[MEG]
Then on top of it, people are like, “Oh, look at you, trying to teach your kid Mandarin and be fancy.” And like, “You’ve told me I needed to do that or he would never be successful.” Like if you listen to everybody, then you’re really crazy. Everything that goes wrong is your fault and everything that goes right, you didn’t have that much to do with. It’s a hard job.
[VERONICA CISNEROS]
Hey girl. Imagine a life where you feel supported, connected and understood. I get it. Being a mom is hard, especially when you’re spinning so many plates. We exhaust ourselves trying to create the perfect life for our family. You deserve to enjoy your family without the stress perfectionism brings. On this podcast, I provide practical and relatable life experiences. I teach women quick and easy to use strategies to help them reclaim their identity, re-ignite their marriage and enjoy their children. If you’re ready to be challenged, then pull up a chair, grab a pen and paper because it’s about to go down. I’m Veronica Cisneros, a licensed marriage and family therapist and this is the Empowered and Unapologetic podcast.
[VERONICA]
Welcome to Empowered and Unapologetic. I’m your host, Veronica Cisneros. Today’s guests are the hosts for What Fresh Hell: Laughing in the Face of Motherhood, which is a top 10 parenting podcast on apple with 3 million downloads to date. This podcast provides reassurance, advice, laughter and community. Margaret Ables is a com is a comedy writer and performer who was head of video for Nickelodeon’s Nick Mom. Amy Wilson is the author of WHEN DID I GET LIKE THIS? and is a comedian and actor who’s performed on Broadway and in dozens of TV shows and films. So please help me by welcoming Amy Wilson and Margaret Ables. Hey guys.
[MEG ABLES]
Hey, thanks so much for having us.
[AMY WILSON]
Thanks for having us.
[VERONICA]
Absolutely. Oh my gosh. Like I said earlier, I am super excited because I have no idea where this conversation’s going to go, but I know it’s going to be fun and hilarious.
[MEG]
That’s how we like to roll. We only like to have conversations where we don’t know where they’re going. Sometimes they go off the rails. So we’ll see how it goes.
[VERONICA]
Those are the first ones.
[MEG]
Yes exactly.
[VERONICA]
So how did you two come together? Like how did you guys become this duo, badass duo?
[MEG]
Well, we started a long, many, many years ago. Amy and I have known each other, I will not say for how long, but the word decades, years. Amy was in a comedy group with my sister in college and we didn’t know each other super well, but we always knew who the other one was. And then we were both in LA, Amy was on a bunch of sitcoms and I would see her on TV and be like, “Oh, that’s Amy Wilson.” I was out there writing comedy and doing TV stuff and we just, our paths kept crossing and then we both started blogs a long time ago. Then we would overlap in the blogging world, like a blogging conference. So I’d be like, “You’re Amy Wilson, from TV and also you know my sister.” So we were that kind of like acquaintances knew each other’s faces and then I ended up at Nick Mom, which was a channel that Nickelodeon started for moms a couple of years back. I was the head of video. So I was watching a lot of incoming video and Amy was in one of them and I was sort of wrapping up at Nick Mom.
[AMY]
I was stocking, [crosstalk].
[MEG]
She definitely, it was like very, what is that called like in, you don’t have no agency in your stalking, because it was like passive stalking, basically. I see Amy in this video and I’ve been pondering this idea of doing a podcast and I just sent her an email. I might’ve even had to get your email address from someone because I probably didn’t have it and I said, this is so funny, you just came across my desk in a video. Do you want to go have a drink? And I pitched her on doing a podcast. And she said yes and here we are, four years later.
[AMY]
And it was, in this moment that most of us have in our lives, Veronica, where I was like, I had just finished a project, a collaboration that wasn’t a great match for me and it was time for me to pivot. And I was like, “Okay, the next thing I have, it will be, I’m going to work with somebody. It’s going to be a woman this time. It’s going to be something that’s fun and funny, funny, but useful.” Like I had my sort of wish list and then isn’t that funny how that works? And then the universe was like, “Hey, do you ever think we should do a podcast together? And it was, I was out of nowhere. I mean, it was, should we go to outer space together? But it just was like, oh, I’m supposed to say yes to this for sure. So I did.
[VERONICA]
Awesome.
[MEG]
It’s a good lesson in like saying yes to the randomness. You know, I had been kind of kicking ideas around and Amy always refers to me in our partnership as the idea cannon. I’m always like, “Let’s do a show. Let’s put on a circus.” And she’s like, “Okay, no, we’re a podcast. Relax.” Like I do think there’s something to be said for like, I have an idea. Let me talk to other people about it because you never know who you’re going to get that good yes and from, and then something starts and it’s exciting.
[VERONICA]
Absolutely. Absolutely. So holy moly, 3 million downloads. Did you guys imagine —
[MEG]
It took a while.
[VERONICA]
Did you guys ever imagine that it would go or be that big?
[MEG]
No.
[AMY]
No, I don’t think we did, but I don’t think we didn’t either. We weren’t like this’ll never work, but we also didn’t know, we couldn’t foresee, even four years ago, podcasts were still like, let’s try this kind of niche thing. It was like, let’s try Instagram reels and see what this is all about. We didn’t know that it would become a full-time thing for us, for sure.
[MEG]
Yes. And I think that’s right. Like when we started podcasting was still kind of new and we really just started like, I’ll get a mic, you get a mic, let’s start talking and see. And so it’s not only that we couldn’t have imagined it. It’s that we weren’t really imagining anything except for taking this first step, and it’s great that it’s led somewhere so exciting.
[VERONICA]
Yes, it’s kind of like let’s just have fun. Let’s just have fun with it.
[MEG]
Yes, that is really how we started it and I feel like Amy and I have both creatively been involved in a million different projects. When you’re an actress, writer, comic, you really have to just constantly reinvent yourself. And there’s something about just starting from like, “Hey, let’s try this,” and being able to build, as opposed to we both came out of like the Hollywood system where it’s like, it’s got to be perfect. It’s got to come out of the Canon hot and on fire, otherwise it’s a failure. And this has been a really nice growth process where it didn’t have to be anything. It was just us putting something together.
[AMY]
And there was no, the steps between your idea and your audience, I mean our audience was small of course at first, but we were making our stuff and they liked it. And there weren’t these 45 steps between you and it ever being seen by anyone which exists in Hollywood and everywhere else to a great degree.
[VERONICA]
Well, I think it pays homage too, to pivoting being able to go out and pivot, being able to realize perfectionism is a lie and as long as we can pivot together, we can make something great. And I love that you guys’ focus is on moms because I don’t think we’re that flexible. I know we want to be however, we get so caught up in trying to be the perfect mom and trying to do things perfectly. So why moms?
[AMY]
You know, that’s where we always were. I mean, I think both of us, Margaret and I would both say that where we got in our careers was by creating our own stuff. Both of us wrote solo shows, two-person show Margaret did. We did improve. I mean, we wrote screenplays and we were both always creating our own opportunities to perform and once I became a mom, that was what there was for me to talk about. And so I wrote, I mean, when I first started writing, like having a babysitter a couple afternoons a week, so I could go right at the Starbucks, that’s what, of course, when I was writing about, is parenting. And I were to show, my first sort of solo show after becoming a parent was about becoming a parent. And I didn’t think that there was that much out there.

