freemom, conversations for modern mothers

There’s this reel that always pops up in Instagram feed, I’m not sure if you’ve seen it but people upload videos of their daughters along with a voiceover that says “to all the parents of stubborn little girls with fierce attitudes. Don’t put out that fire, she’s going to need it.”

I chuckle to myself, picturing my own little dynamo - but at the same time, I feel conflicted. So much of me wants to raise children who are vocal activists, fierce advocates, and people who aren’t afraid to stand up for what’s right and call out what’s wrong. But then of course, there is the other side of me who wants to make sure my kids are respectful, considerate, and open to the plain and simple fact that sometimes we do just have to take “it”. 

We are living in a time when people and especially females are finally getting comfortable with using their voice and that thrills me. Women are showing up and taking over in politics, climate change is being propelled by a teenage girl. The way it’s always been isn’t good enough anymore and I for one am here for it. 

So that’s what we are going to talk about today. How can we as parents stoke the curiosity of our little people in a way that enables them to feel comfortable advocating for themselves and calling out injustice while still understanding the importance of respect and consideration for others? How can moms who maybe aren’t comfortable shouting from the rooftops or putting themselves in front of a microphone raise kids who are and who can? Let’s find out.

With me today is Dr. Ashley Solomon, a licensed clinical psychologist, leadership coach, and founder of Galia Collaborative, a Cincinnati, Ohio-based mental health practice that works to provide women with the resources they need to overcome obstacles at home and at work to reclaim their power. 

From mental health and managing relationships to raising changemakers and advocating for support, freemom is a podcast dedicated to ensuring that every mom feels heard. You can find us on the gram at @freemomcast or on the web at www.freemomcast.com. You can also support the show and help fund production with a sweet little five-dollar donation right here. Thanks for listening!

I’m not going to beat around the bush. Today’s episode is about menopause. 

It seems a bit crazy to me, I mean menopause? That’s for older, or rather “mature” women, right? We are young, we have little people to look after, and honestly we have enough going on. Menopause? Nope. No way. 

Well, yes way. The average woman begins to experience perimenopausal symptoms between the ages of 40-44, and for some women, it’s even younger than that. For those of you who had babies a bit later in life, you could very well be clearing out those tampons and pads at the same time that you’re getting the kids out of diapers. 

It’s crazy to me that every woman experiences menopause and yet no one really talks about it. Yes, we know about the hot flashes but there has to be more to it than that. Funnily enough, if you type “average age” into Google, “of menopause” is the second most common response…. After “death”. Ugh. 

So what do we need to know? Why is menopause such a big secret? How can we prepare ourselves for this inevitable and honestly pretty uncomfortable change that’s in the not-so-distant future? Let’s find out. 

My guest today is Dr. Kate Zachau, Osteopathic Physician with Collaborative Natural Health Partners based in Connecticut. Dr. Kate works with patients to determine the root cause of their medical maladies in alignment with naturopathic and osteopathic philosophies. She specifically works with women as they move through menopause and her passion for integrative medicine is most notable in the modalities of mind-body medicine, nutrition, and osteopathic manipulation. 

From mental health and managing relationships to raising changemakers and advocating for support, freemom is a podcast dedicated to ensuring that every mom feels heard. You can find us on the gram at @freemomcast or on the web at www.freemomcast.com. You can also support the show and help fund production with a sweet little five-dollar donation right here. Thanks for listening!

From mental health and managing relationships to raising changemakers and advocating for support, freemom is a podcast dedicated to ensuring that every mom feels heard. You can find us on the gram at @freemomcast or on the web at www.freemomcast.com. You can also support the show and help fund production with a sweet little five-dollar donation right here. Thanks for listening!

Being a mother and raising kids while looking after a household is really tough right now. Throw in a full-time job, and life can seem pretty close to impossible some days. They say “the struggle is real” but so too is “the juggle” of being present as a mom and a working woman, especially when the cards are stacked against us in the corporate world. 

What exactly do I mean? According to a report by McKinsey & Company, women are promoted to manager at far lower rates than men, which creates a trickledown effect for formulating a gender-balanced foundation at the senior and executive levels. As of 2021, only a little more than 20% of women occupied C-suite roles, which is actually a 5% increase from 2016. 

Are we getting there? Maybe, but way too slowly. In fact, a recent study by The National Women’s Law Center showed that full-time working mothers were paid 74 cents for every dollar dolled out to dads. That’s $17,000 less just because of gender.

So what’s the deal? Why are women getting overlooked when it comes to that promotion, raise, or next step in their careers? If the corporate behemoth is still so fixated on the white male employee, what can we do to take matters into our own hands? Let’s find out.

