Postpartum Rage, Healing & Creating a Community | Sami Garrett

Manouchka: Hey Boss Mama, welcome back to the show. This is the space where we explore building a business you love, raising your family, and creating a life that works for you. I’m your host, Manouchka Elefant, marketing coach and fellow mompreneur.

Today’s episode is a mix of real talk and radical self-compassion with the lovely Sami Garrett, founder of Good Enough Matrescence, an online resource library helping moms feel more supported, less triggered, and better equipped for the messy, beautiful journey of motherhood. Sami is a mom of two, a multi-passionate entrepreneur, and a firm believer that motherhood does not mean losing yourself. It means rewriting the rules.

We’ve all been there. Once you become a mom, there comes a point when all the good intentions you had get pushed aside because you are too tired, overwhelmed, and stretched thin. You just need space to breathe, time for yourself, and a way to reconnect with who you are.

Sami has gone through that, and she knows that experience all too well. In today’s conversation, we go deep into what postpartum rage taught her about unmet needs and self-regulation, how to start healing and building emotional resilience even in the chaos, and her journey from burnout to building a business that feels light, aligned, and human.

We also talk about why her favorite mantra is “nothing matters” in the most freeing way possible.

So if you’re a mom, no matter what your journey has been like, this episode is for you. We all go through stages of feeling overwhelmed or unsure how to keep going while still showing up for our kids and for our business. Consider this your permission slip to pivot, to rest, and to redefine success on your own terms.

Let’s dive in.

Manouchka: Hi Sami. Thank you for joining me on the Hey Boss Mama podcast. I’m so excited to have you here. I’d love for you to start by introducing yourself and what you do so we can better understand how you’re a Boss Mama and how you make it all work.

Sami: Thank you so much. I’m so excited to be here. I love chatting about motherhood, so this is perfect.

I’m Sami, and I’m the founder of Good Enough Matrescence, which is essentially a resource library for moms. We focus on resources that help you become less triggerable and more resourced in general. If we have more education and more support to help us make informed decisions, then we can come from a much calmer, better place and show up more as our best selves.

It’s a huge resource library. It includes everything from nervous system regulation to pregnancy, the fourth trimester, beyond the fourth trimester, parenting, and even support for specific needs children might have. It’s pretty much one big resource library.

Manouchka: It sounds like there’s a bit of everything in there.

Sami: Absolutely, and that’s what I wanted it to be.

I don’t know about where you are, but here, we have to advocate for everything. There’s nothing that says, “You’re pregnant, here’s the best nutrition, here’s how to move, here’s how to prepare for the challenges of motherhood, here’s how recovery works, and here’s what happens if you have gestational diabetes.” That’s just pregnancy.

Then you have the baby and suddenly you’re asking things like, “Why am I peeing when I laugh?” And you’re told, “Oh, do some Kegels.” But it’s so much more complicated than that.

Then in postpartum, especially in the fourth trimester, if you’re dealing with anxiety, depression, rage, loss of identity, or just trying to figure out motherhood, there’s really nowhere to go. You can Google it, but then you get five hundred million different answers, and that only makes you more overwhelmed, which is not helpful when you have a little baby.

Doctors often just say, “You need support,” and you’re like, okay, but what does that actually mean?

I wanted there to be a place with evidence-based resources so that no matter what is happening, moms can help each other too. If I’m dealing with something like postpartum rage, I want to be able to say, “Can anyone relate? Has anyone been through this? What helped? What didn’t help? Is there a professional you recommend?” That way, you’re not wasting time trying to figure it out while also trying to be a mom.

And on top of that, if you’re a business owner too, you definitely do not have the time to sort through all of it.

This idea came to me at the end of last year, when I was coming out of survival mode with my second child. I had a pretty decent spell of postpartum rage, and that was when I realized I needed resources, help, and more support.

In the healing process, I thought, I’ve done all this research. I want one place to put all of it, and I want to build on it so it can help more people too.

Manouchka: That’s wonderful. There’s so much information out there, but at the same time, very little. We’re in such a strange moment because there’s so much online, but we have to be extremely selective with what we take in. Otherwise, you end up with information about every possible disease for pregnant women and children and all of that.

Personally, I remember being really selective when I was pregnant. I looked for things that were more about natural birth and gentle parenting, but also things that resonated with my values.

