Em Clarkson on Hyperemesis, Practicing Online Safety, and Why It's Okay to Say Motherhood Is Hard

We sat down with Em Clarkson on set for our 2026 Changemakers campaign. A writer, creator, and campaigner, Em has played a pivotal role in influencing the Women's Health Strategy to better support those suffering from hyperemesis nationwide, and continues to challenge the social pressures women are so often told to accept. In this conversation, she opens up about the loneliness of her hyperemesis pregnancies, the pressure to "bounce back" that she wishes she could take away from every new mother, and why setting ourselves free of the weight we carry might be the most healing thing we can do.

We're so excited to honour you as a 2026 Changemaker. You've built something really rare - a platform that's honest and committed to bettering the lives of women everywhere. Did you ever imagine it would become what it has?

I'm so grateful and constantly blown away by the community that I have online. I never imagined it - never could have dreamed it, to be honest.

Your work talks a lot about the pressure women put on themselves, as well as societal pressure. Where do you think that comes from?

The pressure on women - whether it's put on by ourselves, our peers, by societal expectation, or actively by those around us - it is relentless. I can't think of an area where it's not just so pervasive. I think so much of it starts with social conditioning and gender norms. There's so much to challenge, so much to unpick. But I think ultimately it comes down to - as cheesy as it sounds — setting yourself free of it. When you can look around and realize that we are drowning, that we are just so overwhelmed with the weight of everything that's on us, I think setting ourselves free of that is probably going to be the most healing thing we can do - worldwide, certainly community-wide.

What did motherhood teach you about yourself?

Motherhood has made me the best version of myself. Me as a mom is someone I couldn't have imagined before - she has all the confidence I needed as a child and as a young woman. I love what my children have made me. They've given me boundaries, confidence, purpose. And that's not to say I wouldn't have found those things without them - I think I would have got there. But for me, seeing the person I needed to be for them allowed me to become somebody beyond my wildest dreams. I love who I've become.

If you could sit with yourself during those first few weeks of postpartum, what would you say?

Big hugs, for a start. And I wish I could say this to every friend of mine who has children, and to every woman everywhere - it's going to be okay. Just hold on. It's going to be alright. Stop rushing. You rush yourself out the door, you rush yourself back into your clothes, back into your relationships, your friendships - and you are rushing back to a version of yourself and your life that isn't there anymore. It's a really disorientating feeling. It feels like running on sand, or running on jelly - everything is just so hard. I wish somebody had just told me I didn't need to be running. I could have just walked it. It would have been easier. So I guess what I would say is just: slow down. The fear that your career, your life, your body - everything has changed forever and you've got to scramble to bounce back - that's huge. And if I could have taken that away from myself, I would have done it in a heartbeat. I'd do it for anyone.

You're not afraid to say the parts that often go unsaid. What's the truth about motherhood that you think we're still not saying loudly enough?

That it's hard. Motherhood is hard - there's so much of it that's hard. And it's also the best. I'm like a propaganda machine for motherhood, I love it. But I think so many people are scared to say that they're struggling. And I think a lot of the time it's not even because their friends don't want to hear it - it's because they don't want to admit it themselves. Because if you think of an archetypal good mother, she doesn't struggle. You're picturing the Good Housekeeping ad from the 1950s. You're not having to do fifty million other things, you're not having to bounce back into rigid denim, you're not having to be on Instagram looking like everything's great. There's so much pressure to find it easy, to feel like you've just found your life's purpose - and that's not to say you haven't. But it doesn't make it easy every day. And I think we're often scared to say help, because then it feels like we're admitting we can't do something. And that's a tragedy.

Favorite TV or movie mom?

I've been in a panic thinking about this. You're going to cancel me for this, but I have some theories. First of all, I'm eliminating Disney - because all Disney moms are dead, and that's a bit screwed up if you ask me. Stepmoms are not portrayed well either - there's a whole chat to be had there. Instinctively I want to say Lorelai Gilmore. I know she's not a great mom in loads of ways, but I'm going to say it - she's doing her best. She was sixteen. She built a great relationship with her daughter. She always did what she thought was best, and they came out of it probably needing a little bit of therapy, but happy and together.

What does your toddler think your job is?

Oh God, I don't want to know. The longer she doesn't know the better. If she never finds out there are hundreds of thousands of people out there on the internet - great.

What are you hopeful about for the future of motherhood?

I don't know if this is for my own motherhood or for a societal view of motherhood, and I don't want to speak for everybody's experience. But if I could hope one thing for moms, it would just be that they're happy. There's so much within motherhood that's beautiful and joyful - yeah, there's hard stuff, and you're knackered, and I don't want to discount any of that. But there's so much that's lovely. And time and time again you hear people say it's not being a mom that I find hard, it's everything else. I just have to hope that there's less of everything else at some point, and that moms just get to be happy. Relaxed, even. When was the last time you saw a relaxed mom? They don't exist. If I could wish one thing for the future of motherhood, it would be that they could relax.

What does being a Changemaker mean to you?

I don't have words for the honor of being called a Changemaker. As an incredibly indecisive person who never evokes change in my own life for fear of what it might bring, it's amazing. Having had hyperemesis and been so ill throughout my pregnancies - I was so lonely, and it was the hardest thing I could have imagined. The idea that I've got to be comfort for anybody else - that's the honor of a lifetime. If I get to be that change in somebody's life, and they feel a little bit less on their own, and feel like they can advocate for themselves and that they deserve a little bit more than what they got - what greater honor in life is there than that?

Read more about the Changemakers here.