When Rumors Spread Like Wildfire About the Fire Commissioner 🚒
Laura Kavanagh tells the TRUE story of her reproductive life while running the FDNY
EPISODE #250: When Rumors Spread Like Wildfire About the Fire Commissioner
Laura Kavanagh knew she would encounter challenges as the first female fire commissioner of the FDNY. But she didn’t anticipate the false rumors that she slept her way to the top — or the nastier rumors about her supposed pregnancy. Now, for the first time, she shares what was actually going on in her reproductive life when she ran the fire department.
More about Laura Kavanagh
Changing the workplace
Former FDNY Commissioner Kavanagh wrote an op-ed for Fortune about her time leading a male-identified organization, and how improve the workplace for women.
Catch our LST FAVES!
Over the next couple of months, we’ll be re-airing some of our favorite episodes about babies and early parenthood between new episodes. We started with Postpartum House Arrest, the story of an OBGYN who fantasized about long walks and sushi after having her first baby. Her own mom had other ideas.
Plus, one of our upcoming re-runs has a Mother’s Day merch tie-in. So, stay tuned for that!
From the Archive
Curious about the process of freezing your eggs? Listen to Eggs Over Freezy, a humorous and informative story about one woman’s fertility journey.
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💗 Stuff We Love 💗
A couple of weeks ago my family went to New Orleans for spring break. My husband, daughter, and I were all scattered in different rows on the plane, and I’d forgotten to download the audiobook I was planning to listen to (a menopause thriller, of course). With no one to talk to and nothing to read, I scrolled the movie options and landed on If I Had Legs I’d Kick You because I’d heard that Rose Byrne was great in it.
And… she is!
I’m not gonna lie, this motherhood drama by Mary Bronstein is bleak and intense. But it’s also validating! Byrne plays Linda, a therapist navigating her daughter’s mysterious illness while her ship-captain husband is off at sea, enjoying his life and blaming her for everything that’s going wrong at home. If I Had Legs is a thriller-ized version of a familiar experience for mothers: trying to take care of our kids, while the rest of the world tells us we’re crazy or we don’t matter.
What I found most fascinating about the film was the fact that the mother-daughter relationship is almost entirely depicted through audio. We hear a lot about the daughter’s illness — that she’s not eating enough, that she’s got a feeding tube, that Linda needs to fill the tube with strange bags of goo every night. We occasionally see the tube in the daughter’s stomach. But we don’t see her face. We only hear her voice. And despite all of the angst about her illness, this girl doesn’t sound sick. She’s a mix of playful, whiny, demanding, and sweet that most parents will recognize.
This choice made me wonder: Is the daughter really sick? Or is Bronstein making the point that normal childhood behavior is too often pathologized? Or that society leads mothers to question their own instincts?
Anyway, this mother-daughter dynamic has a fun and surprising twist that I won’t spoil. Just watch it and let me know what you think in the comments.
And I’ll be sure to share my thoughts on that menopause thriller once I listen to it!
Okay, that’s all for now!
XO, Hillary
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