Bree Sutherland spent years pursuing a conventional definition of success. Life transitions led her to question what she really wanted, and ultimately to build a life and career with greater alignment and fulfilment.
Nothing has to be falling apart for a woman to want something to change. Her career can be fine. Her relationship can be fine. And still, something quieter asks a question worth sitting with: does the life I built still fit who I’ve become.
Bree Sutherland spent many years building a life around a fairly conventional definition of success. It was through her own life transitions that she began asking whether that life still fitted who she had become, a question that now sits at the heart of her work with women navigating change.
Only 34 percent of employees worldwide describe themselves as thriving in their overall wellbeing, according to Gallup’s 2026 State of the Global Workplace report. The rest aren’t necessarily failing at anything. Many are doing everything right and still sensing something isn’t quite aligned, a feeling Bree believes is worth getting curious about rather than dismissing.
Bree’s work is helping women sit with that feeling long enough to understand what it’s telling them.
Meet Bree Sutherland
Bree Sutherland is a Sydney, Australia-based Women’s Life Coach and the founder of Soul FULL Coaching. Soul FULL Coaching supports women through seasons of change, helping them reconnect with who they are now, clarify what matters most in this season and create greater alignment and fulfilment in their lives. Her career has moved across environmental and carbon markets work in Europe and Australia, several years in the not-for-profit sector at WWF-Australia, and a brief return to carbon markets afterwards, before she retrained as a coach in 2024. “I haven’t become less ambitious. I’ve redefined what ambition means to me. It’s not just about career progression or achievement anymore. It’s about creating a life that feels purposeful, fulfilling and aligned with what matters most to me.”
The Quiet Pull Worth Getting Curious About
Bree’s clients often arrive using similar language before they can fully explain why: lost, overwhelmed, stuck, disconnected, uncertain, or simply aware that something in their life no longer feels quite right. From the outside, many of them look like they’re doing fine.
When nothing looks obviously wrong, it can be easy to dismiss that feeling or convince yourself you should simply be happy with what you have. Bree sees it differently, as something worth getting curious about.
Bree reflects:
“Sometimes life can be perfectly fine. And still, something within you knows you want more. It can be easy to dismiss that feeling when there’s nothing obviously ‘wrong.’”
For Bree, that feeling is something worth paying attention to and exploring more deeply.
What Redundancy and New Motherhood Taught Her at Once
Her own lived experience sits alongside her professional training and shapes the empathy, understanding and perspective she brings to her coaching.
“I was made redundant only six months into a new role, at a time when I was also a relatively new mother. It levelled me. My confidence took a huge hit.”
She was navigating two identity shifts at once: new motherhood and a professional identity that no longer felt certain. That experience shapes how she listens when a client describes a life that looks fine from the outside and doesn’t feel that way from within.
Meeting Who You Are Now
Bree’s work isn’t about helping women get back to who they were before life changed. It’s about creating space to explore: Who am I now? What matters to me in this season? What do I want to carry forward, and what might I be ready to let go of?
That process can also involve rebuilding what Bree describes as “inner confidence”: not the outer confidence that comes from competence, experience or knowing you can perform, but the quieter confidence that comes from knowing yourself, trusting your own voice and feeling able to make choices that are right for you.
One of the Biggest Transitions in a Woman’s Life Has a Name
Motherhood is one of the significant transitions Bree works with, alongside many others that can shift a woman’s identity, priorities or sense of what she wants. A February 2026 survey by the maternal community app Peanut found 67 percent of mothers have never heard the word matrescence, the physical, psychological and identity shift of becoming a mother. Without the word, Bree says, women are often left to interpret a profound shift as something private and wrong, rather than a recognised transition.
One client first came to Bree while pregnant with her second child. Matrescence had hit her hard after the birth of her first, and she knew she wanted to support herself differently the second time around. They began working together after her second baby was born.
She was clear that she wasn’t looking for therapy. She knew motherhood had changed her profoundly and wanted support to reconnect with who she was now and understand what she needed in this new season of her life.
At the same time, she missed parts of who she had been before motherhood: her work, her hobbies and some of the things that had once made her feel like herself. Their work became less about trying to “get back” to the woman she had been and more about exploring how she wanted to move forward. What still mattered to her? What did she want to carry with her? And what could those things look like within the reality of her life now?
It’s a theme Bree sees across many different seasons of change. Our circumstances shift, our priorities evolve and sometimes our sense of self changes with them. The work isn’t necessarily about finding your way back to who you were, but creating the space to understand and honour who you are now.
Redefining Success Without Walking Away From Ambition
Bree spent many years pursuing a fairly conventional version of success across environmental, corporate and not-for-profit roles in Europe and Australia. “The truth is I never really loved the roles I was doing,” she says.
Motherhood, redundancy and eventually retraining as a coach prompted her to question what she actually wanted her life and work to look like.
“I’ve personally experienced how challenging it can be when an identity you’ve held for years begins to shift. For a long time, my professional identity was a significant part of how I saw myself. Changing direction wasn’t simply about changing what I did for work. It also meant reconsidering who I was, what mattered to me and what success meant to me now.”
Today, Bree hasn’t abandoned employed work for coaching. Instead, she has deliberately created a portfolio career, combining part-time work in the not-for-profit sector with building Soul FULL Coaching and raising her family.
For Bree, that isn’t about becoming less ambitious. It’s about defining success more consciously and creating a working life that allows purpose, fulfilment, family, flexibility and meaningful work to coexist.
That experience also shapes the way she coaches. “My role isn’t to replace society’s definition of success with another one. It’s to help a woman understand what hers looks like in the season she’s in now.”
Five Reflections for When Life No Longer Fits Quite the Same
Who am I now? Life changes us. Rather than trying to get back to who you were, consider who you are in this season and what has shifted within you.
What matters most to me now? Our values, needs and priorities can evolve as our lives change. What feels most important to you at this point in your life?
What no longer feels aligned? Notice the parts of your life that still feel right and the parts that don’t fit quite as comfortably anymore. What might those feelings be inviting you to explore?
What am I ambitious for now? Ambition doesn’t have to mean what it once did. What does success and fulfilment look like for you now, separate from what you’ve been taught you should want?
What do I want to carry forward? Change doesn’t require leaving your old self behind. Which parts of who you’ve been still matter to you, and how might you bring them forward in a way that fits the woman you are now?
