The Working Mom Show

Heather Laing was the head of HR in the middle of orchestrating layoffs when her 7-year-old son was taken to the ER and placed on an involuntary psychiatric hold. She had to choose between staying with him and showing up for work the next morning. She still carries the fact that she wasn’t there for the scariest part.

What changed afterward wasn’t just how she mothered. It was how she saw every working parent around her.

Heather spent 20 years leading HR and talent at companies like VMware, SanDisk, and Sonos. She knew policies inside out. She had flexibility most employees never get. And she was still struggling. So she asked herself: if I can barely hold this together, what are the parents with none of these advantages actually going through?

In this episode, Heather talks about the invisible crisis hiding in plain sight in our workplaces — 1 in 8 employees raising a child with complex needs, staying silent to protect their careers — and what she’s now building to change it.

Connect with Heather here:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/heatherjlaing

https://www.complexcaregiversolutions.com

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If Heather's story made you think about what might be possible for you, I'd love to talk. I'm a career strategist for moms, and if you're ready to figure out your next step, book a free advisory call with me — link in the show notes.

https://calendly.com/ganterklara/call-with-klara

Or check out my programs: mompire.eu

Not sure yet? Start with the quiz: mompire.eu/quiz

At 34, Allie Grace Garnett was a Harvard Business School graduate working in renewable energy finance in New York. Technically, doing well. Not doing great.

So she decided to volunteer on a farm in Belize and live on $25 a week. None of it happened the way she planned. So she built her own.

Eleven years later, Allie is the founder of A to Z EcoFarm — a retreat center, food forest, and women’s gathering space in the Belizean jungle — and a single mom to a 5-year-old who is currently outside helping build sleeping pods.

She’s also a marketing professional who got laid off by AI six times in two years, and responded by building AI tools so she could spend more time in the garden.

In this episode, Allie talks about what it really took to build a life from scratch in the jungle, why she thinks women and moms aren’t meant to do any of this alone, and what she’d tell any mom who knows her current life isn’t the right one but can’t see the exit yet.

Find Allie here:

https://www.atozecoretreats.bz/

https://www.mommamebz.earth/

Curious about Digital Marketing In A Box?

Email [email protected] to get the Explorer prompt for ChatGPT!

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If this story made you think about what might be possible for you, I'd love to talk. I'm a career strategist for moms, and if you're ready to figure out your next step, book a free advisory call with me :

https://calendly.com/ganterklara/call-with-klara

Not sure yet? Take the 3-minute quiz: mompire.eu/quiz

Astrid Born's daughter had an allergic reaction at school. She drove 40 minutes to get to her. And when she arrived, her manager ticked her off for leaving without informing him first.

In that moment, sitting in a hospital car park, she decided: she was never going to answer to a manager again.

In this episode, Astrid — clarity coach, virtual assistant, and mom of two girls — talks about what it actually looks like to build a business from the ground up as a single mom in an unfamiliar country, with too many ideas and not enough hours.

She’s honest about the loneliness, the workaholic trap, and the slow realisation that her real gift — the thing she’d been doing since university without a name for it — was helping people cut through the noise and see what they actually needed to do next.

Meet Astrid here:

https://www.instagram.com/itsastridborn/

https://wn5znh-un.myshopify.com/

If Astrid's made you think about what might be possible for you, I'd love to talk. If you're ready to figure out your next step, book a free advisory call with me — link in the show notes.

https://calendly.com/ganterklara/call-with-klara

Not ready yet? Take the 3-Minute quiz first: mompire.eu/quiz

Melissa Denning wasn't looking to start a business. She was breastfeeding her third baby, developed painful wounds that wouldn't heal, and discovered that every nursing pad on the market made the problem worse — absorbing the ointment, sticking to the skin, pulling at the scabs.

So she looked everywhere for a solution. Found nothing. And decided: if no one else is going to make it, I will.

