Mamamia founder and podcast host Mia Freedman is stepping back from the Out Loud daily podcast and her duties at Mamamia to take long service leave.
Towards the end of the most recent Out Loud podcast episode shetold listeners:
“Before we go, I have some news… I’m taking a few months off… I guess it’s long service leave.
“I’ve been doing this for more than 20 years now. It started as a weekly show, it’s now a daily show.
“It’s not even my day job…my day job was co-founder of Mamamia… running a business.”
Freedman didn’t take much time off when her children were born and has only taken short annual holidays. “I’m pretty well known as being a bit of a workaholic, and not so good at holidays,” she said.
She is “still going to be around” but not at the business every day. Freedman plans to take a few months off, maybe do some travel and come back when she feels rested.
“Those who run their own businesses will know that when you work for yourself you don’t get holidays, you don’t really get weekends all the time. I haven’t ever felt confident to take all that time off until now.”
“You guys, everybody who works on Out Loud and the wider business at Mamamia, we’ve never had a better team… and I feel like maybe I can step back for a little bit…
“Creatively I feel like, when you run a business its part of a group project, you lead a team… there are some things that I want to do, go a but quiet and work on some things on my own,” she said.
“My voice was cracking…. I was feeling a bit tired. One thing that keeps coming up is… you need to rest.”
Freedman revealed that “behind the scenes” she has been subject to “some online harassment” and a lot of pressure. “It’s my face on the door when things go wrong… you work through burn out.”
“The business and the show can live without me for a while…. I’m going to find out if I can live without it…
“I want to be smaller, the scrutiny of women in the public eye is a lot, I want a little bit of space to be quiet,” she said
The team asked her: Are you going to take up gardening?
“Oh god, please kill me if I do!”
Mentioning the team she works with on the podcast, Jessie Stephens, Holly Wainwright and EP Emeline Gazilas, Freedman said, “the only reason I can do this is that things are going so well now.”