Come To Mama

The Mamas are riding high this episode, with Karen celebrating a dear friend's cancer-free scans. Just in case all this joy gets you sweaty, like Karen in her faucets-on 20s, Kalimba has a deodorant rec for you. In Listener questions, a bride wonders how much she owes her fiancé's family when it comes to their demands and a friend wonders how to deal with a loose-lipped betrayal. The Mamas role play the art of awkward confrontation.

It's the last episode of the year so gather ‘round Listener for some conversational nog. As the Mamas turn the page on 2022, they share what they're sick of,  what they're releasing, what they want to heal, and what they're ready to embrace. Onwards, upwards, sideways into the great unknown.

This week The Mamas welcome Joy Campbell - podcaster, writer, life coach, and mama living an accelerated life with an incurable diagnosis - to discuss the silver linings of Cancer 2.0, how to manage your most constant companion (your mind), how to love on those on a medical journey the right way, and how to get Oprah, Augusten Burrows and Misty Tripoli on your support dream team.

This week, the Mamas turn their attention on their squalling, needy, tender, petty babies. Not their actual sons and daughters, mind you, but their dum dums within. Are our inner wounded babies a good hang? Not if you live with them! But maybe Listener could benefit from making a playdate for her baby with ours. No spanking. No time-outs. Lots of snacks. 

Is there such a thing as dancing out your Daddy issues? Kalimba reports back from a movement therapy studio with a  tender review. Maybe there's room in that dance studio for Karen's family of four plus five animals, because after 15 years in a rent-stabilized house your Mama needs a new roof over her head. What is more destabilizing than a move? Death! The Mamas and Katherine Heigl are here to lecture and shame and bribe you with Halloween candy to put your estates in order if they aren't already.   

Listener, we're back! Unfortunately we still have families, gross. Take a break from yours with a chat about birthday parties, boundaries, and a wellness culture that demands we claim our caption-ready worth even when we don't feel it. In questions, a woman needs help dealing with her dead parents and a man doesn't understand why he can't get laid.

Kalimba went to see her therapist Ben Platt and he's helping her deal with her anxiety. A tarot card reader reached out to Karen, who dared hope the universe wanted to advise her on how best to parent her teenager. Then things got weird. Pour yourself a glass of potato salad and come sit a while with the Mamas. Link to Ben Platt's Grow As We Go https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDeNQNtW1f8  

Kids are back to school, and Mamas are feeling loopy. A chance encounter with a college alum takes them back to their younger days when Karen was in the dirtbag dorm and Kalimba was keeping it cute with the James Avery girls. Switching gears, sloppily!, the Mamas have a few things to say about the fragile male ego. It is omnipresent and malignant when unchecked. Permission granted to tell an 8-year-old boy or a 50-year-old husband to get over themselves.

Kalimba has met her match, and his name is Mickey Mouse. Hers is a harrowing tale of surviving the happiest place on Earth. From one uncomfortable truth (Disneyland is trash) to another (teenagers are liars), the Mamas have their work cut out for them. Goodbye cruel summer, we made the most of you.

The Mamas are in bed together this week, coming straight to you from Kamp Kalimba. Think girlfriends can't handle a frank conversation about money and Karen's dropped jaw in the land of Teslas, nannies, and lifeguards at backyard pool parties? Wrong! Kalimba has an important new parenting philosophy that involves Cokes for dessert. Also, our very unsober take on the latest and dumbest in reality TV.

The Mamas are dying to whisper some words of advice in The Bachelorettes' ears. (The call of the patriarchy… it's coming from inside the producer's headset!) Meanwhile, they're drunk on vacation vibes that only the likes of J.K. Rowling's transphobia and climate crisis headlines can puncture. In Listener Questions, a shift in earning power unsettles a former stay-at-home Mom and a bridesmaid has cold feet.

