Motherhood didn't soften my ambition. It sharpened it.

On the myth I was handed, the terror of losing something I loved, and why I kept building businesses anyway.

"Just you wait." "Your priorities will change." "Motherhood will change you."

They were right. But not in the way they meant.

I spent years in the legal industry absorbing a particular idea about what happened to women once they had children. Law firms, at least the ones I moved through early in my career, operated on an unspoken principle: extract as much value as possible before the baby arrives, because after that, your career will “cap”.

I carried that myth with me even after I left to build my own firm. Even owning the business, setting the culture, making every decision myself - I still braced for the shift. I loved Legalite with everything I had, and I was terrified that the moment I had a baby, I'd fall out of love with it. That my child would replace the passion. That I'd become someone else.

"I loved my business, and I was terrified that the moment I had a baby, I'd fall out of love with it."

My son arrived. And the shift I'd been dreading didn't come.

What came instead was clarity. I realised I could hold space for both - mother and founder, fully - without one diminishing the other. If anything, becoming a mother made me more discerning. More protective of my time. More deliberate about the clients I worked with and the kind of work I was willing to do. Having a baby showed me, in real time, how short and singular this one life is. It didn't narrow my vision for the business. It honed it.

Then my daughter arrived. And something shifted again, a little deeper this time.

If my son sharpened my ambition for Legalite, my daughter sharpened my sense of legacy. My family was now complete and the juggle really was real. The way your support systems need to expand, the way the mental load multiplies, the way you start asking harder questions about what you're building and why. I didn't want to just run a successful business. I wanted to build things that meaningfully contribute. Not add to the noise.

Marianne Marchesi - Founder, Travel Tots

"I didn't want to just run a successful business. I wanted to build things that meaningfully contribute."

Travel Tots was born from that question, and from a very specific moment.

Our first family holiday with my son was, to put it plainly, a logistical nightmare. The mental load was overwhelming before we'd even left the house. At the time, I was mix formula and breastfeeding my baby so the feeding equipment alone was already exceeding my luggage weight limit. We arrived tired and flustered, and I remember thinking: 'how is no one solving this?' I looked. I couldn't find a single business that wasn't just handling equipment hire, but taking on the whole mental load of travelling with kids. Not one.

Then when I had my daughter, and the logistics were multiplied, I started to think really seriously about making Travel Tots a reality.

The gap was real, and it was obvious, and it was mine to fill.

That's why Travel Tots exists. We take on the mental load of travelling with little ones - so you can focus on the memories, not the logistics. It’s why our mission is “One booking. Zero mental load.”

The myth was that motherhood would make me smaller, less driven, less willing to keep building. The truth is that every stage of it - one child, then two, then the very real friction of trying to move through the world with them - has made me more certain of what I'm here to do, and more committed to doing it well.

This campaign, Movement Without Mental Load, exists to say that out loud. And to give other women a place to say it too.