When you first meet Danielle Cadet, you are immediately enamored with her ability to seemingly do it all. When I chatted with her, that impression only grew. She navigated our conversation with masterful eloquence yet frequently paused to help her children resolve their conflicts, praising them for using coping skills to deal with big emotions, correcting them with the kind of love and sternness only a Black mother can give, and even managing to get her oldest off to a playdate. In addition to being a mom of two, Cadet is also a media executive, senior director of content at Hims & Hers, and host of The Pregnant Pause Podcast.
She leaves you wondering how she manages to do it all, but despite appearing to be the epitome of a supermom, Danielle herself will tell you being one is simply not sustainable.
Pregnant with her first daughter during the pandemic, Danielle made protecting her peace her number one priority. “I just didn’t consume that kind of stuff,” she said of content perpetuating a negative narrative surrounding motherhood. “I was already pregnant, so consuming content about women who didn’t want to be mothers just wasn’t productive; clearly that ship had sailed.”
Instead, she decided to focus her energy on creating a safe “umbrella of love” for her girls. However, beyond the pandemic or any negative rhetoric surrounding motherhood, Danielle’s pregnancy journey was compounded by the fact that she’s a Black woman navigating the American healthcare system. As the former managing editor at Refinery 29, she’s led a myriad of conversations concerning the reality of the Black Maternal Mortality Crisis. Once she became pregnant, she wrote an article discussing being pregnant as a Black woman during the pandemic.
Being well versed in the dangers Black women face during pregnancy, it came as no surprise that a massive part of protecting her peace was being meticulous when it came to choosing who she wanted around her during both of her pregnancies. Not only did she have her mom and husband advocating for her when she couldn’t advocate for herself, but she also had a Black OBGYN deliver both of her children.
“I honestly think we should bring back Black midwives. The reason that our children survived centuries ago is because of midwives,” she said. “I’d really love for us as a community to lean into ourselves to fix this problem and not necessarily rely on Western medicine, but that’s not realistic.” Instead, her plea to Black women who are trepidatious about pregnancy or are currently pregnant and are nervous to give birth is to have a great care team, advocate for and educate yourself but don’t get so wrapped up in the education that you forget to enjoy the journey. “My concern is that we go so hard on [the research]. I worry that sometimes that we as Black women are so busy trying not to die that we forget to live and that breaks my heart because no one else is having that experience. I want so badly for us to be able to balance our preparation with our ability to really enjoy what the experience of pregnancy and motherhood truly is. It’s really important to protect your peace when you’re pregnant.”
After giving birth for the first time during the pandemic, she realized that to be the best mother she could be, she’d need to ask for help, something that didn’t come naturally to her. Growing up in a big family, she understood the importance of community but was always comfortable moving far away from her family. Now that she’s a mom though, she’s realizing having a village and being closer to her people is more important than ever. She calls her family a built-in village, but she really had to learn to lean on having Black mom friends not just for the sake of her kids but for her own sanity as well. “I think initially [having Black mom friends] was important to me through the lens of my own children because I wanted my kids to have other Black friends, but I didn’t understand the importance of having that for myself.” She made it clear that even though she adores her friends without children as a valuable part of her village, adding mom friends whom she could rely on and ask for help was all part and parcel of adapting to this new life as a mom, something she admits she still struggles with.
“I’ve realized that it’s not just about my kids having Black friends or my kids being around other Black children. It’s about me having other women in my community. There’s a woman who has become a dear friend of mine and we’ve created this whole community that has nothing to do with our kids. I think it’s just really important to have a mix of people who are in the same season as you and in different seasons and remember to not just have a village but also be a villager. I wasn’t aware of how much I needed that for myself.”
As a self-proclaimed Type A person, she reminds herself to relinquish a bit of control and “hold life with an open fist.” She gives herself grace as she reminds herself that Black women have always been a communal people and were never meant to do this motherhood thing on our own. She referred to the time before social media made moms feel like they were behind or not doing enough, noting that in fact, that portrayal puts a lot of stress on not just moms, but also their partners, especially in heteronormative relationships. “If you think back to African ancestry and the origin of Black motherhood, women were actually with each other. We have this expectation that men are somehow supposed to support women postpartum when historically that was not the case. I’m supposed to be relying on this person, who has no idea what this experience is like to help me? Whereas [historically speaking] I would have my mother, grandmother and aunties who understood.”
