Motherhood changed me in ways I wasn’t prepared for.
Not just logistically.
Internally.
I’m Katrina, and this is the work that grew out of trying to understand that change.
I thought I was ready for motherhood
When I became a mother, I expected life to change logistically.
I anticipated the sleepless nights, researched every milestone, and accepted that my body would never be quite the same.
What I didn’t expect was how different I would feel inside the life I worked hard to build.
From the outside, everything looked fine.
I loved my daughter. I was still ambitious. Still performing well. Still keeping everything moving. My career hadn’t disappeared.
But internally, something had shifted, and I didn’t know how to explain it.
Work didn’t bring the same satisfaction.
The pace I’d once maintained without thinking started to feel heavier.
The expectations I’d always held for myself suddenly didn’t sit right anymore.
I felt disoriented.
Exhausted by the constant decisions. Wanting to trust my gut, but second-guessing even the simplest things.
And because nobody around me was talking about matrescence, or anything that explained what I was actually experiencing, I assumed the tension meant something was wrong with me.
Everyone else seemed to be coping.
So why did I feel so disconnected inside a life that was everything I thought I wanted?
Discovering the word Matrescence changed the way I saw everything
The turning point wasn’t fixing my circumstances.
It was understanding what was happening underneath them.
For the first time, I realised motherhood hadn’t simply changed my responsibilities.
It had changed me.
The way I related to ambition, success, relationships, pressure, even my own standards had shifted.
Once I understood that, I couldn’t unknow it.
And I began noticing how many ambitious mothers were quietly interpreting this experience as personal failure, instead of recognising it as a developmental transition no one had prepared them for.
Women who were still functioning highly.
Still succeeding.
Still holding everything together externally.
But internally wondering why it no longer felt the same.
Why The Wing-Mama exists
I created The Wing-Mama because I couldn’t find spaces that spoke honestly about the identity shifts motherhood creates for ambitious women.
Most conversations focused on coping better. Self-care. Getting back to who you were before.
But that never fully reflected my experience.
The deeper conflict wasn’t about time management or stress.
It was about trying to continue living and succeeding from expectations that no longer fit who I had become.
And awareness alone didn’t change that.
Understanding was the first step.
Recalibration was the next.
That’s the work I do now.
Helping ambitious mothers interpret the shift they’re navigating, examine the standards still shaping their decisions, and consciously redefine what success, ambition, pace, and responsibility mean to them now.
Not by blowing their lives up.
But by helping them build forward from a clearer, more honest place.
My background
Before this work, I spent 15 years in brand communications leading high-pressure teams, navigating ambition, performance, and motherhood firsthand.
I’m an ICF-certified transformative coach and a trained Mama Rising™ facilitator specialising in matrescence and motherhood studies. I’m also a Mental Health First Aider and a member of the Association for Coaching.
But more than qualifications, what shapes this work is my own experience and years of listening to ambitious mothers describe feelings they’ve struggled to put into words anywhere else.
This is developmental work.
Identity work.
Recalibration work.
And it’s grounded in the reality that motherhood reshapes you whether you plan for it or not.