It was funny because I mean, and ended up having a long run in the New York Times came as like, “Oh, another show about parenting.” And I’m like, “What? I am a mom and I haven’t seen this show before.” And the women who came to see it didn’t feel that way. But I think like if you’re outside of this, of course written by somebody who wasn’t a parent and she was like, “Oh, who wants to hear that? They’re all the same.” And I think what we’ve learned through, what I never could have predicted about four years of doing a podcast is like, how will you do 200 episodes? What are you going to talk about? Like what our topics are going to be? What we’re going to talk about is sort of the easiest part of what we do. This is a vastly wide array of things to talk about and discuss. And so it’s actually very fertile ground even if people who stand outside it don’t see it.
[VERONICA]
Yes. No, I agree. I agree. It’s interesting that right before logging on there was somebody that wanted to join my group. it’s a group that I have for women and this is what they asked me. “I’m a working mom who feels guilty for yelling at my kids. I work all day and the rest, whatever I have left are for my babies.” And it’s like, oh my God, my heart goes out to her. So us kind of being together, as moms, what would you say is the common mistake us moms make with her in mind?
[MEG]
Well, I think I might flip it a little bit because we have done a full episode on yelling, yelling as a topic that comes up a lot. And I feel like we try to really take the point of view that like this idea of feeling guilty and feeling like we’re making mistakes and that other people are doing it better than us and that other people are not yelling at their kids, we are the people yelling at our kids, because we’re so tired in this, and strung out and remote learning is horrible and we’re scared and we’re anxious. There’s a lot of reasons we yell at our kids and yelling is not the worst thing in the world. It’s okay. Like, you don’t want to only communicate with your children by yelling at them. And if you find yourself yelling at them all the time, I like that you’re taking some time out to this person, recognize that and say like, “Hey, this is not going great. What can I do?”

