. That became 75 Comfortable, her answer to the 75 Hard challenge, and it's the first time she's talked about it on the show. Then, your questions. Is it realistic to study within three months of giving birth? How do you hold on to a sense of self while breastfeeding, in what's the most honest stretch of the episode? And what do you do if you're not ambitious after becoming a mother, when everyone assumes you should be? Send us a question for the next one at hello@matrescenceunfiltered.com, or find us on Instagram at @matrescenceunfiltered. Mentioned in this episode: Rose's Substack: soffelhaus.substack.comOur episode with Gemma Folkard of Shape Pilates (17 June 2026) on reconnecting with your bodyYesteryear by Caro Claire Burke

  2. 2 Sept

    Your Brain Isn't Broken, It's Upgraded: We Retired Four Terms About Motherhood and We're Not Sorry

    We're back from our summer break. And to ease back in, we've made a mini episode: our four favourite terms to retire, played back to back for the first time. If you're new here, every episode we take a word or phrase about motherhood that isn't working and give it a proper send off. This one gathers the best of them in one place, and heard together they make a bigger point than any of them do alone. We start with baby brain, the phrase that tells women they're losing it right when the research says the opposite. The maternal brain isn't shrinking, it's specialising, and by midlife it can actually look younger than it did before. This is not baby brain. It's neuroprotection. Then baby blues, which Bianca calls out for what it really is: the fastest hormonal crash in human biology, dressed up as something cute. There's honesty here about the day three drop and what it actually feels like from the inside, plus the line that matters most, that anything lasting beyond two weeks deserves real support, not a shrug. We take on the village next, the myth that community just appears when you need it. It doesn't. You build it, from a WhatsApp group, a nursery run, a partner who flexes, and every piece of that patchwork costs something. And we finish on maternity leave, the word that frames one of the biggest transitions of your life as time off. It isn't leave. It's becoming. This is a short one to tide you over. We're back next week with a full episode and a new structure that includes your questions, so if there's something you want us to answer on the show, we want to hear it. Come and find us on Instagram at @matrescenceunfiltered, and if you've got a question or just want to say hello, email us at hello@matrescenceunfiltered.com. If this one gave you something, send it to someone who needs to hear it.

  3. 29 Jul

    Your Job Was Designed Around a Man's Hormone Cycle: Sophie Cliff on Ambition and Shedding the Should

    Your working day was built around a hormone cycle that resets every 24 hours. Yours doesn't. So why are we all still measuring ourselves against it? Sophie Cliff is the author of The Hustle Cure and Choose Joy, a coach and the founder of The Joyful Coach. Seven years ago she walked away from a corporate career because she could see the trade-off coming: be ambitious, or be present. Pick one. She decided not to. Today she runs a growing business on three days of childcare a week, went back to work 10 weeks after both of her babies, and has the positive psychology research to explain exactly why it works. We get into why almost every productivity book she picked up in pregnancy was written by a man with someone else handling his life admin, and what happens when you stop trying to work like one. Sophie explains the 24 hour male hormone cycle the entire working world is built around, what your own cycle actually means for when you do your best thinking, and why waking up at 5am is not a moral achievement but simply the length of a piece of DNA. She also tells us about the nap she takes during work hours and the moment she stopped apologising for it. There is honesty here too. Sophie burnt out at the start of this year while writing a book about burnout, and she talks openly about what that taught her. We cover how she and her husband divide the mental load through explicit conversations rather than assumed ones, the shoulds she has shed in motherhood from parenting camps to the myth of having it all together, and why prioritising joy is not selfish at all but the thing quietly fuelling your resilience, your relationships and your career. If you have ever felt like the game is rigged, it is. This one is about playing it your way. A note from us: we're taking August off for a summer break, and we'll be back with more brilliant guests in September. You can find Sophie at sophiecliff.com, over on Instagram at @sophiecliff, on her podcast Practical Positivity, and in her book The Hustle Cure.

  4. 22 Jul

    Pensions Are Sexy: Taking Your Money Back in a Rich Man's World (Part Two)

    Last episode, we named the cost. This one, we do something about it. First, Rose goes solo through It's a Rich Man's World, the book from the founders of Female Invest that reframes the whole thing. Why the person you marry is the biggest financial decision of your life. Why women live longer but retire poorer and sicker. Why motherhood still costs women almost everything. Bianca joins for the practical half. The exact accounts they use. Pensions, and why they might be the most powerful tool you are ignoring. The tax-free childcare most parents never claim. And how to start investing when every app feels built for someone else. Not financial advice. Just two women telling you what has actually worked. Part two of two.