And I find there’s a big parallel here between motherhood and entrepreneurship. Like you said, both can be extremely isolating. We need people we can talk to, but even if we have family around us or a partner, they don’t necessarily understand what we’re going through because they’re not living it.

Sami: Exactly.

Manouchka: Even our parents may not understand. I remember my mom didn’t understand why I would cry sometimes. She would say, “What is wrong with you? You should be so happy. You’re pregnant. You’re having the baby of your dreams.” And I’d say, “Yes, but I’m just really sad right now.”

Even women who did it forty years ago may not remember what it felt like, or they had a very different experience. A lot of what happened in that first year with my son, I barely remember now because I was so tired.

I also want to bounce off what you mentioned about postpartum rage, because I’m familiar with postpartum depression, but not postpartum rage. Can you explain that a little?

Sami: It’s pretty much exactly what it sounds like. It’s rage. An overwhelming sensation in your body where you want to scream or throw things. A lot of it stems from lack of control and lack of support. Most of it stems from lack of support.

I think that’s why I experienced it the second time around. With my first, babies nap, and I didn’t have another toddler to take care of. When she napped, I could read a book, sit and meditate, or do something for myself. With one child, I found it much easier. We’d go outside all the time, hiking, cross-country skiing, doing all these things.

I did experience the identity shift that every mother goes through, but I never understood how someone could want to yell at their baby or feel pushed to that edge. I didn’t relate to that with my first.

Then I had two, and I lost that time. There was no time for myself. Their naps were on opposite schedules. There was always a child to look after. I barely showered. I completely lost all of my alone time, and I’m someone who really needs it. I need quiet. I need a lot of time to myself.

With two, it was really challenging. There was just no time, and they never napped at the same time. I started to build up all this overwhelm.

We live in a very small town. We do have friends, but they also have kids, jobs, and lives. They can’t just drop everything and come watch the kids while I shower or do the dishes. So while some moms experience anxiety or depression, for me it came out as rage.

The biggest triggers were when my toddler was having feelings. We had rocked her whole world. We went from a family of three, where everything was about her, to suddenly having a baby who needed everything. We did our best to still give her attention, but the baby needed more, and there was so much change in those first nine months. Crawling, walking, all of it.

Each one of those changes was hard for my toddler, and I was also struggling because, though I didn’t realize it at the time, I had completely lost my own space. So I kept getting overwhelmed. When my toddler would react and hit the baby, I would just lose it.

My toddler would come over and smack her sister, and I would feel this intense anger. I wasn’t a yeller exactly, but I would swear under my breath and throw things around me. Nothing extreme like breaking windows, but definitely throwing things out of frustration because I had nowhere for that frustration to go.

Then it started to shift. My toddler would come over and hit her sister, and in my overwhelmed brain I wasn’t thinking clearly. I was in that emotional, survival state of “baby’s not safe.”

There was one time she smacked her sister while she was in the bassinet, and I blocked her a little too hard and she fell backward and hit the fridge. I stopped and thought, oh my God, this is becoming a real problem. I felt like the worst human in the world.

There had been a few moments like that, where I would pull her off too hard or grab her more roughly than I wanted to. I had done all this research. I had prepared to be this gentle, intentional, conscious parent. I had read the books and understood the practices. I felt really confident in all of that, until I got to this overwhelmed state.

And on top of that, I came from a very rocky background, so I had this deep fear of becoming what my own parents were.

Manouchka: What you’re saying is really powerful. I can only imagine what you were going through because this is not the kind of mom you want to be. You have this idea of how you want to show up for your kids, and then the reality is that in that moment, you can’t give that version of yourself.

So how did you get through it?

Sami: I realized I did not want to be that mom anymore. I thought, I’m not doing this.

So I started asking myself, why is this happening? What is the root cause? And it came down to the fact that I had lost all of my alone time. I had no time for myself, not even five minutes, because we co-sleep too, so it wasn’t even like bedtime gave me any space.

I talked to my husband and said, this is how I’m feeling. He could clearly see it too and immediately agreed that we had to do something.

So we made a plan. When he got off work, I would leave for at least half an hour, sometimes an hour or more depending on the day. But I was guaranteed at least half an hour every day to go and do something on my own.

That helped a lot.

Then, in that space, I was able to start doing more inner child healing, reparenting work on myself, and active meditation. I started visualizing how I wanted to react differently, because the same challenges were still going to be there during the day. The toddler would still have big feelings. She would still hit her sister. That was really the main issue.

