00:01:51.800This is just one of the reasons that I'm so excited to talk today with E.J. Dixon.
00:01:56.100Her new book, One Bad Mother, is a sharp and deeply researched look at one of the most loaded labels in American culture.
00:02:04.180E.J. asks who gets called a bad mom and how that question even came about.
00:02:09.100But she also dives into why we're so obsessed with policing motherhood and what all of it says about power, class, race, and gender.
00:02:18.240What I'm hoping is that one bad mother is a cultural reckoning.
00:02:22.100And maybe, if we're lucky, a little bit of a permission slip to a lot of us to stop chasing impossible standards and start allowing ourselves just to be human beings again.
00:02:44.840I'm good. I'm very excited to talk about your book today.
00:02:47.520I got to tell you, I would buy your book based off the title alone. It is so good.
00:02:54.120Thank you. That means so much coming from you.
00:02:56.800And it's not just the title, but also the subtitle. One bad mother in praise of psycho housewives, stage parents, momfluencers and other women we love to hate.0.97
00:03:08.900So I want to get right into it. What does it mean to be a, quote, bad mom in today's society?
00:03:17.520Well, it's hard to pin down, and that's by design, right? It's a very expansive term. Anybody can be a bad mother. You can be too nurturing, not nurturing enough. You can be too permissive, not permissive enough. It's basically a term that can be used to apply to anyone.
00:03:35.980Literally anyone. I mean, I think that I honestly believe we use the term bad mother much more than we do good mother. It is a favorite label among so many people on the Internet, in media, in pop culture, that a deep dive into it. I feel like this could have been a many volume book and not just one.
00:04:03.060Yeah, I'm constantly thinking about things that I, you know, characters that I wish I had written about, like figures that I wish I had written about. It's just constantly coming up over and over again, which is both good and bad, right?
00:04:16.280Right, right. Exactly. Exactly. Well, I want to go back in time a little bit. You did so much research for this book. Where are we starting when it comes to the idea of bad motherhood in terms of just culture generally?
00:04:32.560Well, the thing that was most interesting to me is it's a relatively new idea.
00:05:14.400And women weren't assessed according to how nurturing or kind they were as mothers.
00:05:18.900They were assessed according to how productive they were as, like, field hands or how industrious they were as workers in the household.
00:05:25.760There wasn't even an organization for the welfare of children until the late 19th century.
00:05:32.060There was an organization for the welfare of animals that handled occasional child welfare cases, but that's how little we cared about children's welfare in the United States. And that's how little we cared about good or bad mothers until the 19th century when we saw the world's, the country's first child abuse case. It just, it just wasn't any ether. It wasn't something that we consider culturally. And I think that's really interesting that it's, it really is an entirely culturally constructed topic.
00:06:02.060category. Sorry. Yeah, no, exactly. Exactly. And the idea that when we did finally decide
00:06:08.780to vilify parents in terms of you're not good at raising your children, the fact that it became
00:06:15.900the mother and not bad parents, that that is also so striking to me. Yeah, I think it has to do with
00:06:24.120the Industrial Revolution and the idea that women were sort of tasked with being the protector of
00:06:28.400the hearth and the protector of the home, sort of this like bastion of warmth and nurturing0.62
00:06:32.880for men to return to when they came from, you know, the degraded, dirty workplace.
00:06:39.640They were sort of a purifying force.1.00
00:06:42.080That's what women were expected to be.0.59
00:06:43.440And obviously, this only refers to white middle class women, right?
00:06:46.860Like this doesn't apply to anybody outside of that very limited category.
00:06:53.740And it's also just, you know, plain garden variety misogyny.0.75
00:06:57.040Like, it's really it's kind of crazy that I managed to fill a whole book about the concept of the bad mother and like where it came from and why it exists, because the answer to so many of these questions is like, we just don't like women in this country.
00:07:10.900You know, like we just plain don't like women.0.98
00:07:13.320We just plain don't like women of color.1.00
00:07:16.580You know, that's the answer to like 90 percent of these questions.
