Our Mothers Ourselves

"She is probably the most resilient person I know." -- Emma Walton Hamilton

This week, Katie talks with Emma Walton Hamilton, daughter of the extraordinary Julie Andrews, about her mom's difficult childhood and her determination to give her own children stability and, above all, constant love.

Julie Andrews's two memoirs, Home, and Home Work, are at once heartbreaking and awe-inspiring. While reading the books in preparation for the interview, Katie toggled between listening to Julie's narration, and reading. She was struck by how differently she absorbed the material depending on the medium. That is, when she heard Julie's familiar voice, so thoroughly had she absorbed the calming effect of that voice over the years, she found it hard to feel the darkness of the material.

Emma speaks about her mother's innocence, well into adulthood, a true surprise given the effect that parts of her childhood could have had on her.

Emma and her mother have written more than 30 children's books together, and they co-host the podcast Julie's Library.



Art by Paula Mangin
Music by Andrea Perry
Producer: Alice Hudson
Intern: Rosie Manock

Visit us at: Our Mothers Ourselves 

Dani Rucker generously supplied the beautiful rendition of You Are My Sunshine. Thank you, Dani!

Our Mothers Ourselves is an interview podcast that celebrates extraordinary mothers from all walks of life. Please share the one word that best describes your mother on the Mother Word Cloud.

What with the country in total turmoil, and people doing a lot of fretful handwringing, it might be time to take a breather and celebrate someone who's brought an abundance of solid joy to the palates of so many.

Katie talks with Fanny Singer, the daughter of famed chef and farm-to-table trailblazer Alice Waters, who in 1971 started her Berkeley, Calif. restaurant Chez Panisse intending to feed her community of 60's friends and fellow activists. In the process, she created an entire culinary movement that forever changed the way we think about food.

Fanny's new book, Always Home: A Daughter's Recipes & Stories, is an ode to her mother that rings true and clear. Her pure -- and deeply requited --  love for her mother is in ample evidence on every page.

Katie and Fanny explore the ways in which Alice expressed her love for Fanny, and the many gifts she has bestowed upon her daughter -- and the world.

Don't forget to visit us at ourmothersourselves.com. And while you're there, please contribute your word to the mother word cloud.

Music composed and performed by Andrea Perry.
Artwork by Paula Mangin. (@PaulaBallah)
Producer: Alice Hudson
Intern: Rosie Manock (@RosieManock)

Our Mothers Ourselves is an interview podcast that celebrates extraordinary mothers from all walks of life. Please share the one word that best describes your mother on the Mother Word Cloud.

In the wake of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's death, Katie takes a close look at the influence her mother, Celia Amster Bader, had on her daughter.

Katie interviews Jane Sherron de Hart, a historian and professor emerita at UC Santa Barbara.

Celia was the daughter of immigrants who came to the United States in 1901 to flee the pogroms that were taking place across Eastern Europe. Celia and her sister, Sadie, were deprived of a college education not just because of a lack of money, but because of traditional assumptions about the place of women. "Jewish families commonly sacrificed the futures of their daughters to ensure that a son might attend a prestigious school and enter a high-status profession," wrote Dr. De Hart, in her 2018 biography, Ruth Bader Ginsburg: A Life. (2018).

Celia and her husband, Nathan, settled in New York, eventually moving to the Flatbush section of Brooklyn, where Ruth grew up.

In her June 14, 1993 speech in the White House Rose Garden after being nominated for The U.S. Supreme Court, Ruth Bader Ginsburg said this:

"I have a last thank you. It is to my mother, Celia Amster Bader, the bravest and strongest person I have known, who was taken from me much too soon. I pray that I may be all that she would have been had she lived in an age when women could aspire and achieve and daughters are cherished as much as sons."

Celia died in 1950, at age 47. Ruth was just 17. 


Don't forget to visit us at ourmothersourselves.com. And while you're there, please contribute your word to the mother word cloud.

Music composed and performed by Andrea Perry.
Artwork by Paula Mangin. (@PaulaBallah)
Producer: Alice Hudson
Intern: Rosie Manock (@RosieManock)

Our Mothers Ourselves is an interview podcast that celebrates extraordinary mothers from all walks of life. Please share the one word that best describes your mother on the Mother Word Cloud.

In this era of uncertainty and anxiety, some things are a reliable fixture. Exhibit A: The tenacity of Erin Brockovich, who took on PG&E for its water contamination, won a mammoth settlement for her clients, and inspired an Oscar-winning film.

