No Magic Bullet Podcast - An Honest Discussion on Mental Health · NoMagicBullet

When a Daughter becomes a Mother

·36 min·2 clips

Bobby K opens with a plain welcome to What's in Your Toolbox. He describes the show as an honest conversation on mental health and speaks as someone who lives with Tourette syndrome. The title changed. What began as State of Mind became When a Daughter becomes a Mother once the real shape of Fern Schurkenlanger's story came into view. It is not about a daughter having a baby. It is about a daughter having to become the mother to her own mother, and that reversal sets the tone for everything that follows. Fern joins Bobby for the conversation. They have known each other since they were sixteen, and that long history gives the exchange an easy, familiar feel. Bobby notes that the show has already brought on many guests living with ADD, OCD, anxiety, and depression. Fern's story fits into that same mental health conversation. A lot of the episode centers on her mother's depression. Fern talks through the small supports that helped keep the days moving, including a playlist of Glenn Miller and other oldies her mother liked. The music could settle things down. Walking helped too, first as hallway laps and later as rides in a wheelchair and short trips outside for fresh air. Those changes of scene mattered. COVID made the situation harder by taking away some of the options they would otherwise have had. Bobby turns to medication and mindfulness. Fern says her mother found meditation very hard, while Bobby says mindfulness took him seven years to befriend. The episode does not offer one neat cure. It lands on a more practical answer: patience, music, movement, and kindness can still do real work.

As heard by us

A caregiving story grounded in small, ordinary tools.

Bobby K gives Fern Schurkenlanger room to sit with a hard, intimate subject: what it feels like to become a parent to a parent. The story moves through depression, fading mobility, and the quiet labor of care, where support shows up in hallway laps, music, wheelchair rides, and…

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

When a daughter has to become the parent.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

Listen to the show on

Apple Podcasts Spotify

Play clips from this episode More from No Magic Bullet Podcast - An Honest Discussion on Mental Health