A Motherful World with Alexis Pauline Gumbs

How to Survive the End of the World

You know we love Alexis Pauline Gumbs here at HTS, so we're so excited to present her episode from a show we recently discovered. It's called Mother is a Question.

MIAQ is an invitation into the depths of mothers’ hearts, minds and stories. Join best friends Julia Metzger-Traber and Tasha Haverty as they crack open definitions of motherhood and listen for the unspeakable through playful, intimate conversations with mothers from all walks of life. Mother is a Question is a portal into the kaleidoscopically different and yet universal experiences of what it means to mother.

Not another chat show sharing practical advice from the daily frontlines of mothering, but a space to live in the questions, and enlist the existential and poetic wisdom of those who mother. What would the world be if we took mothers’ questions and their wisdom seriously?

Tasha and Julia, both mothers of babies and small children– sleepless and overwhelmed, renewed and disjointed, transformed and confused – are seeking wisdom from all directions. But rather than expecting any final answers, each question opens up many more. The hosts’ own friendship dynamic–with their sometimes contrasting fascinations and struggles in motherhood–guides each episode, fed by a flow of listeners’ reflections and stories shared on the show’s “heartline,” a voicemail box, exploring that episode’s central question.

On this episode they ask...

What if humans could evolve into our most nurturing and creative selves? What if society were organized around care instead of extraction and destruction? What if we followed the leadership of those who mother? Well, Alexis Pauline Gumbs, self-proclaimed Black Feminist Love Evangelist, thinks we have to. It's urgent. And she calls this possibility Motherful. This episode, Alexis Pauline Gumbs, a poet and one of Julia's philosopher heroes, will be our guide to A Motherful World.