Content note: This episode discusses periods, PMDD, pregnancy loss, endometriosis, adenomyosis, and the emotional weight of reproductive health. We share some very personal things. We think that matters.

This is not an easy episode to write a blurb for, because what happens in it is the kind of conversation most of us have never had — not with our mothers, not with our doctors, not even with ourselves. Welcome to this week's meeting of the Burnt Out Mums Club.

Alexi and Alison talk about periods. Really talk about them.

About the shame that arrives with your first one and quietly never leaves. About PMDD — what it actually feels like from the inside, and what it looks like from the outside when you grow up with someone who has it. About the diagnoses that took decades. About the relationships that absorbed the collateral damage before anyone had a name for what was happening. About the things we were told to just push through — and what it costs us when we do.

This episode covers endometriosis, adenomyosis, PMDD, pregnancy loss, and the particular grief of not knowing that what you were experiencing was not your fault and was not normal.

It also covers clots on white tiles, period candles, and why one of us spent a week at home after getting her period because she genuinely thought you couldn't leave the house while bleeding.

We normalised the wrong things for a very long time. This conversation is part of un-normalising them.

For the women who thought it was just them. It wasn't.

You know that feeling when you look around at other people's lives and wonder how they have it all so sorted — while you're just trying to find where you put the permission slip that was due yesterday? Yeah. Same. Welcome to this week's meeting of the Burnt Out Mums Club.

In this episode, Alison and Alexi get real about what it actually looks like to run a household when your brain works differently. Not the Instagram version. The real version — with Australia Post boxes full of mystery documents, whiteboards wiped at the wrong time, and the visceral PDA reaction to a freezer full of pre-made meals.

They talk about:

• Why visual clutter hits differently for neurodivergent brains — and why that actually matters
• The systems that genuinely work in their houses (and why they're completely different from each other)
• Why meal prepping makes some of us want to set something on fire — and what to do instead
• The two-card trick for direct debits that will save your sanity
• Why "smoked salmon on toast" absolutely counts as dinner and you are allowed to do that

No tips and tricks. No 10-step plan. Just two neurodivergent mums being honest about what works, what doesn't, and why there is no one-size-fits-all answer — only the answer that fits you.

You don't have to have it all figured out. You just have to find your version of figured out.

Welcome to this week's meeting of the Burnt Out Mums Club. Got a diagnosis — or starting to wonder if you might need one — and have no idea what comes next? This is the place for you.

In this mini episode, we each pull back the curtain on our own businesses and how we work differently for neurodivergent women and mums.

First up, Alexi talks about her approach to nutrition for neurodivergent bodies — and why everything she learned at uni had to be unlearned after her daughter's diagnosis. No 10-step treatment plans. No cutting out entire food groups. Just small, anchored, doable steps that actually stick. Sometimes that means starting with breakfast. Sometimes it means drinking enough water. And yes, that is enough.

Then Alison breaks down what coaching actually is, why it works so well for neurodivergent brains, and how it fits into life after diagnosis — or before one, or without one. It's not tips and tricks, and it's not someone handing you a solution wrapped in a bow. It's more like walking into a dark room together, with someone helping you point the torch into the corners you don't normally look at.

Two different approaches. The same belief — that you deserve support that actually works for your brain.

Feeling like you don't know yourself anymore? This is the place for you? Welcome to this week's meeting of the Burnt Out Mums Club.

There's a particular kind of lost that hits when you're standing in a supermarket, with time to yourself for once, and you realise you have absolutely no idea what you actually want.

This week Alison and Alexi get into something that doesn't get talked about enough — the slow erosion of knowing yourself. Not the dramatic identity crisis, but the quiet, creeping realisation that you know exactly what your husband likes, what your kids need to feel comforted, how to create moments for everyone else — and when it comes to yourself, you've got nothing.

They talk about what happens when you outsource your own joy to other people without meaning to, why motherhood puts you at the bottom of the list so consistently that eventually you stop knowing where to find yourself, and why the answer probably isn't a trolley full of fancy toiletries — even if that used to work perfectly.

There's also a deeply relatable conversation about not knowing how to dress anymore, the injustice of men just walking around looking great while we quietly dissolve, and the radical idea of dropping yourself in Daylesford for a weekend with no plan and no one to look after.

Plus: colour seasons, orange glasses, noisy jackets, and the day Alexi romanced herself around Fitzroy in the rain and felt genuinely magnetic. We're all chasing that feeling.

Even been so full of rage that you couldn't put a sentence together? This is the place for you. Welcome to this week's meeting of the Burnt Out Mums Club.

Nobody warned us about perimenopause. Not really. There were no classes, no preparation, and apparently very little research — especially if you compare it to, say, the amount of money that went into Viagra.

This week Alison and Alexi get into one of the most under-talked-about intersections in the spicy mum world: what happens when a neurodivergent body hits perimenopause. The rage that might be hormones, might be Mars in Aries, and is probably both. The postpartum to perimenopause pipeline that nobody tells you about. The emotional symptoms that arrive years before the physical ones. And why, if you've got a divergent brain, you've almost certainly got a divergent body too.

They talk about the wild west of HRT, why your liver deserves a little attention before you go down that path, why iron is doing more than you think, and the genius hack of drawing a picture of your body and handing it to your GP instead of trying to explain everything in a ten minute appointment.

Also: why some women just sail through menopause completely unbothered, and why that is genuinely offensive.

Funny, frank, and full of things your mum probably never told you — because nobody told her either.