Kalimba wants/forces Karen to watch The Bachelorette with her, so bear with our breakdown of men's bare ankles, oiled chests, fragile egos, and cross necklaces. Kalimba's youngest son has a novel understanding of preventing STDs that could greatly benefit Bachelor Nation. Also, how to handle a friend's unexplained chilliness and a Harry Styles hot take.

Queer educator, activist, and Tik Tok sensation Flint joins the Mamas for a conversation about their life as a nonbinary public high school English teacher and how to be more empathetic, more curious, and less of an asshole in this world.

With Kalimba down with Covid, Karen's daughter Ava joins the conversation to offer a 13-year-old's perspective on awkward phases, the overturning of Roe Vs. Wade, and the humiliations of having a Mama for a mother. In Listener Questions, we role play on next best steps for a parent who has found drugs in her daughter's pocket. 

A best friend's surgery has Karen feeling in need of a pep talk from past-their-prime movie stars. Eager for a break from reality, the Mamas turn their eyes toward matters of money and fantasy. Whether your mind turns towards rolling around on a soft bed of bills or having the extra dough to spring for a therapist, may all your fiscal dreams come true. In Clint Questions, a single mom is nervous about her right to date. 

The Mamas welcome @lifeisrosiestory to talk about her journey from a six-year-old who looked upon her belly in the mirror with disdain, to a teenager using drugs to shed weight, to the strong mother she is today who refuses to subject her children to the obsession with exercising and dieting that nearly killed her. What if it's not our bodies that need fixing, but the culture that teaches us to loathe them?     TW: drug abuse and eating disorders 

Bad news: Turns out Karen really is a Karen. Let this Mama's foot-in-mouth moments make you feel better about yourself, Listener. Kalimba continues to explore her identity, starting with the African roots of her name. In Questions, a Listener worries about saying I love you.

The Mamas feel the need, the need for some very delicate racial and cultural identity exploration as Kalimba processes new information about her father. Also covered, the cinematic triumph of the new Top Gun and a plea for Listener.

What a long strange trip it's been for the Mamas. What was supposed to be a gentle microdose in the desert to celebrate Kalimba's birthday took a dramatic turn left. There were ego deaths, a quick stop into the emergency room, a topless interlude, blueberry fingers and curly fries. Listener, do as we say, not as we do. Moms make mistakes too.  

You can't keep a Mama down for long. Kalimba may enter this episode a broken woman, brought low by quarantine and a husband still testing positive, but we end on a high of vows of bralessness and peacocking. On a vulnerable dare, the Mamas call a couple of loved ones for a spontaneous gush. Speaking of, you're never too old for outercourse. Let's get into it and all around it, Listener.

This episode is brought to you by unwashed bathrobes. A Mama's house is rocked by Covid just as news breaks that the Supreme Court is preparing to overturn Roe V Wade. What's a Mama to do but keep loving and fighting and answering life's big questions. Can you date a friend's ex? Is dry humping only for 15-year-olds? Are you sharing and tagging Come to Mama with your favorite friends and lovers?

Kalimba has more divine matters on the brain than Karen's diarrhea. She takes this podcast to church, as the Mamas talk about religion in their houses growing up and how that's impacted their own sense of God and religion today.  Holy gear switch in Listener questions with a mother's worry over her 13-year-old daughter's love of BTS gay fan fiction. 

Love languages are on the table today. Kalimba speaks fluent How to shut down an ex-boyfriend from further wasting any more of your time, while Karen has begun a duolingo crash course in $40 spa appointments. Spring break took a lot out of the Mamas, especially Karen, who left a good portion of her soul in a Mexican toilet. What else needs flushing? The conversation and conflation around a woman's weight and self-worth. Is there a way women can honestly value aesthetics without prioritizing appearance?

We will be back next week, listener!

Spring is in the air, the hills are alive with Mamas! Female friendship is looked at from all the angles today, from the power of one-on-one to the siren call of a group. Karen talks about her almost friendship with Amy Sedaris and Kalimba hears from an ex who years ago almost wanted to marry her. What's this boy doing calling a Mama now? In Listener questions, a happy wife wants her own bedroom and the Mamas wrestle with how to deal with your friend's toxic relationship drama.

