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:

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:

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:

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

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 said no. Then, before anyone could even react, I heard myself apologising for it. Nothing bad happened. Nobody was hurt. I just held a boundary — and some old, exhausted part of me still felt like I owed someone a "sorry" for it.

This is Part 3 of the July series — Boundaries, People-Pleasing, Guilt, Self-Trust. Boundaries was the door. People-pleasing was why it stayed open. This episode is the toll booth that charges you every time you try to walk through anyway: guilt.

Here's the truth nobody tells you when they hand you a boundary script — guilt doesn't disappear once you learn the skill. If you're a recovering people-pleaser, guilt isn't a sign you did the boundary wrong. It's the toll you pay for doing it right, at least for a while.

In this episode:

Take the free Power Leak Checklist at whatyoutookback.com/power-leak-check-list-sign-up to find out where your own guilt tends to load in.

What have you taken back? 🎙️

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.

Someone tells you, "Honestly, you're just so easy to work with." You smile. You say thank you. Inside, some tiny, exhausted part of you goes, oh no — because you know what that sentence actually means once you translate it. You've never made this person manage your feelings, negotiate with your limits, or wait for you to think about what you actually want. You made yourself frictionless. And frictionless people don't get protected. They get relied on.

This is Part 2 of the July series — Boundaries, People-Pleasing, Guilt, Self-Trust — and this episode goes straight at the mechanism underneath every collapsed boundary from last week: people-pleasing. Not the dictionary version. The real one. It's not about wanting to be liked. It's about a nervous system that decided, a long time ago, that being needed was safer than being known.

In this episode:

Take the free Power Leak Checklist at whatyoutookback.com/power-leak-check-list-sign-up and find out exactly where yours started.

What have you taken back? 🎙️

Picture your family or friend group chat. Someone's asked you to host Christmas again — same as every year — and for the first time, you type the word "no." Then you delete it. You write it again, this time with a paragraph attached: how tired you've been, the kids' schedule, a "maybe next year" so nobody feels rejected.

That's not a boundary. That's a boundary wearing a disguise so it can sneak past everyone's disappointment without anyone noticing.

This is Part 1 of a four-part July series — Boundaries, People-Pleasing, Guilt, Self-Trust — and this episode is about the tell that gives away a fake boundary every time: the length of the explanation. A real boundary is a sentence. The kind most of us were taught to build is a paragraph.

In this episode:

If this one hits close to home, take the free Power Leak Checklist at whatyoutookback.com/power-leak-check-list-sign-up — it'll show you exactly where your energy is leaking before you even get to the boundary conversation.

What have you taken back? 🎙️

Someone decided you were the strong one. Nobody asked your permission. And somewhere along the way, it became the only thing you were allowed to be. This episode is for the woman underneath the strength — the one who has held everyone else together and never once been the person someone rushed to check on. It's time to talk about what that costs.

You became the ceiling that holds everything up.

And ceilings don't get to have bad days. They don't get to sit on the kitchen floor at 10pm and just not be okay for a minute. They don't get to say I'm struggling. Because if the ceiling comes down, everything underneath it does too.

This is the episode for the strong one. The one who nursed people through illness. Who held families together through things that would have broken most people. Who went through her own heartbreak, her own losses, her own falling apart — and handled it, because that's what you do.

And not one person asked if she was okay.

In this episode, I talk about how the strong one role gets assigned without your consent and hardens over time, the quiet, unspoken fear that keeps the people around you from ever asking — if she's broken, what happens to all of us? — the grief that lives underneath the strength, and the permission you were never given but always deserved.

This episode won't give you a five-step strategy. It'll give you something simpler.

The strongest thing you will ever do is let someone in.

🔗 Download the free Power Leak Checklist — start identifying where your energy, confidence and sense of self have been quietly leaking away.

Episode 17 — "She Was Always the Strong One. Nobody Checked on Her."

Everyone decided you were the strong one.

Not because you asked for it. Not because anyone sat down and voted. But because when things fell apart, you stayed steady. When there was a crisis, you handled it. When everyone else needed holding — you held them.

And because you did it so well, so consistently, so quietly — nobody thought to ask if you were okay.

Not because they didn't care.

Because they genuinely couldn't imagine that you needed it.

This episode is about the hidden cost of being the strong one. Not the exhaustion — you know about that already. The deeper cost. The grief of never being the one who got to fall apart. The loneliness of competence. The slow erosion of the woman underneath the role.

And the boundary nobody ever talks about — the one that was set for you without your permission. The boundary around your own vulnerability.

This month we're taking our power back. And this week, that starts with something quieter than a boundary conversation or a hard no.

It starts with the permission to not be strong.

Just for a minute.

Just for today.

In this episode:

Grab the free Power Leak Checklist: whatyoutookback.com/checklist

If nobody has checked on you lately — consider this your check-in. I see you. And you are allowed to put it down.

Episode 15 — "You are not difficult. You are just done."

You were the easy one. The agreeable one. The one who never caused a fuss.

You let things roll off your shoulders. You swallowed the truths that deserved to be said out loud. You kept the peace — even when it meant losing yourself.

And somewhere along the way, you called it strength.

It wasn't strength. It was self-abandonment.

In this episode, we're talking about what happens when you finally stop pretending you're fine. When you stop performing agreeable. When the real version of you — the one with opinions and needs and things she actually thinks — starts showing up.

And why, when that happens, suddenly you become difficult.

This episode is for the woman who has been called too much, high maintenance, or dramatic — when the truth is, she just stopped being convenient.

Because you were never difficult.

You were just done.

In this episode:

Grab the free Power Leak Checklist: whatyoutookback.com/checklist

If this episode made you feel seen — share it with a woman who needs to hear it. She knows who she is.

EPISODE 14: THE BARE MINIMUM IS STILL SOMETHING

Ever had one of those days where simply getting through it felt like an achievement — but you still convinced yourself it wasn't enough?

This episode is for the woman carrying the mental load, juggling everything, showing up for everyone else, and quietly beating herself up for not doing more.

Somewhere along the way, you started believing every day needed to be productive, exceptional, purposeful. You stopped giving yourself credit for surviving hard seasons. You made "just getting through it" something to be ashamed of.

In this episode Skye talks about the pressure you place on yourself, the unrealistic standards you've normalised, and why the bare minimum deserves far more recognition than it gets.

Because sometimes the win is getting out of bed. Sometimes the win is making it through the day. And sometimes the win is simply not giving up.

The bare minimum is still something. And so are you.

If this episode hit close to home, start here:

The free Power Leak Checklist will show you exactly where you've been losing energy, confidence and yourself — in five minutes or less. It's the first honest look most women take at what's actually draining them.

→ Get it free at whatyoutookback.com/checklist

Ready to go deeper?

The Noticing (7-day) and The Awakening (28-day) are built for the woman who is done performing fine and ready to start reclaiming herself.

→ whatyoutookback.com/programs

Follow + subscribe so you don't miss what's coming. This is just the beginning.