00:07:21.040I mean, it's always it's always the answer.
00:07:22.700And it's not even just this country either.1.00
00:07:24.860And if you think about most of history, we just don't like women. We just don't appreciate women. And also globally. But it's particularly bad in America. I think it's particularly bad, too, in American pop culture. And you get into that a lot. The trope of the bad mother in television and on film. And who gets to decide those things? Let's talk a little bit about Mommy Dearest.1.00
00:07:51.140yeah for sure mommy dearest i think is one of my favorite references that people make
00:07:56.860who know nothing about the actual original product right and so but i it's become this
00:08:05.020kind of catch-all for bad motherhood what did you learn about it while you were doing your research
00:08:11.140well mommy dearest was really interesting to me because it's based on this memoir
00:08:16.640by Christina Crawford, who is the adopted daughter of this very, very, very famous 1940s
00:08:23.340actress named Joan Crawford. And Joan Crawford was like one of the biggest stars of her era,
00:08:29.260made a lot of like really huge movies, incredibly accomplished. But she's best known for like today
00:08:37.280for this movie that's based on this tell all memoir that her daughter wrote about her,
00:08:43.940which painted her as this shrill, alcoholic, physically and emotionally abusive heriton, basically.
00:08:52.040And I found I sort of got the idea to frame this chapter around her and around the topic of like maternal mental illness in general.
00:09:01.980By after I listened to Karina Longworth's podcast, You Must Remember You Must Remember This and her whole series.
00:09:08.480Oh, good. So good. And I talked to her for this chapter, too.
00:09:12.540And she was in it had been a while since she did research for this episode for the season, but she was super helpful. And it's sort of like I did not I had seen the movie and I was familiar with like, you know, no more wire hangers and all of the like, you know, screenings, college screenings across the country.
00:09:28.720But, like, I wasn't really aware of, like, Joan Crawford's body of work in her biography and just how much she had done to sort of build this very, like, Depression-era, single, independent career girl trope and just how much her whole body of work had kind of been erased by this super campy, not even necessarily, like, 100% accurate, necessarily.
00:09:55.780Yeah, a portrayal of her. So that kind of got me thinking. And also like when I when I saw the movie, I remember my takeaway being like, hey, this isn't this is bad. Like, you know how everybody else feels about the movie. But also it did strike me as kind of like a very naturalistic, whether intentionally or not, portrayal of living with somebody with bipolar disorder, you know.
00:10:20.180And I didn't think that was intended on behalf of the filmmaker, but like it did make me wonder, well, you know, does Joan Crawford, did Joan Crawford have undiagnosed bipolar disorder? What is it actually like to live with a mother who has bipolar disorder?
00:10:34.640And those two questions kind of dovetailed and led me to write a chapter about psychomommies, mothers with mental illness, and how stigmatized it is for mothers to have two children and to raise children while struggling with mental illness.
00:10:56.480And how it's depicted in pop culture through the lens of Joan Crawford.
00:11:00.660What I was thinking is how terrified I was when I had my first baby, when they start giving you the postpartum screening, along with the questions they ask you. You have a baby. And in order to screen for postpartum depression and anxiety, they ask you questions that I think you're terrified to answer truthfully because of the stigma against mental illness and mom.
00:11:22.540So they're like, do you want to hurt yourself or your baby? And I think no matter how any woman is feeling, you're also terrified of someone taking that baby away, of someone telling you that you're not a good enough mother. And a lot of women I've talked to didn't answer those questions as, you know, thoughtfully as they could have, as nuanced as they could have.
00:11:44.380and in ways that could have gotten them help for postpartum depression and anxiety
00:11:48.420because of these terrible stigmas against a mother having any kind of mental illness
00:11:54.020and the immediate assumption that that will make them a quote-unquote bad humor.
00:11:58.500Yeah, and I think postpartum depression and anxiety is interesting
00:12:02.600because I have seen over the past decade or so increasing discussion and awareness
00:12:08.260of postpartum mental health conditions in particular.
