In a recent in-person episode of the Trust Me Mom show, host Ekaterina Konovalova sat down with a marketing executive, TEDx speaker, and LinkedIn content creator Nicole (Nikki) Ramirez. What followed was a raw and relatable conversation about parenting, professional identity, and the surprising overlap between marketing and motherhood.
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Ekaterina and Nikki know each other from the marketing world, but this time, the focus wasn't just career moves - it was the unexpected wisdom that emerges when a marketing expert becomes a parent.

From Forbes to Fishy Challenges

Before motherhood, Nikki's career path was nothing short of impressive. "I'm a journalist turned marketer and now I'm a growth marketing specialist, specializing in healthcare. I am also a personal branding coach and a LinkedIn content creator," she shared. She even led marketing at Forbes for their accolades department and gave a TEDx talk back in 2018.
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But everything shifted when she became a mom. "I thought, I'll be a mom, and it'll just fit into my life, and I won't change at all. And how naive I was," Nikki admitted. "Every day is just a new adventure. You watch this person become a whole human, and it's incredible."

Going Viral Over Beach Chicken

That human (Nikki's toddler) became the star of a viral LinkedIn post that put Nikki in the social media spotlight. "My toddler hates fish but loves chicken. So, when we have salmon, I call it beach chicken and he says 'Yay, beach chicken!' and eats the whole thing," she explained. "I ended the post with 'know your audience.'"
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The internet exploded. "I ended up on the Today Show and Newsweek... I had colleagues and friends who are not on LinkedIn or follow me sharing my post and saying, 'Hey, I saw you on X, formerly known as Twitter... and on Instagram... and someone did your whole post on TikTok.'"

Branding, Negotiation, and Toddler Psychology

Nikki believes that many business skills translate directly to parenting. "My negotiation skills are top notch now... you're always rebranding and storytelling and rephrasing things to really get your toddler to stay alive and be a good person." Her parenting mantra? "Know your customer."

As a mom of one with another on the way, Nikki has learned to be deliberate about how she divides her energy. "I make sure to end my day when my child comes home from daycare... closed laptop, I'm spending time with my son... no phones at the table, no distractions."

Advocacy and Identity

Beyond parenting and work, Nikki is an advocate for maternal rights through her work with the Chamber of Mothers. "We have three pillars that we really concentrate on: maternal health, affordable childcare, and paid maternity leave." She emphasized the need for a phased return to work and the high costs of childcare that force many families to make painful choices.
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"Fill your cup with what you want to do," she advised. "If you're forced to say, 'Okay, I can't afford childcare so I’m staying home,' that's not filling your full cup."

​Redefining Self and Social Life

Parenthood also changed her social rhythm. "I was such a social butterfly... now I have no desire to really do a lot of that anymore. I'm trying to wrap my head around: is this who I am now? Or am I just exhausted?"

Despite the shifts, she’s clear about one thing: "You need to keep your identity when you become a mom. Diversify your happiness. Don't give up on your hobbies and passions. When your cup is filled, you can fill other people's cups."

Nikki’s Advice to New Parents

"Put your oxygen mask on first. Do what makes you happy and don't feel guilty about it. Because then you are your full self, and it will reflect on your kids," reminds Nikki. Moms tend to lose themselves in caregiving and work, and they will thank themselves in the long run if they maintain hobbies and continue to invest in friendships despite the exhaustion.
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Whether you’re marketing beach chicken or trying to make sense of your new identity as a working mom, Nikki’s story is a refreshing reminder that the skills we use in our careers can serve us well at home - and vice versa.

Imagine you had a magic wand… How would you reshape home life to make it more equitable? Fortunately, you don’t need to look for a fairy - the resources and strategies are already available today. One of the change agents who is making waves in the movement for greater equity in household labor and caregiving is Laura Danger: an activist, educator, author, wife, and mother of two.
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So, what sparked Laura’s passion for this work?

