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The Mom Room

Mary Catherine Starr on Art, Activism, and The Mental Load of Motherhood

The Mom Room

Renee Reina & Podcast Nation

Society & Culture, Kids & Family, Parenting

4.8 • 602 Ratings

🗓️ 17 June 2025

⏱️ 59 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Ep511. Renee sits down with illustrator and writer Mary Catherine Starr, the creative force behind @momlife_comics, to talk about how the chaos of early motherhood—and a global pandemic—sparked a viral career that resonated with millions. From her first comic to landing a book deal, Mary Catherine shares how she uses humor, art, and personal storytelling to make sense of the emotional labor, invisible work, and double standards baked into motherhood. They also dig into the behind-the-scenes reality of being a creative mom online: the pressure to do it all, the fear of burnout, and dealing with the backlash that sometimes comes from posting content. This episode is for anyone who’s ever felt like the default parent, wondered how it all fell on their shoulders, or found comfort in seeing their experience reflected back with honesty and heart. Find Mary Catherine’s comics at: https://www.instagram.com/momlife_comics/ RENEE REINA   Instagram: @themomroom | @thereneereina   TikTok: @thereneereina   Facebook Community - The Mom Room Community  YouTube: Renee Reina - The Mom Room Podcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

This podcast is brought to you by Podcast Nation.

0:04.8

This episode is brought to you by Name Bubbles. It is back to school season and you know what that means.

0:11.1

Lots of items are heading to school and they're not always necessarily coming back. They're either headed to the lost and found, they're left on the school bus, their friends take them home thinking they're theirs.

0:21.4

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0:39.1

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0:44.2

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0:49.6

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0:55.9

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1:00.5

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1:09.1

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1:13.6

trusted by parents nationwide.

1:21.4

It's like that. Uh-huh. It's like that. Mary Catherine Star, welcome to the mom room,

1:27.2

and I just discovered that you started following me in quarantine, which I was not expecting you to say that. So look at us. Oh, gosh. I think it was that little doll house where you had the doll house. You were doing the default parent thing. And it like, the Legos. That's what it was. And I was like, I was totally, I was talking all about the default parent stuff then, too. And when I saw that, I was like, she gets it. She's illustrating it in such an amazing way. Like, I was just like, yes, yes, yes. So that was, I think that's what did it for me. That Lego house, first of all, it took like three months to build. It was huge. But then my son was so young that he destroyed it.

2:02.0

And then we couldn't build it because it was mixed in with all the other Legos and like nothing made sense.

2:08.0

Because I was like, I need to do a whole series of just like showing the characters in the house.

2:14.4

Oh my God.

2:14.9

It was so perfect.

2:16.1

I'm a little bit inspired to like buy the home alone

2:19.2

house again and build it. But I mean, no matter what you probably got your money's worth,

2:24.0

like from how it made its rounds on the internet and like what it did, I think for just like

...

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