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What Fresh Hell: Parenting, Relationships, and Making Life Better, with Two Funny Moms

When you’re a parent, every day brings a “fresh hell” to deal with. In other words, there’s always something. Think of us as your funny mom friends who are here to remind you: you’re not alone, and it won’t always be this hard.
We’re Amy Wilson and Margaret Ables, both busy moms of three kids, but with completely different parenting styles. Margaret is a laid-back to the max; Amy never met a spreadsheet or an organizational system she didn’t like.
In each episode of “What Fresh Hell” we offer lots of laughs, but also practical advice, parenting strategies, and tips to empower you in your role as a mom. We explore self-help techniques, as well as ways to prioritize your own needs, combat stress, and despite the invisible workload we all deal with, find joy amidst the chaos of motherhood.
If you’ve ever wondered “why is my kid…” then one of us has probably been there, and we’re here to tell you what we’ve learned along the way.
We unpack the behaviors and developmental stages of toddlers, tweens, and teenagers, providing insights into their actions and equipping you with effective parenting strategies.
We offer our best parenting tips and skills we’ve learned. We debate the techniques and studies that are everywhere for parents these days, and get to the bottom of what works best to raise happy, healthy, fairly well-behaved kids, while fostering a positive parent-child relationship.
If you’re the default parent in your household, whether you’re a busy mom juggling multiple pickups and dropoffs, or a first-time parent seeking guidance, this podcast is your trusted resource. Join our community of supportive mom friends laughing in the face of motherhood!
whatfreshhellpodcast.com

Copyright: Copyright © 2016-2023 What Fresh Hell, LLC

Latest Episodes:

Fresh Take: Jenny Wood Mar 21, 2025

Show notes

How can moms feel empowered to make progress towards their personal and professional goals? Jenny Wood, author of the new book WILD COURAGE, offers tips for applying courage in your daily life, balancing personal ambitions with family responsibilities, and setting healthy boundaries.

In her 18 years at Google, Jenny Wood grew from entry-level to executive. Jenny’s writing has been featured in Harvard Business Review, Entrepreneur, Inc., and Forbes.

Jenny and Margaret discuss:

The nine negative adjectives women are often labeled as and how Jenny flips them in her book
How to differentiate between the "truths" and the "tales" you tell yourself about a situation
The very small ways you can start to exhibit courage in your everyday life

Here's where you can find Jenny:

www.itsjennywood.com
@itsjennywood on IG and @jennyilles on LinkedIn
Buy WILD COURAGE: https://bookshop.org/a/12099/9780593717646

We love the sponsors that make this show possible! You can always find all the special deals and codes for all our current sponsors on our website:

https://www.whatfreshhellpodcast.com/p/promo-codes/

What Fresh Hell is co-hosted by Margaret Ables and Amy Wilson.

mom friends, funny moms, parenting advice, parenting experts, parenting tips, mothers, families, parenting skills, parenting strategies, parenting styles, busy moms, self-help for moms, manage kid’s behavior, teenager, tween, child development, family activities, family fun, parent child relationship, decluttering, kid-friendly, invisible workload, default parent,

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Family Meetings (and Why You Should Do Them) Mar 19, 2025

Show notes

Does your quality time with your spouse sometimes/always devolve into discussions about finances, kids, or future plans? Here's how focused weekly meetings—both for our partnerships and for our families—can strengthen, deepen, and save the sanity of our relationships.

Amy and Margaret discuss:

How marriage/family check-ins improve the day-to-day health of relationships
Best practices for successful marriage/family check-ins
How they tailor their own marriage/family check-ins to work for them

Here are links to some of the resources mentioned in the episode:

MARRIAGE MEETINGS FOR LASTING LOVE by Marcia Naomi Berger
Brett and Kate McKay for Art of Manliness: How and Why to Hold a Weekly Marriage Meeting
Julia Ries for Self: Scheduling a Weekly ‘House Meeting’ With My Partner Changed My Damn Life
Jo Piazza for Bustle: The HR-ification Of Marriage

We love the sponsors that make this show possible! You can always find all the special deals and codes for all our current sponsors on our website:

https://www.whatfreshhellpodcast.com/p/promo-codes/

What Fresh Hell is co-hosted by Margaret Ables and Amy Wilson.

mom friends, funny moms, parenting advice, parenting experts, parenting tips, mothers, families, parenting skills, parenting strategies, parenting styles, busy moms, self-help for moms, manage kid’s behavior, teenager, tween, child development, family activities, family fun, parent child relationship, decluttering, kid-friendly, invisible workload, default parent, cognitive labor, emotional labor, mental load, second shift, family meeting, marriage meeting, family check-in, marriage check-in, relationship check-in, partners, marriage, spouse, relationships, couples

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

DEEP DIVE: Is There Just Too Much Information? Mar 17, 2025

Show notes

This month's Deep Dive series is about parenting through uncertainty. Listen to all of the episodes in the series with this Spotify playlist.

