The Pinterest mom fantasy

Stacy Pederson: I thought that when I grew up, I was going to be an amazing mom. I really did. I thought I would gather the children around the table at night in their homey clothing, and we would have homemade dinner with homemade bread and homing butter for the cow that I milked out back, and then I thought I’d be one of those cool homes.

School moms that teaches their kids math lessons in the grocery store. And I could tell you the only math lessons my kids have ever heard in a grocery store is I am counting to three.

Andrea Marie: We are Moms Unhinged, a nationally touring standup comedy show. Join us in our podcast as we explore everything from motherhood, midlife, crisis, marriage, divorce, online dating, menopause, and other things that irritate us.

Meet Stacy Pederson and her path into comedy

Andrea Marie: Hello everyone and welcome to Moms Unhinged where we are talking to our amazing cast of comedians who perform with us all over the country. And I’m super excited to be joined today by with Stacy Pederson, international speaker and comedian. Welcome Stacy.

Stacy Pederson: Thank you so much for having me, Andrea. I appreciate it so much.

Andrea Marie: Yeah, so fun to get to talk. I just love these conversations and getting into some of the nitty gritty things about, you know, diving a little deeper than we do maybe in our sets sometimes, you know, make a lot of jokes about motherhood, but sometimes we get a little serious on the podcast.

Stacy Pederson: Yes. We gotta know the darkness of where the comedy comes from, the fodder.

Andrea Marie: Real dark. Why don’t you share with us like how you got started in comedy? I remember, so I’ve known Stacy for, I don’t even know how long, like 13 years or something like that. I met you like super early on in a National Speakers Association meeting and I was so excited ’cause you just had such a fun brand and I was like, this is a woman I need to know. So tell us how you got started in comedy.

Finding stand-up comedy by accident at 36

Stacy Pederson: So a total accident. I have a degree in theater, so I was an actress for a while and I stepped away from acting. It’s a long story. I started a children’s theater school, back at Colorado Springs and I used to write the scripts for that, and people started asking me to write scripts for other things, and they came out funny.

And I had no idea what standup comedy was. No clue. Never heard of it. It wasn’t until I was 36 that I learned about this thing called standup comedy. I had done a one woman show for a church event and everybody was calling it comedy. And I’m like, what’s like standup? And I’m like, what’s that? And so I learned a little bit about it, and then I got hired from that one event to do standup. And I was like, well, I guess I better figure this out.

And it was, yeah, it was a brutal road. Like I literally had no, I’d never seen a comedian ever, I didn’t know anything about writing. I didn’t know anything, so I just started doing it and learned along the way, and that’s how I became how I got to stand up.

Andrea Marie: That’s awesome. I love that so much. And you know, you really incorporate a lot of funny things into your speaking. I mean, do you call yourself a humorous speaker or like how do you define your speaking?

Stacy Pederson: I say I’m a funny motivational speaker. Cause I never heard the word humorist until I started speaking and I’m like, what’s a humorist? And honestly, I just figured it’s technically for marketing. I don’t think anybody’s like, I want a humorous speaker. They’re probably looking, I want a speaker, and that is just basically why I called myself that.

Andrea Marie: Yeah, yeah. And you’ve got such a good message and you’re speaking too, so it makes sense to kind of go with the motivational part first and then say you’re funny later, you know?

Stacy Pederson: Yeah, yeah.

What it was really like raising five kids at once

Andrea Marie: Oh man. So that’s amazing. And you have two kids. That’s also an interesting thing about how you might define how many children you have.

Stacy Pederson: Yes. So I have two biological children and both in December, one will be turning 26 and one will be turning 22. And then so I have three stepchildren who I love a lot. Their dad is no longer in my life by choice.

Andrea Marie: Yeah.

Stacy Pederson: But thankfully the step kids are. So I really kind of don’t define how many kids I have a lot of times on stage ’cause I don’t know how to say that.

Andrea Marie: Yeah. It gets complicated ’cause then you’re like, well then what happened? You know?

