Nutrition, mindset and simple routines can make a real difference to your energy and focus, especially for busy mothers juggling work and home life.
In this episode, I’m joined by Lucy Kenefick, nutritionist and founder of NuMe Collective, to talk about the four pillars of wellbeing: food, movement, sleep and stress management.
You’ll hear us chat about:
How small habits can have a big impact on your wellbeing
Why protein is crucial in your 40s and beyond
The role of fibre for gut health, mood and long-term health
Making practical, family-friendly nutrition swaps
Sleep hygiene and stress management as foundations for energy
Why self-care isn’t selfish
Lucy’s approach is simple and refreshing: keep it basic, keep it manageable and focus on progress over perfection. A healthy diet isn’t about restriction or doing everything perfectly. It’s about building small, sustainable habits that give you more energy to show up as your best self at work and at home.
👉 Find Lucy on Instagram: @nume_collective
👉 Learn more at: www.numecollective.ie
✨ The Life-Work Balance Blueprint is kicking off in Jan 2026. Inside the programme, Lucy is leading an exclusive masterclass on how to boost your energy with small steps.
✨ If you’d like to get started sooner, I’m running a September Reset Session special offer — a 90-minute 1:1 call plus two weeks of support to help you manage your time to feel calm, clear and in control again.
Find all the details here:👉 https://frazzle.thrivecart.com/life-work-balance-reset-session/
Start building boundaries and systems that help you go from stressed to calm. Be more present with your family without sacrificing your career.
If you enjoyed this episode, follow the podcast so you don’t miss the next one
Back-to-school season can feel like a whirlwind — uniforms, homework, activities, meltdowns and the daily juggle on top of work and home life.
In this episode, I chat with Jenny Douglas, founder of A Good Moment Company, about how creating a calm, organised home can reduce stress and free up time for what really matters.
We talk about boundaries, systems, and why understanding your why matters when it comes to building habits that last.
Jenny shares practical ideas for:
Decluttering and setting up simple systems that stick
Using time management and scheduling to create calmer evenings and mornings
Outsourcing and sharing the load so you don’t burn out
Making small, intentional changes that add up to big results
Back-to-school organisation tips to help you feel more prepared and less stressed
Jenny founded A Good Moment Company after her own personal challenges with fertility and cancer, which led her to discover the power of organisation and boundaries.
Today she helps families create calmer, more intentional homes with systems that support both parents and kids.
Find her on Instagram: @goodmomentcompany.ie Website: www.goodmomentcompany.ie
✨ The Life-Work Balance Blueprint is kicking off in Jan 2026. Inside the programme, Jenny is leading an exclusive masterclass on creating calm homes with supportive systems.
✨ If you’d like to get started sooner, I’m running a September Reset Session special offer — a 90-minute 1:1 call plus two weeks of support to manage your time to feel calm, clear and in control again.
Find all the details here:👉 https://frazzle.thrivecart.com/life-work-balance-reset-session/
Start building boundaries and systems that help you go from stressed to calm. Be more present with your family without sacrificing your career.
If you enjoyed this episode, follow the podcast so you don’t miss the next one.
Parenting can feel like a sinking ship — especially when tantrums and big emotions take over. In this episode, I chat with Dr. Rhona Stallard about how understanding our own emotions, setting boundaries and practising self-regulation can transform the way we support our children.
We share practical strategies for managing behaviour, creating safe spaces for feelings and why “good enough” parenting really is enough.
Managing behaviour starts with our own self-regulation.
Boundaries matter — but so does flexibility.
Children learn most through what we model.
Community makes the hard days easier.
Rhona, founder of the PlayLab community has a PHD in early childhood education and real-world experience as a full-time working mother of two young children.Rhona helps parents decode behaviour, build deeper connections and support their child’s wellbeing.
Find her on Instagram: @the_play_lab_
✨ The Life-Work Balance Blueprint is kicking off in Jan 2026. Inside the programme, Rhona will also be leading an exclusive masterclass inside the Life-Work Balance Blueprint, diving deeper into how to navigate tantrums and build calmer family systems.
✨ If you’d like to get started sooner, I’m running a September Reset Session special offer — a 90-minute 1:1 call plus two weeks of support to help you manage your time to feel calm, clear and in control again.
Find all the details here:👉 https://frazzle.thrivecart.com/life-work-balance-reset-session/
Start building boundaries and systems that help you go from stressed to calm. Be more present with your family without sacrificing your career.
If you enjoyed this episode, follow the podcast so you don’t miss the next one.
Welcome back to The FRAZZLE Podcast — Season 2 is here!
I’m Aoife Hughes, Life–Work Balance coach, corporate speaker and founder of FRAZZLE.
This season, we’re focusing on boundaries and systems — the two most powerful tools to help mothers with demanding careers go from stressed to calm.
