Episode Summary

In this episode, Maria and Esohe trace their friendship back to a chance elevator meeting as new moms in Jersey City, and open up about the very different paths their motherhood experiences took from there. Maria shares her story of undiagnosed, late-onset postpartum depression that went unspoken for years, even to her closest friend, while navigating early motherhood without family nearby. The conversation moves through the idea of matrescence, the overlap of postpartum struggles with perimenopause, and why community functions as therapy — not just a nice-to-have. It closes with the real origin story of Mama's Got Mojo: an idea sparked by Maria's husband in 2015, a 2018 UN conference that lit a fire under both hosts, a pivot to in-person events when the podcast wasn't yet possible, and finally, 8 years late ...