But we try to never start from the point of view of like, you’re doing a bad job. You’re yelling and that’s not okay and you’ve got to fix it. We start from the point of view of like, “Hey, guess what? We’re all yelling too much.” Because we’re in a really anxious position and we yell a lot. So we try to come at it from the point of view of like, what is the solution to yelling? And Amy tends to do a ton of research and I talk about my huge Irish family and how I’ve seen it play out. So we do all make mistakes, but I think that when we start from the point of view of like, I’m making mistakes and therefore I’m bad at this job, probably not. Could you be doing it better? Are there people doing it better than you?

There’s probably some people doing it better than you. Are there people doing it not as well as you? Lots of people are not doing it as well as you. So what we try to put in people’s path is getting off the hook, stopping with the worrying about where we are in the mom race and saying, “Hey, if we’re having a problem, if our kid’s not eating well, if we’re fighting too much with our spouse, like what’s going on and are there ways to like go reset ourselves to a place where we know feels better?” Not here’s what you’re doing.
[VERONICA]
Yes. Yes. So I kind of want to put it out there. And what would you say is your biggest struggle personally, as a mom?
[MEG]
Yelling. I’m a huge yeller. I have a short temper, always have, and I tend to, Amy and I always refer to it as respect my authority, but it’s just that thing of like, I don’t like to be challenged. And one thing we say all the time, I would say my biggest problem as a mom, as a woman, as a human being on this earth is telling myself the wrong story. So telling myself my husband doesn’t do anything, I have to do it all, I am victimized by that. Telling myself the story of I hate cooking and yet I produce meals all the time and these people are not grateful enough for those meals, and so, I mean, that’s, I think Amy has really helped me with that on the podcast talking stuff through. I think that that’s my biggest flaw as a person, getting into the wrong story and not telling myself the story like my husband and I love each other, but we’re in a really hard situation and sometimes it’s hard. That story’s a lot better than the story of like my husband’s an idiot who was born to get in my way.
[VERONICA]
Yes, true.
[AMY]
I think my biggest struggle used to be, when my kids were younger, y struggle was that I was bad at this and nobody else was. Like, it’s very binary. I yell at my kids and nobody else does. I’m the only one who’s failing to this degree, which of course isn’t true, but I was stuck there at definitely. And now I think I am a little bit stuck in the, I mean, I have three teenagers and —
[MEG]
Thoughts and prayers please.
[AMY]
Yes, there’s many an hour that goes by without a kind word or look from anybody I live with, just demands and I’m feeling like I’m not being appreciated. And I don’t think that’s a story I tell myself. I think that that’s kind of true and how I seek out my self-worth without trying to find it in the eyes of my high school sophomore. Like, like he’ll come around. It’s not his job to make me feel better during the pandemic. It’s not totally my job to make him feel better either. It’s our job to co-exist in this age appropriate ages and stages sort of way.
[VERONICA]
Absolutely. Since we’re all putting it out there, I’m going to put mine on here too. My biggest struggle has been recognizing when it’s time to call it quits. You know, when I need to go ahead and stop working and being intentional as a mom and being present and not something that really, really I’ve been trying to focus on for a good amount of time, just like all of us. We’re all going to be a work in progress, all of us. We’re not going to get this a hundred percent. And that’s not my goal. and it doesn’t sound like that’s you guys’ goal too, to be this perfect mom. It sounds —
[MEG]
It’s definitely not.
[VERONICA]
Right? Because it doesn’t exhibit —
[MEG]
If it is we’re in a lot of trouble.
[VERONICA]
It sounds more like, okay, this is the current issue that I’m struggling with. So I get to get myself grace. I get to recognize that it’s a story that I tell myself, and maybe I need to challenge that story. And then I love what you just shared too. Like it’s not for my for my, did you mention sophomore? Was in sophomore?
[AMY]
Yes.
[VERONICA]
It’s not for him to figure it out. It’s for me to figure it out. So why do you guys think that we fall into these patterns?
[AMY]
I think that’s our assignment. I think it tells us like, you better figure this out. Like they better be doing, like, they’ll never go to college unless you have their fine motor skills figured out by their fifth birthday. I mean, I think that’s my soapbox right. Like, we are both told that we need to freak out about everything and then are made fun of for having freaked out about those things. It makes me crazy.
[MEG]
And I think, I mean, it is a really important job. Like you’re guiding humans into the world. Like it’s a pretty big job and so I think it’s okay to feel freaked out by it because you want them to turn out happy and healthy and really honestly, probably successful and fulfilled and you want everything for them. And then the great paradox of being alive is that you cannot actually provide those things and so you’re really just, we say all the time, you’re not at the helm of the boat. You’re in another boat, yelling to their boat and being like, “Ah, you might want to head left a little bit,” but you don’t really, I think that we, I always say, I imagined motherhood like being handed a lump of clay to mold. And it’s really nothing like that. It’s like being in a room with another functional human who you don’t have a lot of control over. So I think that the distance between those two images is very, very difficult. And as Amy says, Then on top of it, people are like, “Oh, look at you, trying to teach your kid Mandarin and be fancy.” And like, “You’ve told me I needed to do that or he would never be successful.” Like if you listen to everybody, then you’re really crazy. Everything that goes wrong is your fault and everything that goes right, you didn’t have that much to do with. It’s a hard job.
[VERONICA]
Yes, it is. So I can’t believe I’m sharing this, but I’m going to share it because like I said, in the beginning, we just go there. This is how we roll. So this weekend, so every Sunday is one of my kids, somebody in the family gets to pick the day’s activities. So we have a whole board, kind of like what you see in the back, it’s a whole board of post-it notes. It’s a whole list of activities and whoever day it is, we get to go and pick from that board and do whatever the activities are.
[MEG]
Great idea.
[VERONICA]
Oh my God. It’s amazing. So amazing. So it was Aubrey’s day. Aubrey’s my middle one, she’s 13. Oh my God. She’s going to be 14. I’m going to have a heart attack. So we’re at the mall, Aliyah and Aubrey are in one store and me and Brooklyn are in another one and I’m trying on clothes, because you can’t go into dressing rooms now. So I’m literally like trying not to be like naked, trying to put on these shirts, even though I’m wearing a long sleeve shirt and a jacket. So trying to like finagle this and not flash everybody and Brooklyn, my little monkey feet, my 10-year-old, so she’s sitting like there’s clothes right above her head. She’s just kind of sitting in this knuck. You’re not supposed to sit there, but she’s sitting there and she asks me, while one boob is in the other boob is like trying to figure it out because I got a size too small, of course. And she asks me, “Mom is being a mom hard?”

