Mulberry Gate, Postnatal Depression and Selling My Way Out of £40k Debt with Tracey Longbottom

June 8, 2026

The unfiltered reality of the brutal trade-offs behind the polished success.

When we look at tech founders and corporate leaders, we are frequently fed the highly polished, carefully curated version of success. We see the milestones, the investment rounds, and the expanding team sizes. But behind almost every life that looks entirely certain from the outside is a deeply complicated, often chaotic journey underneath.

In this week’s episode of Notes from the Not There Yet, Bethany sits down with Tracey Longbottom, the powerhouse co-founder of legal tech firm Forsyte. On paper, Tracey’s trajectory is staggering: since launching in September, she and her co-founder Jane have built a team of 14 people and secured over 30 major law firm clients. Yet, the true power of Tracey’s story doesn’t lie in her commercial metrics; it lies in her unapologetic willingness to speak about the brutal trade-offs, identity crises, and societal expectations that accompanied her rise.

Tracey Longbottom as a young child in a sheep outfit

The Roots of Rebellion and the Independence Drive

Raised in a traditional, working-class Northern family in Bradford by a police officer father and a matriarchal mother, Tracey identified early on as the family's "black sheep". Pushing boundaries was instinctual. Kicked out of the family home at 15, she refused to let her chaotic circumstances dictate her future. She worked gruelling hours to fund her own university education, graduating with £40,000 worth of debt but holding an unshakeable belief that she could sell her way out of it.

For Tracey, money was never about materialism; it was about autonomy. Watching her mother’s traditional role - where her father held total financial decision-making power - Tracey framed that setup as her personal idea of hell.

"I need independence, I need financial freedom to be able to make my own choices. And that's what money gives you, right? It gives you the ability to say, "I don't want to be stuck in this situation."

Tracey Longbottom with Dad on wedding day in wedding car

'Mulberry Gate' and Shifting Power Dynamics

This fierce drive for independence inevitably collided with societal expectations of what a woman "should" be. Tracey details a decade-long relationship that ticked every traditional box her parents hoped for. Yet, as her sales career skyrocketed, the domestic power dynamics fractured. The tension culminated in an event her friends still call "Mulberry Gate". Just two months after a beautiful wedding in Santorini - a wedding she admits she felt a deep sadness entering because she knew it wasn't right - Tracey treated herself to a luxury Mulberry handbag with the fruits of her own hard work.

When her husband’s response focused entirely on the transaction rather than her wellbeing after a long journey, the clarity was instant. She asked for a divorce at the dinner table. It was a swift, decisive reclamation of her life, proving that evolving apart is often the only way to avoid suffocating who you are meant to become.

The Identity Trap of Motherhood

Perhaps the rawest chapter of Tracey’s story explores her transition into motherhood. Unapologetically honest, Tracey admits she never had a burning desire for children and found pregnancy to be an identity crushing experience. For a woman who spent decades carving out professional credibility and a sharp identity in male-dominated boardrooms, suddenly being viewed purely as a "vessel" and “just a mum” by society was a painful shock and a reality she didn’t want to navigate.

Following the birth of her daughter Isla, Tracey faced severe, undiagnosed postnatal depression. She struggled with a lack of sleep and felt an intense resentment that her hard-won identity had been placed on an unnatural pause. While society peddles the narrative that motherhood must immediately feel like the "best thing ever," Tracey felt a profound detachment, watching her partner bond instantly with their baby while she desperately waited for that emotional rush to arrive.

Her saving grace was making the empowering choice to put Isla into childcare at just three months old to reclaim her workspace and her mind. It is a choice she speaks of without a shred of performative guilt, recognising that a fulfilled mother is far better than a deeply depressed, compromised version of herself.

Reclaiming Sales and Facing the Boardroom

Today, Tracey navigates the legal tech sector - a triple-threat of male-dominated environments: sales, tech, and law. She embraces her directness, her ambition, and her love for vintage fashion and blonde curls, turning the experience of being underestimated into a distinct corporate superpower. For Tracey, sales is never a dirty word; it is an act of accountability, integrity, and human connection.

Now sitting in her self-described "messiest middle ever," balancing high-stakes business scaling with the ongoing mental load of motherhood and school WhatsApp groups, Tracey’s story stands as a beautiful testament to our core philosophy: you don't need a polished life to be entirely successful. You just have to have the grit to design a life entirely on your own terms.

Tracey Longbottom with co-founder Jane Pritchard

What Tracey's Story Teaches Us

Tracey's journey through the "messy middle" carries lessons for anyone navigating professional ambition alongside heavy personal trade-offs:

Financial freedom is structural safety: Money is not about luxury or status; it is the critical tool that gives you the absolute power to choose your own setting and leave situations that no longer serve you.
Being underestimated is an advantage: Stepping into traditional rooms where people make instant assumptions about your appearance allows you to entirely own the space the moment you display undeniable, hard-won credibility.
Reclaiming your identity is not selfish: Choosing early childcare, opting out of societal parenting scripts, or preserving your workspace are entirely valid acts of mental health survival.
Accountability overrides the pitch: Real commercial success relies entirely on keeping your integrity, building deep human networks, and standing accountably by your word when things inevitably break.
Nothing has gone wrong: Even when your life looks like chaos colliding, you can thrive in the middle of a moving feast of compromise.

A Final Thought

If you’ve ever achieved the outward markers of corporate success, only to feel a deep friction within your private relationship dynamics...

If you’ve ever looked at the massive societal expectations placed on mothers and felt an intense sense of claustrophobia or identity loss...

If you’re currently carrying the crushing mental load of building a professional career while managing the logistics of family life...

Tracey’s story is your reminder that your ambition does not make you a bad version of what society expects you to be. Success isn't about scoring a flawless 10/10 across every column of life; it's about having the grit to design your own non-linear path and owning your trade-offs with absolute pride.