The crying never really bothered me. It was trying to manage everyone’s emotions at once.

So I did a lot of reframing. I asked myself, how am I going to step into this new version of myself who reacts differently? I visualized that over and over.

It was a journey. Probably four to six months before I felt completely out of it. Now, the girls still hit each other. They’re close to two and four, so of course emotions are still there. They are still humans. But now I am able to come from a place of clarity. It still annoys me, but I’m not angry in that same way. I’m not swearing and throwing things anymore.

It took four to six months, but a big part of that was the reframing, changing my reactions, and doing that inner healing work.

Manouchka: That’s huge. It really comes back to the importance of self-care, because having that time to pause, breathe, and recenter yourself is priceless. If we don’t have that, especially with lack of sleep, which was a big one for me, we just can’t keep giving from an empty place.

Sami: Absolutely.

Manouchka: And it’s the quickest way to get to burnout too.

Sami: Absolutely. And what was so challenging at first with the rage was that it didn’t feel like something I could see building. With overwhelm, it builds. With depression, you can often feel it getting heavier. But the rage felt instant.

Sister hits sister, mom explodes.

There wasn’t that pause. There wasn’t a breath. So I had to learn how to stop and take that breath before reacting. That was the challenging part.

And then there are things that are just out of your control. That was another big realization. Before kids, you can control so much more of your life. Then you have kids, and suddenly you realize you can’t control them. They have feelings, and now it’s not just your life anymore. It’s family dynamics.

Manouchka: Don’t say it like that.

Sami: It’s not completely over, but you know what I mean.

Manouchka: They’re just small humans. But at the same time, you went through all of that, and then about a year ago you started your business. So right after that, you started Good Enough Matrescence?

Sami: Yes. Once my daughter turned one last November, that was really when it happened.

By the time she was eight or nine months old, I could see the light at the end of the tunnel. I was coming out of survival mode, out of the rage, and starting to feel like myself again.

Once I came out of it, I had done all this research, all this nervous system regulation work, all this healing, and I thought, I need to put this somewhere and share it.

I already had friends reaching out asking me about cloth diapers, clean products, shampoo, how we did things, how we washed diapers and troubleshot all of it. I was spending two hours writing emails about our exact process, and I thought, I need one place for all of this.

Then I realized if I’m struggling, I know I’m not the only one struggling. I thought it would be really cool to have a community where moms could get together and say the raw things we’re often afraid to say in public. Things like, “I’m so angry right now,” or “My baby won’t stop crying and I just want to throw them. I’m not going to throw them, but I want to.”

Having those thoughts does not make you a bad mom. I wanted a place where we could be honest, connect, and talk about all of it. Sleep. Rage. Overwhelm. Whatever it is.

Then alongside the community, I wanted a full resource section too, where we could bring in experts to talk about pelvic floor health, menstrual health, neurodiversity, therapy, gentle parenting, highly emotional children, all of it.

That way there is one place with trusted, more evidence-based resources, and moms can decide what feels right for them. What works for you may be different from what works for me, but maybe there’s overlap. Maybe we’ll learn something. I think we just don’t have those resources.

There’s so much pressure to go, go, go. And if you’re working, then you need to be a good working parent. And if you’re a good working parent, someone says you’re a bad mom. And if you’re just a mom and not working, then somehow you’re not enough in another way.

I wanted a loving, nonjudgmental community.

Manouchka: That’s so similar to why I started Hey Boss Mama. I realized I wasn’t the only one in this situation.

And something I found really interesting when I was asking around during pregnancy is that people tended to fall into two categories. The ones who were super happy to share information, and I’m one of those people. I’m like, here are all the steps, here was my birth plan, here’s exactly what I did.

Then there were the people who would say, “It’s really up to you,” because they were scared of giving advice. They wanted you to find your own path.

But when I started Hey Boss Mama, I knew I needed community. I felt isolated. I knew I was going to discover all kinds of new things, and I wanted those conversations. I wanted to share them with others too. That’s how it came about.

I was checking out your Instagram and I saw something I really liked. Tell me again about your mantra.

Sami: Pretty much, “nothing matters,” but in the most freeing way possible.

Manouchka: I feel like that is exactly what I need in this stage of motherhood and business. If I cared deeply about everything the way I used to, I wouldn’t accomplish anything. Who cares? It doesn’t matter.

