Nina
on Inner Narratives, Episode 09: Coming Back to Herself
Former investment banker, mother of three
Nina, former investment banker, mother of three, joins Nadz on Inner Narratives in Episode 09, Coming Back to Herself, a conversation about the experiences we'd never choose and ambition, motherhood, and identity.
Who is Nina?
Nina spent years in investment banking and stepped back at the height of her career, not because she had run out of ambition but because she had run out of time to ask what she actually wanted. She is a mother of three and speaks with unusual clarity about pause as a strategy rather than a retreat, and about what she found when the noise finally dropped.
What does Nina talk about on the podcast?
Nina left investment banking at the point where most people would have stayed. Three children, a career at its peak, and a schedule that had quietly answered every question about who she was for over a decade. This conversation is about the pause she took, and about what she found in it. We talk about the specific disappearance that happens when ambition and motherhood are both running at full volume, how the outline of a person blurs when every hour is allocated, and how easy it is to mistake momentum for direction. Nina is precise about the discomfort of stopping: the loss of identity that comes with the loss of a title, the guilt in both directions, and the strangeness of having time to ask what she actually wanted. What she describes on the other side of that pause is not a reinvention. It is a recovery, a return to a version of herself that had been running alongside her life without being consulted.
- The experiences we'd never choose
- Ambition, motherhood, and identity
- Choosing quiet over momentum
- Rediscovery on the other side of pause
How does the conversation unfold?
- 00:00Arriving and feeling nothing
- 07:20Banking, speed and self-worth
- 15:45Motherhood and divided attention
- 24:10The decision to step back
- 32:00The discomfort of the quiet
- 40:30What she found on the other side
In Nina's words
I had the time and none of the attention. Those are not the same thing.
The silence I had wanted for years arrived and felt like losing something.
Growth is not always faster. Sometimes it starts with stepping back.
Clips with Nina
Nina: growth isn't always about moving faster
6,000 views, as of October 2026
The experiences we'd never choose are often the ones that reveal us
4,201 views, as of October 2026
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