Liberating Motherhood

Today we are going to be learning from the legendary reproductive justice activist Loretta Ross. Loretta is my feminist hero and role model, and I feel so lucky that she was willing to share some time with me. 
How is it that a human rights movement rooted in the shared value and worth of every human being so often devolves into a toxic stew of abuse and hurt feelings? Anyone who participates in leftist political movements has seen small disagreements spiral into mutual attacks, psychological brutality, and worst of all, fractured and less powerful movements. 
Lasting change requires us to build solidarity across difference. At the very least, we must be able to resolve small disagreements. Ideally, though, we have to bring more people into the fold—including people we really don’t like, including people with whom we have very significant moral disagreements. 
I’ve often noted that the anti-choice movement succeeded by standing in lockstep with one another, no matter how much they hated each other. They built a movement for 50 years, and they succeeded. We can learn a lot from them. But leftist coalitions are diverse and highly principled. These are good things, but they can make it challenging to work together. 
So I’ve been thinking a lot about how we can do this. And then I found Loretta Ross’s book, Calling In. It has helped me to consider my own role in toxic call-out culture, and to seize opportunities to build consensus and coalitions rather than elevating myself and my ego. This, I think, is the only way we move forward. 
There’s lots of advice about how to be a better activist, what this moment means, and how to deal with people who disagree with us. I think the most useful advice comes from people who have actually succeeded at sustaining a lifetime of activism. Loretta has changed hearts and minds over and over, working with people many of us would never even want to talk to. She has done the work that progress demands, and now she’s here to teach us how to do it, too. 
You’ll recognize some of what we discuss from my earlier episode about sustaining hope as an activist. I cannot over-emphasize how much Loretta’s work has shifted my consciousness and influenced my own work, and I hope you find her wisdom as valuable as I do. 
Some of the topics we cover in this conversation include: 

Toxic call-out culture, and how it is destroying individual well-being as well as activist movements. 

How childhood wounds create toxic shame that we then foist onto our activist colleagues. 

How we build resilience and capacity to work across difference. 

Calling out vs. calling in, and how we know when to do each. 

Loretta’s experiences working with rapists and deprogramming white supremacist. 

How our egos can undermine our activism, and how we resist that temptation. 

The components of an effective call-in, and how to know when a call-in is likely to work. 

“When you ask people to give up hate, you must be prepared to be there for them when they do.” 

The concept of the victimized violator—the person who feels entitled to violate others because of their own victimization. 

How to respond to a call-out or call-in. 

Can we use calling in with ICE officers? 

How we can acknowledge the humanity of those doing harm without losing sight of their victims. 

How we sustain hope and avoid despair. 

About Loretta Ross 

Loretta J. Ross is a Professor at Smith College in Northampton, MA in the Program for the Study of Women and Gender. She teaches courses on white supremacy, human rights, and calling in the calling out culture. She has taught at Hampshire College and Arizona State University. She is a graduate of Agnes Scott College and holds an honorary Doctorate of Civil Law degree awarded in 2003 from Arcadia University and a second honorary doctorate degree awarded from Smith College in 2013. She also has credits towards a Ph.D. in Women’s Studies from Emory University. She serves as a consultant for Smith College, collecting oral histories of feminists of color for the Sophia Smith Collection, which also contains her personal archives. Loretta also is a recipient of a MacArthur Fellow, Class of 2022, for her work as an advocate of Reproductive Justice and Human Rights, and an inductee into the 2024 National Women’s Hall of Fame.
Loretta’s activism began when she was tear-gassed at a demonstration as a first-year student at Howard University in 1970. As a teenager, she was involved in anti-apartheid and anti-gentrification activism in Washington, DC as a founding member of the DC Study Group. As part of a 50-year history in social justice activism until her retirement from community organizing in 2012, she was the National Coordinator of the SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective from 2005-2012 and co-created the theory of Reproductive Justice in 1994.
Loretta was National Co-Director of April 25, 2004, March for Women’s Lives in Washington D.C., the largest protest march in U.S. history at that time with 1.15 million participants. She founded the National Center for Human Rights Education (NCHRE) in Atlanta, Georgia from 1996-2004. She launched the Women of Color Program for the National Organization for Women (NOW) in the 1980s and was the national program director of the National Black Women’s Health Project. Loretta was one of the first African American women to direct a rape crisis center in the 1970s, launching her career by pioneering work on violence against women, as the third Executive Director of the D.C. Rape Crisis Center. She is a member of the Women’s Media Center’s Progressive Women’s Voices. Watch Makers: Women Who Make America video.
Loretta has co-written three books on reproductive justice: Undivided Rights: Women of Color Organize for Reproductive Justice in 2004; Reproductive Justice: An Introduction in March 2017; and Radical Reproductive Justice: Foundations, Theory, Practice, Critique in October 2017. Her newest book, Calling In: How to Start Making Change with Those You’d Rather Cancel is available now!
Loretta is a rape survivor, forced to raise a child born of incest, and also a survivor of sterilization abuse at age 23. She is a model of how to survive and thrive despite the traumas that disproportionately affect low-income women of color.
Loretta is a mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother.
You can find all of Loretta’s books, as well as all books recommended on the podcast, at the Liberating Motherhood Bookshop page.