While still working full-time as a realtor and raising three kids — including a teenager who is absolutely mortified every time she says "nipple ointment" in public — Melissa launched MomAid, a clean, intentionally-formulated breastfeeding and baby essentials brand now sold on Amazon, Leaping Bunny certified, and gunning for EWG certification.

In this episode, she walks us through the whole messy, brilliant journey: the Thanksgiving cabin where it all clicked, the patent process she didn't know existed, the lab that stood her up on three Zoom calls, and the mom reviewer who called her formula "the Krabby Patty secret recipe."

She also shares what she'd tell every mom sitting on a product idea, too scared to start: you'll never know enough. So buckle up.

You can find MomAid and Melissa here:

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If [this story / what NAME shared today] made you think about what might be possible for you, I'd love to talk. I'm a career strategist for moms, and if you're ready to figure out your next step, book a free advisory call with me — link in the show notes.

https://calendly.com/ganterklara/call-with-klara

Or check out my programs: mompire.eu

Janylene Turcotte spent 25 years in HR — coaching others through career transitions, navigating senior roles, nearly a decade at Deloitte — and when she was finally let go in a restructure, she sat down for an interview three days later and completely froze.

Her body didn't want to be there anymore. And it took that moment to admit what she'd been avoiding: she was done with HR. She just hadn't been ready to say it out loud.

What followed was a deeply personal transformation — getting sober after nearly a decade, building a support team from scratch, getting curious, and stumbling into a hypnotherapy session that changed the entire direction of her life.

In this episode, Janylene — hypno-coach, stepmom, now step-grandmother, and founder of her own practice with over 1,500 sessions behind her — shares what she learned, what she helps her clients unblock, and the 7-out-of-10 framework that's changed how she thinks about mom guilt, perfectionism, and what it actually means to feel good in your own life.

Meet Janylene here:

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If [this story / what NAME shared today] made you think about what might be possible for you, I'd love to talk. I'm a career strategist for moms, and if you're ready to figure out your next step, book a free advisory call with me — link in the show notes.

https://calendly.com/ganterklara/call-with-klara

Or check out my programs: mompire.eu

A month before going back to work after having her baby, Hailey Bohlman sat with a question most new moms ask but few answer honestly: what do I actually want my life to look like?

She didn't blow everything up. She didn't quit. She went down to 60% at her corporate technical program manager job — fully accepted she wouldn't be climbing any ladders — and she kept building Cork & Fizz, her wine education business, podcast, and tasting events, on the side.

In this episode, Hailey — Seattle-based mom of a 7-month-old and a self-described happy cog in the machine — talks about why she stopped measuring success in dollars and promotions, how she structures her week across corporate, baby, and passion project, and why she batch-recorded 20 podcast episodes on maternity leave just to stay sane.

It's a refreshingly honest conversation about what it looks like when work is not your identity — and that's completely by design.

Meet Hailey here:

https://www.corkandfizz.com/

https://corkandfizz.buzzsprout.com

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If Haileys' story made you think about what might be possible for you, I'd love to talk. I'm a career strategist for moms, and if you're ready to figure out your next step, book a free advisory call with me — link in the show notes.

https://calendly.com/ganterklara/call-with-klara

Or check out my programs: mompire.eu

Candice Seenyen had it all on paper. Product manager at Meta. Twin boys. A career she'd worked 10 years to build. And by the end, she wasn't crushing it professionally while bravely choosing motherhood. She was getting worse at both.

The moment that changed everything? A Friday night — a public holiday she'd planned to spend with her kids — spent on her laptop, anxious about a forgotten slide. She closed her laptop at 10pm, her boys already asleep, turned to her partner, and said: it's now or never. Then she opened the laptop again and signed up for a $10,000 conscious parenting certification with Dr. Shefali.