She does that. She’s like, I swear to God, she’s like going to be a philosopher or something. I don’t know. She asks me, “Mom is being a mom hard? And I’m like this, one boob in and I’m like, “Oh my God, this is like a big question. This is a really big question. I need to be totally in tuned.” I was like, “What makes you ask that question?” And she’s like, “Well because you work a lot.” And I swear to you, ladies, my heart dropped, like dropped. She’s like, “Mom, you work a lot.” And you know Leah, my oldest she’s 18 girls, so I totally got your beat Amy. So Aliyah who was working with me she’s like, “She doesn’t do her job all of the time. So you have to do her job.” And she’s like, and it just seems hard and I was just like right away I want to go into therapist mode. I don’t know if you guys know I’m a therapist, but right away, I want to go into therapist mode and ask. “Okay, well, how does that impact you? Tell me more. When you say is being a mom …,”

I want to go into all of them. I’m not going to go into all of the questions I wanted to ask, but totally wanting to be a therapist mode or be a therapist for that moment. And then I was like what, “You have to step back and be a mom. Take therapy out. You have to step back and just be a mom. Be a mom.” So I literally just sat there with her and it was like, “Mama, do you feel like I’m too busy for you?” And she was like, “Well sometimes.” Oh my God, ladies, it broke my heart. It broke my heart. I wanted to take everything away right there, right then. And there was nobody that could convince me that I wasn’t a bad mom. In that moment I thought it was the most horrible mom, like, “Oh my God, I suck.”

I went into all of that negative self-talk and I apologized. I was like, “Mama I’m sorry.” And she’s like, “It’s okay.” And I was like, “No. No, it’s not.” And then she’s like, “No mom it’s okay.” And I was like, “What makes you say it’s okay?” She was like, “Well, because I don’t want to be rude.” And I was like, “What do you really want to say?” And she’s like, “Well, I want to say that it’s not, but it’s okay, mom.” I was like, “Well, if you say it’s not, are you afraid of that it’ll affect our relationship? Are you afraid that maybe mommy will be mad or maybe mommy won’t like you as much, or maybe mommy will get hurt? She’s like, “Yes.”

