e044 – Finding Funny in Motherhood with Jenna Kim Jones

Jenna Kim Jones is a clean stand up comedian who performs regularly nationwide. Jenna has three comedy specials which are played regularly on Sirius XM. She was the featured comedian on Sirius XM’s Channel Laugh USA in September 2016 and August 2018. Jenna also released a video special with Dry Bar Comedy called “Jenna Kim Jones: Fun to Hug” that is available to stream on Amazon Prime. Jenna is the co-host of the television series Random Acts and has a daily podcast she hosts with her husband called Couple Friends! As a mom of two, Jenna is no stranger to the chaos and with a 4 and 2-year old, she is busy. Jenna brings fun and brightness to the grey areas of motherhood, the areas that get swept under the rug and dismissed. How does Jenna find the humour in motherhood? Sometimes it is difficult. Jenna shares with us one of many episodes in motherhood where nothing goes right. Bubbles, a newly crawling baby and a door locking toddler inspired Jenna to start seeing that there can be laughter found in the most stressful situations and sometimes all you can do is laugh at the impossibility of it. All of these hard moments can be hilarious. By focusing on the outrageous, she can laugh at the hardest days. By searching out the humour, it can lighten the heavy work of motherhood. Finding her mom friends helped her learn to let things go. That it doesn't matter if you don't know what you are doing half the time, because they don't know either. By having mom friends that compare each other or compete with the milestones. Kids don't remember the small stuff like when they were potty trained or bottle-fed, kids remember the love, and parents that do everything in their power to make sure their kids are happy and healthy. Sometimes we just have to let it go. Try every day to laugh with your kids. Some days just feel like everyone is grumpy and combative. Jenna checks in to see if everyone has laughed together. Kids should know what it feels like to just laugh. We all have those days where it feels like every other minute is a time out or a mess. We should do whatever it takes to make them laugh, silly clothes, silly faces whatever is needed to laugh, even on the really bad days. Laughter always lightens the mood. It's important to teach our kids that it is okay to cry, it is okay to laugh, that feeling all the emotions is what a human needs to do. When we expect them to bottle all the feelings up they never learn how to regulate all of those big messy feelings. So when they cry just let it out. When they laugh, go big and be silly. Jenna has done stand up for a long time and self-released her own special right before getting pregnant with her first daughter. Her career started to take off as she started her family, and her podcast, Couple Friends, came out after shifting her direction and focusing on family and the transition to finding friends while parenting. Couples Friends is a short little pick me up that lets the humour in every day. It’s so hard to find couple friends. And then when you do they, like, want to hang out. Problem solved! Let Jenna Kim Jones and her husband #AL be your virtual couple friends. JKJ and #AL are the married couple friends you really want to see but, like, you’re also kind of tired and maybe we can do it another time? They get you. And you get them. Listen to them talk about nonsense, play games, and ramble on about life. They’ll never talk politics and best of all, they’ll never ask you to babysit their kids so they can go on date night. Couple Friends Podcast Instagram: @jennakimjones jennakimjones.com