Beyond the Catchy Title
When I came across Dolly Jones’ book Leaving the Ladder Down: How to Combine Career and Motherhood, from the Women Who’ve Done it, it immediately resonated with the approach I’d taken when starting the blog A Fine Balance, which evolved into the Work-Life Balance Confessions podcast.
Both Leaving the Ladder Down and A Fine Balance: Work-Life Balance Confessions are rooted in the same principle: interviewing people from all walks of life who are individually navigating a similar experience, and seeking to celebrate and learn from those differences.
In my case, it’s work-life balance. In Dolly’s case, it’s returning to work after having children.
The values felt so aligned that I was thrilled when she agreed to join me as a podcast guest. And I can safely say that the conversation exceeded my expectations. I had naturally expected that we’d have plenty to talk about on the subject of navigating work-life balance from the perspective of working mothers. And we did. A lot.
But what I hadn’t anticipated was that this episode would deliver some of the most hard-hitting, profound advice I’ve featured on this podcast, on a topic I haven’t explored in nearly enough depth before.
Therapy.
Not therapy as a last resort. Not therapy as something you turn to only when things fall apart, or when you’ve been impacted by trauma. But therapy as a practical, proactive tool in the pursuit of work-life balance – and one that working parents, in particular, stand to benefit from enormously.
One Woman. A Treasure Trove of Stories
Dolly Jones, a former editor of Vogue and married mother of two, has a wealth of experience to reflect on when it comes to the pursuit of balance between work and everything else in life. She has navigated balance in some of the most demanding contexts imaginable: the fashion industry, the relentless pace of global online media, and later the solitary discipline of being a writer, not to mention juggling amidst all of that a voluntary role as a school governor.
Meanwhile, her book – described as a funny, practical and crucial guide for women facing the life-changing prospect of returning to work after having children – is informed by interviews with dozens and dozens of women navigating exactly that.
So she arrived on the podcast equipped with not just her own story, but theirs too. Throughout the episode, therefore, Dolly weaved in anecdotes of working parents of all kinds, providing tangible examples that shine a light on the multi-faceted ways that people juggle their work with everything else in life that matters to them.
But her insight and advice were based on her personal experience too. Our conversation touched on Dolly’s perspective of finding balance within a marriage, the impact of grief on work-life balance, the unexpected burnout that she experienced following traumatic events in her life, and the transformative role that therapy has played in her regaining and maintaining her balance overall.
Sufficed to say, it made for a rich and wide-ranging conversation.
A Fitting Celebration of Women Empowering Others by “Leaving the Ladder Down”
Though this episode was recorded in February 2026, I mostly worked through the edit throughout March, which coincided with International Women’s Day, the theme of which this year was “Give to Gain”. It’s a subject that I reflected on in the podcast’s monthly newsletter: The Work-Life Balance ‘Win-Win’ of Women Empowering Women.
As my social calendar – not to mention my social media feed – filled with celebrations and recognition of women, the timing could not have been more fitting to be re-listening to the recording of my conversation with Dolly. The concept of Dolly’s book leans into the IWD theme, encouraging recognition of the gains all-round of women empowering women by “leaving the ladder down” as they ascend their work and home life trajectories.
It reinforced the notion that lifting others up won’t diminish you, but rather elevate you too, whilst acknowledging the reality that getting into that mindset requires a strong sense of self-confidence and self-assuredness. It’s a virtuous cycle: more women support each other → more women thrive → more women are in a position to support others → and so on.
Dolly isn’t short of examples of this working successfully in practice and throughout our conversation, she reflects on how this can, in turn, enhance the work-life balance of both those that “leave the ladder down”, and those that take advantage of those rungs being available, and feel emboldened to start climbing.
Summary of what we cover in this episode…
- The power of “leaving the ladder down” — and what that looks like in practice
- Navigating work-life balance as working parents
- Finding balance within a marriage
- The impact of grief on work-life balance
- The different degrees of burnout and the various definitions of trauma that can be its catalyst
- The guilt, the judgment, and the internal voice that convinces you that you’re failing on at least one front at all times
- Trauma – including the kinds that don’t look like trauma from the outside – and how unexamined experiences shape the way working parents relate to achievement, rest, and ambition
- The transformative impact of therapy on work-life balance
- Choosing priorities and setting intentions
This is one of those episodes I’ve been thinking about since we recorded it. I hope that listeners will enjoy it and come away feeling as moved, encouraged, and optimistic for the future as I did.