It’s like, “Oh my God, my little ten-year-old is having, is able to go ahead and not only express what she’s feeling, but also convey in such a way that like, I don’t think most adults know how to do.” But it was just like so amazing. And I told her, “Mama, well, if you say it’s okay, then what you’re telling somebody is it’s okay and more than likely —” And then she finished my sentence, she goes, “They’ll do it again?” And I said, “Yes.” So this is a time where you get to say, “No, mom, it’s not okay. It’s not okay and I want you to play with me more.” And then I go, “What does that sound like?” And she goes, “Yes, I do want you to play with me more.”

And she’s like, “And I do want this and I do want that.” And it was just like, whoa. I was like, “All right, we’re going to do it.” I don’t think we allow ourselves to have conversations like that with our kids, because we don’t want to hear the truth. If I’m being a hundred percent honest, most of us don’t want to hear the truth. And I hear this when I’m in session with my clients. And not only that, but I hear this with the women I coach. We don’t want to have these uncomfortable conversations because we don’t want to hear the truth because where we go with the truth is I’m a bad mom versus kind of like what you were saying, make, this is just a story I tell myself. I could do better. I can change this. So I kind of want to hear you guys’ input.
[MEG]
I mean, I think that’s right. And I also think that we like to focus on what we call developmentally appropriate behavior and a ten-year-old who’s starting to give you feedback on your parenting is exhibiting developmentally appropriate behavior. Like that is a developmental stage of childhood and I think that one thing, I mean, I’m kind of big on, there’s a mom role and there’s child role and they’re not equal. So I do have that sometimes with my kids where I’m like, “I appreciate your feedback, but it’s really not welcome at this time. I’m kind of running the show here.” So I like getting feedback from my kids, but it’s not equal to my decisions. And I also think that it can be really helpful to have those conversations. We talk a lot about like good places to talk to your kids.

Sometimes when I’m driving, especially I have two boys and like, they don’t want to sit around and have conversations ever. So sometimes when I’m driving, we’ll get into stuff but sometimes my son will say to me, “You’re really, you’re being kind of mean lately. You’re yelling a lot.” And I’m like, “It’s true. I think I’ve let the stress of the holidays, let’s say really get to me and I apologize and I’m going to try to fix that.” But there are also times where my kids will say stuff to me, “I want you to do something with me instead of doing the work that you’re doing,” and I’m like, “No, I’m busy working. This is my job. I have a job and kids.” And like I think that there’s two sides to it, letting our kids’ voices in and also making decisions.