“Information overload” is defined as the tipping point when the input of information exceeds an individual’s capacity to process it all. When we begin to feel overwhelmed and stressed by the amount of information that is available, we can end up feeling more stressed and overwhelmed than knowledgeable.

For parents, the urge to find certainty through online research—only to end up feeling even less certain—is particularly common. How can we make the constant availability of information, useful and otherwise, work for us rather than against?

Amy and Margaret discuss:

How "information overload" can reduce decision-making abilities
Whether obsessive internet searching is the result, or cause, of low self-confidence in parents
How to know your limits, and then set them

Here are links to some of the resources mentioned in the episode:

Terese Glatz and Melissa A. Lippold. “Is more information always better? Associations among parents’ online information searching, information overload, and self-efficacy.” International Journal of Behavioral Development.
Jessica Runberg for The Washington Post: Is crowdsourced parenting eroding confidence?
Cara Goodwin for Psychology Today: New Study: Information Overload for Parents

We love the sponsors that make this show possible! You can always find all the special deals and codes for all our current sponsors on our website:

https://www.whatfreshhellpodcast.com/p/promo-codes/

What Fresh Hell is co-hosted by Margaret Ables and Amy Wilson.

mom friends, funny moms, parenting advice, parenting experts, parenting tips, mothers, families, parenting skills, parenting strategies, parenting styles, busy moms, self-help for moms, manage kid’s behavior, teenager, tween, child development, family activities, family fun, parent child relationship, decluttering, kid-friendly, invisible workload, default parent, parental stress, kids stress, stress, news, current events, world affairs, emotions, kids emotions, parent emotions, uncertainty

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Fresh Take: Mary Catherine Starr on Truly Sharing the Mental Load in Marriage Mar 14, 2025

Show notes

Women take on the lion's share of housework in heterosexual partnerships, and that gap in labor becomes a chasm once a child is born. Once Mom is the default parent, it becomes very difficult to even out the distribution of housework and parenting more equally.

Mary Catherine Starr, author of the new book MAMA NEEDS A MINUTE, has renegotiated the distribution of labor in her own marriage post-kids and has tips for how other women can do the same.

Mary Catherine Starr is an artist, graphic designer, and author. Her hugely popular Instagram account @momlife_comics explores motherhood, marriage, and the double standards of parenting.

Mary Catherine and Amy discuss:

What inspired Mary Catherine to start Mom Life Comics
Why women usually become the default parent as soon as a baby is born
Why Mary Catherine's cartoons help women explain the mental load to their partners

Here's where you can find Mary Catherine:

https://www.marycatherinestarr.com/
@momlife_comics on IG
marycatherinestarr.substack.com
Buy MAMA NEEDS A MINUTE: https://bookshop.org/a/12099/9781797226866

We love the sponsors that make this show possible! You can always find all the special deals and codes for all our current sponsors on our website:

https://www.whatfreshhellpodcast.com/p/promo-codes/

What Fresh Hell is co-hosted by Margaret Ables and Amy Wilson.

mom friends, funny moms, parenting advice, parenting experts, parenting tips, mothers, families, parenting skills, parenting strategies, parenting styles, busy moms, self-help for moms, manage kid’s behavior, teenager, tween, child development, family activities, family fun, parent child relationship, decluttering, kid-friendly, invisible workload, default parent, cognitive labor, emotional labor, mental load, second shift

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

How to Feel Less Starved for Time Mar 12, 2025

Show notes

As moms, it feels like we're always crunched for time without a moment to ourselves in a given day. And that really takes its toll on our mental health. Here are some tips for getting more "time affluence" in your day—and no, it's not about being more productive! Time affluence is about structuring your to-do list so it feels more manageable and working time for yourself into the fabric of your day-to-day so that you're not going months without any me-time.

Margaret and Amy discuss:

The difference between "time famine" and "time poverty"
Why modern conveniences haven't given us more leisure time
What studies show about the relationship between time affluence and happiness

Here are links to some of the resources mentioned in the episode:

Wikipedia: Time Affluence
Ross Bruch for Brown, Brothers, & Harriman Law Firm blog: The Value of Time: Understanding and Maximizing Time Affluence
Barnaby Lashbrooke for Forbes: This is the Key to Achieving Time Affluence
Jermaine Archer's TEDTalk: "A Matter of Time"

We love the sponsors that make this show possible! You can always find all the special deals and codes for all our current sponsors on our website:

https://www.whatfreshhellpodcast.com/p/promo-codes/

What Fresh Hell is co-hosted by Margaret Ables and Amy Wilson.

mom friends, funny moms, parenting advice, parenting experts, parenting tips, mothers, families, parenting skills, parenting strategies, parenting styles, busy moms, self-help for moms, manage kid’s behavior, teenager, tween, child development, family activities, family fun, parent child relationship, decluttering, kid-friendly, invisible workload, default parent, time management, time hacks, life hacks, time affluence,

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

DEEP DIVE: Dealing With Uncertainty as a Parent Mar 10, 2025

Show notes

This month's Deep Dive series is about parenting through uncertainty. Listen to all of the episodes in the series with this Spotify playlist.

