RAGE AGAINST the MOM-CHINE
get off the assembly line and into your wild ecosystem
A six-week group space for mothers who demand better.
JULY/AUGUST 2022
$450 USD
Photos by Katie Sikora
There’s a fury brewing inside you. Don’t be scared.
Here’s the breakdown:
We meet as a group on Fridays, from 12:30-2:00pm CST.
JULY 2022
July 8, July 15, July 22
No group or Rage Room on July 29
AUGUST 2022
August 5, August 12, August 19
The Rage Room, our drop-in office hours, will be held on Mondays from 12-1pm CST, from July 11-August 15
YOUR ANGER ISN’T A WILDFIRE, IT’S A FLARE GUN.
And it’s telling you:
Care is a feminist ethic, not a feminine duty.
The current culture of oppressive care severs mothers from their autonomy, power, and brilliance, by design.
You didn’t consent to being the default parent at the expense of all the rest of you.
Not to hush your discomfort for other people’s pleasure.
Don’t hate the Momming, hate The Mommy Complex.
The Mommy Complex?
The Mommy Complex is the systemic, oppressive web that dominates our (American) cultural norms around parenting. I’ve termed it a “Complex” both because it turns parenting into a machine, churning out narrow, one-size-fits-all specifications for how to be a parent, and because of the way it preys on the fears and insecurities of mothers, and then gaslights them when they show distress.
The Mommy part refers to the problematic and exclusive language norms of parenting. The term Mommy has often been a way to infantalize and gender birthing parents, to manufacture discord between parents marked as female, and perpetuate gender stereotypes in parenting.
Put it all together, and you have The Mommy Complex (sigh. It’s always the mother’s fault, isn’t it? THANKS, SIGMUND FREUD).
Left unchecked, The Mommy Complex results in Mother Fragmenting; the exhaustion, burnout, and disconnection that is specific to parents who have been socialized as mothers.
Mother Fragmenting is the expectation that you can only access one part of your identity at a time, and may have to forsake one part for another.
It’s the pressure of “This is the most important job and I want to be a good parent to my kids,” combined with the sinking feeling of “this isn’t sustainable,” combined with the weasely whispered narrative of “if you were a good mom, you could handle this,” and “if you loved your kids enough, this would be enough.”
And in the space between that expectation and reality usually lies a sense of shame and self-blame. A feeling that you have a personal failing that makes it hard to keep up, that leaves you empty and burned out.
But if you listen carefully, there’s something else humming beneath the surface. Anger.
Because The Mommy Complex lobs fragmentation at you as a way to knock you on your ass and distract you so that you are out of your power, out of alignment, and out of fucks to give. Knowing that when you’re like that, you can’t fight back. And it weaponizes your anger at you as something unbecoming, unmotherly, unjustified, unhinged.
No wonder you’re both simmering with rage and afraid to call it that.
Photos by Katie Sikora
So let’s name it:
You have a story to tell, but feel vulnerable telling it.
You cycle between “Careen & Collapse,” running hot and high-strung and then feeling completely depleted
You strive for secure attachment and gentle parenting with your kids, but ignore your own needs and judge your own emotions.
You feel like you have to leave your mom life at the door when you go to work, and leave your work life at the desk when you go home.
You have a contentious relationship with the phrase “good enough.”
You’re a feminist but feel trapped in traditional gender roles, you’re committed to social justice but feel trapped in burnout.
You rely heavily on outside information about parenting styles, attachment, best practices and sleep training programs, and put a lot of time and money into finding the “answers.”
You don’t trust that your intuition has your best interest in mind. You think it might be trying to sabotage you when it tells you to slow down.
You feel deeply let down and abandoned by the institution of motherhood, even while you love and enjoy your kids.
This is not happening because you did anything wrong, or because you are anything wrong.
It’s happening because The Mommy Complex is just that- a complex of unjust structures designed to make us think we are failing constantly. And failing constantly feels like shit.
