Burnout Recovery for Working Moms: Why Hustle Fails

Burnout recovery is not a personal willpower problem — and if you are a working parent trying to hold a demanding job and a full life at the same time, this conversation will name something you have been carrying quietly.

Leslie sits down with Jessica Lattif, founder of Not Working in Tech, a platform and community challenging toxic workplace culture and the myth that burnout is just the price of success. Jessica spent more than a decade in the tech industry, rising to senior engineering manager, before a string of illnesses, a chaotic team, and a performance plan led her to take medical leave — and never go back.

Together they get into what actually drives burnout: the unspoken cultural rules that punish anyone who is neurodiverse or simply unconventional, the impossible math of caregiving alongside a job that expects round-the-clock availability, and the way hustle culture asks individuals to solve problems that were never individual to begin with. Jessica also shares why she now tells clients to take the leave they have already earned, and what it looked like to rebuild a working life on her own terms.

If this one lands, the invitation at the end is simple: you do not have to figure out the next chapter alone.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

WORK WITH LESLIE

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Book a 1:1 coaching discovery call → https://theloomlife.com/discovery-call

Coaching + programs → https://theloomlife.com

Therapy (Florida clients) → https://loomlifetherapy.com

Leslie Ellen Mathews → https://leslieellenmathews.com

Instagram → @the.loom.life

TikTok → @leslieellenmathews

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

CONNECT WITH JESSICA LATTIF

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Not Working in Tech → https://www.notworkingintech.com

Instagram → @notworkingintech

TikTok → @notworkingintech

LinkedIn → https://www.linkedin.com/company/not-working-in-tech

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

CHAPTERS

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

00:00 Welcome & meet Jessica Latif

01:18 Growing up between cultures and feeling like an outsider

07:30 From nutrition policy to sustainable seafood

13:15 An unexpected path into tech

15:15 Career pivots, imposter syndrome & starting over

17:25 "Family friendly" doesn't always mean parent friendly

18:10 What working in tech was really like

21:00 Burnout, motherhood & becoming the first parent on leave

23:15 The job that pushed her to the breaking point

27:30 How burnout quietly builds over time

30:00 Can employers access your mental health data?

33:20 Why taking leave can change everything

36:10 Entrepreneurship, hustle culture & the social safety net

40:35 How Jessica helps people recover from burnout

42:40 Why burnout isn't something to solve alone

45:00 Hidden resources most people never hear about

47:10 Building Not Working in Tech

49:45 Why teachers, healthcare workers & parents are burning out

53:00 Why young people are rethinking work and family

54:10 Envisioning a healthier future for work

55:10 Final thoughts and Closing

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

SUPPORT RESOURCES

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

This episode discusses burnout, workplace discrimination, and mental health. If you are struggling, support is available.

US — call or text 988 (Suicide & Crisis Lifeline)

Outside the US — find a helpline at https://findahelpline.com

This podcast is for educational purposes and is not a substitute for therapy, medical care, or legal advice.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

KEYWORDS

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

burnout recovery, working mom burnout, tech industry burnout, toxic workplace culture, taking medical leave for burnout, neurodivergent at work, hustle culture, life coach for women in transition, mental health podcast for women, career burnout support

#BurnoutRecovery #WorkingMomBurnout #ToxicWorkplace #PullingThreads #TheLoomLife