Bad Mothers Podcast

Welcome to the new edition of the Bad Mothers podcast. In addition to family estrangement, we’ll now include my book club discussions with Tam - Family Estrangement , as well as interviews with other guests about their experiences with motherhood, womanhood, and more. My intention with Bad Mothers has always been to provide a place for women to be entirely themselves, whatever that is, and especia...

To close out season 3, I’m sharing my essay, It’s better this way, published by The Audacity on October 30, 2024. This essay is about my estrangement from my mother, my late effort to understand her as a human separate from her role as mom, and of the resolve my sisters and I shared throughout our lives. I focused on sibling estrangement this season because I wanted to understand it better. I feel...

My final guest for this season is Barbara, which is a pseudonym. Barbara’s parents died when she was young, and she is estranged from her siblings and step-mother. Her unique circumstances make it a bit more complicated for her to share her story or even be honest with some people in her life about members of her family who have some notoriety. Together, we decided to share her story anonymously....

Shelly Sharon helps women who’ve been around the block with healing unpack the way a challenging relationship with their mother still holds them back today, so they can thrive in their life and career. Shelly is a trauma-informed, certified Hakomi therapist. After a childhood marked by neglect and abandonment, she turned her story on its head and built a life of purpose and healing, where she’s co...

Last week, the long-awaited anthology, No Contact, Writers on Estrangement, was published. And lucky for us, we have its editor, the lovely Jenny Bartoy, as my guest for this episode. Jenny and I talk about her own estrangement story, as well as her vision for this anthology and the process of compiling and editing a wide variety of essays on the experience of estrangement from all sides. Jenny Ba...

This week we hear from another generous person who responded to my call for stories of sibling estrangement. Jaime has been estranged from her younger brother, sister and both parents for several years. As she explains here, she learned from these relationships how to be a better mother to her daughter. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to...

I am a huge book nerd, so I am always looking for ways to incorporate books into my work here on the podcast, and on the Bad Mothers substack. Speaking of, on Tuesday April 28, you can join the book club chat for Katherine Angel’s Daddy Issues live on Substack. I think books — including and maybe especially novels — have the power to teach us so much about ourselves and the world around us. They h...

I put out a call on a few social media support groups for people willing to share their sibling estrangement stories. I’ve heard from a lot of estranged adults, and read plenty of stories. This one is similar to in many ways — we can always see patterns in abusive and neglectful families — but Sharon’s story also feels especially cruel. Her resilience and thoughtfulness about this experience is tr...

This week, my book club partner and Family Estrangement Substack author Tam and I are discussing the novel, Mother in the Dark by Kayla Maiuri. We read it for the Estrangement Book Club, and since it includes parental and sibling estrangement, I thought it would fit nicely with this season. The novel was published in 2022 and is narrated by a twenty-something living in New York City, who has been...

This season, we’re taking a closer look at sibling estrangement — how it happens, what it feels like, and how to move forward. When I put out a call for those willing to talk about their experiences, I received several generous replies from people who genuinely wanted to help others by sharing their stories. This week, we hear from April. Learn more about Together Estranged here. This is a public...

Sandra Ann Miller is a certified Happiness, Relationship, and Health & Wellness coach, and Trauma-Informed Abundance Coach. But she doesn’t like to call herself a coach. She is The Happyist , and helps people to cultivate happiness from within. This is something she’s had to do for herself, too, having grown up in an emotionally abusive family, from which she has been estranged for many years. Tod...

In keeping with the tradition of inviting one of my family members on the podcast each season, today I’m speaking to my dad. I truly value the trust and honesty that my guests offer in this space, so it’s important to me to share aspects of my personal story, too. My dad has three of his own siblings, and I remember him telling me throughout my childhood that the only constant in my life would be...

I decided the best way to kick off a season focused on sibling estrangement was to learn the dynamics at play in a narcissistic family system. Who better to talk to than Dr. Katie McKenna. Katie an accredited psychotherapist who specialises in parentification & emotional abuse. She works on breaking generational trauma, so women can have healthier relationships, by recognising everyday toxic and n...