00:12:12.940like there are a lot of celebrities coming forward to talk about their own experiences with it and I
00:12:17.260think that's amazing like I'm very happy to see that but I do find it interesting as I write in
00:12:22.760the book that the conversation is limited to only mental health disorders that have a beginning you
00:12:29.640know a discrete beginning and end you know they adhere to a specific timeline like postpartum
00:12:34.360depression is you know I think that the clinical uh definition like by definition it's only supposed
00:12:41.360to last like a year or a year and a half. You know, we can't really wrap our minds around
00:12:47.760chronic maternal mental illness in any real way. So while it's amazing that like we're talking more
00:12:56.820about postpartum mental illness, I do find it interesting that we still can't have that
00:13:02.620conversation about like long-term maternal mental illness in any substantive way.
00:13:12.240And I don't think we ever really will, honestly.
00:13:15.320I mean, I don't know if we ever really will fix any of these things in a real way ever at this point.
00:13:21.280And it's not like nobody is suffering from it.0.93
00:13:24.580You know, it's like a huge percentage of women.
00:13:27.040So many people aren't suffering from it every single day.
00:13:31.660And I was very broad in terms of like, like I'm using the word mental illness here and I'm being like very broad and very vague.
00:13:36.720But that's by design. You know, like I remember at one point when I was editing the chapter, my editor was like, well, don't you want to be more specific here? And I was like, no, like, you know, that encompasses like depression. It encompasses anxiety. It encompasses borderline. It encompasses typo. Like it encompasses. There are a lot of women who deal with this on some degree or another. And like they're not being seen or heard in any real way.
00:14:00.760or when they are seen and heard again it's very easy to categorize them as the bad mother
00:14:06.840yeah exactly or to yeah to have their illness ascribed to like being a bad mother you know
00:14:13.800yeah yeah i want to take a quick break and when we get back i want to talk a little bit
00:14:18.420about the inspiration behind this book for you
00:14:20.460saying how you feel out loud is terrifying but that's what hinge's new free audiobook
00:14:32.920no ordinary love is all about it's a collection of real love stories about five couples that met
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00:15:52.800We're judged as females in the world, you know, from the beginning of time, but I've never been as judged until I became a mom.
00:16:00.820Yeah, absolutely. But I think, I mean, even less so from a personal perspective, this, the book, the idea for the book sort of stemmed from this other idea that I had for a book,
00:16:12.080which was kind of like this academic treaties about how a lot of the parenting practices that progressive women are taught from very early on are all stem from like conservative right wing organizations like breastfeeding and baby wearing and attachment parenting.
00:16:29.880And it was a very, like, stilted, almost, like, academic treatise.
00:16:34.980And I was kind of just thinking, like, what's a more approachable way of, like, packaging some of these ideas?
00:16:41.720And I was like, oh, talking about how the right sort of packages, like, these ideas, these culturally constructed ideas about badmothers into pop culture and, like, sneaking them into pop culture.
00:16:53.100And also, like, I just really wanted to write about, like, 20 pages about MILFs.
00:18:26.760That was a really odd experience because he really didn't want to talk to me. I think he Googled me and saw that I had written all of these. He correctly pegged me as like a liberal feminist. And he was like, oh, she's going to smear me. And I was like, no, I'm just curious if your views on this have evolved.
00:18:49.680And I kind of want to know, because the whole idea of that chapter, right, was like, I just thought it would be funny to be like, do you think MILFs are bad moms?0.67
00:18:58.140Like porn MILFs or like Stifler's mom is a bad mom?0.53
00:19:00.440Like, I thought it would be funny to ask him that question.0.99
00:19:03.320Because it's like, it's so beside the point, you know, it's like asking if the Death Star had like insurance, you know, it's just a really like stupid wonky question.
00:19:11.980And I thought it would yield a funny answer, but it ended up being this conversation about like, I mean, this is my interpretation.
00:19:21.680Like he didn't say this outright, but like just judging from how hesitant he was to talk to me and the tone of our conversation.
