Overthinking About Mommy Issues

Ashley, welcome to the Magical Overthinkers podcast.

Yay, thank you.

I'm so excited to talk to you about moms.

Me too.

This topic has been on the Magical Overthinkers list of subjects to cover since the show's inception.

So it feels like a long time coming.

Could you introduce yourself and your work and how you came to write this book? Because it is bold and it is necessary.

Bold indeed.

So my name is Ashley Orman.

I am an editor, a health and wellness journalist, and the author of Motherfucked, How to Keep Your Mother's Toxic Drama from Ruining Your Life, out now.

So in my mid 20s, I have a little story.

It's a long, long way to explain this.

But in my 20s, I got my dream job at Cosmopolitan.

And I quickly learned that I had some pretty intense social anxiety.

I would go into my pitch meetings and I would have my pitch document in front of me.

I couldn't read it.

I couldn't breathe, which is not very helpful when you're trying to pitch ideas.

And so I started therapy for social anxiety.

And my therapist and I danced around this question, why do you care if people see you as awkward or weird? And for a long time, I said, you know, who wants to be the Phoebe Buffay of their friend group? I want to be Rachel Green.

And eventually, I came to the conclusion slash realization that I didn't want people to see me the way that I saw my mom.

I did not feel relieved by this realization.

At first, I felt embarrassed to be attributing this like major issue in my life to my mom.

And also, I felt really ashamed because I always knew something was kind of up with this relationship with my mom.

But having a mental health professional sort of confirm like,

hmm,