This is the first podcast episode I’ve done by myself, because I wanted to speak directly to all of you. If you like it, I may do more. 
On a recent AMA, someone asked me how I sustain hope when I’m surrounded by horror and despair. Here’s what I told her: 

I know that the only thing that makes things actually hopeless is giving up hope. If my foremothers could fight through coverture, through legal rape, through legal violence, if other women could continue to fight through slavery, through a Holocaust, through witch burnings, through endless war, then surely I can honor them by continuing to fight. I will not allow despair to cause me to drop my link in the chain that extends to my ancestors and toward freedom.

I decided to record this podcast episode because so many of you have contacted me wondering how we can possibly keep going with things as terrifying as they are. 
I’ve been an activist for a long time, and I’ve been lucky enough to learn from many elders (several of whom will be on this podcast in the next few weeks). I hope that I can offer you some strategies for thriving. I also know there’s value in hearing another human voice—hopefully someone you trust—reassuring you. 
So I decided to record this, off the cuff, by myself. I could have edited. I could have gone back and added more, and I probably should have taken a decent photo rather than a frazzled selfie. I think, though, there’s sometimes value in showing up as we are, and in hearing someone else free-associate. I wanted to deliver this message as quickly as possible, rather than as perfectly as possible, so I hope it still has value. 
In this episode, I talk about how I sustain hope, why I think you need to sustain hope, and how to build effective activist networks. 
If you’re out there doing the work, I love you for that. Let’s join hands together and get as much done as we can. I hope you like this episode. I hope it helps you.

“Black men have been held accountable for things they didn’t do for so long, that we have forgotten how to hold them accountable for the things they do.” — Kiki Bryant

Men are stealing women’s lives by stealing their time. So why is it that we have widespread notions of women as spoiled, entitled gold diggers? The words we use matter. They focus our attention and make it easier (or harder) to speak about a topic. 
This is a sweeping conversation that covers a lot of ground. Some of what we talk about: 

How social media is using bans without any due process to suppress the voices of minority creators. Kiki lost her Facebook account, and we talk extensively about how many other writers this has happened to, drawing on research Kiki conducted. Social media has the power not just to silence people, but to remove everything they’ve ever previously said. 

The importance of memory in constructing philosophical beliefs, and how social media bans undermine collective memory. 

Kiki’s framework of labor diggers. 

The economic impact of being the default parent. 

Labor digging begins in childhood, and how gendered childhood norms set people up for miserable heterosexual relationships. 

The effects of mass incarceration on Black relationships specifically, and how this ongoing trauma contributes both to lower Black marriage rates and to misogynoir. 

The commonalities between Black manhood and white womanhood.

The unique challenges facing Black women leaving abusive Black men. 

The pick-me feminist: the feminist who wants to talk about how she’s not like all the other feminists. 

Competitive parenting, breastfeeding while Black, and the use of parenting culture to reinforce hierarchy. 

About Kiki Bryant
Kiki Bryant, known online as the Uppity Negress, is a mother, writer, and sociopolitical critic located in Chicago, IL.
Follow her on Facebook here. 

Check out her amazing Substack here. 

Follow her on threads here. 

Buy her books on her website, which also has other merch and a ton of great information.

If you like this episode or this podcast, please consider heart-reacting, sharing, commenting, or leaving a positive online review. It helps the podcast continue to attract great guests!

Motherhood is a cultural, political experience. But in many places, especially the United States, we pretend culture doesn’t exist, and that everything about motherhood is both inevitable and an individual problem. 
Abigail Leonard is an American journalist who, inspired by her own experiences living abroad in Tokyo, set out to explore how different cultures support (or don’t support) mothers, and how this influences outcomes for everyone. 
Abigail’s book highlights how cultural norms determine the bounds within which we mother. And while the social networks and community support women can access vary greatly from nation to nation, the profound impacts of patriarchy persist across cultures, making motherhood much harder than it needs to be. 
In this podcast, we talk about: 

Similarities and differences between motherhood experiences in Japan, Kenya, Finland, and the United States. 