Stacy Pederson: Was, he was a jerk, but I already fell in love with the kids for being with him for 10 years. So that’s.

Andrea Marie: Yeah, yeah. So you had a period where you had five kids and then how many were teenagers?

Stacy Pederson: Three teens and two tweens.

Andrea Marie: Oh my goodness.

Stacy Pederson: So like an example would be 14. They would’ve, age wise it would’ve been 14, 14, 16, 16, and 18, I think that would’ve been the age range, and then half the year, the two that were the same ages would be like a half a year. They were all, both a half a year apart. So then it would’ve been like 14, 15, 16, 17.

Andrea Marie: Oh my gosh. That is unhinged in itself. That is, that’s all you need. That’s unhinged.

Stacy Pederson: It was hard.

Andrea Marie: Yeah. That’s crazy. And I can’t imagine vacations or did you take vacations?

Stacy Pederson: Yeah, so I had this thing that I loved wanting to take ’em on road trips and see the country. They are scarred for life, but, and I remember having moments with them where we would take photos and there was always somebody unhappy. Always. ‘Cause that’s how it is. You’re always as a child, you’re the one who’s least loved.

Andrea Marie: Yeah, yeah.

Stacy Pederson: In your mind, right? there’s always someone who was upset. And so when we would do a photo, I would say, act like you love each other. And it worked because when they get together and they look at some of those photos. Like they’ve blanked out some of the bad, they’re like, oh yeah, that was so fun when we, and remember when you threw up and da, da da. And it’s like a positive thing for some of them. So, but in the moment I was like no. Yeah, one time I took him across 14 states.

Andrea Marie: Oh, no. 

Stacy Pederson: In a minivan.

Andrea Marie: No, that sounds terrible.

Stacy Pederson: Yeah yeah, it was, but it was also good because again, they have the memories. We all have the memories.

Andrea Marie: Right, right.

Stacy Pederson: So that’s probably why they’re resilient.

Andrea Marie: Yeah, you gotta test him a little. You can’t just have them have a soft life. 

Stacy Pederson: Yes, yes. Oh gosh.

Parenting through septic shock and chronic illness

Andrea Marie: Oh, that’s so great. That’s so great. So yeah, so tell us one of the other things that, the theme of your, you know, that you have in both your speaking and in your comedy is about how you’ve almost died a bunch.

That’s how I get to introduce you. Stacy Pederson, she’s almost died a bunch, and that is true. And so, you know, we were talking a little bit beforehand about that and like parenting through illness and having kids while you’re sick, but how that’s also changed your perspective on parenting.

So share a little bit about that with us.

Stacy Pederson: It started in 2011, they thought I got sick from stepping on a rusty nail and I was in septic shock and almost died. And so I have a story, a journey of over 14 years of an infection that couldn’t be killed. And each time it came back, it’s come back seven different times. I’ve had sepsis or septic shock, and that’s how I’ve almost died, been in ICU, had major surgeries.

And then I found out two years ago it was actually a misdiagnosis the entire time. It was never from the rusty nail. It was my parents were hippies, so it was from drinking raw goat’s milk growing up, and it’s a rare bacteria. And so the good news is that everything that I went through it, it’s completely curable.

So the bad news is that had it been diagnosed correctly, it was curable. So everything, my journey really wasn’t necessary. But I did learn a lot and it did make me a better parent, very much so it a thousand percent changed my view of what it meant to be a good parent. When you don’t know if you’re gonna be around.

Andrea Marie: Yeah.

Stacy Pederson: Or you can’t do the other things that other moms seemed to be able to do?

Andrea Marie: Right. And so what age was that first infection? Were your kids? Was it before you had kids?

Stacy Pederson: No. So I wanna say I remember taking my son to his first day of second grade, and I was bound and determined to be there that first day. And I remember I showed up in a walker, ’cause I wasn’t walking. I mean, I was able to walk, but I couldn’t walk without a walker, so he would’ve been seven, which means my daughter would’ve been 11.

