Your Mom Friend

For the Season One Finale I threw open the doors and asked my Patreon community to interview me. They had some amazing questions. We talked about: how I define moms and motherhood why I do this work advice for introverted parents of extroverted kiddos advice for the white moms of mixed race kiddos Your Mom Friend will be back this fall when the school bells ring! Until then please leave me a review on iTunes, share the podcast with your friends, and take good care mama!

Every single time Dara writes even so much as a Facebook status, I rush to read it. She is that friend you have who says exactly what you were trying to find the words to say. Dara is a mom of three, a writer, an editor, and she will have a book out soon if I have anything to say about it. She hid in her basement to record this episode with me because mom life is real. Her essays often interrogate the intersection of race and gender, politics of respectability for women, concepts of femininity, and motherhood. Her writing has appeared online in xoJane, Clutch Magazine, The Root, For Harriet, Improving Birth, and The Feminist Wire, and in print. She earned a BA in Creative Writing/ French Literature from the University of South Florida (2005), and an MA in African-American Literature from Florida State University (2007). She is a former college-level composition teacher.  Since 2007, she has written and edited professionally in The Apartment Guide, the mortgage servicing industry, and for Southern Fried Poetry

Anuradha is, quite simply, brilliant. She is seriously multi-talented, from biology to dance to history to Human Design - she just knows so much! I think it comes from being deeply curious about our world and about other people. She’s also one of the kindest people that I have ever met. Above all, Anuradha is a teacher and I have been so blessed to learn from her. Anuradha Kowtha uses she/her pronouns. She is both American and British, and proud of the south Indian heritage from her own immigrant parents. She has a B.S. in Biology, an M.A. in Rhetoric and is an experienced educator, researcher, editor and business owner. Anuradha is also an accomplished Bharata Natyam dancer and painter. Now she guides clients through the work of rediscovering who they are, why they are here and removing the conditioning that keeps them from doing it and writing powerfully about this work from within the fire of her life. In this episode, we talk a lot about Human Design. Human Design Readings are where we answer the question

personally. Tara was the first person I met who took the idea of women taking care of themselves seriously enough to build an entire business around the concept. I will always be grateful that I met her when I did and for her friendship. There’s no one else I could think of for our Mother’s Day episode. Tara Pringle Jefferson is a writer, speaker and self-care coach who created The Self Care Suite, a multicultural community for well-nourished women. Creating safe and affirming spaces for women to flourish is her superpower.    Twitter: @SelfCareSuite/@WhereWomenBloom IG + FB: @TheSelfCareSuite/@WhereWomenBloom www.theselfcaresuite.com  

Drisana McDaniel is the mother of three incredible humans, a career makeup artist, and a co-founding member-owner of the Transformative Teaching Collective — where she facilitates intergroup dialogue around topics of racial and social justice for the purpose of healing. At the center of her worldview is an urgency of living with audacity, curiosity, compassion and empathy. Her projects and events illuminate the often-invisible, nuanced and complex interior lives and voices of minoritized and historically oppressed folk. She has served on the Women and Gender Studies community board at the College of Charleston for the last five years. She lives in Charleston, South Carolina by way of Atlanta Georgia, West Germany, Denver Colorado, and Northern California.

This week I’m talking to Saira Rao about politics, race, and change. Saira Rao is a racial justice activist, former congressional candidate, and co-founder of In This Together Media, Race2Dinner and Healing from Hate. Rao's upcoming memoir, BROKEN NEWS, will be published in Spring 2020. I was introduced to Saira through Facebook and her page regularly gives me life. She is an unapologetic truth-teller in a world that tells women, especially black and brown mothers, that we must lie to stay safe. Her page is regularly a safe haven for me - even as she is constantly under attack. I am so grateful that she took some time out of her busy schedule to chat with me! Connect more with Saira! On Facebook On Twitter On Instagram In Brown Girl Magazine