The social structures that can make motherhood easier or more difficult. 

How men’s refusal to participate equitably in parenting negatively affects women across cultures—and how social safety nets can either intensify or offset these negative effects. 

The political role of motherhood, and how a culture of mother blame can destroy an entire society. 

The rampant violence of life in the United States. 

The long-term effects of parental leave on parent-child relationships. 

You can find Abigail’s book, a reading list, and all books I recommend on the podcast, at the Liberating Motherhood Bookshop. 
About Abigail Leonard
Abigail Leonard is an award-winning international reporter and the author of Four Mothers: An Intimate Journey through the First Year of Parenthood in Four Countries. It follows women in Japan, Kenya, Finland and the US during their first year as mothers, and was named an Amazon “Best nonfiction book of the year so far”, and a Sunday Times “Book of the week”. Abigail was previously based in Tokyo, where she was a frequent contributor to NPR and New York Times video... and where she had her own three children.
Visit her website here, or find her on Instagram @AbigailLeonardAuthor.

“Everyone is impacted by racism.” — Sabia Wade 

We’re back! It’s now Season 3 of the Liberating Motherhood podcast. As promised, this season you’ll be getting an episode every single week. Please consider helping this podcast continue to grow by: heart-reacting on Substack, liking on your favorite platform, leaving a comment on social media, leaving a positive review on your favorite podcast platform, and sharing the podcast with friends. Your support can help the podcast continue to grow and bring on great guests. 
The American birthing system is in crisis, with women dying at higher rates now than they did a generation ago. Birth if often traumatic, leaving lasting physical and emotional injuries. 
While everyone who gives birth is touched by this system, thing are especially bad for Black women, who die at roughly four times the rate of white women. No amount of education or money can reduce this risk; racism and misogyny are the factors that matter.
Sabia Wade argues that the birth crisis is inseparable from the larger crises our culture faces, and that collective liberation means birth liberation, too. I was so excited to get to talk to her. Here are a few of the topics we discuss: 

The Prison Birth Project, prison birth, and the crises facing incarcerated women. 

How racism erodes everyone’s humanity, including by divorcing white people from their own humanness. 

The competing demands of accountability and inclusion, and how we build bigger, more powerful movements for liberation. 

What activism means, and how we cultivate meaningful activism. 

Racism in maternity care, the fact that the problem is getting worse, and what we need to do to stop this crisis. 

The racist social norms that have steadily pushed Black midwives out of obstetric care. 

The racist roots of modern obstetrics and gynecology. 

Care is more important than profit—and why a for-profit system will never provide comprehensive care. 

How racism limited Black people’s access to medical care, and how Black communities have responded with building their own systems of care. But now, for-profit medicine is seeking to commodify Black bodies and disrupt these community systems of care. 

Harm is inevitable, which is why we all must work to be more accountable. 

The defensiveness many obstetricians feel when confronted with the racist, misogynist reality of our birthing system. 

You can find all of the books I reference on the podcast, as well as many lists of recommended books, at the Liberating Motherhood Bookshop. 
About Sabia Wade
Sabia Wade (she/they) is a Black, queer, multi-disciplinary reproductive justice advocate, entrepreneur, and thought leader. As the creator and CEO of Birthing Advocacy Doula Trainings and founder of For The Village, Inc., Sabia has built accessible pathways for community care workers and birth justice advocates across the country.
With roots as a volunteer doula at the Prison Birth Project, Sabia’s work now spans curriculum design, organizational strategy, full-spectrum doula care, and executive coaching. They are also the author of Birthing Liberation: How Reproductive Justice Can Set Us Free, a groundbreaking exploration of bias, healing, and collective freedom in reproductive care.
Beyond advocacy and education, Sabia leads Tend & Mend Healing Studio in Wilmington, NC, offering herbalism, spiritual care, mediumship, Reiki, death doula support, and human design sessions—bringing a holistic, liberatory approach to healing and leadership.
Find Sabia at sabiawade.com. You can also follow her on Instagram or LinkedIn, buy her book here, visit Tend and Mend Healing Studio, learn more about Birthing Advocacy Doula Trainings, or support her nonprofit, which trains the next generation of liberation-focused doulas. 
https://www.sabiawade.com/
Sabia also was generous enough to offer a discount code for Liberating Motherhood listeners: 
Use coupon 15off at Tend & Mend Studio: shop

And for BADT programming: https://birthingadvocacy.thinkific.com/