  5. 15 Jul

    £65,000 Poorer: The Real Price of Becoming a Mother (Part One)

    Nobody hands you the invoice. But becoming a mother has a price, and it is bigger than you think. The cost of raising a child to eighteen. The 42% drop in a mother's earnings. The nearly £100 billion the economy loses every year when women step back. This episode puts numbers on the things that usually go unspoken. And as always, we flip the story. This is not about what women give up. It is about what the economy takes for granted and never pays for. Rose brings the data. Bianca brings the reality of doing this maths for the first time, in real time. If the sums have never quite added up for you, they don't. And it is not your fault. Part one of two.

  6. 8 Jul

    The Fourth Trimester: Neuroscience Every New Mum Needs to Know

    In this episode, Bianca and Rose break down what's actually happening inside a new mother's brain in those first twelve weeks known as the fourth trimester, and why "baby brain" is one of the most misunderstood phrases in motherhood. Because your brain isn't failing. It's remodelling, the same kind of major neuroplastic shift as adolescence, trimming and strengthening the connections that make you sharper at reading emotion, detecting threat, and keeping a tiny human alive on almost no sleep. They get into why everything suddenly feels louder. Why your nervous system and your baby's are, for a while, essentially one shared system learning to divide. And why the guilt so many new mothers carry, for needing help, for feeling depleted, for not bouncing back, might be less about personal failure and more about a species that was never designed to do this alone. If you've ever looked in the mirror in those early weeks and thought, "why don't I feel like myself," this episode won't fix your sleep. But it might change the story you're telling yourself about why.

  7. 1 Jul

    Closing the AI Gap: Lauren Ingram on Why Women Can't Afford to Sit This One Out

    Women are using AI about 25% less than men. Lauren Ingram is on a mission to close that gap before it sets. We sit down with the founder of AI Girl Gang to talk about the skills gap no one has named yet, and why mothers have the most to gain and the most to lose. Lauren tells us how she built her whole career from her phone on maternity leave, newborn under one arm, talking to tech leaders at 2am between feeds. She shares the early pregnancy loss that sparked a strange creative renaissance, and the name AI Girl Gang itself. And she makes the case for trading the fear of being left behind for curiosity, play, and opting in. Honest, warm, and a proper nudge to stop watching from the sidelines. Find Lauren AI Girl Gang: aigirlgang.tech Substack: aigirlgang.substack.com LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/ingramlauren Instagram: @laurennextbigthing

  8. 24 Jun

    Your Calm Goes First: Dr Rosanna M on threat, drive and the soothe system motherhood forgets

    Your brain didn't break when you became a mother. It got an upgrade. Clinical psychologist Dr Rosanna M joins us on compassion-focused therapy and the three systems that run how we feel: threat, drive and soothe. Motherhood sharpens two of them. You hear the cry before anyone else does. You hold a hundred things in your head at once. The one that quietly slips is soothe, the rest and the steadiness that hold it all together. So we get practical about getting it back. A grounding exercise you can do mid-feed. The five percent shift. And why a treat is never just a treat. Warm, clever and genuinely useful. Find Rosanna on Instagram at @DrRosannaM. Resources:Guided breathing exercise (diaphragmatic breathing with Sophie, Nuffield Health): https://247.nuffieldhealth.com/videos/diaphragmatic-breathing-with-sophieValues vs goals, getting a sense of what matters to us again (video): https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-sMFszAaa7C9poytIAmBvAThe Happiness Trap Bull's Eye worksheet (PDF): https://thehappinesstrap.com/upimages/Long_Bull's_Eye_Worksheet.pdfMore from Rosanna, Becoming Mum resources: https://becomingmum.co.uk/resources/

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About

Matrescence Unfiltered is LIVE, a new podcast exploring motherhood, career, identity and ambition. ✨ We made this for the woman who loves her career and may be dreaming of becoming a mum, expecting, or already raising little ones. For the woman who couldn't find content that spoke to both motherhood and ambition at once. We're Bianca and Rose. A Chief Marketing Officer in her third trimester and a coach, consultant and organisational psychology researcher specialising in matrescence and sustainable high performance. We've been friends since we were teenagers, the first of the great neurological shifts of a woman's life, as it happens. Matrescence is the transition into motherhood. It is as neurologically significant as adolescence. And it is almost entirely absent from the professional conversation. That's what this podcast is about. 💡 Motherhood isn't a hindrance to your career, it's a accelerator. Research proves it's a neurological upgrade. 💡 Each episode, we take one thing about motherhood and work that doesn't hold up under scrutiny and break it down properly. Research, lived experience, and honest conversation about what it actually means when your identity is shifting in the middle of everything else. If this helps even one woman feel a little less conflicted and a little less alone, it will have been worth every second.

Information

  • Creator
    Rose Soffel and Bianca Bass
  • Years Active
    2026
  • Episodes
    20
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © 2026 Rose Soffel and Bianca Bass
  • Show Website
    Matrescence Unfiltered

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