In the eponymous role, Julia Roberts was plenty feisty but by many accounts she wasn't as in-your-face fiery as the real Erin Brockovich, a self-described "foul-mouthed, short-skirted blonde woman from Kansas."

Brockovich has a new book, Superman's Not Coming: Our National Water Crisis  and What We the People Can Can Do About It.

“We are amid a major water crisis that is beyond anything you can imagine,” Brockovich writes. The book is filled with righteous anger directed at corporations who “lie, cheat, sue, intimidate, falsify documents, and outright bully."

The book is getting rave reviews, so it seems fitting to replay the episode from a few months ago, in which Erin talks about her mother Betty Jo Pattee, who passed on to Erin her own stick-to-itiveness.

Don't forget to visit us at ourmothersourselves.com. And while you're there, please contribute your word to the mother world cloud.

Music composed and performed by Andrea Perry.
Artwork by Paula Mangin. (@PaulaBallah)
Producer: Alice Hudson
Intern: Rosie Manock (@RosieManock)

Follow us on Instagram: @Our_Mothers_Ourselves and Twitter: @MothersSelves

Our Mothers Ourselves is an interview podcast that celebrates extraordinary mothers from all walks of life. Please share the one word that best describes your mother on the Mother Word Cloud.

Our series commemorating the 19th Amendment ends with the second segment on the first female Vice Presidential candidate, Geraldine Anne "Gerry" Ferraro (August 26, 1935 – March 26, 2011).

In this conversation with Ferraro's daughter, documentary filmmaker Donna Zaccaro, Katie takes a closer look at Ferraro The Candidate.

When Walter Mondale  chose Ferraro as his running mate on the Democratic ticket in 1984, Mondale's campaign got an immediate boost. The mood inside the convention hall was electric. And Ferraro's acceptance speech was dazzling. But she faced a level of scrutiny that her male counterparts simply did not.  Nevertheless, she handled some of those patronizing men -- like then Vice President George Bush during their debate  -- with just the right mix of respect and humility.

In the documentary, Paving the Way, produced and directed by Zaccaro, we learn more about Ferraro's feelings about her place in history and her hopes for the generations of women who have followed her.

 Don't forget to visit us at ourmothersourselves.com. And while you're there, please contribute your word to the mother word cloud.

Music composed and performed by Andrea Perry.
Artwork by Paula Mangin. (@PaulaBallah)
Producer: Alice Hudson
Intern: Rosie Manock (@RosieManock)

Our Mothers Ourselves is an interview podcast that celebrates extraordinary mothers from all walks of life. Please share the one word that best describes your mother on the Mother Word Cloud.

Our series commemorating the 19th Amendment continues, with the third and final installment. The subject: Geraldine Anne "Gerry" Ferraro (August 26, 1935 – March 26, 2011)

In the first of a  two-part interview with Ferraro's daughter, the filmmaker and producer Donna Zaccaro, Katie explores the late Congresswoman and vice-presidential candidate's early life and first years in Congress.

Ferraro was just 48 years old when Walter Mondale chose her as his running mate in the 1984 presidential election.

Zaccaro's documentary about her mother, Paving the Way, is a rich portrait of a woman whose hard work and dedication to social justice left a lasting impression on society.

You can read Ferraro's speech from the 1984 Democratic National Convention, or watch it on YouTube.

Don't forget to visit us at ourmothersourselves.com. And while you're there, please contribute your word to the mother word cloud.

Music composed and performed by Andrea Perry.
Artwork by Paula Mangin. (@PaulaBallah)
Producer: Alice Hudson
Intern: Rosie Manock (@RosieManock)

Our Mothers Ourselves is an interview podcast that celebrates extraordinary mothers from all walks of life. Please share the one word that best describes your mother on the Mother Word Cloud.

It's a big week for the history of women's rights. August 26 -- Women's Equality Day -- commemorates the 1920 passage of women's suffrage in the U.S., with 19th Amendment Centennial Day.

This episode is the second in a three-part series celebrating the centennial of the 19th Amendment, giving women the right to vote. Katie speaks with Coline Jenkins, great-great granddaughter of famous suffragist Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who in 1848 led the Woman’s Rights Convention, the Seneca Falls, N.Y. convention that fought for the social, civil and religious rights of women. 