TW eating disorders The Mamas are about to get their periods, which means our heads are EVERYWHERE. Ping pong along with us as we discuss Kalimba's former ballerina days, eating disorders, our relationships with rejection, who among us is a witch and what it means to be an artist. Most importantly, we start workshopping ways to eliminate the dreaded "What do you do?" conversation in small talk situations. In Listener questions, how to deal with a frenemy and when a Mark is no longer a Mark.

Fairy tales really do come true, at least they do for one of us. Destini Ann—parenting coach and purveyor of her patented "Bitch you doin a good job" battle cry of support —joins the Mamas  to discuss her peaceful parenting philosophy that has made her an Instagram hero. In a nightmare turned reality moment, Kalimba's audio breaks, along with her heart. Karen forges on without her, with Kalimba mutely rooting the Mamas on, as they talk healing from trauma, taming the mind, and parenting from a place of connection and calm. 

The story of Kalimba's son discovering that she is the tooth fairy wins the Oscar for Best Drama. (Look for his version of events in a future best-selling children's book). Karen bemoans the starkest fact of mothering a teenager: You no longer know your friends' parents. Saying Yes to a sleepover can feel like sending your kid onto the set of Euphoria. In Listener Questions the Mamas strategize on how to deal with your killjoy friend on social media and whether getting laser hair removal is a moral failing.  

TW:  suicide, sobriety  After being best friends for nearly 30 years, the Mamas talk about Karen's mother's death at length for the first time. "Can I ask a question?" turns out to be the simplest, kindest way to begin a difficult conversation. On a much lighter note, a Listener wonders how she can get her grown-ass friend to stop using the word "potty." 

Kalimba and Karen welcome their first guest, OG Listener and Kalimba's mama, Jenny, who is the source of all things sisterly and silly.  Tragic adolescent haircuts and fashion phases are revisited, Karen discusses being a "Karen," and the women wonder if intergenerational compassion is available to us as mothers.  In Listener Questions the Mamas strategize on how to handle an imperious mother-in-law and offer hot-take flirting tips. 

TW: SUICIDE   Kalimba concedes that the free Jungian life coach might have been onto something about finding the joy in between Covid tests. Howl, like the part wolf that you are! Karen fears a sudden need to meticulously organize her underwear drawer while quarantining with Covid makes her a rigid sociopath. Or worse (!), a way of clearing space to tackle unresolved grief around her mother's mental illness and subsequent suicide.  During Listener questions, the Mamas love on a socially self-conscious listener and debate whether or not a husband's habit of snacking on the toilet is grounds for divorce.

Karen and Kalimba discuss their wildly different free sessions with a Jungian-trained life coach. Karen went deep, connecting her control issues with her teenager to the loss of her mother to mental illness. Meanwhile, Kalimba spent the session in a state of controlled fury after being told she needs to find the joy in a global pandemic. (Yo Lady, joy this!) A text mid-episode brings bad news: The Covid is coming from inside the house.

Darkness is nigh: Kalimba's young son warns her that she has four years to live and Karen's late period has her realizing menopause is likely four months away. In Audience Questions, they strategize on how best to cope with an anti-vax parent, and what to say to your cunnilingus-loving partner when receiving isn't your thing. Also, unsponsored hawking for nonalcoholic spirits and a mini trampoline!

On their inaugural episode, Kalimba and Karen plug their non-sponsors. (This podcast is NOT brought to you by yogurt or the best party game ever.) Karen wrestles with her inability to sit with negative feelings and Kalimba describes how she survived her child's harrowing three-hour meltdown without blowing her lid. During audience questions, Karen turns the subject of pubic hair political and Kalimba vehemently defends her management of other people's dinner plates at the end of a meal.