It sounds like in that situation, you were really open and able to say like, “Hey, there is more room for this.” And we also say a lot, like come from a place of, yes. So when my kids were like, “Can we have breakfast for dinner?” I used to be, before I think we started the podcast always like, “No, no we can’t. No, that’s not healthy. No you can’t run out in the snow barefoot. No, that’s not safe.” And now I have tried to reset after talking to a lot of people, let’s come from a place of yes, “Hey, can we play more?” Yes we can. And this is the times we’re going to do it. But at the same time, it’s like, you can hear your kid’s input, but your kid’s input is just one. I have three kids, I have a five-member family And so my ten-year-old’s feedback is one small part of the chorus of my life. So on the one hand, yes, it’s great to like hear your kids and try to say yes and on another hand, it’s great to reinforce with your kids. Like I have a job, dad has a job and we’re five of us. So it’s not always exactly the way you want it and that’s another part of life.
[VERONICA]
Yes. I think the other thing, where I was going with her is I didn’t want her to feel invalidated. She was speaking up about something. She developed the courage to go ahead and say this out loud. And it wasn’t in a demeaning way. It wasn’t like, “Mom, you need to do better.” It wasn’t anything like that. It was like, “You know what? This is something that’s bothering me and so just a question I’m going to ask.” And if I wasn’t open to being willing to have that dialogue maybe she would have felt, maybe that would have increased shame in her and I would have never connected on that level.
[MEG]
I think that’s right. And that’s something somewhere that we’ve come a lot as parents, I think from the generation before us, is the ability for kids to say things and really be heard. And I’m trying to shed maybe a little bit of my historical, like kids have a role and parent’s have a role and find that middle ground. And it sounds like you handled it really perfectly like opening up to that voice, which is important.
[AMY]
The part that I think too is like she’s asking for something specific. She’s wise child, and is like, “I’d like to spend more time with you.” It isn’t, “You never, you don’t love me as much as you love …” It was something really actionable. So in this case, it’s like it seems to me there’s an easy fix there and you can try to move very smoothly through the step of like, “Oh, I’m a terrible mother [crosstalk] but you can get caught in that spider web. You know what I mean? Like that, just push through that to the, “Okay, she wants to spend more time with me. Wonderful. This will always be the case. I’m going to put a date on the calendar right now and not wallow in the, oh, I must be so terrible to have had my kids say this to me moment.”
[VERONICA]
Absolutely. I appreciate the feedback and going back to Meg, being able to go ahead and discern when it’s something that, okay, this is mom’s role because mom’s role and child’s role, they’re not the same. They’re not by any means equal. I will never be my daughter’s best friend. I’m going to be her mom. My 18-year-old, she’s cool and I’m her mom. Like, “We’re cool, but I’m still your mom. And yes, you can kick it with me, I Coachella, but mommy’s partying, so stay over there.” But yes, absolutely like making sure we have those roles and going back to what Amy said, being able to listen, being in tune with that. So I kind of want to ask you guys, when have you been, if ever in maybe a similar situation where you had to kind of step back and go, “Wait a minute, I’m not going to beat myself up. I’m going to go out and listen to what’s being said, and I get to tweak it.”
[MEG]
I mean, I there’s so many examples for me, I mean —
[VERONICA]
What’s the one that comes up for you?
[MEG]
The one that comes up for me, I would say it’s like my kids, I was a picky eater and my kids are all really picky eaters and I’ve had the experience. I was like, “Oh, they’ll outgrow it. It’s fine.” And now they’re 12, 10 and eight and like, they’re not really outgrowing it. I feel like, I go out places and people are like, “Your kids don’t eat anything.” And I’m like, “Oh, that’s because I failed. I knew I was supposed to be doing this and I did it completely wrong and that’s why.” My mom had been raised in a house where you had to finish whatever was on your plate and I think she reactively, when we were kids was like, “I’m never going to make my kids eat anything they don’t like.” So we probably grew up eating in a different kind of crazy way and now I’m third generation crazy where I’m just like, “Ah, I’m going to kind of sometimes tell you, you have to eat it. I don’t know what the heck I’m doing.”
[VERONICA]
I have no idea.
[MEG]
And I often find myself talking about this and being like, this is somewhere I really failed as a parent. Like teaching my kids to eat properly, I did a bad job at it, but I try not to stay there that long. It is what it is. Like I sometimes feel that way, but I still think it’s probably going to work out and I wish I didn’t have to put up with people being like, “Oh, your kids don’t eat anything.” But they probably do and it’s not the end of the world.
[AMY]
And then what happens. The problem with that is that you feel bad.
[MEG]
Exactly.
[AMY]
For me, it was we get to talk to such interesting people on the show. Like such wise experts. And we were talking to Dr. Wendy Mogel who I love. She wrote —
[MEG]
Amy loves her a lot.
[AMY]
It was the first person was like, “We love you. Will you be on our show?” And she said, yes and I got to talk to her. So I said, “So I have a question for you,” and her answer blew my mind in ways I wasn’t expecting. My sort of love measurer wary, not so sure that they’re getting as good a shake as the other kids in the family would say, it would say, “Hey, guess what happened at school today?” I’d say, “Oh, what?” And this kid would say, “Oh, now you’re making that face, that pretend to listen face.” I’m like, “I’m listening. What are you talking about?” “Oh, no. Now you’re just making that face.” And I said to her, “Well, how do I handle that when my kid says that to me?” And I was looking to her to find out like what’s the right way to respond to and to help this kid understand you’re incorrect and I’m the parent?