How do we prepare for a future that isn’t clear? How do we prepare our kids for their future when what that might look like is alsounclear?

Uncertainty is an unavoidable part of the parenting journey, but in this episode we’re talking about those really uncertain times: the “this might be nothing, but we’d like to run more tests” times. The “we actually aren’t sure what’s happening here” times. The "this could really go either way" moments in our lives.

In this episode we discuss:

why parenting through uncertainty is so hard
how these times have played out in our own lives
why “just try not to think about it!” is terrible advice
why the things we do to reduce our uncertainty can sometimes backfire

Here are links to some writing on the topic that we discuss in this episode:

Mark Freeston et al: Towards a model of uncertainty distress in the context of Coronavirus (Covid-19)
Nabi Nazari and Mark Griffiths: Using Fear and Anxiety Related to COVID-19 to Predict Cyberchondria: Cross-sectional Survey Study
Victoria Maxwell for Psychology Today: 6 Ways to Increase Uncertainty Tolerance

We love the sponsors that make this show possible! You can always find all the special deals and codes for all our current sponsors on our website:

https://www.whatfreshhellpodcast.com/p/promo-codes/

What Fresh Hell is co-hosted by Margaret Ables and Amy Wilson.

mom friends, funny moms, parenting advice, parenting experts, parenting tips, mothers, families, parenting skills, parenting strategies, parenting styles, busy moms, self-help for moms, manage kid’s behavior, teenager, tween, child development, family activities, family fun, parent child relationship, decluttering, kid-friendly, invisible workload, default parent, parental stress, kids stress, stress, news, current events, world affairs, emotions, kids emotions, parent emotions, uncertainty

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Fresh Take: Nicole Graev Lipson Mar 07, 2025

Show notes

How can women grapple with society's unattainable standards for beauty, femininity, and motherhood? Nicole Graev Lipson, author of the new book MOTHERS AND OTHER FICTIONAL CHARACTERS, discusses how she has started to divorce herself from these ideas and get more comfortable with uncertainty.

Nicole Graev Lipson's essays have appeared in The Best American Essays 2024, The Sun, Virginia Quarterly Review, The Gettysburg Review, River Teeth, Fourth Genre, The Boston Globe, and more.

Nicole, Amy, and Margaret discuss:

The role that mothers are expected to play
How society treats aging women as invisible
How Nicole learned to sit with her own uncertainty about parenting

Here's where you can find Nicole:

nicolegraevlipson.com
@nglipson on IG and @NicoleGLipson on X
Buy MOTHERS AND OTHER FICTIONAL CHARACTERS: https://bookshop.org/a/12099/9781797228563

We love the sponsors that make this show possible! You can always find all the special deals and codes for all our current sponsors on our website:

https://www.whatfreshhellpodcast.com/p/promo-codes/

What Fresh Hell is co-hosted by Margaret Ables and Amy Wilson.

mom friends, funny moms, parenting advice, parenting experts, parenting tips, mothers, families, parenting skills, parenting strategies, parenting styles, busy moms, self-help for moms, manage kid’s behavior, teenager, tween, child development, family activities, family fun, parent child relationship, decluttering, kid-friendly, invisible workload, default parent,

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

BEST OF: So What Do You Do All Day? Mar 05, 2025

Show notes

If you're a stay-at-home parent, how do you answer to the people who frequently– and annoyingly– ask, "So, what do you do all day?"

A listener in our Facebook group posted?

"During Covid, I quit my job and I’ve been home. I drive my kids to school, work out, and manage the house and family. I’m very happy and fulfilled, especially knowing that my eldest will be leaving for college soon, I’m soaking up this time. My problem is trying to explain this to others. I have a good college degree and worked in a decent field before I quit. I guess I feel pressure to work and use my skills. One well-intentioned retired woman at my gym was actually trying to figure out how I can not drive my kids to school so that I could go back to work. I’ve even considered lying and saying I work part time at home to get people off my case."

A pre-pandemic Gallup analysis 60,000 women in the U.S. revealed that more than a quarter of SAHMs report feeling depressed. The researchers suggested that “societal recognition of the difficult job stay-at-home mothers have raising children would perhaps help support them emotionally.” Don't stay up waiting for that to happen. America’s mothers have continued to say that society is not supporting them.

Do we just decide not to let these misperceptions of stay-at-home parenthood bother us? Do we fight back, bring lists, demand the respect that our hard work deserves? Will that get us anywhere?