Nicole Lee is a strategist, coach and diversity, equity and inclusion trainer and founder of the Lee Bayard Group LLC. A strategic campaigner, she works with community organizations to ensure their voices and concerns are heard. As a coach, she works with changemakers to ensure they have the tools to live their best lives. She is the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Specialist for Gaia Women’s Leadership Project and works with many organizations in furthering their work towards equity.  She was the first female President of TransAfrica, the nation’s premier African American foreign affairs organization and founder of the BMLP, a legal organization affiliated with the Movement for Black Lives. From Haiti to Ferguson, she has led international and domestic investigations and missions docu menting human and civil rights violations. From this work, Nicole has learned that each of us can be brave, courageous and visionary. Each of us can also give into our worst fears and settle for the life we have rather than

Shannon is another online friend who turned into an offline friend. She is a fierce, funny, and fabulous mom of six kiddos. Over the course of our friendship Shannon has grown and changed and done so with unfailing honesty and grace. She owns up to her shit, y'all, and she inspires the hell out of me.   Shannon Dingle is an author, journalist, & activist who breaks the rules about what's appropriate to discuss in public & what isn't. She doesn't shy away from the hard places, from politics & privilege to trauma & disability. She lives with her spouse & their six children in Raleigh, NC. Her first book will be coming out in winter 2021 with HarperOne.   You can check her out at her website and follow her on Facebook.

Decolonizing Motherhood  - what does that mean and how do we do it? Gayatri and I tackle childhood trauma, traditional expectations, patriarchy, capitalism, and the idea of the sacrificial mother. Dr. Gayatri Sethi is an educator, mother, and aspiring writer-poet.  She speaks, teaches and writes about decolonizing, identities and belonging. She is committed to healing anti-Blackness among brown folks in order to build learning and solidarity among marginalized folks across boundaries. She is of South Asian Indian descent and was born in Tanzania and raised in Botswana. She currently resides in the Atlanta area and is raising (biracial) Black children who appreciate their African-American, Indian and African heritages and cultures. She is brilliant, kind, funny, and wise and I am so lucky to have her as one of my mom friends.

Lauren gives me hope every day that I can survive this whole motherhood thing. Her nest is empty, her kids all still like her, and her personal and professional lives are thriving. This episode is a love letter from an empty nester to all of those still in the trenches.

Tiana and I talk about her birth experience as a fat woman of color living in Germany. She brings a huge amount of humor to the trauma and reality of childbirth via c-section. Tiana Dodson is a fat, certified holistic health coach who’s out to destroy the belief that you have to be skinny to be happy and healthy. Through her work with One Beautiful Yes and the In This Body virtual conferences, she guides people feminine-of-center to reconnect with their bodies through pragmatic self-care practices so they can come to see that there is nothing wrong with living in a larger body.

Bellamy Shoffner is freelance writer and publisher of Hold the Line (HTL), a widespread publication for parents and educators who are committed to social equity. With a solid focus on tangible action, Bellamy expanded HTL to include community events, nonprofit collaborations, and an annual support-in-activism retreat. Bellamy’s work encourages citizens of the world to become empowered to stand for justice across the many intersections of marginalized communities. Her writing can also be found in The Establishment, Narratively, HuffPost, and other reputable sites.

Nami consults in multi-stakeholder, multi-sector dialogue around public health, health equity, civic engagement, and land management. She’s on a mission to save the world for all of our kids. Nami is an activist and an advocate. She sees a problem and takes action. You know that friend you have who has no idea how amazing she is? That’s Nami. She writes in her spare time and is currently signed with La Casita Grande publishers. Her series of non-fiction, autobiographical essays is set to be released in early 2020.

The story behind Your Mom Friend - the who and the why. 

In 2009, she married her husband and they tried to have a baby. They could not due to various factors. In 2012, she went through the intense process of IVF and got pregnant with twins – a boy and a girl – brought to us by science, hope, and love. Those babies are now 6 years old and in kindergarten in Chicago Public Schools. Katy is 45 years old and doing her best to keep up and enjoy as many of these normal everyday moments as possible and then write about them to share with all of you. Katy is a helper, writer and full-time working mom living in Chicago. She has blogged for a thousand years. I found her when her blog was “I Want A Dumpster Baby” and just immediately fell in love with her wit and her style and her honesty about what being in recovery was like. Her work has been published through Chicago Now as “I Got a Dumpster Family”, and has had work published through Red Tricycle and Twiniversity.