Andrea Marie: Wow, wow.

Stacy Pederson: So yeah, they were, and up until that point. My kids were with me all the time everywhere and my daughter had never, in 11 years, had really never been apart from me, other than when they were at school. And then half the time I was like the mom volunteering, and I did work a lot, but the jobs that I had, including the children’s theater and I was working with kids, my kids could be there with me.

Andrea Marie: Mm-hmm.

Stacy Pederson: It was pretty dramatic for them as well.

Andrea Marie: Yeah yeah, I bet. So that’s wild. So you are taking care of your kids, and then you have to be in the hospital for how long were you in the hospital?

Stacy Pederson: First time I was in the hospital for three weeks and when I left, U couldn’t walk. And so I went from a wheelchair to a walker, to a cane. And I just, every time I was sick, until the end, because it did fall apart. Eventually, I got diagnosed with PTSD and went through a journey of just a lot of depression and just everything kind of felt like it fell apart.

So that journey of going through that. That time it was the three weeks.

Andrea Marie: Yeah, wow. And how did they deal with that? How did they handle that?

Stacy Pederson: I remember that first time my son was at vacation Bible school and they didn’t want me to know. It wasn’t until after, and my son is very, very steady. He’s my logical, practical scheduled from day, like from birth. He was so scheduled. I remember, and this is true, he rarely talks ’cause he’s very man in that way.

Everything’s just a grunt or a yes or a no. And at three I would be reading him a bedtime story or making a story up, having him in bed and he’d scrunch up his eyebrows and he’d go, what’s tomorrow? And then I would list out what the plan was tomorrow. Well, then the next night, if we didn’t follow that plan, he would bring it up.

You said last night that, da da da. And so that is part of my, one of my comedy bits as it’s true, that’s who he was. They said that he had really bad anger and behavioral issues, which is not him at all. That VBS.

Andrea Marie: Right.

Stacy Pederson: And my daughter and I have talked a lot and I’ve both had them both do therapy and she is a little bit of the opposite, like how wanting to mother me.

Andrea Marie: Mm.

Stacy Pederson: And I’m like, you are the child.

You’re not in the parental role. I’m okay. Like, it’s okay. You live your life and you be happy. You don’t need to worry about me. And so they both kind of had opposite reactions, but definitely it definitely changed them.

Andrea Marie: Yeah, yeah.

How illness reshaped Stacy’s idea of being a “good mom”

Stacy Pederson: And I will say. I really believe it’s changed them, unfortunately.

‘Cause if I could go back and give them an amazing, perfect life, I would in a heartbeat. But they both really impress me with some of their values that they have now and what matters to them in life. And I do think some of that hardship is where that comes from.

Andrea Marie: Yeah, yeah. I mean, you know, it’s interesting because we don’t really get to choose what our life looks like. You think it’s gonna go a certain way. And you don’t get to pick, you know. You don’t get to pick what issues come up. You just have to deal with them.

I think it’s interesting, like you said. You kind of wish everything would be perfect. But who, first of all, what is perfect? And second of all, whoever has a life with no speed bumps in it? It’s no one.

Stacy Pederson: Yeah, that’s very true. It’s very true.

Andrea Marie: Yeah.

Stacy Pederson: I’ll say that it did change my perspective and values on how I looked at parenting very much so. Because before I was trying to be the perfect mom with the homemade meals and volunteering at the school and all the sports. And so they had this cushy, protected positive life as much as I could.

‘Cause there’s actually more to the story with their real father who also got sick, blah, blah, blah. We won’t dive in. But I remember, it was the third time I got sick and I had to have major surgery and they didn’t know how it was gonna go. And so I put my kids on a plane to stay with my mom and my sister in another state.

And I remember standing at the Denver International Airport watching their plane take off, realizing that I may never see them again.

Andrea Marie: Wow.

