Tell Me About Your Mother

Check out Amy's new book, Forget "Having It All": How America Messed Up Motherhood—and How to Fix It  (https://www.amywestervelt.com/book). We'll be back with another season later in 2019, but in the meantime, check out some other Critical Frequency pods, Peace of Mind with Bhi Bhiman (https://fanlink.to/PeaceofMind) launching January 18th and The Double Shift (https://www.katherinegoldstein.com/the-double-shift-podcast/), the podcast for a new generation of mothers, launching February 11th.  

In our season 3 finale, we take a listen back through three seasons full of fascinating women.  Episode sponsors:  StoryWorth - visit storyworth.com/tellme for $20 off Zola - visit zola.com/tellme to start your free website and get $50 off your registry completion

Journalist and podcaster Amy Roost has a really incredible life story, starting with the fact that she was a "replacement" child in a wild adoption story. Here she tells us that story, plus how watching her mother taught her to fight for civil rights, never live vicariously through her children, and speak her truth. Episode sponsor: Zola - visit zola.com/tellme to start your free wedding website and get $50 off your registry today!

Jenny Kaplan grew up watching her mom take herself and her career as seriously as she took her family and her broader community. This year her mom was one of hundreds of women who decided to run in the wake of the 2016 election, prompting Jenny herself to make some big moves. Here, she tells us about her mom, and introduces her new podcast Women Belong in the House. Episode Sponnsor: LOLA - visit mylola.com and use TELLME for 40% off all subscriptions for Lola's non-toxic and organic feminine products.

Author Rebecca Traister's new book Good and Mad looks at how society has handled women's rage throughout history, how it has been punished, and how it has served as a catalyst for political victories and social change. In this episode, we get some interesting insights into the first woman Traister studied, and how it formed her ideas about womanhood, work, feminism, and more.  Episode sponsor: Care/of - for 25% off your first month, visit takecareof.com and use the promo code TELLME

Giphy producer Stephanie Weber moved around a lot as a kid. Her single mom wasn't following men in the 1980s, she was chasing a career as a computer programmer. They were a tight unit then and still are today, but Stephanie sometimes wonders if growing up in a matriarchal family has had an impact on her relationships with men today.  This episode's sponsor is Sun Basket. Visit sunbasket.com/mother for $35 off your first box. 

Legendary ski mountaineer Hilaree Nelson is the first woman to have climbed and ski'd down so many mountains it's hard to count. She was determined to keep it up after having kids, in part because of the impression her mom left on her as a kid.  For $50 off select Casper mattresses: casper.com/mother and use the code "mother" at check out. Terms and conditions apply. 

Emily Zulauf is the Fiction Lead for a new game studio in Seattle, where she tries to come up with cool characters and weird, scifi-y names for things. Before that, she was with Pixar Animation Studios, where she worked as a Script Supervisor for Inside Out. She spent two years as the co-executive director of the Seattle Clemency Project, and she's a mom with a four-year-old daughter. Episode sponsor: Casper - Go to casper.com/mother for $50 off select mattresses. Terms and conditions apply. 

After a few requests from listeners, Amy tells the story of her own complicated mother-daughter relationship. This week's episode is sponsored by: Audible -- visit audible.com/TellMe for a free 30-day trial and a free audiobook! Casper - visit casper.com/Mother for $50 off select mattresses

Sarah Miller is an editor for Popula and a writer (mostly of super smart humor pieces) for The New Yorker, The Cut, and various other publications. In this episode she talks about what she admires about her mom, what she wishes were different, and the misogyny inherent in the expectations most people place on their mothers and their relationships with them.  This episode of TMAYM is sponsored by SunBasket. Go to sunbasket.com/MOTHER for $35 off your first order!

In the Season 2 closer, we talk to journalist and commentator (and Critical Frequency co-founder!) Maya Francis about her mom being a teen mom long before she had Maya, having siblings who had completely different childhoods from her own, how her parents taught her about race and gender, and how despite being a fiercely protective mother, her mom has also always maintained her own personhood.

Author Lauren Muscarella lost her mom when she was 20, and says there were aspects of their relationship that she had to work through on her own, long after her mom passed. In this episode we delve into how Lauren did that, why it was so important to her mom that Lauren pursue every opportunity, and how she eventually turned her own journey through grief into a book that might help others (especially her dad and brother, who Lauren thought might only read a book on loss if she wrote one), Alice's Law.

Filmmaker Amanda Micheli found the subject of her latest documentary, Vegas Baby, while researching financing options for her second round of IVF. In this episode we talk about how her upbringing impacted her views on family and relationships, and how that impacted her reproductive decisions.

In this crossover episode with the Bearcat podcast, we meet Leticia Aguilar and hear how her mom's experience showed Leticia what sort of woman she did and did not want to be. Now she helps other Latina women figure out how to carve out their own paths.

