Bad Mothers Podcast

A bonus episode, featuring Dick Polman of SUBJECT TO CHANGE.

This essay is adapted from one I wrote for Substack March 2024 and another for Jenny Magazine in August 2026.

If you follow me here or on Instagram, you know I’m a little obsessed with Donna Berzatto from the hit television show, THE BEAR. This essay explores why she is such an intriguing character to me, an estranged daughter. Some spoilers ahead.

“I hate myself for saying this, but that show is very triggering for me,” I tell some of my sisters during a Sunday group call.

We’re talking about The Bear. I don’t want to be one of those people who overuse the word “triggering,” but in this case it truly does apply. And not just for the chaotic restaurant kitchen scenes. But let’s start with those. By my informal polling, anyone who has worked in a restaurant will be overcome with a familiar panic when watching the first few episodes, where absolutely everything goes wrong in the kitchen of a beloved hole-in-the-wall sandwich shop in Chicago.

The oldest four of us sisters worked in diners, bars and chain restaurants from the age of fourteen. Vanessa carried on until her mid-thirties. I finally gave it up after I paid off my credit card debt from my summer abroad, three long years after graduating from college. Gina bartended until she had her first kid, and Jess refused to return to Bob Evans the second she finished school. The camaraderie – but also the anxiety and exhaustion – portrayed on the hit show are not unfamiliar to us.

If these were the only triggers on the show, I could probably bear it.

But the other one is a lot more insidious. It’s Carmy’s mother, Donna.

Played by Jamie Lee Curtis, she doesn’t actually appear until halfway through season two, for just two episodes. But her narcissism and neglect weighs on Carmy and his sister Natalie brilliantly from episode one. Carmy is a mess. His brother recently committed suicide, and he is plagued with something like PTSD, resulting from working for a head chef who appears to be the worst person in the world. Carmy is twitchy, smokes like a chimney, and avoids all emotional connection. Natalie is more well-adjusted, but that’s only because she’s the fixer. If you’re a fixer, you already know, you look like the one who has it together, but that’s only because you’re too busy helping everyone else to resolve their own demons. Natalie hassles Carmy to talk to her and begs him to go to AA. When he finally relents, her face is the picture of relief. She has saved one brother, for now.

Until S2:E6, Donna Berzatto is invisible, but her impact is deafening. It makes me squirm. When she finally appears it’s almost a relief. This is the thing that is so deeply uncomfortable. This is why I relate to but despise these characters. They are me. That kind of dysfunction seeps into every part of your life. Sure, I know the misery and elation that’s possible working in a restaurant, but I also know what it’s like to have a mother who is there one minute, gone the next. Whose love is conditional, and the conditions are a mystery.

Michaela Chamberlain is the author of the new book, On Resisting Women, which examines how individuals become misogynists. She shows how unrecognised misogyny infiltrates everyday life, in both public and private, shaping how we think, feel, and speak. She explores the persistence of misogyny: how it is woven into the fabric of our culture, our institutions, and our psyches.

In particular, I was interested to talk to Michaela about:

* How or if it is possible to eradicate misogyny

* How our conception of misogyny changes as we age

* The rage women feel about living in a misogynistic society, and how that is sometimes misdiagnosed due to — you guessed it — misogyny

* The expectations misogyny places on women and mothers in particular, and

* If it may play a role in maternal estrangement.

Michaela Chamberlain trained at The Bowlby Centre and studied in the Psychoanalysis Unit at UCL. Shortly after qualifying at The Bowlby Centre in 2016, she started teaching Freud and attachment theory and became chair of The Bowlby Centre. She worked as an honorary psychotherapist in two NHS trusts for several years. She has presented clinical papers at public forums, lectures internationally, and has been published in various journals. Her debut book, Misogyny in Psychoanalysis, was released in June 2022, which explores the historical and current context of misogyny in psychoanalytic theory and clinical practice. She is in private practice in London as a psychoanalytic psychotherapist and is a supervisor and training therapist.

Her book is available now from Karnac Books and is available everywhere books are sold. She’s on Instagram @michaelachamberlain_therapist.

Asha Dore is a speech-pathologist, editor, and extremely prolific writer. Her essays and reported features have appeared in Vogue, Washington Post, McSweeneys, New York Magazine, and elsewhere. She’s also the founder and host of the literary interview podcast, Totally Biased Reviews.

In this conversation, we talk about her relationship with her mother — which included some time living together in adulthood — and the moment Asha realized she needed to cut ties. We also discuss her mother’s diagnosed mental illness, Asha’s worries about inheriting that illness, and how Asha tries to be a better mother to her kids.

We talk a lot about Asha’s essay for The Cut, which explains some of the dynamics at play in her relationship with her mother. I highly recommend it, and it is available here.

Learn more about Asha and read more of her work on her website, https://www.ashadore.net.

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 especially if it’s at odds with patriarchal decrees. That sometimes means we talk about genuinely “bad” mothers, but it also gives space to their daughters, women who don’t have children for any reason, or who do have kids and don’t have all the answers. It’s a place for sisters and aunts and friends to share the ways they’re hacking their way through a jungle of expectations to make their own path.

And an exciting new addition: these stories will also be available as video on my Substack and on YouTube.

To kick off this new format, I’m happy to share a recent book club discussion with Tam Stevens about Daddy Issues, by Katherine Angel. Watch it here:

This book packs in an incredible amount of cultural references as they relate to fathers and their daughters, and Angel introduced me to several new ideas and things to consider.

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 very lucky that the break with my mother strengthened my connection to my sisters rather than breaking it. That is not always possible, as we’ve heard this season.

I want to express my sincere gratitude to all of my guests this season, who shared such personal and emotional stories in the hope of helping others going through estrangement from family. I am so grateful for their trust in me, and in you, to listen with care and compassion.

Bad Mothers will be back in the autumn with more stories from women, but with a bit broader scope. More on that soon. In the meantime, I hope you’ll join me and Tam from Family Estrangement to talk about Virginia Evans’ novel, The Correspondent, on June 23. Details are available on the Bad Mothers Substack and linked in the episode notes.

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. Please note there is mention of sexual assault in our discussion today.

As a reminder, our next book club is June 23, and we’re reading The Correspondent by Virginia Evans. We’ll meet on Substack Live with Evolving Family at 7pm BST/2pm EDT. Join in to watch and share your thoughts in the comments. The recording will be available to paid subscribers of either Bad Mothers or Evolving Family.

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 committed to helping women to heal their mother wound.

She joined me on the podcast to discuss her own experience with sibling estrangement, what it was like growing up in an isolated, small family unit, and about her practice helping women thrive after unpacking complex mother-daughter relationships.

You can learn more about her work from her website, https://www.shellysharon.com

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 Bartoy is a French American editor and critic. Her writing appears in several anthologies and in such publications as The Boston Globe, The Seattle Times, Under the Gum Tree, Chicago Review of Books, The Rumpus, and others. She holds a master’s degree from Columbia University and lives in Tacoma, Washington.

Along with the anthology, Jenny has written recently for Literary Hub with a reading list on estrangement, and Open Secrets with her own estrangement story.

No Contact, Writers on Estrangement, is available now from Catapult Press.

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.