We didn’t cause it.
But we can get mad about it.
And then we can disrupt it.
Imagine if you could…
Co-regulate with yourself and learn to tune into your emotional and somatic landscape
See your “overwhelming negative emotions” as signals and assets, rather than liability.
Remember who the fuck you are.
Fiercely protect your values, priorities, and identity.
Make space for transformation.
Put the blame on the Mommy Complex and not on yourself
Tell your story without having to qualify it with “I love my kids, of course,” or a redemption story arc.
Allow grief to be a normalized part of becoming a mother and create a ritual to work with it.
Set boundaries on your time, energy, and labor
Parent in a way that honors your unique strengths and ignores the rest
Choose self-care, hobbies, and restorative activities that have nothing to do with self-improvement.
Start to give attention to that plan, idea, or thought you’ve always had in the back of your head and always talked yourself out of.
Be a presence in the causes that create a more just culture.
Use pleasure, rest, and connection as tools of power and rebellion.
Give yourself a fucking break.
Photos by Katie Sikora
Here’s what I want you to know:
Your life requires rest, connection, pleasure, joy, and play- by necessity, not afterthought.
The anger you feel is life-saving when you direct it at the right places.
Feminist care is high-consent, high-context, and high-connection.
You can move out of the frozen, immobilized state of doing, lists, tasks, emotional labor, and mental load and be your most expansive, multitudinous, complex self.
Just because there isn’t a cultural space to honor becoming a mother, doesn’t mean you can’t create one and protect it with your life.
Join Rage Against the MOM-chine
$450 USD
We start July 8!
Hi I’m Allison Staiger, and I’m a maternal leadership coach.
I help birthing parents, mothers, and caregivers lead their families and build businesses with feminist care and rebellious anger.
I specialize in helping parents who want to change their relationship with caregiving, from paternalistic and performative to personalized and political. This isn’t a parenting class, a self-care workshop, or your typical mom group, and it’s not about you having to dilute yourself to be of better service to people in your life or to the same old broken and reductive systems.
This is a movement to expand the definition of mothering and facilitate spaciousness, wholeness, and fire into the foundation of it.
You can learn more about my feminist values and business practices here.
Photos by Katie Sikora
In Rage Against the MOM-chine, I help you to create your own container for your own unique transition into motherhood (whether that transition happened weeks ago or decades ago), so that you can have space for your stories, your parts, and all the twisty feelings that come with it. So that you can let things settle and see yourself in other people. So that you can give care audaciously and advantageously, without being taken advantage of.
Because care is a feminist ethic, not a feminine duty. And it’s the responsibility of all of us.
Our work together.
JULY
W1: WARM - Co-regulate, normalize and build trust with anger, introduce pleasure power tools
W2: SCORCH - Frame and name The Mommy Complex, contextualize anger
W3: SIZZLE - Bring the new parts of self forward and together through story and values
AUGUST
W1: BURN OFF- Create grieving rituals and continue telling story
W2: ENGULF - Honor and integrate the maternal identity, re-visit pleasure as power.
W3: SIMMER - Bearing witness to each other, naming what needs protecting, committing to feminist care
drop in weekly to the rage room for extended conversation, story-telling, and spotlight coaching.
Join Rage Against the MOM-chine
$450USD
Our fires not only burn things down, they light a new path.
One in which:
Birthing parents can feel safe in their bodies, emotions, and nervous systems.
Parents do not have to be constantly performing parenting.
Compassion is not weaponized.
Parents are equipped with individual, community, and cultural buffers against caregiver erosion.
Parenting is not an individual endeavor or a competitive sport.
We stop having a fight-or-flight relationship to care- either all-consuming or avoided and outsourced.
We become fluent in trauma-informed caregiving, stewarding parents through safety, remembrance and mourning, and reconnection (h/t Judith Herman)
So let’s make it together.
Ready to join Rage Against the MOM-chine?
Doors close on July 6, and we start on July 8!
$450USD