The first thing that strikes you about Tracey Jewel is her abundance of positive energy, palpable even over Zoom from her home in Perth, Australia. Successful author, speaker, reality TV star, and still glowing from the birth of new baby boy Frankie, Tracey currently has a lot to be positive about.\

The 38-year-old mother of two’s latest foray into TV sees her among the six ‘Witches of Wall Street’ – a powerful group of successful businesswomen helping to empower other women – many of whom she’s also collaborated with on her upcoming fourth book ‘Decoding the Wellness Mantra’. 

Including wisdom from fellow ‘Witches’, Leah Steele, Taryn Lee, Michelle Patrick, and Soraya Garfield, “it’s a dabble into different wellness modalities that women might not have come across to raise their vibration and live a high-frequency lifestyle,” says Tracey.

Having originally been inspired by Tony Robbins back in 2004, Tracey started writing books about female empowerment after the birth of her first child, daughter Grace who is now 11. 

Tracey Jewel’s trilogy started with Goddess Within, then Don’t Mess with the Goddess. 

“They all have a flavor of feminine energy and personal power in your life. About having a side hustle, running your own business, developing your career – balancing life and business,” she explains.

Her third book This Goddess Means Business was launched in 2018, on the back of Tracey’s appearance on a  very popular reality TV show and propelling her even further into the glare of the media spotlight.

Dubbed one of Australia’s biggest social experiments, and indeed the reality TV format has been highly successful in other countries worldwide too, Married at First Sight – Australia sees three experts match-make couples who will only meet for the first time at the altar to marry each other. 

Tracey’s “marriage” to Dean in Season 5 didn’t work out in the end, as many don’t, but she was crowned the season’s most empowered bride for the way she handled herself. “I took my power back and found my self-worth through the process,” she reflects.

Taking back your power

Life in the media spotlight hasn’t always been – and still isn’t – kind to Tracey, who treats her detractors with far more compassion than they might deserve.

Asked about hurtful experiences, both with the press and social media, Tracey says there were definitely some low moments during her recent pregnancy and in Frankie’s first few weeks.

“I had a hard pregnancy and I found being pregnant and becoming a mom is when you’re most judged. For example, right now, I’m combining expressed breast milk and formula feeding. I’m very open and honest about my struggles with breastfeeding, and I do have some product collaborations (with formula brands). Because expressing allows me to work, and I can get more sleep and juggle everything. And while I’ve had a lot of positive comments, there have been a lot of judgmental, very opinionated comments, criticizing my decisions, calling me a bad mother.”

Tracey says that she really gets to see the whole spectrum of opinions across her 160,000 Instagram followers and that sadly, in her extensive experience of having been trolled online, the majority have been women. Her advice to anyone dealing with bullying, on- or off-line is that you mustn’t give those people the power to hurt you.

It’s about taking your power back. So we get to decide what we share on social media. But we don’t have to believe anyone that is bullying or trolling us, and we can decide not to engage in that behavior back as well.

Self-care has many facets

Tracey’s own experience of highly-opinionated keyboard warriors trying to tell her the “right” way to feed her newborn, and an overwhelming amount of other parenting advice, helped her realize that women just need a safe space to share their experiences and find their own way, and inspired her to create her new self-care platform Upself.

“There’s a lot of how-to information out there, which can be very overwhelming. Rather than just the how-to, let’s support each other, all get together and have a conversation. And that’s really what Upself and my self-care approach are all about, creating safe spaces for people just to be able to essentially vent about where they’re at and keep it real, rather than trying to fix it all the time.”

So it was her experience during COVID-19  lock-down and of becoming a new mother for the second time that spurred Tracey to pivot towards the self-care for women space. “Self-care for women in general, as well as self-care for women in business and other wellness professionals – because if they don’t fill their own cup up first, they’re going to burn out.”

Tracey has also considered the wider issues of self-care for women juggling motherhood and their own business, many facets of which are often overlooked.

“In the marketing world, and the social media world, it’s all about the facials, and getting a massage and getting your hair done, where self-care should cover all aspects of real life,” she says. “It’s emotional self-care, it’s even financial self-care – looking after yourself, and actually setting yourself up for wealth. It’s professional self-care, it’s social self-care – making sure that you’re not isolated, and you’re connecting with friends and colleagues. And with COVID, that’s changed massively. We can’t just go to a networking event, sometimes we have to pivot and do things online. So we touch on all aspects of self-care, not just the feel-good, fluffy stuff.”

“And at the end of the day, we need to make the right decisions for ourselves and our family, and not give away that power we have to Instagram or just following someone else’s experience and advice. I don’t think we appreciate and honor ourselves enough. We’re too busy giving that power away to other people.”