And she was like, “Well, maybe he’s on to something. I guess I would respond and say, hmm, let me think about that. When you say that, I’m not sure what that means. Will you tell me more about that?” He goes, “You do make a certain face.” And I was like, “What?” I just didn’t know until then that my job wasn’t always to talk my kid out of the negative things they were thinking about me or other people, that I could entertain the idea that I perhaps had something to learn from this kid, had no idea until she told me that.
[VERONICA]
Absolutely. Absolutely. I would even go as far as asking, well, why are you triggered by that? But then he says that, okay, I’m going into therapist mode, the minute he says that, what is it about that phrase that triggers you so much? And then in addition to that, why is there a resistance on hearing him out, hearing what he has to say, hearing about his complaint. Like, what is that resistance initially? You know, your kids trying to communicate with you something and you’re right away going, “Nope.” Face is in there. “I don’t even know what you’re talking about. Like just say the damn thing. Just hurry up and say.” What we don’t realize is yes, like they say, most of our communication is non-verbal and so your son is onto something and is finding out, gaining that clarity.
[AMY]
It’s okay to have that humility of taking that in without losing the next month to like, oh my God, like I have to work on my listening face. Like, no, you don’t, just get this kid out and like try a little better next time.
[VERONICA]
Yes. Well, and what is he trying to tell you? You know what I mean? He’s telling you something, he just maybe doesn’t have the words to go ahead and say it. And then in addition to that having that moment of clarity, it’s a beautiful thing when you allow it. But yes, I think we’re all on guard with being a mom. We don’t want to be criticized, we’re automatically putting everything into it, giving it our all. I mean, when I heard monkey feet, that’s what I call her, when I heard monkey feet say that it’s like, “Girl, do you have, today’s Aubrey’s day? You’re going to get your day.” You know what I mean? And, “No, I don’t work all day.” I wanted to go into like showing her my damn time card. I don’t even have one, but I wanted to draw it out for her, “Look girl, five o’clock, mama’s done. You know, her last session is at this time and then I run downstairs because I’m working from home right now. Then I run downstairs and hang out with you and we played UNO. Do you not remember —“
[AMY]
Like yesterday.
[VERONICA]
I have a picture. You are laughing.
[AMY]
If you have a picture of you playing UNO with your kid, I’m on your team. That’s all I’m going to say.
[VERONICA]
Thank you.
[AMY]
If you ever played UNO, I mean, you’re a winner
[VERONICA]
We played UNO last night but yes, I love that you just shared that. I didn’t even know I was making a face. I wasn’t even aware of it. And the fact that you asked Wendy, is that her name?
[AMY]
Yes.
[VERONICA]
The fact that you asked her it’s because it meant something to you and all of these things, motherhood, all of it we take a great deal of pride in what we do. You know, we’re huge nurtures, we’re huge lovers and if we can just give ourselves a little bit of grace, I don’t know. I’m not going to say this world’s going to be a happy place because that’s totally cliché, but you get my point. I don’t know. So one of the questions I have two questions for you and these are the questions I ask everybody, what are you doing right now to live the life you want to live?
[AMY]
Should I go first?
[MEG]
Yes.
[AMY]
I have a I have a screenplay, not a screenplay, sorry, a script of a musical, actually the book of a musical that I was writing with two collaborators and we put it aside for most of 2020, because what is art during a pandemic and will the show makes sense? So we got together at the end of 2020 and said like, “Okay, we’re ready to move forward and this is it.” And they’re the songwriters and I’m the script writer so I kind of have to go first and finding the time to work on that is hard so giving myself the gift of sort of blocking out my time a little more carefully and saying like, well, I do have this place here and I’m trying to do something where I’m just touching it every day. Even if I’m in that file for five minutes a day, I mean, I wish it was four hours a day, but even if it’s five minutes a day and I touch it, then I’m not spending 90 minutes on it and then putting it down for three weeks and then carry around the guilt instead of just doing the work and then pick it up and have to start from the beginning again, that’s the gift I’m giving myself as just touching that every day until I get it done.
[VERONICA]
Beautiful. I love that. I love that. Meg.
[MEG]
Mine is new year’s resolution, but it’s, my husband and I try to meet on new year’s day every year and talk about whatever, everything, our budget, our goals, our everything. My big purpose for this year is to set, I have a work goal, podcasting goal, I have another job that I do have a goal there and then I have some goals for home and then that’s it on goals, because I tend to be a little bit idea-canish. I can be a canon.
[VERONICA]
I see it. I see it. I love it. I love it.
[MEG]
Shiny object, like people come to me and they’re like, “You would be great to run the blah blah committee.” And I’m like, “I would be great. I’ll do it.” And then I’m like, the lifeboat is full, there’s no room for anything else, this is what I want to accomplish.” And that means saying no to everything else this year, basically. And that’s something I’m trying to work on because I tend to be a little bit of like a rabid squirrel, like, “Okay, what’s next? Oh, something fun.” And really trying to say, like, “I have plenty right now that I am trying to accomplish and I don’t need anything else.”
[VERONICA]
I love it. Discipline. Awesome.
[MEG]
Whole discipline.
[VERONICA]
Right? We all need it.
[AMY]
It’s not my strongest skill.
[VERONICA]
All right. My last question in one sentence, what advice would you give to the mom who feels stressed and disconnected?
[MEG]
Mine would be find your way back to one, which is something we say all the time on the podcast. It’s like Amy, as an actress, there’s an expression on the set, let’s go back to 1 and you put everything, any cup you’ve picked up, everything goes back to its starting place. So I think all of us know kind of on a very inherent level where our 1 is. My 1 is like a person who eats generally nutritious foods, kind of tries to exercise sometimes and keeps it on that kind of path. My mom is like saying yes to a lot of things, bringing a lot of fun and not yelling a ton. My marriage is like smiling at my husband who walks in the room, trying to touch each other a little bit more, remembering that we’re not angry coworkers at a daycare that were like in love and we chose each other.