Here are links to some of the resources mentioned in the episode:

Our episode with Laura Vanderkam on time management for moms
Laura's piece: "The working stay-at-home mom"
Motherly’s 2022 State of Motherhood Survey Report
Consider This on NPR: The Great Resignation: Why People Are Leaving Their Jobs In Growing Numbers
Gallup: Stay-at-Home Moms Report More Depression, Sadness, Anger
Emily Glover for Motherly: It’s harder than ever before for families to get by on a single income

Sign up for the What Fresh Hell newsletter! Once a month you’ll get our favorite recent episodes, plus links to other things to read and watch and listen to, and upcoming special events: http://eepurl.com/h8ze3z

We love the sponsors that make this show possible! You can always find all the special deals and codes for all our current sponsors on our website:

https://www.whatfreshhellpodcast.com/p/promo-codes/

What Fresh Hell is co-hosted by Margaret Ables and Amy Wilson.

mom friends, funny moms, parenting advice, parenting experts, parenting tips, mothers, families, parenting skills, parenting strategies, parenting styles, busy moms, self-help for moms, manage kid’s behavior, teenager, tween, child development, family activities, family fun, parent child relationship, decluttering, kid-friendly, invisible workload, default parent, parental stress, kids stress, stress, news, current events, world affairs, emotions, kids emotions, parent emotions, uncertainty

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

DEEP DIVE: Brave Parenting in a Scary World Mar 03, 2025

Show notes

This month's Deep Dive series is about parenting through uncertainty. Listen to all of the episodes in the series with this Spotify playlist.

Gloria DeGaetano, parenting expert and founder of the Parent Coaching Institute, recently wrote: "There's almost not a word to express the stress parents are under right now. 'Overwhelmed' doesn't cut it. It's beyond anything we've ever experienced."

This really is a strange and scary moment for all of us, and parenting through our own anxiety is proving a special challenge.

In this episode we discuss how to parent bravely–which doesn't mean parenting in denial but does mean creating emotional safety for our families even when we don't have all the answers.

Here are links to some of the writing on the topic that we discuss in this episode:

Kidpower.org: How To Choose Safety in Scary Times
Ariana Eunjung Cha for Washington Post: ‘It’s like a fire alarm every day’
Alison Snyder et al for Axios: Parents Aren't All Right
Fresh Take: Christina Hillsberg on How Being a Spy Prepared Her For Parenting
Helping Kids Feel Secure In a Scary World (With Guest Dr. Abigail Gewirtz)

We love the sponsors that make this show possible! You can always find all the special deals and codes for all our current sponsors on our website:

https://www.whatfreshhellpodcast.com/p/promo-codes/

What Fresh Hell is co-hosted by Margaret Ables and Amy Wilson.

mom friends, funny moms, parenting advice, parenting experts, parenting tips, mothers, families, parenting skills, parenting strategies, parenting styles, busy moms, self-help for moms, manage kid’s behavior, teenager, tween, child development, family activities, family fun, parent child relationship, decluttering, kid-friendly, invisible workload, default parent, parental stress, kids stress, stress, news, current events, world affairs, emotions, kids emotions, parent emotions, uncertainty

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Fresh Take: Melanie Shankle Feb 28, 2025

Show notes

How do we navigate raising children when we were not set a good example by our parents? Melanie Shankle, author of the new book HERE BE DRAGONS, discusses how we can disrupt the harmful parenting patterns that we grew up with and do better by our own children.

Melanie Shankle is the New York Times bestselling author of several books, co-host of the podcast, The Big Boo Cast, and creator of The Big Mama blog.

Melanie, Amy, and Margaret discuss:

What Melanie's relationship with her own mother taught her about parenting
When to know if your kids need your help navigating a situation
Modeling the importance of female friendships for our kids

Here's where you can find Melanie:

@Melanieshankle on IG and @BigMama on X
https://thebigmamablog.com
Listen to Melanie's podcast The Big Boo Cast
Buy HERE BE DRAGONS: https://bookshop.org/a/12099/9780593601204

Listen to our Fresh Take with Judith Warner, author of AND THEN THEY STOPPED TALKING TO ME

We love the sponsors that make this show possible! You can always find all the special deals and codes for all our current sponsors on our website:

https://www.whatfreshhellpodcast.com/p/promo-codes/

What Fresh Hell is co-hosted by Margaret Ables and Amy Wilson.

mom friends, funny moms, parenting advice, parenting experts, parenting tips, mothers, families, parenting skills, parenting strategies, parenting styles, busy moms, self-help for moms, manage kid’s behavior, teenager, tween, child development, family activities, family fun, parent child relationship, decluttering, kid-friendly, invisible workload, default parent, parental stress, kids stress, brain development, kids anxiety, anxiety, worry, stress, generational trauma, harmful parenting pattern

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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