Stanton started the convention with a speech on the convention’s goals and purpose:

“We are assembled to protest against a form of government, existing without the consent of the governed—to declare our right to be free as man is free, to be represented in the government which we are taxed to support, to have such disgraceful laws as give man the power to chastise and imprison his wife, to take the wages which she earns, the property which she inherits, and, in case of separation, the children of her love.”

Coline talks about her mother, Rhoda, her intrepid grandmother, Nora, and what it's like to be descended from not just one but several generations of strong women. 

On August 26th, the new Women's Rights Pioneers Monument was unveiled in New York City's Central Park. 

 NBC's Today Show streamed  the event via the MonumentalWomen.org website.

Don't forget to visit us at ourmothersourselves.com. And while you're there, please contribute your word to the mother word cloud.

Music composed and performed by Andrea Perry.
Artwork by Paula Mangin. (@PaulaBallah)
Producer: Alice Hudson
Intern: Rosie Manock (@RosieManock)

Our Mothers Ourselves is an interview podcast that celebrates extraordinary mothers from all walks of life. Please share the one word that best describes your mother on the Mother Word Cloud.

This is the first of a three-part series published over the course of three weeks, honoring the 100th anniversary of the 1920 ratification of the 19th Amendment, giving women the right to vote. 

A Woman's Place is in The House (the title refers to Abzug's famous campaign slogan) celebrates Bella Abzug, a lawyer, Congresswoman and leader in the fight for women's rights. She was Gloria Steinem's mentor, and worked as a labor and civil rights lawyer. Fresh out of Columbia Law School in 1945, she spent four years defending Willie McGee, a young Black man in Laurel, Mississippi who had been convicted of raping a white woman.

Katie speaks with Bella Abzug’s daughter Liz Abzug, about her mother’s childhood; Bella’s own parents, who immigrated from Russia; what it was like to have a mother like Bella Abzug; and the issues surrounding women’s rights that
remain unresolved half a century later.

Liz and Katie also listen to clips from Harvey Fierstein's 2019 one-person play, "Bella Bella," (now an Audible Original), directed by the marvelous Kimberly Senior, as well as clips of Abzug herself from the 1970s, speaking on the women's movement.

Liz Abzug founded and runs the Bella Abzug Leadership Institute, which inspires and trains young women to become leaders in the fight for social equality. 

Don't forget to visit us at ourmothersourselves.com. And while you're there, please contribute your word to the mother word cloud.

Music composed and performed by Andrea Perry.
Artwork by Paula Mangin. (@PaulaBallah)
Producer: Alice Hudson
Intern: Rosie Manock (@RosieManock)

Our Mothers Ourselves is an interview podcast that celebrates extraordinary mothers from all walks of life. Please share the one word that best describes your mother on the Mother Word Cloud.

Part Two of the conversation with Nina Lorez Collins about her mother, the late filmmaker, playwright, and writer Kathleen Collins.

Nina talks about THE TRUNK, what it was like to be the shepherd of the many works her mother left behind, and the instrumental role Nina played in seeing to it that her mother's big talent find its rightful place in modern American literature.

Katie and Nina also play film and literary critics with a small selection of Collins's complex and highly autobiographical work.

Nina runs TheWoolfer.com, a social platform for women over 40.


A note to all:  For the audio word montage that starts each episode, please record one word to describe your mother. Send your one word as an mp3 file to [email protected], and we'll include it in the audio montage.

And here's the visual word montage, reflecting the thousands of words people have chosen to describe their mother: www.katiehafner.com/word-cloud/

Our Mothers Ourselves is an interview podcast that celebrates extraordinary mothers from all walks of life. Please share the one word that best describes your mother on the Mother Word Cloud.

In this, the first of two parts, Katie talks to Nina Lorez Collins about her mother, the groundbreaking filmmaker and writer, Kathleen Collins.

Collins died of breast cancer in 1988, when she was just 46. She was one of the first Black women to direct a feature film.

In this episode, Nina talks about her mother's childhood in New Jersey, her stormy relationship with Nina's father, a White man she met while studying French cinema in Paris in the 1960s. 

And Nina talks about her mother's cancer, an illness she hid from her children until two weeks before she died.

Nina is a writer and entrepreneur who runs the Website TheWoolfer.com, a social network for women over 40.

Our Mothers Ourselves is an interview podcast that celebrates extraordinary mothers from all walks of life. Please share the one word that best describes your mother on the Mother Word Cloud.