Stacy Pederson: And my thought was, what kind of mom have I been? In that I used to tell them things all the time about life. You should go for your dreams. You should put other people before you, you shouldn’t worry about.

And there was a lot of you should but I had never been in done it. I was never an example.

Andrea Marie: Mmm.

Stacy Pederson: And I realized that I could say anything I wanted and it wouldn’t matter that my life, I had to live it in a way that was reflective of the values that I wanted them to have. And that was a huge shift and so that’s why I got back into acting.

That’s why even as sick as I was, pursuing my goals and my career, because I wanted my son to be able to not basically have to have a woman at home taking care of him. I wanted him to be able to be respectful and open to whoever he fell in love with as a partner and not be worried about that person’s career.

Like a jealousy thing, to be respectful of women in general. And for my daughter, I wanted her to go for her dreams as well, that she didn’t have to live this perfect traditional life ’cause she came out of the woman artist like you would not believe. And so strong-willed like she would, she’ll never be happy being.

Like a trad-wife, it’s just not who she is. And so that really changed a lot of how I approached parenting is am I being an example for of what’s best for their personalities and their future.

Andrea Marie: Right, and that’s so interesting ’cause I don’t think we put enough weight into that. Like the show don’t tell, you know, the like, Hey, I’m gonna walk my walk. If I’m telling you to do this, I need to show you that I’m also committed to doing this and living my life in a way that i mportant to me and not just serving you children.

Stacy Pederson: Yes, yes. I think there’s such a message. A mixed message for us women and girls, that we are somehow supposed to be other people’s servants in a way. Like we’re supposed to serve a man. We’re supposed to serve our children, we’re supposed to serve our friends. We’re supposed to serve our work.

And we’re not servants. We are the owners of our own life. We awe the CEO. We run it and we get to choose it. And I think motherhood, it gets really complicated that way as well, of the balance of taking care of them, but also reflecting who we are and embracing who we are as the CEOs of our own life.

Andrea Marie: Yeah, and it’s not to say that if that’s what you love, if you love staying home, that’s great. I do think if that’s what you feel like you are put on this earth to do, then absolutely do it. I think that being an example and working outside the home and having a career you love is also so powerful. A powerful example.

Stacy Pederson: Yeah, like we all have different giftings and we all operate differently, and I think being able to have the courage to operate in your gifting. Whether that is being a stay at home mom and homeschooling and doing all of those things, like if that’s your gifting, that is beautiful and wonderful and you are the CEO of that life.

But on the other hand too, some of us are wired a little different whether we’re artists or just enjoy what we do for a living. And so it’s just embracing our iniquity.

Andrea Marie: Yeah, for sure. For sure Yeah, we don’t all have to be, like you said, when we are off stage, we don’t all have to be at home baking pies.

Stacy Pederson: I tried.

Andrea Marie: I can’t.

Stacy Pederson: I can’t do the crust. 

Andrea Marie: No, no. 

Stacy Pederson: I can do pudding.

Andrea Marie: I tried to bake a birthday cake one time. It was so sad. It was so sad. It just was stuck together with frosting and just the ugliest thing you’ve ever seen in your life. I was like, no, I can do cookies. That’s it. That’s what you get guys.

Stacy Pederson: You make amazing cookies, by the way.

Andrea Marie: That’s my gift.

Stacy Pederson: Yes, yes.

Andrea Marie: Oh, man, that’s such a great message. I love that so much. And I’m sure that now that they’re older, they recognize that.

Stacy Pederson: Yeah, I think so. Like I am really proud of both of them for ’cause they are so different of. Embracing who they are in their giftings and going after it in their view of the world. And not being held back by, well, you should be doing blank. No, they should not be doing blank. They need to create who they are and what works for them.

And I believe that for just living a good, meaningful life where you can make a difference for other people is embracing, again, that uniquity that you have.

The Walmart meltdown she still thinks about

Andrea Marie: Yeah, that’s great. That’s great. Well, one thing I love to ask our guests is what is an unhinged moment for that you’ve had either, you know, in your parenting or I mean, I know we all are like. It’s a lot, but pick one thing to share of something that maybe.