My guest today is Anita Gatto, a mom of two and Co-Founder of The Board, a consultancy that connects C-Suite executives and entrepreneurs. Anita’s goal is to support women founders and leaders while creating a stronger, equity-driven, and gender-balanced business world.

From mental health and managing relationships to raising changemakers and advocating for support, freemom is a podcast dedicated to ensuring that every mom feels heard. You can find us on the gram at @freemomcast or on the web at www.freemomcast.com. You can also support the show and help fund production with a sweet little five-dollar donation right here. Thanks for listening!

From mental health and managing relationships to raising changemakers and advocating for support, freemom is a podcast dedicated to ensuring that every mom feels heard. You can find us on the gram at @freemomcast or on the web at www.freemomcast.com. You can also support the show and help fund production with a sweet little five-dollar donation right here. Thanks for listening!

I read an article recently that brought a lot of new mom insecurities flooding back to me and I’m honestly a bit ashamed to admit it. I was one of the last of my group of friends to have a baby and as helpful as their advice and wisdom were in so many aspects of pregnancy, I often found myself in the late-night company of Instagram, Amazon, and Google trying to decipher which gizmo, gadget, and “must-have” product I absolutely had to buy for the little human being that I felt completely underprepared to welcome into our family.

Now I am a planner and a minimalist and I’m also a gosh darn marketing professional. And even with those to-the-core personality traits and a career of experience, I still found myself drenched in the anxiety of not having the right “stuff” for my bub. Luckily, I was able to fight off most of my impulses but it was so easy for me to flash back to those moments of the unknown, where having the best strollers, sleepers, and sound machines would somehow make me a better mom.

So what is the deal with the consumer compulsion that grips us moms? Are we easy targets - hormonal, hapless, and armed with a financial treasure trove better known as the baby registry? How can we kick these insecurities and learn to trust our gut a bit more with regard to real needs versus wants or even worse - influencer projections? Let’s find out.

With me today is Annie Midori Atherton, a writer and mom based in Seattle, WA. Her work focuses on parenting, culture, and any question that seeks to explain why we are the way we are. You’ve probably stumbled across her work in Romper, The Everymom, Business Insider or The Atlantic, and if you haven’t dialed into her stuff yet, you should.

From mental health and managing relationships to raising changemakers and advocating for support, freemom is a podcast dedicated to ensuring that every mom feels heard. You can find us on the gram at @freemomcast or on the web at www.freemomcast.com. You can also support the show and help fund production with a sweet little five-dollar donation right here. Thanks for listening!

From mental health and managing relationships to raising changemakers and advocating for support, freemom is a podcast dedicated to ensuring that every mom feels heard. You can find us on the gram at @freemomcast or on the web at www.freemomcast.com. You can also support the show and help fund production with a sweet little five-dollar donation right here. Thanks for listening!

I’m going to be really upfront here and tell you that I was never interested in politics until I became a mom. I’m embarrassed about it now but honestly, I found it all to be super boring. Mostly white, male candidates never spoke my language and it wasn’t until Barack Obama came on the scene that I even bothered to vote. Shameful, yes, but true. 

Now that I have little people, I have become a whole heck of a lot more invested in what happens in this country, especially when it comes to healthcare, environmental protection, and women’s and family issues. I started thinking about why so many political candidates are white males and why so many issues that are important to me as a mother - paid parental leave, universal preschool, safety in schools - never seem to make it “up the hill”. As I started looking into it, I found out that prior to this past election, 7 percent of representatives in Congress and only 5.3 percent of state legislators in the United States are mothers with children under the age of 18. What’s being celebrated in the media is Congress’s “unprecedented” diversity with 28% of the makeup being women and 23% identifying as non-white -  the most in history. Humph.

So, are we doing something wrong here or are the increases in numbers actually encouraging? How can we help more women and mothers get into the political spectrum so we have a fighting chance at actually getting what we need for our families? Let’s find out.

My guest today is Liuba Grechen Shirley, Founder and CEO of Vote Mama. Liuba ran for Congress in 2018 as a mom of two toddlers with no salary to pay for childcare. She quickly figured out why moms with young children don’t run for office and started the fight to change it. Liuba became the first woman in history to receive federal approval to spend Campaign Funds for childcare and she received the highest vote share of any Democrat to run against the incumbent in 25 years. After her campaign, she launched Vote Mama PAC, the nation’s first Political Action Committee dedicated to electing Democratic moms up and down the ballot. Since 2019, Vote Mama PAC has helped more than 400 pro-choice, Democratic moms run for office in 31 states. In 2020, Liuba launched the Vote Mama Foundation to break down the barriers that keep moms out of office and make it easier for moms to run and serve. Just recently, Liuba launched the Vote Mama Lobby, a political empowerment app that mobilizes fed-up moms to become an organized civic and voting bloc, volunteer for mama candidates, and lobby for truly family-friendly policies. It just so happens to be the virtual mom group of my dreams. 