00:19:32.760I think that he does feel a little guilty about it, but I also think that he was doubling down a bit.
00:19:39.720and was like didn't like thought it was stupid to like overanalyze like
00:19:46.740the sexist or objectifying implications of it right right so i did a rewatch of american pie0.57
00:19:56.620recently i have to say i mean i saw it when i was what year was it i had to be high it had to be
00:20:04.500high school 1999 yeah yeah yeah it was um the end of high school early college nothing about
00:20:11.360the movie holds up today very little very little except jennifer coolidge except jennifer coolidge0.94
00:20:18.680in my opinion at least no she's she's wonderful i actually don't even mind jason biggs masturbating0.95
00:20:26.420with a pie even though it is I mean it's it's just all so gross in so many ways it's a hard watch0.98
00:20:36.220you know American Pie is one of the hardest rewatches I've had the other hardest rewatch
00:20:43.880I've had recently of something I loved as as a teenager was 16 Candles oh god yeah really rough
00:20:51.900Really rough. Neither of them hold up. But I could see how the creator of it would want to make the defense of it was of another time.
00:21:01.640yes and yeah and that was definitely part of the conversation and to be honest like
00:21:08.980i had a similar experience to you in re-watching it and milf is like and and the whole stifler's
00:21:15.720mom storyline is like the least problematic in my opinion element of the entire movie like
00:21:23.440you know that the kid is of age at least you know like like he's of age like it's weird
00:21:29.800but um you know it's and it's it's a weird like you know it's a one-dimensional objectifying role
00:21:37.940but it's like it's like the least problematic element of the whole movie which is you know
00:21:42.140incredibly fucking misogynistic and and it's very unfunny at points but um yeah i mean in
00:21:50.980re-watching it like with respect to the milf uh storyline and the milf legacy in particular like0.97
00:21:57.560I honestly have very complicated feelings about it, which I hope is evident from people reading that chapter, because on one hand, like, I do think it was kind of revolutionary and I do think it was kind of subversive and, dare I say it, empowering to imply that an older woman or a maternal figure is capable of having desires other than, like, watching the great British baking show, Bake Off, whatever the fuck you call it.
00:22:25.920I don't watch the Great British Bake Off and cleaning house and, you know, serving other people's desires.
00:22:30.420Like, I think I think at the time, because that was a very sexist era, that was, you know, subversive.
00:22:36.920But at the same time, it was also in service of other men's very limited ideas of what those women looked like and acted like, you know, so in service of male fantasies.
00:22:48.840And I keep coming back to the song and video for Stacey's mom, too.
00:22:53.700yeah yeah which is rachel hunter right yes rachel hunter you know quintessential milf uh
00:23:00.680which again to show a woman of a certain age at that point you know being sexual being desired
00:23:09.120i don't think we'd seen a lot of that since anne bancroft in the graduate and that's a really big
00:23:14.800gap between those two cultural moments yeah it was a big deal and and we shouldn't i think it would be
00:23:21.320i think it would be reductionist to be like the milf trope is sexist without considering like the
00:23:27.820context of the time and place um and the fact that like yeah i mean that was 30 years in between
00:23:33.980that that women of a certain age women over 35 were just considered completely disgusting and
00:23:40.160sexless you know um and the milf trope did a lot to change that but at the same time i mean0.99
00:23:46.520And now you're seeing, you know, women in porn who are 25 years old and have abs that you could, like, bounce a quarter off of cast as, like, the MILF or the GILF.0.71
00:23:59.420And it's obviously, like, a very limited, very restrictive view of female sexuality.
00:24:03.820And there's an argument to be made that it's more harmful to women and to mothers than it helps.
00:24:11.860But I think that everything that you write about in this book, and you do it very, very well.
00:24:15.480I think everything is complicated. You are not attacking or tearing anything down unilaterally. You really come at this from a place of curiosity and a desire to understand and to talk through with the reader like you're just sitting down with a really smart girlfriend and saying, hey, let's just get into this.