Stacy Pederson: There’s so many.

Andrea Marie: I know.

Stacy Pederson: So many. Like which time on the bathroom floor crying locked up? Like, okay, so I hate it when my kids fight. That was like the one thing that would send me over the edge. And they’re so different. And the only thing they have in common is both of them think they’re right.

That’s so they will argue something to death. And when my son was three days old, I laid him down on a blanket, get a little stretch time, and my daughter immediately ran him over with a doll stroller that it started at day three.

Andrea Marie: God, rolled right over.

Stacy Pederson: She just rolled it and we were like, Catherine, why did she do that? And she goes, I don’t know, I just had an impulse, but they’ve been fighting ever since. So, but they’re really close too. So when they would fight, it would just stress me out. And this is when I was working with I had three jobs at the time, and this is when I was with my first husband and he was sick. And so I had to work a lot and my kids were at Walmart and I had the children’s acting school parents, and then I had the other parents.

And they started fighting in the line at the grocery store, and I fricking lost it. I was like, stop, like unhinged in line at Walmart. And then I immediately turned around and there was one of the moms horrified, like that at the, she was walking by to exit Walmart and had stopped in her tracks and was like staring at me.

And I turned beet red, and then I was like, all flustered. I was trying to explain it. It Didn’t she just walked off? And I was so, I was like, I am such a hypocrite because I’m all smiley when I’m working with your children.

I’m so fun. I’m Miss Stacy, and then I’m annihilating my children verbally in public, and it is one of my most embarrassing parenting moments.

Andrea Marie: Oh man.

Stacy Pederson: Just losing it.

Andrea Marie: Oh God, that’s so hard. I mean, in line too. That’s a stressful time. You’ve got, you know, you’re trying to keep it all together there. You know, you wanna just get outta there. There probably has already been several fights in the aisles. 

Stacy Pederson: Oh yeah.

They’re like ramming the cart into each other, like the, it just was, it was just a moment. I had a moment. But they, I have joked about it with them and they’re like, and they’d said, this is why we’re in therapy. But what I used to do when they would fight so bad is I, when they were little, ’cause you can make ’em do it when they’re little. You can’t make ’em do it.

Andrea Marie: Yeah.

Stacy Pederson: I would make them sit on the couch and hold hands so they could get along and then they both had to apologize to each other. And then also say, I forgive you.

Andrea Marie: Okay.

Stacy Pederson: So there was a lot of ah and hand squishing, ah, it’s your fault. Until they were just so sick of sitting there. Then they would do it and then they could get off the couch and they’re like, yeah, that was. And I’m like, Hey, they learned to say sorry and forgive. So I don’t know that. 

Andrea Marie: Oh my gosh.

Stacy Pederson: Hoping their future significant others will thank me for that. That’s what I’m hoping.

Andrea Marie: I know we don’t always get the credit we deserve, do we? We don’t, we don’t. That’s so funny. So they would just have to sit there and like, and then they, that makes me laugh. Thinking about them just sitting there so angrily.

Stacy Pederson: Yeah. And holding hands like they had to like.

Andrea Marie: Yeah.

Stacy Pederson: And I’d be like, look at your sister. And this was before they had step siblings. I’m like, look at your sister. That’s the only sister you’ll ever have, Catherine. Look at your brother. That’s the only brother you’re ever gonna have. And someday I’m not gonna be around. And you’re all each other’s got like, yeah. We spent a lot at therapy. 

Andrea Marie: It is so hard. No one. I’m telling you, this is what I always say is no one warns you how hard it is and you see this line. I remember thinking when I was, this is a terrible thing to admit, but I remember like before I had kids being like, God, how could anyone ever hit their children? That’s so terrible.

And then I was like, oh yeah. I get it. I get it. I mean, I wouldn’t. I did smack my son across the face in the zoo parking lot when he was screaming one time, but it was very light. 