From mental health and managing relationships to raising changemakers and advocating for support, freemom is a podcast dedicated to ensuring that every mom feels heard. You can find us on the gram at @freemomcast or on the web at www.freemomcast.com. You can also support the show and help fund production with a sweet little five-dollar donation right here. Thanks for listening!

From mental health and managing relationships to raising changemakers and advocating for support, freemom is a podcast dedicated to ensuring that every mom feels heard. You can find us on the gram at @freemomcast or on the web at www.freemomcast.com. You can also support the show and help fund production with a sweet little five-dollar donation right here. Thanks for listening!

According to a study published in the Journal of Family Psychology, a whopping 67% of couples say they are discontented with their marriage after they have a baby. Are you surprised? Probably not. After all, many women take on the lion’s share of both childcare and household chores, creating an imbalance in the home that stokes a serious resentment fire. As for the men, a loss of freedom and their position as the sole focus of their wife's attention is a huge change that can create frustration or detachment. 

One thing I read while preparing for this interview that intrigued me was the idea that couples get stuck in defensive positions of anger, sadness, and withdrawal - emotions that become cyclical especially as the stresses of parenting take their toll. Finding joy, laughter, and the commonalities that brought a couple together in the first place start to become a distant memory which creates further frustration for both partners. 

With such a huge change in household makeup, are there ways that we can tackle marriage after baby which will actually strengthen the bond between partners and create a more sound, loving relationship for years to come? Let’s find out. 

With me today is Becca Stone, a Brooklyn and Philadephia-based psychotherapist, coach, and trainer, who works specifically in emotion-focused couple’s therapy, an evidence-based approach to healing relationships grounded in the neuroscience of attachment. She is also a mother of two and works with her husband running their practice, so clearly, she knows what she is talking about. Check out her website or find her on TikTok @beccastone_therapist.

From mental health and managing relationships to raising changemakers and advocating for support, freemom is a podcast dedicated to ensuring that every mom feels heard. You can find us on the gram at @freemomcast or on the web at www.freemomcast.com. You can also support the show and help fund production with a sweet little five-dollar donation right here. Thanks for listening!

From mental health and managing relationships to raising changemakers and advocating for support, freemom is a podcast dedicated to ensuring that every mom feels heard. You can find us on the gram at @freemomcast or on the web at www.freemomcast.com. You can also support the show and help fund production with a sweet little five-dollar donation right here. Thanks for listening!

It’s no secret that corporate America kind of treats women like crap, with men earning roughly 16% more than us for doing the exact same jobs over the exact same time. If that doesn’t sound like a lot, tell your friends that they’d have to work 42 more days a year to even the score. No thank you. 

What’s even more shocking than the gender disparity in this country is what’s known as the “motherhood penalty” which studies show accounts for 80% of the gender pay gap. So it’s not just women who are being screwed, it’s actually mothers. To make that perfectly clear, we are earning less and getting passed up for promotions more simply because we have children. There is some pretty scary research to support all of this. A Harvard study found that mothers were recommended an 8% lower starting salary than non-mothers which is more than 8% lower than the recommended starting salary for fathers. Oddly, the trend is reversed for dads when compared to childless men. 

According to a recent report by the World Economic Forum, it will take another 130 years to close the gender pay gap globally. Let’s make this perfectly clear, we are talking about paying women, and disproportionately mothers, equal pay for equal work. That’s it. So how can we fast-track that trajectory and start to build a foundation that will actually benefit our daughters in ways that we are unlikely to see in our lifetime? Let’s find out. 

With me today is Lauren Smith Brody, founder of The Fifth Trimester an educational consulting platform that supports all working parents and caregivers to advance women’s leadership and build gender equity in the workforce. Her book, The Fifth Trimester, is a must-read for parents looking to survive and thrive in the tumble dryer early days of balancing career and motherhood.

From mental health and managing relationships to raising changemakers and advocating for support, freemom is a podcast dedicated to ensuring that every mom feels heard. You can find us on the gram at @freemomcast or on the web at www.freemomcast.com. You can also support the show and help fund production with a sweet little five-dollar donation right here. Thanks for listening!

From mental health and managing relationships to raising changemakers and advocating for support, freemom is a podcast dedicated to ensuring that every mom feels heard. You can find us on the gram at @freemomcast or on the web at www.freemomcast.com. You can also support the show and help fund production with a sweet little five-dollar donation right here. Thanks for listening!