How Laura's Advocacy Began
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Laura shared that her advocacy journey began with personal experiences of inequity in her household. Married for over a decade and raising two children in a dual-income household, Laura found herself at a breaking point in 2019 after being laid off days before giving birth to her second child.

"Our household was on edge. I had very little capacity to be kind when soliciting help," she recalled. Then, the pandemic hit in early 2020, turning their already challenging life into a pressure cooker.

The combination of economic uncertainty, domestic stress, and societal collapse pushed Laura to speak out online about her experiences. "I was watching millions of women and primary caregivers just leave the workforce because of the overwhelm," she said. "I am seeing all of the fractures of society... and I was really, really mad."

Defining Weaponized Incompetence

Laura defines weaponized incompetence as using a lack of skill or poor execution of a task to avoid responsibility. "It can be truly being neglectful on purpose and trying to break the trust of the person. It can be just willful ignorance," she explained.

She shared a striking story about a woman who left her husband one task: dispose of bug-infested rice while she was on a business trip. He poured it down the drain, causing a plumbing disaster. He didn’t tell her how he had disposed of the rice, and it was embarrassing when he mentioned the drain was clogged but forgot to explain what had caused it. The truth came out when his wife asked her father to stop by the house and help fix the plumbing. “Eventually, they did break up,” Laura noted. “It was just one example of many.”

Whether such acts are intentional or due to a lack of skill, they still have a strong impact on the partner who bears the emotional and logistical burden.​

Understanding the Nag Paradox

The "nag paradox," Laura explains, occurs when one partner takes on the mental load of planning and delegating while the other follows instructions. "One party feels criticized and the other defensive. We aren’t seeing the work of delegating as work," she said.

She emphasized that equitable relationships must include explicit conversations about roles and responsibilities, beginning with manageable tasks. "Start small. Bite-size. Practice having those explicit conversations about what you want."

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​Lessons from the Dishes

Laura discussed how she and her husband addressed recurring conflict over dishes. "We had to think about what are the barriers for each of us and how we could fix it," she said. They explored pragmatic solutions, including simple fixes like putting a chair in the kitchen in the evening so her husband could sit while doing the dishes and listen to a podcast, switching chores, and structuring conversations using frameworks from relationship experts like the Gottman Institute.
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On Devaluing Domestic Labor

Ekaterina raised the issue of how domestic labor is often devalued in households and society. Laura responded passionately: "Without the work of the home, nothing else in society functions. You literally cannot live without feeding yourself, without getting rest."

She underscored how this devaluation disproportionately affects caregivers and women, contributing to systemic inequities such as the "motherhood penalty."

The Need for Structural Support and Community

Laura spoke to the added stress for families caring for children with special needs. She emphasized the universal need for care networks: "It’s impossible for one person to do this. It’s also impossible for two people to do it. We need whole networks of care."

Quoting disabled parent and author Jessica Slice, Laura touched on the fear that often accompanies caregiving: "There is real fear that you won’t be able to access the care you need."

Communicating Through Mental Health Challenges

Laura also opened up about navigating her own mental health, including bipolar II and ADHD. She and her husband have developed a communication shorthand. "All I have to say is 'I'm not feeling well.' That's it," she shared. They then rely on pre-planned strategies to divide caregiving responsibilities.

Modeling Equity for Children

Laura and her husband are intentional about modeling equity for their children. They openly plan, communicate, and share household responsibilities. "We really focus on out loud talking about the things we enjoy and really showing them that we can be whole people," she said.

​To learn more about Laura and her work, check her Instagram at @thatdarnchat or visit lauradanger.com for more resources. 

Laura's book No More Mediocre offers hopeful strategies for fostering equitable relationships. She also co-hosts the podcast Time to Lean, where she discusses everyday care labor, cultural critiques, and practical tools.

When you think of Cinderella, Rapunzel, or Sleeping Beauty, you probably imagine soft-spoken princesses, wicked but rather cartoonish villains, and true love’s kiss. But the fairy tales we tell our children have been radically sanitized over centuries, transformed by culture, politics, and Disney into the versions we know today.
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To unravel these origins, I sat down with Anne Duggan, a fairy tale scholar and professor at Wayne State University. Her insights reveal how the stories we think of as timeless classics were shaped by centuries of retelling - and how much they’ve lost along the way.