00:24:41.440Like, where did it come from? How did it affect you? How did it affect the world at large? You know, instead of, you know, coming at this from a place of which I could see how some people would think this could be the case, you know, a place of very righteous feminist anger. You're coming at this from a very strong place of curiosity. You also happen to to be a liberal feminist.
00:25:03.100Yeah, I mean, there's I think it comes from like a the as a reader, there is nothing I hate more than being condescended to.
00:25:12.380No, or like there's nothing I hate more than the phrase we all know that or like we all we all think that like, no, we don't we don't all know that like we don't all know that we share the same opinion like we I don't assume that everybody is coming from the same place as me.
00:25:31.280Like, I think I think it's a safe assumption that like a lot of the people who are going to read this book are liberal feminists such as myself, but not all of them, you know, and hopefully not all of them, to be honest.
00:25:43.260I mean, I would prefer it was it wasn't all of them. And maybe some of them are going to have different opinions about, you know, certain issues than others. And beyond that, like, I just don't think it's interesting to have, you know, I just don't think it's interesting in general to be an ideological, you know, stickler about.
00:26:05.320there's no smart way to say this really but like to be i i think i think it's better to to see
00:26:13.620to be curious about other perspectives and and interrogate i guess it's the reporter in me just
00:26:19.000like see both sides of everything then uh then to just adopt an ideological viewpoint it makes
00:26:26.400everything so much more interesting for the reader too uh because i i think it gives us a smart way
00:26:34.240to look back at what is a very complicated history for women so that we can figure out
00:26:39.940how we want to move forward, how we want to move past a lot of these things, which it felt for so
00:26:47.000long that women were on this path to things being better in the world, not just for mothers,
00:26:54.060for women generally, but certainly for mothers. And now clearly it feels the opposite in a lot
00:27:00.940of ways. I want to take one more break. When we get back, I want to talk a little bit about your
00:27:07.260own experience of feeling like a bad mother, because I will say I feel like a bad mother almost
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00:28:21.360Like, I do not like playing. I do not particularly like being at playgrounds with my children. I will take them on wonderful, like, trips and to museums and do projects with them. But if it's dolls or blocks or sometimes even Legos, it makes me want to die. And I recently just started saying those things out loud. What kinds of things make you feel like a quote unquote bad mother?
00:28:48.140I will say that writing this book has kind of liberated me from that.
00:28:52.600I love that because I think that reading this book is going to liberate a lot of people from that.
00:29:01.080The intention was really just to make people stop and recognize that all of the things that you feel guilty about are completely socially constructed and utter bullshit.0.96
00:29:15.640And there's just no reason for you to feel guilty about them.
00:29:19.120Like, I think the feeling guilty about pretend play thing is a really good example.
00:29:23.300Like, I mean, I don't know where that I don't write about this in the book, so I don't know where that specific piece of advice comes from.
00:29:30.820But if I had to guess, that stems from like the advent of the parenting advice industry and, you know, the rise of like John Watson and, you know, attachment theory and, you know, which in turn arose from like this need to drive women back into the home after World War II and after women had, you know, regained, you know, independence.
00:29:52.440and it's all it's all part and parcel with this larger social project of drive of stripping0.76
00:30:00.480women's autonomy right and like all of it all of it if you really dig dig deep enough
00:30:08.900and you can sort of like the roots of something as simple as like1.00
00:30:14.100you must engage in pretend play all the time with your child like what what kind of shit is that1.00
00:30:21.700do you think our mothers or our grandmothers were being told that shit no like no we know1.00
00:30:27.820no absolutely not on the whole like most of us turned out fine without like our parents being0.97
00:30:34.000on the floor like playing legos with us for like at least an hour a day or having like circumscribed
00:30:39.660pretend play for like like it's all just designed to make us feel less it's all by design to make us
00:30:47.540feel less like we're doing less like we're always need to do more like we always need to be more
00:30:54.680like we're never enough like we always need to be more for our kids and do more in the house
00:31:00.040and stay more in the house and be more on the floor and and clean up more and and buy more toys
00:31:06.200and and who does that benefit it doesn't benefit us it doesn't benefit us it benefit it benefits
00:31:12.840the patriarchy and there's a reason for that and i'm sorry this sounds really like conspiratorial
00:31:17.440And like Angela Davis. But it's true. I mean, when you when you really research all this shit and when you research where it comes from and the reason why, you know, the modern parenting advice industry is structured the way that it is, like, it's true.