In this episode, Candice — now a conscious parenting coach and mom of twin boys — shares the full arc: the impossible standards she held herself to at work and at home, the son who didn't want to come to her when he was scared, and the day — two years later — when that same boy casually said, "I used to be scared of you. But I'm not anymore. Because I know you now."

Book a session with Candice, if you want to be an even better mom:

Instagram: @coachcandiceseenyen

LinkedIn

 www.candiceseenyen.com

Instagram: @coachcandiceseenyen

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If Candice's story made you think about what might be possible for you, I'd love to talk. I'm a career strategist for moms, and if you're ready to figure out your next step, book a free advisory call with me — link in the show notes.

https://calendly.com/ganterklara/call-with-klara

Or check out my programs: mompire.eu

Melissa Face came back from maternity leave to find her principal had docked her end-of-year evaluation points for absences. The absences that were her maternity leave.

That was the moment something shifted. Not loudly — she didn't quit, she didn't complain. She just quietly stopped caring about being a good employee on paper in a system that clearly wasn't designed with her in mind.

Melissa is an award-winning author, English teacher, and mom of two who has been published in Chicken Soup for the Soul across 25 volumes — and whose book I Love You More Than Coffee: Essays on Parenthood was born from a question her 3-year-old asked on a sticky, chaotic, perfectly ordinary terrible day.

In this episode, she talks about teaching through early motherhood, being blindsided by a corporate layoff she never saw coming, hiding on her couch in the same leggings for two days, and eventually landing the job she'd always been looking for — one that finally doesn't ask her to choose.

Find Melissa and her book here:

I Love You More Than Coffee

Website

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If Melissa's story made you think about what might be possible for you, I'd love to talk. I'm a career strategist for moms, and if you're ready to figure out your next step, book a free advisory call with me — link in the show notes.

https://calendly.com/ganterklara/call-with-klara

Or checkout my career solutions for moms: mompire.eu

Rose Ann Mullet sat across from her boss — pregnant, asking for one day a week from home — and he told her that when his kids were young, he and his wife just figured it out.

She wanted to ask: was it we, or was it she?

She didn't. She did the math, and gave notice the week the return-to-office went into effect — leaving eight weeks of paid maternity leave on the table.

Rose Ann is a content strategist and ghostwriter for lawyers, a self-described queen of pivots, and a mom of two who has reinvented her career more than once — always for a reason, and always around her family. In this episode, she talks about what it actually feels like to pivot repeatedly, why she's not ashamed of her non-linear path, and how the four unpublished novels sitting in a drawer quietly made her better at everything she does today.

Meet Rose via her LinkedIn and Website.

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If Rose Ann's story made you think about what might be possible for you, I'd love to talk. I'm a career strategist for moms, and if you're ready to figure out your next step, book a free advisory call with me now:

https://calendly.com/ganterklara/call-with-klara

Or check out wht programs I created for moms:mompire.eu

Kertu Sepp had two career pivots. Neither happened the way she planned.

The first was a deliberate leap — from teacher to the booming Estonian tech sector — built through networking, self-study, software engineering courses, and sheer persistence. The second wasn't a choice at all: a mass layoff, a husband starting a new job, two daughters, and her mother's final months of life landing all at once in November.

She sat in the middle of all of it, and instead of rushing back to corporate, she waited. She dealt with her mother first. Then she asked herself what she actually wanted.

In this episode, Kertu — career and leadership coach based in Tallinn, Estonia — talks about why women in their 30s and 40s hit a wall even when they have everything they worked for, why staying in indecision is itself a decision, and what it feels like to finally stop putting yourself in a box.

A genuinely thoughtful conversation between two career coaches who happen to both be moms.

Meet Kerttu here:

LinkedIn

Website

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If this story what Kerttu shared today made you think about what might be possible for you, I'd love to talk. I'm a career strategist for moms, and if you're ready to figure out your next step, book a free advisory call with me — link in the show notes.

https://calendly.com/ganterklara/call-with-klara

Or check out my programs here: https://mompire.eu