When you’re caring for everyone, who’s looking after you?

You’re raising kids. Your parents are getting older. Work hasn’t slowed down. The washing still needs doing, dinner still needs making, appointments need organising, someone needs a lift somewhere and somehow you’re meant to look after yourself too.

Welcome to the sandwich generation.

In this episode of The Parts We Hide, Victoria Braithwaite and Dr Pennie Taylor APD talk about what it really feels like to be squeezed between competing responsibilities and why so many people, particularly women, quietly carry an enormous physical and emotional load.

As mothers, business owners and women navigating the competing demands of children, careers and ageing parents, Victoria and Pennie know what it feels like to be caught in the middle. Drawing on their own experience; Victoria supporting families through The Family Cook, and Pennie’s extensive work across health and wellbeing, they unpack the guilt, exhaustion, caring responsibilities and invisible logistics that keep families functioning.

Because sometimes life really is a sh*t sandwich and pretending we’re coping perfectly doesn’t make it any easier.

This is the part we don’t always talk about: what happens when everybody needs something from you at once.

What happens when you're qualified to be in the room, but you're still trying to convince yourself you belong there?

In this episode, Victoria Braithwaite and Dr Pennie Taylor APD are joined by sisters Christina Bruno and Sarah Bettcher, two engineers who have built successful careers in traditionally male-dominated fields.

They take us back to where that sense of belonging can begin, long before the workplace. From growing up playing with Barbies while their brothers built with Lego and Meccano, to arriving at university feeling as though everyone else already knew more, Christina and Sarah reflect on confidence, finding their voices and the pressure to prove themselves.

They share the moments they weren't heard, the meetings where speaking up felt impossible, the interview where Sarah's mind went completely blank and how those experiences have shaped the women and leaders they are today.

But this conversation isn't only about careers.

Christina joins us just two weeks after giving birth, rocking baby Harvey as we talk about motherhood, sleep deprivation, workplace flexibility, supportive partners, mental load, guilt, burnout and the invisible work that continues long after the working day ends.

We also ask what needs to change for the girls coming behind them. How do we encourage girls who love maths, science, building and problem-solving to back themselves? How do leaders create workplaces where quieter voices aren't simply invited into the room, but are actually given the space to be heard?

It's an honest, funny and very real conversation about confidence, careers, motherhood, leadership and learning that sometimes you don't need to become the loudest person in the room.

You just need to know that your voice belongs there.

The Parts We Hide. Because the parts we hide are often the parts that connect us.

Few things attract more judgement than how a mother feeds her baby.

Breast is best. Fed is best. Breastfeeding, formula feeding, combination feeding; behind those simple phrases are women trying to make deeply personal decisions at one of the most vulnerable times of their lives, often without access to all the information they need.

In Fearless Feeding, Charlotte Chambers, part of the first female-owned and operated infant formula company in Australia joins Victoria Braithwaite and Dr Pennie Taylor for an open conversation about infant feeding, motherhood and the judgement that can come with both.

Charlotte shares her own experience of trying to feed a newborn, the challenges that followed and how that lived experience ultimately became the beginning of a business.

Together, they explore the messaging around “breast is best” and “fed is best”, the laws and restrictions surrounding infant formula information and marketing, and an important question: what happens when parents don’t have all the information they need at one of the most vulnerable times of their lives?

How do we make reliable infant-feeding information and support more accessible to new mums? How do we better support women when breastfeeding doesn’t go to plan? And can we have more honest conversations about feeding our babies without judgement, guilt or shame?

Because fearless feeding isn’t about choosing one side or another. It’s about giving women the information, support and confidence they need to make the decision that is right for them and their baby.

What if some of the things we’ve been taught about weight, food and our bodies deserve to be questioned?

In Weighting for Change, Victoria Braithwaite sits down with co host Dr Pennie Taylor APD for a conversation that challenges some deeply ingrained ideas about weight, health and what we see when we look in the mirror.

And for this conversation, Pennie brings an extraordinary depth of experience to the table. An Accredited Practising Dietitian, researcher and author, Pennie spent 18 years as a research scientist with CSIRO and is now Director of 360ME Nutrition and Director of Clinical Translation at VivaLab. Her career has spanned clinical practice, nutrition science, research and the translation of complex health evidence into information people can actually understand and use.

Her clinical experience includes supporting people navigating eating disorders, disordered eating, body dysmorphia and complex weight management, with an approach that reaches beyond food and numbers to self compassion, acceptance and the impact these issues can have on individuals and the people who love them.

Together, Victoria and Pennie unpack BMI and the messages we still teach young people about weight, diet culture, body image, weight loss medications and surgery, our relationship with food, and the way we learn to judge our own bodies.

Victoria brings the questions, lived experience and some of the beliefs many of us have absorbed without ever really questioning them. Pennie brings decades of clinical and research experience and isn't afraid to challenge a few of them.

Sometimes changing the conversation means being willing to question what we've always believed to be true.

Episode 3: Weighting for Change

Because the parts we hide are often the parts that connect us. 🎧

The smile we wear when everything is falling apart. John Mannion of the Breakthrough Mental Health Research Foundation joins Victoria and Pennie to talk about the exhausting work of appearing fine — why so many of us feel we have no other choice, and what happens when the brave face finally comes down.

If this conversation brings something up for you

This episode includes an open conversation about mental health and some of the things we often carry quietly.

If you, or someone you care about, needs additional support, please know that help is available.

For mental health support services and resources, visit the Breakthrough Mental Health Research Foundation’s Get Help Now page:

https://breakthroughfoundation.org.au/get-help-now/

If you or someone close to you is in immediate danger, please call 000.

You don’t have to navigate it alone.

Half the population goes through it, yet almost nobody talks about it. Dr Beth Russ joins Victoria and Pennie for a frank conversation about perimenopause — the symptoms nobody mentions, the silence around them, and how to advocate for yourself when your own body feels like unfamiliar territory.

The things we carry quietly; the brave faces, the money worries, the health changes nobody warned us about. The Parts We Hide is a new podcast from Victoria Braithwaite and Dr Pennie Taylor APD, talking honestly about what it means to stop hiding. Season 1 begins 10 September. Talking about what people carry quietly.