So that’s the central advice that I give myself and other people. It’s like, you don’t have to be perfect. You just have to go back to 1. You just have to reset and find that place that you pretty much know. You know where it is. And so don’t say to yourself, “The goal of like, I’m going to be a perfect mom,” because you’re going to really be discouraged by that. “I’m never going to yell at my kids again.” That’s not going to work out, but like, just go back to your good place. And it is kind of like a dieting metaphor. We’ve all figured out that like eating water for three weeks, you’ll lose weight, but it doesn’t work out. You know, you have to find a place that is like your realistic operating system. And we are in a pandemic and very difficult times. So don’t set goals for yourself that are unrealistic and don’t be hard on yourself for failing goals. Just go back to 1 calmly.
[VERONICA]
Love it. Love it.
[AMY]
That’s really good. I think I would say —
[MEG]
All right, Amy, what do you got? Let’s see what you can do.
[AMY]
Let me say, spaghetti on Tuesdays. No, I’m going to say that it doesn’t have to be, like I was saying before about the script. It doesn’t have to be all or nothing. I’ve gotten myself very caught in, like, I need to spend four hours on this or I can’t touch it until I have four free hours, which, spoiler alert, never happens. it doesn’t have to be all or nothing. With my friendships, I have found the same thing. Like we’re all so isolated right now, busy moms and we’re all busier than usual with the online schooling and like you’re out of touch and it doesn’t have to be all or nothing. I don’t have to call my friend Heather to catch up for an hour or not speak to her for the next nine months. I can send her a text. I can say, “Hey, how are you doing? I thought of you today. Oops. I got to go. Bye.” And I feel like, my husband actually does a pretty good job of that with his old friends and I have been very all or nothing in my catch-ups. I’m trying to get a little more like just sending somebody a text, send five people a text when you’re bored, five different people. It’s a good thing. Somebody is going to write you back and then you have somebody to talk to.
[VERONICA]
I love it. Ladies, where can we find you?
[MEG]
You can find us all over the place. We are truly everywhere. So we are What Fresh Hell podcast and if you Google that combination of words, you will find us everywhere you want to. We are on TikTok, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook. We’re everywhere. We do have a really fun Facebook community, facebook.com/whatfreshhellcast. You can join our community there. It’s like 4,000 moms talking to each other, giving advice, supporting each other. It’s a really nice, nonjudgmental, lovely place to be. So if you’re looking for some extra mom’s support, that’s a great spot.
[AMY]
I agree. And we have a website, whatfreshhellpodcast.com. That’s an easy place to find sort of all the different places in one place.
[MEG]
The tree where all the branches meet.
[AMY]
Like a mom. That’s the mom of the rest.
[VERONICA]
Ladies, thank you so much for coming on. This has been absolutely amazing.
[AMY]
Thanks
[MEG]
It was so nice to talk to you. Thanks for having us.
[VERONICA]
Absolutely.

Many women lose their own identity in the shadow of being a mom and a wife. We are a community of women who support each other. We leave perfectionism behind to become empowered and unapologetic. I want to personally invite you to join our girl gang. It’s a free Facebook community for women just like you. Go to www.facebook.com/groups/empoweredandunapologetic. See you there.

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Empowered and Unapologetic is part of the Practice of the Practice podcast network, a family of podcasts that changes the world. To hear other podcasts like the Bomb Mom podcast, Beta Male Revolution or Imperfect Thriving, go to practiceofthepractice.com/network.

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