Stacy Pederson: That was an unhinged.

Andrea Marie: Yeah, gone to therapy for that one.

Stacy Pederson: It’s true.

Andrea Marie: He was three, he doesn’t remember. I have done my therapy.

Stacy Pederson: We do, it’s amazing. It’s amazing how like all consuming it is all the time.

And then they leave and you’re like, aw. Although sometimes I’m like, look it’s like eight o’clock at night and I got nothing to do, but lie around and watch Netflix. Like there is a moment, there are positives, but I definitely miss the busyness and the noise and the chaos.

Andrea Marie: Yeah, I know.

Stacy Pederson: Not the fighting.

The flying ravioli incident (and what it taught her)

Andrea Marie: Yeah, the fighting is the worst. It is the worst. Yeah, yeah. Did you have another, or did you share both of those? I can’t remember. 

Stacy Pederson: Oh, I do have. 

Andrea Marie: Yeah. Yeah, got a little extra time.

Stacy Pederson: This turned into a life lesson for me.

Andrea Marie: Okay.

Stacy Pederson: So this is back when I was trying to be a really good mom and I had made homemade ravioli, homemade spaghetti sauce, the whole thing. And we lived in a tri level, so it had three different levels to the house, and they were all kind of open.

Andrea Marie: Mm-hmm.

Stacy Pederson: And the kitchen was kind of off to the side. And I’m tossing to the sauce on my ravioli and I turn to present this big, beautiful bowl. And I don’t know what happened, but it slipped outta my hand. Only, it didn’t slip outta my hand. It like catapulted, flipping multiple times in the air, hit the ceiling, and then crashed on the floor.

Andrea Marie: Oh my God.

Stacy Pederson: Well, I like a lot of sauce. I like a lot of spaghetti sauce on my pasta. There was so, it was dripping off the walls, the ceiling. It was on three, all three levels. Carpets. And my daughter and I just stood there like stunned. Like it was such, I cannot explain the mess of this thing. And I was like, I didn’t know what to do. Like it’s on the cabinets, it’s all over the walls, it’s on the carpet, and you couldn’t walk anywhere.

And so I was like oh my gosh, what do I like? I just froze and then I had this thought of, oh well, I guess I just better start. It took forever. It took hours to get it off. There’s probably still ravioli’s screaming in the dark at night in that house, the ghost of raviolis, but that was a life lesson for me because ever since then, when I get really overwhelmed.

Like life is just a mess. I’m like, well, I guess I just better start. It’s my unhinged moment with ravioli.

Andrea Marie: You’re staring at the disaster and you’re like, all right, let’s dive in. Oh my gosh, that is crazy. Don’t you kinda wish you had like a video camera of what exactly happened. It’s like sometimes I’m like, how did it get so far?

Stacy Pederson: Yeah, I don’t, because I was holding it and I don’t know how it like launched and through itself multiple times in the year. It was, wow. Yeah, well that and probably just the look of horror on daughter and my face, and she still talks about it to that this day too. She’s like, remember?

Andrea Marie: Those low moments remind us at least it’s not as bad as that, you know?

Stacy Pederson: So if they knocked over milk, I never got upset. It was never as bad as the ravioli.

Andrea Marie: Yeah. Right, right. Oh, well, Stacy, this has just been so much fun. Thank you so much for sharing your thoughts and your ideas about motherhood and how things change along the way. So we appreciate it. And why don’t you share with the audience where they can connect with you and find you.

Stacy Pederson: Well, I’m on all the social. Well, not all. But you know, a lot of the social media, and it’s usually just my name, Stacy Pederson. I have the worst. Spelled name, it’s so hard both. And then my speaking is, I have a website and it’s my name, stacypederson.com.

Came up with it all by myself.

Andrea Marie: Well, we will have a link to all that in the show notes. So thanks again and looking forward to performing with you again.

Stacy Pederson: Thank Same. 

Andrea Marie: All right. Bye everyone.

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