Grit Diaries
Kate de Jong · 44 min
After two miscarriages and a decade of chronic stress as a consulting engineer, Kate de Jong finally stopped wearing the mask — and rebuilt her life, her health, and her calling from the ground up.
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For 35 years, Kate de Jong wore a mask so well that no one could see the cost. She climbed the corporate ladder as a consulting engineer in Perth, winning bids and managing client relationships, all while her body kept score of the stress. The anxiety was relentless, the insomnia chronic, the colds endless. She was doing everything right on paper, until two miscarriages in two years showed her she couldn't keep doing it at all.
The second loss broke something in her that the first one had bent. She couldn't put the mask back on. So she took a month off, sat by the beach one morning, and felt something shift. Watching an Irish backpacker move through a cafe with ease and lightness, Kate realised she hadn't felt that way since her early twenties. In a moment of clarity, a single word dropped into her mind: give up. Not as defeat, but as permission to stop. She went home and told her husband she was quitting her career. He resisted until a job offer came through that changed everything. Paris for two years, then South Korea for four. Once the financial pressure lifted, she fell pregnant. Jack was born in Paris. Leo followed in South Korea.
What Kate had buried at 18, when her father steered her away from journalism and Italian toward the security of engineering, finally had room to surface. She trained as a coach, then as a business mentor, and built Inspired Business to help female founders launch companies outside the corporate system. Every thread of her earlier life, the languages she loved, the relationships she knew how to build, the writing that always felt effortless, wove itself into something true. The gold wasn't in the cracks of her breaking. It was in what she chose to do after.
⚠️ Content advisory: this episode discusses grief & loss, which some listeners may find distressing.
If you need support, you're not alone. Help is available: • Lifeline (24/7 crisis support): 13 11 14 · lifeline.org.au • GriefLine: 1300 845 745 · griefline.org.au
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