00:31:31.320Like that's that is why that that is why we are being told these things. And that really is the reason why I wanted to write the book. Like, you know, when you really scratch the surface and interrogate like these scripts and these tropes, there's no reason there's prison to believe any of this shit.0.61
00:31:52.660like the only thing that you really ought to be considering is like are you present are you there0.93
00:31:58.400are you nurturing do you love your kids do your kids feel safe do they feel do they trust you
00:32:03.800did they do they do they feel accepted for who they are like beyond that everything's gravy i0.99
00:32:12.060and it just frustrates me so much that like women feel the need to like believe otherwise0.97
00:32:19.120because it's all just a fucking scam it is it is indeed a scam i i i think this and say this out0.97
00:32:27.640loud all the time that you know put making women feel off kilter making us feel like we are not0.99
00:32:34.760good enough as mothers it really so much of it serves also to get us to buy more things
00:32:42.500and fuel capitalism fuel like so many of these systems designed by men for men um because i
00:32:52.600started this podcast because the internet mom influencers made me feel like i wasn't a good
00:32:58.400enough mother they made me feel like my house wasn't clean enough like i wasn't breastfeeding
00:33:02.300hard enough um and they were all selling me things to try to be quote better at this and i spent0.74
00:33:10.040thousands of dollars with my first couple of babies. By the third, I realized this was all a
00:33:15.580scam. But it is exhausting. And the fact that I still that I'm still sometimes made to feel
00:33:22.520like I'm a bad mom, despite having gone through this three times, despite having done all of the
00:33:29.060research into this, it really it really is amazing cultural programming to me.
00:33:33.420Yeah, I mean, me too. And I just it makes me very sad. And my one hope with this book would be that women feel liberated to some extent from it.
00:33:46.720And it's not like I mean, as the book makes clear, it's not like there aren't women who do harm to their children or there aren't like truly, quote unquote, bad mothers out there.
00:33:55.920But the goal of this book really wasn't to, you know, differentiate like who's a bad mother and who's a good mother.
00:34:03.420Like, who really, who really counts as, like, a bad mother? It was more just to kind of interrogate, like, these, these scripts and these, these things that were told happen to us the second that we have children and, like, what's the truth and what is not? And as it turns out, like, when you really start looking into it, a lot of, and it's not true. And, yeah.
00:34:28.340Yeah. I mean, honestly, all of the things. I do think that just talking about it, just saying it out loud, I even feel very soothed today because, you know, like I said in the beginning of the episode, we've had three snow days this week.
00:34:47.260um thankfully my three-year-old her daycare slash preschool has been open uh but my two big kids
00:34:55.080have been home i took them sledding um despite me not wanting to sled or be out in the cold
00:35:01.100uh and since then they've been indoor cats we've all been indoor cats i don't want to go back
00:35:05.120outside it is very cold i'm doing a half-assed job of keeping them on their school zoom because
00:35:11.760they're doing virtual school uh and they're watching a shit ton of tv and i even had these
00:35:16.280pangs today. I'm like, you should go do a project with them. Should I? I'm a full-time working
00:35:22.820woman, the breadwinner of my family. Should I be doing those things? And why do I feel bad about
00:35:27.800it? So yes, I think that this book is truly going to, you know, liberate a lot of women from these
00:35:34.280ideas. I hope so. And yeah, I mean, I experienced it yesterday too. Like I had a couple friends over
00:35:40.540and we were, you know, having a glass of wine and, you know, I've had the same experience. Like my
00:35:45.980kids have been cooped up inside having because of the snow and um my son we just wanted you know
00:35:53.520have a conversation i was catching up with some old co-workers and my son was watching like a0.97
00:35:57.640bunch of these really stupid like brain rot uh dinosaur toy videos on youtube and they're though0.98
00:36:04.360they're i know exactly which ones you're talking about because i've got a dino kid0.99
00:36:07.580and oh how old is he oh he's now eight oh oh he still loves dinosaurs oh it hasn't oh it's
00:36:15.080it's it's only ripened for him i'm dreading this for me it did not end we are going
00:36:21.780fossil hunting in wyoming this summer and now he makes lego stop motion animation videos
00:36:28.560of scenes from jurassic park i mean he sounds very precocious but i'm also
00:36:33.140listening to this with dread because mine is three and if i have five more years of this
00:36:37.260i'll kill myself but i'm like look you might not but you very well i thought it was going to end
00:36:42.580it for. And then I got a five. And we're really close to nine now. Maybe he'll be a paleontologist.0.94
00:36:49.920He might be. Well, he says he says that he wants to be a paleontologist slash paleo artist.
