The Not Safe For Mom Group Podcast

Writer, author, and mom of three Sara Peterson has been down all the instagram wormholes and has lived to tell about it. On this episode, your host Alexis , and Sara have a super candid conversation on the ways in which performative motherhood and momfluencers are wearing us all down. Sara shares with us what it means to be a "hot mom", why prescriptive parenting doesn't work, the new mom haircut, and we also discuss . . . haunted Mormons (IYKYK). Sara's book, MOMFLUENCED, will be out this spring. We go deep into momfluencer culture in this episode, so here are a few articles to provide "supplemental reading":
Articles by Sara:

• Momfluencer Culture Enrages Me: Why Can't I Look Away?
• Why I want to quit social media
• Apparently makeup for children is just as much a thing as skincare for children
• Why I’m struggling to explain my beauty routine to my 4-year-old daughter

Also discussed in the episode:

• Mormon influencer exposes ‘soft swinging’ secrets on TikTok: ‘Everyone hooked up’

Subscribe to Sara's Substack, "In Pursuit of Clean Countertops", here.

Poppyseed Health offers 24/7 on-demand text access to doulas, midwives, and nurses.

The National Council on Sexual Addiction Compulsivity has estimated that six to eight percent of Americans, and approximately one in six women struggle with an addiction to pornography and sex. (Many women with sex addiction engage in casual sex, have multiple partners, or affairs. ) Author, and mom Erica Garza is one of the few women speaking out about her struggles with porn and compulsive masturbation (beginning at age 12), and later, sex addiction. Her memoir, "Getting Off: One Woman’s Journey Through Sex and Porn Addiction" is a brave and eye-opening story that helps dispel myths and opens up a necessary conversation about addiction. On this episode of the podcast, Erica talks about the underlying anxieties that contributed to her addiction, the pain of living a secret life, and how she finally was able to experience pleasure without feelings of shame. Erica also shares how her former addiction informs how she parents her daughter, and offers tips for those who may be struggling with sex addiction and want to seek help.
Ways to get help:

• Attend Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous which follows the 12 Step Model from Alcoholics Anonymous
• Disrupt unhealthy patterns by turning off your internet or traveling someplace new
• Connect with others who are working to recover from addiction (any kind)

You can find her book here.

Poppyseed Health offers 24/7 on-demand text access to doulas, midwives, and nurses.

"I could tell you maybe two people at my son's school know, and this is the crazy thing, maybe even more because I have been around people in those times I was using and you just don't think you look drunk. You did this, you forgot lunch, you did that, and who knows what people picked up on? My disease would lead me to believe they didn't at all, but I'm sure some people did."

In today's episode, we talk with someone who doesn't appear to be an "addict" but only because we have so many misconceptions of how an addict should look. An addict can be someone whose life has completely fallen apart, and it can also be the well-dressed mom at drop-off who is on her way to her C-suite office. Our guest tells us about the origins of her addiction, the career that helped fuel it, and how she has found recovery. She also talks about why she insists on considering herself an "addict" even though she is sober. We'll hear what it is like to parent while in recovery and how she talks to her child about her sobriety.

Resources for recovery:

• Online Intergroup of Alcoholics Anonymous
• Caron.org

Poppyseed Health offers 24/7 on-demand text access to doulas, midwives, and nurses.

We don't talk about stillbirth and infant loss enough because to acknowledge that they happen is to acknowledge that they could happen to US. We protect ourselves from these stories, which are OTHER PEOPLE'S STORIES, to further separate someone else's reality from that of our own. For Anna Feldberg, our guest on this episode, having lost her first daughter Charlotte, who died suddenly at 35 weeks gestation, is a reality from which she cannot separate. Anna shares with us her very personal story, and how she got to a place where the grief (and guilt) was no longer something all-encompassing. Folks often wonder what to say to someone who has experienced the loss of a child, as if that friend is on the other side of a wall and we can't begin to reach them. This episode helps us better understand how to support someone who is going through infant loss -- or, if it is something that has touched our own lives, how we can begin to move through our own grief process.
23,000 babies are born still in the US each year -- and often, the causes for these stillbirths are not clear. After losing Charlotte, Anna found out that her placenta had been small -- something doctors had never mentioned to her during the course of her pregnancy. Anna has become a passionate supporter of consistently measuring the placenta during pregnancy. She now works with an organization called PUSH for Empowered Pregnancy, to research and integrate similar maternal/fetal monitoring protocols into standard prenatal care.
Resources Anna shares in this episode:

• "What helped me a lot were support groups and connecting with other women (and men) who went through it."
• PUSH's Resource Page: From support groups to medical resources and connections to grief support book suggestions: https://www.pushpregnancy.org/pregnancy-infant-loss
• Star Legacy Foundation: Primarily focused on pregnancy loss grief support. Also have a mentor program where they pair a “veteran” loss mom up with a new loss mom.
• Our partner Poppy Seed Health provides 24/7 text access to nurses, midwives, and doulas, with a special focus on providing support during pregnancy and infant loss.

Today we have writer, and coach Jenn M. Choi on the podcast, who shares with us her story of surviving the deaths of both of her immigrant parents (on top of going through a huge life change) and how that process helped her face the generational trauma she'd held onto for so many years. She talks about how she found self-compassion, how reframing healing is a constant process, and how we all have the tools we need within us to become "the moms we wish to be."
Listen to her expert suggestions on how to heal, and move through generational trauma in your own life, and how the ultimate self care is knowing that you need help and that you can't do it all alone:
Jenn's healing go-to's:

• Mindset - Knowing to accept help. This is the first step: To get into the mindset of receiving help and saying, it is ok to not be ok, and I cannot do this alone.
• Therapy is one of the best tools in helping you not implode with feelings of rage. Finding the right modality of therapy and good chemistry with your therapist is essential.
• Coaching - therapy looks at present and past; coaching is more future focused.
• Writing - journaling helps you process and come up with things from your subconscious and bring it to light. Writing a letter to your past self can be very powerful.
• Online communities - going online and finding your community (FB, IG, Reddit’s sub communities).

Poppyseed Health offers 24/7 on-demand text access to doulas, midwives, and nurses.