Comedian Marcella Arguello grew up in the rural town of Modesto, Ca where her El Salvadoran parents dealt with plenty of casual racism long before Trump. Marcella learned how to entertain herself as a kid, and how to combine the best of both feminine and masculine traits in one badass comic. Check her out @marcellacomedy everywhere, or at her weekly LA show, Women Crush Wednesdays. Also, please check out our Patreon campaign if you haven't already (patreon.com/criticalfrequency).

Sammy Nickalls (a writer and editor at AdWeek) says her mom has always been super supportive, even when she hasn't totally understood or agreed with her daughter. Sammy started the hashtag #TalkingAboutIt in the wake of her best friend's suicide to encourage people to more openly discuss mental health, and says her mom supports her but sometimes worries that it might hurt Sammy professionally to be so vocal about mental health. Patreon link here: www.patreon.com/criticalfrequency

Aparna Nancherla's mom was finishing up her residency as she was having Aparna and her sister. All three women dealt with anxiety and depression at different points in their lives, and for Aparna taking care of her mental health ultimately resulted in a successful career in comedy. Critical Frequency Patreon is here: patreon.com/criticalfrequency. Check out Aparna on episode 6 of the Netflix series The Standups: www.netflix.com/title/80175685

In part two of our Season 2 opener, writer Heather B. Armstrong (aka "Dooce") opens up about the challenges of living a lot of your private life publicly, how she's navigated writing about family, and how her kids feel about all of it. Check out our Patreon link here: patreon.com/criticalfrequency

Heather B. Armstrong was one of the original "mommy bloggers". In this 2-part episode we get into all of that, plus how Heather navigated leaving the Mormon church when the rest of the family was still very involved in it, why she stays in Utah for her mom, and how she learned the hard way to be careful about what she writes online. Please check out the Patreon for our new network, Critical Frequency, and donate if you can!: https://www.patreon.com/criticalfrequency

When Renita Parker Mobley heard comedian Sasheer Zamata interviewing her mom on This American Life last year it suddenly made her realize: she'd spent years mad at her mom for leaving her dad and kicking off a messy divorce, maybe it was time to get to understand her better as a woman, not just a mom who had failed to live up to Renita's expectations. Here, Renita tells us about her past experiences with her mom and what she's learned about her in the past year.

An interview with writer Samantha Ladwig about maternal estrangement.

Wesley Allsbrook is the artist behind the first-ever illustrated virtual reality film, Dear Angelica (produced by Oculus Studio. The film centers on a young woman (played by Mae Whitman) who has recently lost her actress mother (played by Geena Davis); it depicts an idealized relationship, and focuses on the daughter's sense of loss. Wesley feels a similar sense of loss for her mom, who's still alive.

Allison (Alli) Maloney is the news and politics editor for Teen Vogue. Recorded on Mother's Day 2017, in Brooklyn, this episode centers on Alli's story and her complicated relationship with her alcoholic mom who left when Alli was three and never truly re-entered her life after that except for the occasional visit or call. Shortly after her mom died in 2013, from alcohol-related cancer of the liver, Alli got sober. Not gonna lie: this one's a tearjerker.

Porochista Khakpour is a highly acclaimed author. Her fiction books, Sons and Other Flammable Objects and The Last Illusion, have received and been nominated for various awards and she also contributes essays frequently to a variety of outlets. Her forthcoming memoir, Sick, chronicles her journey in dealing with late-stage Lyme disease. Porochista also teaches writing at Columbia University and has also taught at Bard College. She immigrated to the United States as a refugee from Iran as a child. In this episode she tells us about navigating the Iranian and American identities with her mother, and how her mother dealt not only with raising an "American" daughter, but also with raising her daughter in far worse financial circumstances than she herself was raised. For more on Porochista and her work, visit her website at http://porochistakhakpour.com/. 

Ashley C. Ford is the senior features writer for Refinery 29, and has also written for a wide range of other publications, including The Guardian, Elle, and Teen Vogue. She was raised in Fort Wayne, Indiana, by a single mom, after her dad was incarcerated when Ashley was six months old. In this episode, Ashley talks to us about how she dealt with her mom's anger growing up, her mom's role in her career, and what has changed--for better and for worse--for black mothers in recent decades. 

Our relationships with our mothers are complicated, and that's especially true for women, each generation of which has lived through decades filled with changing norms and expectations. Your mom is likely the first female role model you had--good or bad. In Tell Me About Your Mother, journalist Amy Westervelt will talk to a variety of women about what their mothers taught them, connecting these personal histories to the broader story of modern women. Here's just a taste of what's in store in the coming months. Official launch: May 2017 (Mother's Day, naturally).