Murderous Cinderella

Forget the docile girl who waits patiently for rescue. In the 17th century Italian version by Giambattista Basile, Cinderella was no passive heroine. Called The Cat Cinderella, this version features a young woman who murders her first stepmother on the advice of her sewing teacher, who then becomes her second, even crueler, stepmother.
Later, French author Marie-Catherine d'Aulnoy combined Cinderella’s story with the Hansel and Gretel-like tale of abandoned children and cannibalistic ogres. Her Cinderella not only outsmarts monsters but negotiates her marriage on her own terms, demanding the return of her family’s stolen lands. She’s spunky, calculating, and anything but submissive.
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This is a far cry from the Cinderella we know - demure, sweet, and rescued purely through marriage. According to Professor Duggan, Charles Perrault, whose 17th-century French retellings became the main reference for Disney, made deliberate choices to soften heroines and remove their agency.

Why So Much Violence?

If you’ve ever noticed that the Grimm Brothers’ stories are gory, like the Cinderella stepsisters whose eyes are pecked out, you’re not imagining it. Earlier fairy tales were filled with executions, murder, and betrayal, often reflecting societies where violence was publicly visible and normalized.
While some of this brutality has faded in modern adaptations, Disney-era retellings introduced their own issues: erasing sex, reducing complex women to passive beauties, and reinforcing narrow ideals about femininity.

From Single Mothers to “Happy Endings”

Consider Rapunzel. The first written version, Petrosinella, featured a possibly unmarried pregnant woman who traded her child for parsley. In French adaptations, the girl still became pregnant, but her sexuality was gradually hidden. The Grimm Brothers scrubbed the pregnancy out altogether, replacing it with the famous “your hair is so heavy” slip-up. Disney took this further, transforming Rapunzel into an innocent, wide-eyed heroine with no hint of scandal.
Professor Duggan explained that this progressive taming - what she calls the “domestication” of fairy tales - continued over centuries, reflecting the dominant social norms of each era.

Fairy Tales Weren’t Meant for Children

One of the biggest surprises? Most of these tales were never originally for kids. They emerged in aristocratic salons and courtly circles, full of sophisticated allegories and adult themes - like Little Red Riding Hood, which was a thinly veiled metaphor about predatory men.
Many of the authors were women - like d’Aulnoy, who herself endured an abusive marriage and exile. Their tales often contained hidden critiques of arranged marriages, forced unions, and power imbalances. For example, Beauty and the Beast can be read as a commentary on marrying an older man or grappling with fear of male sexuality.

Disney’s Cultural Takeover

So why do we mostly remember Perrault and the Grimms today? One word: Disney.

When Snow White hit theaters in 1937, it reshaped popular culture. Disney’s dominance in the age of home video made its pastel-colored, simplified versions the only ones most of us knew. Other beloved tales - like d’Aulnoy’s The White Cat, which was once so famous that it inspired operas and was featured in Victorian gossip columns - faded into obscurity.
As Professor Duggan put it, “We tend to think Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, and Snow White have always been the top fairy tales, but until Disney, that just wasn’t true.”

Should We Keep Reading Them to Our Kids?

After learning how these tales were shaped by politics, misogyny, and commercialism, you might wonder: should we still share them with children?

Professor Duggan believes yes - but with a twist. She encourages parents to treat fairy tales as living stories, open to discussion and reinvention. Ask kids what they think. Invite them to retell the tales. Talk about whether the characters’ choices were fair. The act of questioning is just as important as the story itself.

As Duggan told me, “These stories were always meant to be adapted. Our job is to keep rewriting them.”

Further Reading:

• The Lost Princess by Anne Duggan
• Off With Their Heads! by Maria Tatar
• Mother Goose Refigured by Christine Jones

Listen to the full interview on Trust Me Mom podcast.