One of the things I have found most amusing in my current stage of parenting is just how absorbent my little people are. My kids repeat nearly everything they hear, including the rogue f-bomb, a habit that my husband and I are now working a bit more diligently to break. Good, bad, happy, or sad, if we are talking about something, my children want to be a part of it. All the more so if their parrot-like chit-chat gets a reaction from mom and dad.

From mental health and managing relationships to raising changemakers and advocating for support, freemom is a podcast dedicated to ensuring that every mom feels heard. You can find us on the gram at @freemomcast or on the web at www.freemomcast.com. You can also support the show and help fund production with a sweet little five-dollar donation right here. Thanks for listening!

The thing I love most about hosting this podcast is getting to speak with women all over the country who have been transformed by motherhood. Many of my guests are experts in their field fighting for women’s rights or professionals who have dedicated their lives to the betterment of our physical and mental health. Once in a while, I get to meet someone who does both - a person who has been radically changed by motherhood and who has used that experience to actually help other women lean into a role that they hadn’t been able to imagine before. 

In my experience, having kids has always been at odds with professional success. As much as we want to advance in our careers, society tells us to “step aside ladies, go raise the kids. Money is the man’s work now.” But the more I’m surrounded by inspiring women, the more I find myself in the company of people who, instead of letting their careers take a backseat, have actually used motherhood to catapult into a new way of working. The change is not without its challenges though, as the identity shift of being a mother while also balancing a professional life, navigating emotional changes in a partnership, and getting our heads around the world we’re currently grappling with can absolutely take its toll. 

So, as mothers, where are we in terms of life, career, and taking care of ourselves? How can we set ourselves up for change that actually feeds our needs and supports us as we age? That’s what we are going to talk about today.

With me is Jessica Vanderberg, Co-Founder and Clinical Director of The Alliance Center, a Connecticut-based mental health center that’s solely focused on supporting mothers through life’s major transitions. As a full-spectrum doula, childbirth educator, social worker, and a mom, Jessica has dedicated her life to the mental health of women as they navigate pregnancy, motherhood, and parenting.

From mental health and managing relationships to raising changemakers and advocating for support, freemom is a podcast dedicated to ensuring that every mom feels heard. You can find us on the gram at @freemomcast or on the web at www.freemomcast.com. You can also support the show and help fund production with a sweet little five-dollar donation right here. Thanks for listening!

From mental health and managing relationships to raising changemakers and advocating for support, freemom is a podcast dedicated to ensuring that every mom feels heard. You can find us on the gram at @freemomcast or on the web at www.freemomcast.com. You can also support the show and help fund production with a sweet little five-dollar donation right here. Thanks for listening!

Here on the show, we talk a lot about how tough it is to raise kids, but if we’re being honest, sometimes it feels like the world is stacked against us from the moment we get that positive sign on a pregnancy test. Nearly all the women in my close circle of friends work full time and I would be lying if I told you that the thrill of their pregnancy news was met by an honest bit of fear. 

That seems normal right, who wouldn’t be worried about becoming a mother? But parenthood wasn’t the only thing eating them. It was actually how they would tell their employers the news and how a pregnancy, or several, would affect their careers. 

The Pregnancy Discrimination Act passed in 1978 technically protects a person’s workplace rights, which means that women can’t be discriminated against for being pregnant. But it happens every day. In fact, statistics show that in the last 10 years, more than 50,000 pregnancy discrimination claims were filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and Fair Employment Practices Agencies. That’s nearly 14 women per day, every day who come forward. And that’s just the start. 

Once a woman gets through the stress of “breaking the news” of a pregnancy to her powers that be, she then has to start a conversation about maternity leave. With no federal paid parental leave program available in the United States, these are very murky waters. Some companies have policies in place, some states even offer a level of job security, but rarely here in the U.S. can women access a program that allows them to feel financially secure enough to enjoy their first few months as a mother. 

So what gives? Let’s find out.

My guest today is Amy Beacom, a mom of two and the Founder and CEO of the Center for Parental Leave Leadership, the first consultancy in the US to focus exclusively on parental leave. Amy is recognized as the premiere expert on the personal and professional interplay around parental leave for employers and employees. She helps women advocate for themselves in order to fully experience motherhood without the burdens of wobbly job security or financial stress.

From mental health and managing relationships to raising changemakers and advocating for support, freemom is a podcast dedicated to ensuring that every mom feels heard. You can find us on the gram at @freemomcast or on the web at www.freemomcast.com. You can also support the show and help fund production with a sweet little five-dollar donation right here. Thanks for listening!

From mental health and managing relationships to raising changemakers and advocating for support, freemom is a podcast dedicated to ensuring that every mom feels heard. You can find us on the gram at @freemomcast or on the web at www.freemomcast.com. You can also support the show and help fund production with a sweet little five-dollar donation right here. Thanks for listening!