00:36:53.940And I'm like, we don't know what jobs are going to exist in 10 years. So you do you.
00:36:58.220I mean, the dinosaurs are already dead. So I don't think that, you know, that's in danger of
00:37:02.240becoming defunct. No, no, exactly. Exactly. So yeah, but I do know exactly the videos that
00:37:08.000you're talking about because we we lived through those during the three years. And yeah, they make
00:37:12.160you want to die yeah and I put them I put them on for him because like we just wanted to like
00:37:16.840have a conversation and I felt the need to say which was you know it was true like oh I don't
00:37:21.940usually give him this much screen time tonight because he was having like you know he was
00:37:25.980watching them for a while like I don't usually put these videos on for him for that long you
00:37:29.120know we usually I only give him like you know 10 minutes of these videos per day and it was and it
00:37:34.200was all true but like my co-workers my former co-worker looked at me and they were like you
00:37:40.000don't need to say that you know like i'm not i'm not judging you and i was like wow like i've
00:37:44.660fallen into my own trap you know like i'm making excuses for myself or something that i don't need
00:37:50.620to make excuses for like i'm trying to catch up with somebody i have not seen in like nine months
00:37:55.580and this is fine and i should just give myself a break yes you should give yourself a break and0.68
00:38:00.740give yourself all of the grace my kids my kids have truly watched so much crap tv
00:38:04.840cast i mean they do all kind of all the time and also they watched good movies with me and they do
00:38:11.540fun things and i'm no longer that worried about it i'm really i'm very worried about it but i'll
00:38:17.800get over it i also love it when that happens when you find your people and you're like oh okay yeah
00:38:22.600like thank you thank you for actually saying to me that i don't need to make an excuse right now
00:38:28.180um because you don't and that's what i'm hoping this book does for a lot of women you know feel
00:38:33.480kind of catch themselves and be like, I don't have to feel that way. Me too. I do too. That was the
00:38:37.700goal. So let's talk about how everyone can get this book. So it's pre-order now. It is available
00:38:43.040for pre-order wherever books are sold. I recommend getting a copy for you and getting a copy for a
00:38:49.580friend so that you can talk about it. But then I also love the idea of getting a copy for a man
00:38:55.160because one of my goals this year is to have men reading more books by and about women. Also get a
00:39:02.360copy for your mom i've been urging people to get copies for their moms as like a backhanded uh
00:39:08.760mother's day gift i love this for mother's day actually also valentine's day i mean i dedicated
00:39:17.740the book to my mom and a lot of the book is about my mom and she was at first a little bit like
00:39:23.660but i think she she understands and appreciates it now and we've had a lot of really actually
00:39:29.420amazing conversations about about it and how and how much like I love and appreciate her so
00:39:35.180this this book has actually like really opened up my relationship with my mother in an amazing way
00:39:40.300oh I love that how so you have to read the book to find out it's a perfect hook well thank you
00:39:46.440so much for being here today EJ thank you so much for having me this has been amazing and I'm such a