Episode 29:
Minna Dubin on Rage, Compassion, and Challenging the ‘Good Mother’ Assumptions
Hey there mamas and welcome back to another episode of Life After Birth. In today’s episode, I’m speaking to Minna Dubin, the Author of ‘Mom Rage: The Everyday Crisis of Modern Motherhood.’ I absolutely loved this book and was so excited to invite Minna to speak with me for this episode. Minna’s writing has been featured in The New York Times, The Times, Salon, Parents, Romper, Oprah Daily, MUTHA Magazine and many other publications.
As a leading feminist voice on mom rage, Minna has also appeared on MSNBC, Good Morning America, The Tamron Hall Show, NBC10 Boston and NPR. Minna is from California and lives with her husband and two children.
In this beautiful conversation, we talked about Minna’s experience of becoming a mother, and what her difficulties were during this time. We of course talk about rage in motherhood, exploring the social elements that play a role in this and the power of treating your anger with compassion.
We also discussed:
The intensity that can come with difficult seasons of motherhood, and the importance in having faith and self-belief that you can and will make it through these challenging times.
The power of drawing on previous experiences of when you have overcome challenging times to help foster this belief.
The need for time, space and separateness in mothering and how this is often perceived negatively in our society, due to patriarchal internalised modelling that has led to the belief that a ‘good’ mother wants to be around her children and husband all the time and who doesn’t have needs of her own.
Minna’s identity as being a bisexual Queer woman married to a cis-man, how becoming a mother intensified this experience and how she used writing to help process her second ‘coming out’ experience once she was a mother, and the part this played in her returning to herself.
The internalised belief of the “good mother-good child” association that is held in many facets of our society, and how this can manifest in relation to neurodiversity and behavioural differences in children.
And much much more.
I hope you feel seen and heard by listening to this conversation, and enjoy it as much as I did.
Find out more about Minna in these places:
You can purchase Minna’s book “Mom Rage: The Everyday Crisis Of Modern Motherhood” here – it’s an incredible, comprehensive and detailed exploration on the rage felt my mothers, and I hugely recommend giving it a read!