Sami: Exactly. It really doesn’t matter.

If you can go to bed feeling like you did the best you could with the resources you had, and you feel good about that, then that’s enough. At the end of the day, the sun is coming up tomorrow. The sun does not care if you paid your bills, didn’t pay your bills, were a good mom, or a bad mom.

So it becomes, what really matters to you? But also, in a strange way, nothing matters. So do what feels good for you.

Manouchka: These days I’m really in the mindset of just get it done. It doesn’t need to be perfect.

Sami: Exactly. It doesn’t.

Manouchka: That alone has taken such a weight off my shoulders.

Sami: Yes. Just do it. It does not need to be perfect. And honestly, we’re probably the only ones who care that much.

Manouchka: Exactly. Tell me more about the technical side of setting up your business. How did you find the time when time is such an expensive commodity?

Sami: It really is the most expensive commodity.

I’m kind of weird in the sense that I like a slow-paced life. I don’t like to be super busy. But when I find something I’m really passionate about, I can stay up forever and get it done.

In this case, I became really passionate about getting these resources out to moms. So when my husband got off work, that became my time. I poured that energy into building the website.

I wanted to keep it as simple as possible because there can be so many moving parts in business. I used the same mindset again. Nothing really matters. I just need to get it out there. I can make it better later, but I need to get it live.

So I kept it really simple on Squarespace. That allowed me to do everything from email to website to membership all in one place. I didn’t want all these different systems if I could avoid it.

Then I sat down and thought about how I wanted to run it in a way that actually excited me. I knew I was not going to commit to weekly calls or promise new content every single week, because there would absolutely be weeks when I would not get to it. But I could commit to new content every month.

So I laid it out in a way that felt doable and exciting for me, and also clear for the members. Everything is on Squarespace. It connects to Stripe for payments. I also use Zoom for guest expert sessions, and Slack is where the community lives, since Squarespace doesn’t really allow that kind of interaction.

Those are basically the moving parts. I tried to keep it very, very simple.

Manouchka: That really is the keyword here. Flexibility and simplicity. Not making it overly complicated or beautiful, because what matters is the content and the fact that you are getting the needle moving.

Sami: Exactly. None of the members care whether there is a pretty picture attached to the information they’re looking for. They just want the information. They want to make an informed decision.

Manouchka: And you can always make it prettier later.

Last question. At some point in the future, what do you hope your daughters would say about you?

Sami: That’s such a hard question.

I think I would want them to say that I wasn’t perfect, but I always repaired. That I had a strong relationship with them, and that they always knew they could come to me for anything. That I wouldn’t judge them. That I kept trying. That I pivoted when I needed to pivot. That I rested when I needed to rest. That I did what was good for me, and by doing that, I showed them that they are allowed to live for themselves too.

I think that would be a big one.

Manouchka: That’s beautiful. Thank you. That was such a beautiful answer.

Sami: Thank you.

Manouchka: So now tell us where everyone can learn more about Good Enough Matrescence and connect with you.

Sami: Instagram is the best place. It’s @goodenoughmatrescence, and the website is goodenoughmatrescence.com.

Manouchka: I’ll put all the links in the show notes so people can find you easily.

Sami: Thank you. Matrescence is kind of a weird word, so that helps.

Manouchka: Thank you so much for joining me. I had a really good time with you.

Sami: Me too. Thank you so much. It was so nice chatting with you.

Manouchka: Wow. I just want to take a moment to thank Sami for her honesty, her humor, and that much-needed reminder that we do not have to be perfect to be powerful, and to be incredible moms.

Whether you’re navigating toddler meltdowns, pivoting your business, or just trying to remember the last time you had five minutes alone, I hope this episode helped you feel seen.

I find it so incredible how both motherhood and entrepreneurship can be such lonely experiences, and experiences where we need support. It’s not easy to do this by ourselves.

That is also why I created Hey Boss Mama. I wanted to help myself and other moms have more clarity, more calm, and more joy in our business journeys. That’s also why I offer one-on-one coaching. You can check it out at heybossmama.com/coaching. I would love to support you in building a business that fits your life and not the other way around.

And of course, go follow Sami and check out the incredible resource library she has created at Good Enough Matrescence.

Until next time, Boss Mama, you’ve got this.