Danielle considers herself a five-year-old mom, the age of her oldest daughter, so she tries to place the same level of expectation on herself as she would her own five-year-old. “There’s this weird expectation that a woman who’s never done this before and a man who’s never done this before are supposed to raise a child while sleep-deprived and her body is healing after being through major chaos… We have this assumption that you’re supposed to have it all together as a mom, like you’re gonna be this supermom,” she said. “We portray motherhood in this very perfect way and it takes some humbling. You gotta fuck up a couple times before you realize not asking for help is not doing anyone any favors, especially not my kid… we all think we’re failing when we’re not. It’s just that we’ve created this expectation that this is supposed to be a two-person job when that’s just not the case! Being a supermom is just not sustainable.”
After returning to work after giving birth to her firstborn, she became painfully aware of just how unsustainable being a supermom is. Danielle, like so many, found herself at a crossroads she calls the intersection of ambition and motherhood. She realized the way she defined success changed after she became a mom. Being a mom gave her an entirely new outlook. Certain things that mattered to the corporations she was working for simply did not matter to her—but she absolutely still values her career and life outside of her kids because eventually they grow up and move out. In response to that tension, she built her podcast, Pregnant Pause, to help other Black moms who find themselves at this intersection.
The idea for the podcast came after she came back from maternity leave with her firstborn. She felt like she was having an identity crisis and felt lost as she navigated her personal and professional life. Seeking respite and community while in the throes of the pandemic, she turned to podcasts only to realize the working mother wellness space was dominated by White women. “At the time there were no podcasts where Black women were talking about balancing their personal and professional lives. There were a lot of parenting podcasts led by White women, but like, I don’t want a White woman to tell me what to do with my children. White women have quite frankly been relying on Black women to care for their children for centuries, so why do they get to be the leaders of this space when they haven’t been the ones actually doing the caretaking?” She decided since the space she needed didn’t exist, she would have to create it, and thus, Pregnant Pause was born.
Almost a year later, Danielle has interviewed everyone from Danielle Brooks to Lauren Speed Hamilton on her podcast. She’s also interviewed Cardi B on her motherhood experience separately, and she’s realized that influencer or not, celebrity or not, all moms at the intersection of motherhood and ambition have one thing in common: they have no idea what they’re doing, but they’re led by their love for their kids. She wants other moms to remember that too. She hopes she can give women a taste of the community she’s built and help them see that it’s not only okay but normal to be dealing with the chaos that comes with living at the intersection of motherhood and ambition.
In fact, she saw it in her own life. She was inspired by the Black moms of the 80s and 90s sitcoms like Claire Huxtable and Marion Gilbert, and her most recent favorite Black TV mom was Dawn from Forever. But more importantly, she had real-life examples of what women at that intersection looked like. “My mom provided an example of ambition and my grandmother provided an example of softness. That combination made me who I am today. Both of them taught me the importance of having friends and a village. They were very village-oriented women. I have very vivid memories of my mom always being on the phone with her girlfriends and then my grandmother always being on the phone and my kids will probably have very similar memories.”
In the end, what Danielle wants more than anything is for Black women to feel supported no matter what phase of motherhood they’re in. “Motherhood is hard and it’s stressful but it’s also so fun,” she said. When she stops trying to do it all and allows grace to take over, she experiences the most beautiful parts of being a mom. Some of her favorite parts are watching how she and her husband are molding and informing these little lives in even the smallest of ways. Most notably, her eldest loves Luther Vandross and Future because she is an amalgamation of her mom and her dad. Her youngest is just like her in that, despite only being two, she loves things to be orderly. “The other day, I told my oldest and her friend to get in the car and I said, ‘let’s go girls,’ so I played Sheryl Crow’s ‘I feel like a woman.’ Now she gets in the car and asks for the ‘girls’ song. She knows all the words to that song,” Danielle told us fondly.
But even if you aren’t at the place where you’re singing in the car with your kids yet, she wants you to know there’s still a place for you. “For the women who have decided they don’t want to be mothers, for the women having trouble becoming a mother, for the women who decided to freeze their eggs, for the women who are navigating dating and motherhood. Black women have such a specific experience when it comes to starting a family and that’s why I say it’s for Black women at the intersection of ambition and motherhood because that looks very different for everyone.”
To listen to Pregnant Pause, you can tune in on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. You can find Danielle on Instagram or on her Substack, Cadet About It.
This interview was edited for length and clarity.