Welcome to season 3 of the Bad Mothers podcast. In the first season of the podcast, I focused on women who are estranged from their mothers and thinking about whether they want to become mothers. The second season included more talk about motherhood – how our dogs might play a role in our choices about kids, or how we can reframe our perspective if things don’t go the way we want. I also interview...

Bad Mothers began as an outlet for me to write about how women can subvert their assigned scripts, particularly around motherhood. I advocate for abortion rights, reproductive justice, the right to be a “working” mom or a stay at home mom without judgement, and especially the right to not be a mom at all. When I shared an essay about how I became estranged from my mother nearly twenty years ago, I...

Tam is a psychologist, trainee counsellor and PhD researcher whose work centres on family relationships, identity and resilience. She runs the Substack Family Estrangement , where she explores the complex realities of family cut-offs from both sides - those who choose distance and those who live through being estranged. Her writing takes in many forms of estrangement and aims to offer nuance and b...

Thanksgiving week is often the start of a difficult time of year for a lot of estranged people, and I hope this interview with Dr. Bridgette J. Peteet is helpful. She is a clinical psychologist, professor, and author of (dis)Honor Thy Mother: Daughterhood, Dysfunction, and Deliverance . This hybrid memoir blends personal truth with psychological insight. Her work centers on adverse childhood exper...

If you’re a regular listener or reader of Bad Mothers, you know I adopted a puppy this year and it has been A LOT. I think it’s been a lot for me especially as an adamantly child-free woman. Because Annie demands all of my attention. It made me want to talk to other women who have made really thoughtful choices about whether to have children, and how pets fit into those choices. As soon as I found...

My guest this week is Gayle Kirschenbaum . She is a filmmaker, writer, photographer and coach who recently released a memoir called Bullied to Besties , about how she healed her relationship with her mother. Her documentary, LOOK AT US NOW, MOTHER! is about the same journey. You can find her on Substack here . I wasn’t sure Gayle would be the right fit for Bad Mothers, in spite of all evidence tha...

Kate Muir is a women’s health expert, investigative journalist and documentary maker. She created and produced two ground-breaking Channel 4 documentaries on menopause that ignited a massive conversation among women in the UK. Her latest book is How to Have a Magnificent Midlife Crisis , and I met her when she visited my local bookshop. I was intrigued by the content of her book, of course, but th...

In this week’s episode, I speak to Melissa Fraterrigo , whose new book, The Perils of Girlhood , is a memoir in essays about how we teach girls to live in this world — both from her own perspective through her experiences as a young girl, and as a mother to girls. Melissa also wrote the novel Glory Days and a short story collection, The Longest Pregnancy . Her work has been nominated twice for Pus...

Bad Mothers refers to mothers who’ve hurt us, from whom we’re estranged. But it also refers to other kinds of mothers, other kinds of women. I originally meant it as a facetious way to describe myself - I’m a “bad mother” because society thinks motherhood is all women are good for and I’ve decided to not be one. So this season, in addition to continuing my conversations with women who are estrange...

This week we return to our roots with a discussion of maternal estrangement, with Megan Margherio . Megan is an author and trauma-informed embodiment coach. Her work is shaped by both lived experience—childhood trauma, estrangement, and complex PTSD—and deep study in nervous system repair and somatic healing. Her debut memoir, Everwoven: A Memoir. A Reckoning. , is a raw, lyrical journey through e...

I’m kicking off Season 2 with a discussion about being a child-free dog mom. How does having a dog — and especially a puppy — help us frame our ideas about motherhood? For me, it’s been a tough few months with my new puppy Annie, and I’ve thought a lot about how she compares with a baby and why I chose one over the other. The perfect person to kick off this conversation is Keltie Maguire , a clari...

Welcome to season 2 of the Bad Mothers podcast. Last season, I focused only on strained or estranged mother-daughter relationships. One of the things that I hope others take away from those conversations, apart from the necessity and validity of choosing estrangement, is that sometimes – perhaps even most of the time – our mothers were doing their best. It just wasn’t enough. I have sympathy for m...