Ever felt like you've got nothing left to give but you just have to keep going? This is the place for you. Welcome to this week's meeting of the Burnt Out Mums Club.

Burnout isn't a bad week. It's not forgetting to wash your hair or being a bit tired at school pick-up. It's when your brain goes offline, your body stops cooperating, and you find yourself sitting in a women's business breakfast wanting to absolutely lose it at someone for meditating at 5am.

This week, Alison and Alexi get into it — properly. Between them they've hit burnout more times than they'd like to count, and this episode is the honest account of what it actually looked and felt like from the inside. Moving house. Ageing parents. Restructures. Perimenopause nobody warned them about. Tunnelling machines under the floorboards. And the particular kind of rock bottom that arrives quietly, wearing the face of a normal Tuesday.

They talk about why recovering from burnout is actually a skill nobody teaches you, why it takes longer than anyone tells you, and why Instagram self-care is — to put it gently — not going to cut it. Plus Alexi's number one piece of advice for anyone who is burnt out right now, and why it has nothing to do with productivity.

If you've ever felt like you had no core strength left but had to keep holding everyone else up anyway — this one's for you.

Ever wished you could just read in to the brain of your autistic partner? This is the place for you. Welcome to this week's meeting of the Burnt Out Mums Club.

This week, Alison is joined by a very special guest: her husband Rod. And yes, her friends are going to be very jealous.

Rod was diagnosed with autism and combined-type ADHD in early 2025 — later in life, and after a path that most late-diagnosed adults will recognise: years of masking, a childhood of being told he was "too much," and a growing suspicion that something was going on long before anyone put a name to it. In this episode, he talks openly about what that journey actually looked like from the inside.

They dig into the moment a psychologist essentially told him he shouldn't be okay — and what that cracked open. How moving house became the unexpected trigger that unravelled everything. What it really means to spend a lifetime as someone else, and why being handed a Level 1 diagnosis after decades of white-knuckling it through the world can feel more like an insult than a relief.

There's also a genuinely beautiful conversation about what it's like to be in a relationship with someone whose richest, most fascinating world mostly happens inside their own head — and what it costs both of them.

Raw, funny, and unexpectedly moving. Rod builds castles in the sky and goes and lives in them — and this week, we finally get to go inside.

Feel bad for losing your proverbial at your kids this morning? This is the place for you. Welcome to this week's meeting of the Burnt Out Mums Club.

If you've ever held it together just long enough to get everyone to school — then sat in the car park and cried — this one's for you.

This week, Alison and Alexi dive straight into the chaos of a genuinely brutal morning: sleep deprivation, a house inspection that quietly set off a 12-hour dysregulation spiral, and the moment you crack the shits right alongside your screaming kid and just have to keep going anyway.

They unpack why meltdowns so often feel like they come out of nowhere (spoiler: they usually started yesterday), what happens when a PDA parent and a PDA child are both fighting for control of the same morning, and why "just stay calm and regulated" is the most unhelpful advice anyone has ever given a burnt out mum.

There's also a real conversation about something that doesn't get talked about enough — making accommodations for yourself, not just your kids. Including one very specific purchase that's been avoided for way too long.

Raw, honest, and zero Instagram-worthy moments. Just two mums doing their absolute best in a spicy household, and talking about what that actually looks like.

Ever walk away from a conversation with more questions than answers? This is the place for you. Welcome to this week's meeting of the Burnt Out Mums Club.

School holidays mean one thing: actual mum catch-ups. Not play dates where you spend the whole time refereeing — real conversations, over coffee, without small people interrupting every thirty seconds.

This week, Alison comes to the podcast with a lot to unpack. Two catch-ups, two very different conversations, and one question she can't stop thinking about. When you finally get a diagnosis for your kid — do you tell the school? Do you tell anyone? And what happens when the answer is not yet, and probably not for a while?

They dig into why sharing a diagnosis can feel so loaded, why trust doesn't come easily to a lot of autistic parents, and why the parents who are having the hardest time advocating for their kids might actually be the ones who need the most support themselves.

Then there's the medication conversation. Does your child know who they are without it? Does medicating a kid mean toning them down to fit a world that wasn't built for them? And what happens when two spicy kids who are usually best friends suddenly find that one of them medicated and one of them not is a combination that's just a bit much?

No neat answers here — just two friends asking the questions that a lot of parents are quietly sitting with, and not quite saying out loud.

Feel touched out, talked out, burnt out and over it? This is the place for you. Welcome to The Burnt Out Mums Club.

Every podcast starts somewhere. This one starts with two friends who got tired of advocating for their kids in a bubble — and decided to stop gatekeeping their conversations.

Between them they've got three kids of varying spiciness, two step-kids of untold spiciness, a late-diagnosed ADHD brain, an AuDHD husband who regularly needs to be reminded to drink water and go outside, and somewhere between zero and forty years of figuring out their own brains — depending on who you ask.

They talk about why they're sick of hearing that neurodivergent family life is just hard — and what's missing from that conversation. Why having the language to name how your brain works changes everything, for your kids and for you. Why home has to be the place where you first learn that life doesn't have to be done on hard mode. And why, if you can't ask for accommodations in your own lounge room, asking for them out in the world is a pretty steep hill to climb.

There's also a brief detour into the Rothschilds, a panic attack on cold tiles, and the revelation that Alexi is, in fact, a habanero.

A Capricorn and a Pisces walk into a podcast. It turns out that's a very good combination.