We’ll tackle the emotional mental load (guilt, perfectionism, permission to rest) and the cognitive mental load (planning, food, routines) — all through the lens of mindset, plans and systems.
🎙 First episode drops 27 August with Jenny @agoodmomentcompany, where we talk about creating a calm home through boundaries around time and energy.
Subscribe now so you don’t miss an episode — and join the Life–Work Balance Blueprint waitlist at @frazzlelifeworkbalance on Instagram.
In the final episode of Season 1, Amy Young from @DreamyCubs joins me to talk about the support that is available for parents to help their children to develop the skill and confidence to sleep.
This episode also covers:
If you would like more support with your child's sleep - follow Amy @DreamyCubs. You can also find out more about the support she offers on her website - www.dreamycubs.ie.
With the FRAZZLE framework – ‘How to run your home like a business’, the metric of success is time to invest into your self-care.
If you would like to work with me 1:1 - reach out:
I am in your corner to support you to invest in your self-care and Life-Work Balance.
More information to follow on Season 2...
In this episode, PwC Partner - Nicola Quinn joins me to talk about how she leveraged social connection to manage her transition back to work after her second baby.
This episode also covers:
With the FRAZZLE framework – ‘How to run your home like a business’, the metric of success is to save time to invest into your self-care.
If you could like to work with me on a 1:1 basis to build your life-work balance vision, values and goals:
I am in your corner to support you to invest in your self-care and life-work balance.
In this episode, Paula Cogan joins me to talk about how she navigated her career to become a CEO while rearing 3 sons with her husband, Mike.
We talk about how to adopt a permission mindset. Permission to ask for help, put less pressure on ourselves to meet ‘be perfect’ and to follow our instincts as parents and in our career.
This episode also covers:
If you would like to work with me on a 1:1 basis to understand your life-work vision, values and goals to build a plan to make room for self-care:
I am in your corner to support you to invest in your self-care and life-work balance.
In this episode, Dr Marese McDonnell @cradle.psychology joins me to talk about the infamous “mom-guilt” that a lot of us feel as working mothers.
Sending our love on Valentine’s Day. Listen to this episode to start to free yourself from “mom-guilt”.
We discuss how to manage it better so that it doesn’t get in the way of our success and investing time into our self-care.
This episode also covers:
* What is emotional regulation?
* Why do we feel judged as mothers?
* Why “good enough” parenting is better for our children
* Parental well-being is crucial for our child’s well-being
* How not to let “mom-guilt” get in the way of our self-care
* How to leverage self-care to sooth our nervous system
* Laughter is a form of self-care (and reality TV for us) 😆
* There is no “ideal parent”, we are all doing our best
* Why we need to be kind and compassionate to ourselves
Check out the Cradle Psychology website; www.cradlepsychology.com to find out more about their 1:1 consultations and workshops.
Also follow them on Instagram @cradle.psychology to pick up some really useful tips and tools on how to manage emotions.
With FRAZZLE coaching and planning, the metric of success is to save time to invest into self-care.
If you would like to work with me on a 1:1 basis to understand your life-work vision, values and goals to build a plan to make room for self-care, reach out on aoife.hughes@frazzle.ie
In this episode, Dr Ros Drake @drake_chiropractic joins me to help us get a better understanding around why working mothers are so FRAZZLED so that we can protect ourselves from burning out physically and mentally.
Today’s episode covers:
Check out Ros’s new pregnancy and postpartum snacks that are launching soon @mamas_golden_food
Books recommended by Ros:
With FRAZZLE coaching and planning, the metric of success is to save time to invest into self-care.
If you would like to work with me on a 1:1 basis to build a plan to make room for self-care please reach out on aoife.hughes@frazzle.ie.
I would love to work with you to support you to invest in your self-care and life-work balance
Time is the most valuable asset that we own. It is finite. We can measure it but no one knows how much of it we have long-term. We need to invest and spend it wisely.
The FRAZZLE coaching framework - 'How to run your home like a business' is about building a strategy to save time in the key quadrants of our lives; work, home and family to make room for self-care.
Today's episode covers:
With FRAZZLE Coaching and Planning, the metric of success is to save time to invest into your self-care.
If you would like to work with me on a 1:1 basis to build boundaries to manage your time more effectively please reach out on aoife.hughes@frazzle.ie.
I would love support you to work towards a life-work balance.
In this episode, Hazel Buckley @theyogatreehazel joins me to talk about how meditation can help us to manage our emotional health. Emotional health is one of the three key components of self-care, alongside physical and social health.
Hazel is a mother of 3 and runs a very successful yoga practice, retreats and last year officially launched “The Yoga Tree Community” app that has a holistic approach to health from physical exercise with yoga to meditation to nutrition.
Emotional health in simple terms is about how we manage negative emotions like stress, anger and anxiety. Christmas can be a stressful time as emotions run high. Our children are out of their routine and are over-stimulated.
