Introducing Normalizing Normal

It is time.

Momma Cusses is expanding.

Kinda.

History time.

Momma Cusses began back in 2019 as an ezine. It was hosted on Medium; a lot of the work is still there if you're curious. (And heads up not all of it was focused on parenting at the time. Some of it was writing about the thing most people get to enjoy to become a parent in case that's not your cup of tea.)

Was that really late in the ezine game to try to make an ezine? Yeah. Yeah, it was. But its the resources I had to tap. Confession time; I didn't start Momma Cusses with any notion of direction or purpose. I had just had twins late in 2018. I was forced out of the workforce because the cost of daycare was so damn high. I was alone a lot, lonely, and clinging to what little sanity is granted a stay-at-home mom outnumbered by her own mewling progeny. I was looking for any sort of outlet to connect to the outside world.

Also, there was a massive hole in the budget thanks to the two income trap and Medium promised pay. (Turns out they don't pay great but something was better than nothing at the time.) So I started writing. Satire articles and advice. Stories of my various past jobs (including the time I sold sex toys to a preacher's wife). Whatever came to mind went on Medium.

This is the part where you're supposed to say and it blew up and turned into this massive success story. Except...it didn't. My articles on Medium limped along with a narrow following and even narrower scope of engagement.

And then along came 2020. There are few good things to say about that year. Very, very few things. But the timing of the pandemic and a petty mom moment meant I found myself talking about parenting on TikTok. That's where it blew up and turned into at least a modest success story if not a massive one.

That's when a purpose revealed itself. Create the resource I'd been missing. Take everything I learned in the trenches of learning how to parent and condense it into a small, digestible chunks. Sixty seconds to relate, connect, explain, or comfort other parents just trying to do their goddamned best, break generational cycles of trauma & distrust, and do better by their kids than was done by them.

Thus, Momma Cusses went from a desperate attempt to connect to a full-on brand with direction and purpose. And now, almost four years later, it's time to expand. If I want this to be a resource for parents looking to explore gentle or responsive parenting, it can't just be me. There's no such thing as a parenting expert. Just people with good ideas. It is now my job to begin gathering a whole bunch of good idea people.

One of those good idea people, I feel, is Emily Feret. I met Emily on social media after my own following began to blossom and I immediately felt a connection not just to her content but to who she is as a person. Thus, as the time has come to expand that resource network, I welcome Emily to the Momma Cusses team! I'll allow her to introduce herself:

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Hello.

Hi.

Salutations

How the heck are ya?

I don’t know, insert whatever cool way there is to greet people these days.

My name is Emily! I am a 32 (nearly) year-old stay-at-home mom of two who is known by a small sliver of the internet as the mom who “normalizes normal”.

Ok, it’s a … decent-sized sliver- I’ve been featured in the New York Times, parents.com, motherly, the Today show, books, podcasts, and articles, and last year I met Drew Barrymore in the flesh. And we held hands.

All of that is amazing and wonderful but in reality, my house is often a mess, my body stretched and marked, and I am a self-declared expert in nothing, but I do have Google.

My magic is, that I show it all.

You know when you shove that stuff off your counter before you take a picture? - Well I show off the pile of stuff and make people feel okay about it.

My catchphrase started as “Let me show you around my house and make you feel better about yours”.

I love talking about motherhood- the messy, beautiful, scary, rewarding experience it has been.

I love helping others feel better about their own life by talking about mine!

Showing off my messy house, talking about my parenting fails ( and wins), and helping others find themselves in motherhood is what I do.

I can’t wait to share with you here, and thank you to my good friend Gwenna for letting me share her space here now and then.

I’m Emily, I like to normalize being normal, so let me talk about my life, and make you feel better about yours.