The Story of a Mother Who Destroys the Perfect Mom Mythology

Welcome to 500 Greatest Songs, a podcast based on Rolling Stone's hugely popular, influential, and sometimes controversial list. I'm Brittany Spanos.

And I'm Rob Sheffield. We're here to shed light on the greatest songs ever made and discover what makes them so great. From classics like Fleetwood Mac's Dreams to the Ronettes' Be My Baby, and modern day classics like The Killer's Mr. Brightside.

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Find your perfect Philips Roku TV today online or at your local Walmart and Sam's Club. And we return to our American stories. Tiffany Jenkins is a wife and a mother of three. She's acquired a huge social media following on her blog Juggling the Jenkins where her videos receive millions of views. Tiffany wrote a highly successful memoir, High Achiever, the shocking true story of one addict's double life. Here's Tiffany Jenkins with the rest of her story and what it means to be a good mom. You know what I want to talk about today? I want to talk about what it means to be a good mom okay because listen if you look on social media and YouTube okay let's take YouTube for example they have tons of videos of families announcing pregnancies to their loved ones right and it's always so joyous everybody's so excited and screaming and yelling and they're like oh my god finally thank you look at these little booties i'm gonna have a grandkid okay that was not how my pregnancy announcement went i had been living in a halfway house for two months and i started dating this guy and i got an overnight pass okay one weekend i got one overnight pass i'm not going to go into detail about what happened on the overnight pass but let's just say that two weeks later my body started acting a little weird i didn't have a job or a car at the time so i scraped together some quarters and walked my butt down to the dollar tree and bought a pregnancy test i took a pregnancy test in the bathroom of the halfway house i was living at with six other women and when the second line popped up i collapsed on the floor and lost my mind it was not joyous i was not excited i was terrified i had just started gaining i had just started gaining trust back with my family what was i going to tell them how was i going to tell the owner of the halfway house that i abused the one overnight pass they finally gave me what was i going to do i couldn't even take care of myself how was i going to take care of a child i was terrified i prayed out and i said listen technically physically i know why this happened but like spiritually and mentally i don't know why this happened please help me what am i supposed to do i can't have this baby and it was in that moment that i realized suddenly i wanted this baby more than i had ever wanted anything in my entire life i told my sister basically like okay you're an idiot i told the owner of the halfway house and he could have kicked me out but he didn't he let me live there and pay rent until i could get on my feet so i married the man who got me pregnant five months after we started dating and i continued to live in the halfway house up until near the end of my pregnancy my recovery didn't stop just because i was pregnant i had to keep working on myself i got a job busted my butt got a car we got an apartment and my son was born on my birthday it was the greatest gift that i've ever received when my son was six months old i found out i was pregnant with a cloister she burst into the world a colicky fury of tears and chaos and i got postpartum depression two weeks after she was born my bonus daughter came to live with us full time and i was battling postpartum depression full on i went from being a single sexy bachelorette living in a halfway house to a married mother of three in the span of two years okay when it comes to motherhood i have no clue what i'm doing i don't when i was suffering from postpartum depression i used to go to social media for support and i you know to try to see what other people were doing because i had no clue and i quickly realized that it seemed like everybody else had their life together while mine was crumbling everybody's home looked beautiful while mine looked like a hurricane just ripped through the living room all the moms were posing with their babies looking so perfect and wonderful while i wanted to leave mine in the crib and run out the front door and never come back i can't explain what that did to me internally as a person it made me feel like a failure it made me feel ashamed it made me feel like maybe i wasn't meant to be a mom there was one day one day especially where i resented my children just for existing i didn't want to take care of them anymore i didn't want to be a mom anymore so i called my doctor crying and i said is it bad that i don't want the kids anymore and they said come into the office right now and they got me an essay and the doctor and i worked on a recovery plan for me once i started to feel better i started to write and i wrote for numerous reasons i wrote because it was really therapeutic for me to get it out of my head and onto paper and i chose to share my writing because everywhere i looked everything looked so perfect so i thought maybe if there's just one person out there who's feeling the same way as me they can read what i've written and see that they're not alone and that's where juggling new jenkins was born a good mom is not measured by her ability to keep a clean home some people have more money than other people some people have more possessions than other people but none of that matters life is going to go by like this going to be over before you know it and i promise you that it is not going to say anywhere in your obituary her house was really clean we got a story to tell you that when we were on the street her house was really clean we gotta stop stressing about the little stuff we gotta stop wasting time beating ourselves up over the little stuff and start spending more time creating memories with our kid taking them places putting our phones down chilling with them going outside when they come up to you and they say mommy will you play with me instead of saying no just get up and play with them because i can promise you that neither of you will ever regret that decision i have to remind myself like this daily i'm the queen of in just a minute babe i'm the queen i do it all day long so i have to remind myself that that minute will never come and i know that so it is up to me to make the minutes count now what makes a good mom i don't think there's one answer a good mom is somebody who doesn't spend hours obsessing about how they aren't good enough a good mom is somebody who recognizes that they have a problem and does whatever they can't fix it whether it be addiction alcoholism anger depression picking action makes a good mom but it all boils down to love being a shining example to the kids of what love is about showing them love and showing others love as often as possible and that was tiffany jenkins you were listening to and what a voice and so straight straight as an arrow and by the way that line in the beginning what was i gonna do i can't take care of myself how am i gonna take care of this child you know that reminds me of the narrator and there goes my life by kenny chesney if you remember the lines all he could think about was i'm too young for this got my whole life ahead hell i'm just a kid myself how am i gonna raise one by the way we're never ready to raise a kid i've had so many people say i'm not ready well you're never ready and she jumped in and raised this child and what great advice and moms good ones and good fathers do this to show them love and show others love as often as possible i have no idea what i'm doing she also said and you know what none of us do and people like love to give a lot of advice about parenting but it's not easy and if anybody had the formula down well share it with the world you'll be a billionaire it's no duck walk but that advice love others and yours as often as possible about as good as it gets tiffany jenkins story here on our american stories welcome to 500 greatest songs a podcast based on rolling stone's hugely popular influential and sometimes controversial list i'm britney spanos and i'm rob sheffield we're here to shed light on the greatest songs ever made and discover what makes them so great from classics like fleetwood max dreams to the ronettes be my baby and modern day classics like the killers mr brightside listen to rolling stone's 500 greatest songs on the i heart radio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts infinity presents a new chapter in luxury the premiere of the all-new 2025 infinity qx80 live march 20th from the edge at hudson yards in new york city featuring a performance by john batiste the all-new 2025 infinity qx80 is an suv designed to help every passenger feel just right be the first to see it march 20th 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