In this podcast we talk about how simple breathing exercises can activate our parasympathetic nervous system when we are stressed and move us from a fight or flight to a rest and digest state.
Having a tool like meditation to help us to manage stress may be the best gift you give yourself this Christmas.
In this episode, a client and good friend of mine, Jean Fenton @jeaniebean86 joins me to talk about batch cooking.
Jean works full time as a registrar in The Crawford Art Gallery and has three girls under the age of 6 so she has a lot on her plate (pun intended) :)
Jean signed up for the planning program, “Batch cook like a boss” to take the stress out of the limited time that she has to cook dinner in the midweek evenings.
We chatted about how getting started with batch cooking and planning is the biggest part of getting the operation in place.
With kids and life in general, things don’t always go to plan but we learn on the way and adapt to what works for us. The main thing is to start with a plan
Abraham Lincoln once said, “Give me 6 hours to chop a tree and I will spend 4 sharpening the axe”. Once we have a plan in place, we can save time and headspace to make room for our self-care.
In this episode, I introduce the “How to run your home like a business” framework. I talk about why it makes sense to a build strategy around the key pillars of our lives; work, home, childcare and self-care.
As working mothers, we are carrying a heavy physical and mental load that comes with the work, home and childcare pillars which are leading to burnout.
When we become more operational around these pillars, we build time efficiencies to make room for our self-care strategy. This spans across our physical health, emotional and social health.
Once we have a plan in place, we can start to work with our partner, one of the main stakeholders in the business to manage the division of labour.
Another key resource is our team, our close family and friends - also known as our village. Our children are our customers. The overall goal is to ensure that they are happy.
The top line metric of success in this business is time. Time to be present with our partner, team and customers and to make room for self-care.
In this episode, the lovely Siobhan O' Sullivan from @sosfitnesscoaching joins me to talk about how to make room for self-care without the “mom-guilt”.
Siobhan owns and runs SOS Fitness and takes a holistic approach to wellbeing. She is a personal trainer and coach to a lot of working mothers and talks about how they build a boundary at home to make room for exercise as a form of self-care and why.
Working mothers are working two full time jobs. It’s not always easy to find the time to do something that makes us feel good. We talk about why we need to build a boundary around time for self-care as it builds our self-esteem to help us reach our goals.
The three main components of self - care are physical health, emotional health and social health. Exercise falls into the physical health category and releases endorphins (happiness chemicals) which make us feel good and helps to combat stress.
We talk about how exercise is simply moving. A three minute dance around the kitchen (with or without a spoon ) will not fail to make you feel good. It’s a good first step towards making room for self-care.
As part of baby loss awareness week, this episode is dedicated to baby Theo, baby Naoise and all the other babies that are star side⭐️
Adding a trigger warning as this may be upsetting for some.
A very special friend and guest, Lisa McCarthy joins me to share her fertility journey. She bravely shares her story about how baby Theo came into the world and sadly had to leave us 💔I talk about my baby Naoise who was also born sleeping 🦋
I believe in speed over perfection so for that reason this podcast is not edited. I want to capture the true conversation and story🎙️
However I do want to highlight that when I said that, 'Naoise wasn’t good enough for this world', I meant to say the complete opposite ❤️ I believed that he was too good for this world 👼
As our time is precious my aim is to keep podcast episodes short but I made an exception for this very special episode as I feel that it’s a conversation that should never be rushed ❤️
We talk openly about our babies and the next steps around how to move on and make sense out of tragedy. We also share how we dealt with tough decisions and how we now remember and celebrate 🎂our babies as they will always be part of us and made us who we are today.
We hope that we help someone that has to walk this path and loved ones around them as this is a road that no one knows how to navigate ⛔️
If you would like to reach out to myself @frazzlelifeworkbalance or Lisa @carthylisamc, we are are always happy to talk.
We want to send all our love ❤️ to the mothers, fathers and families of babies that are no longer with us but will never leave us ❤️🦋⭐️
Grá Mór a Chroí ❤️❤️❤️x
In this episode, I talk about how FRAZZLE born was and my motherhood journey so far. I do mention baby loss so adding a trigger warning if you would prefer not to listen.
I talk about my vision for FRAZZLE and dig into what I mean when I say that my goal is to help women to make room for self-care by balancing the work that comes with home and family life.
I work with working mothers on building a strategy around the key pillars of their lives from their Work, Home and Family so that they can make room for self-care. Self-care spans across our physical, emotional and social health.
If you have any questions or would like more information on Coaching and Planning in the Life-Work space, please reach out on:
Website: frazzle.ie
E-mail address: aoife.hughes@frazzle.ie
Instagram: @frazzlelifeworkbalance
LinkedIn: Aoife Hughes
Making room for self-care by balancing the work that comes with home and family life.