Jaded Dame
Jaded Dame is a darkly funny, unfiltered podcast about life as a modern woman who’s seen some things, and lived to tell about it.
Hosted by Athena Manuma, a mom and blue-collar wife, this show dives into the realities no one really prepares you for: motherhood, relationships, identity, bad decisions, and everything you figure out the hard way.
Some episodes are solo real-time thoughts, reflections, and the kind of honesty you don’t always say out loud. Others feature rotating guests bringing their own stories, perspectives, and lived experiences to the table.
Nothing is overly polished. Nothing is fake-deep.
Just real conversations, sometimes funny, sometimes uncomfortable, always honest.
If you’ve ever had to rebuild yourself, laugh through the chaos, or question how you got here in the first place… you’ll feel right at home.
Jaded Dame
Running on Empty
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Some mornings just don’t stand a chance.
What starts as “today I’m going to have it together” quickly turns into missing keys, a car full of chaos, a toddler with priorities, and a silent race against the clock.
In this episode, Athena walks through a real morning in her life, juggling three kids, work, and the mental load that never really shuts off. From internal spirals at the gas pump to a quiet, unspoken moment with another mom, this episode is a reminder that the chaos isn’t just yours.
If you’ve ever felt like you’re behind before your day even starts… you’re not alone.
You ever have one of those mornings where you're like, today's the day I'm gonna have it together and that exact opposite thing happens. Well, it was 6 30 in the morning and I have minimal wiggle room to get myself from point A to point B. I have to drop my two-year-old off to school, and I'm holding four bags in my hands, and she's also wanting to be held. So I'm basically like a camel making my way out to the car, and I go to pull open the car door, and I realize I don't have my keys in my my purse. And now that feeling in my soul where I'm like, those keys could be anywhere in the house right now because I realize that my oldest took them the night before, and uh we we don't know where that's gonna end up. We don't know where those keys could be. And when I go to ask her about it, she hits me with the uh your your keys. And then I have Tolly, who is two. Ava uh has located my keys under a pile of clothes in her bedroom that I would have probably never seen until the next break of dawn. Um, if I would have searched for them myself. So luckily she found those. Um and I go, I run back out to the car, and as I open up the door, a water bottle falls to the concrete, and I throw that in, and Tolly climbs up into the car with her baby doll. And now we need to move on to the next segment, which is Tolly being a good mommy and putting her baby doll in the car seat, and she's going to buckle in her baby doll and then get herself buckled in. So by the time all of this kind of like shakes out, I've spent a good nine minutes trying to get myself out the door, and I was already leaving, quote unquote, on time. I should have left 10 minutes early because I knew this was gonna happen. This always happens. Um, but I go and carry on with my morning and drop tall off and head back to the house to now start next chapter. I gotta get myself ready for work. I gotta get my girls, my other two, out the door as well. So that then starts the next piece of where's your shoes? Where's your backpack? Did you unpack your lunchbox from last night? No, that's cornbread in there from how long ago? Oh, okay. I um I think the stress of motherhood is so hard. Um but regardless, like I'm normally in between taking calls and trying to wrangle at the same time because that's just the the path I chose. I um get I get Kai and Ava back into the car and we take off. And as I turn on the car, what I hadn't realized, what I had failed to realize when I came home from dropping tall off was I don't have any gas in the car. I have 11 miles until empty. And I'm like, oh my god. The chaos in ensues. And I will tell you, this was chaos that I think I missed in the fine print when I said, you know what? I want to start my life as a mother. That's what I want to do. That was the fine print I missed. Um, but regardless, I get the girls dropped off to school. I get myself to the pump by a whisper of gas, basically, and kind of thinking to myself the whole time, like, God, you have got to get yourself together. Like, you know, you need to make it a point to clean out this car every time you get out of it. You gotta just put your foot down. You gotta put your foot down. And as I'm thinking this, another mom pulls up, but she's in a car significantly bigger than mine, and she parks. She opens her door, and a water bottle falls out on the ground. I look at her and we make eye contact, and my initial reaction is like, oh crap, she saw me look at her and now she thinks. Like, then my mind starts to spiral. Oh, she thinks I'm judging her or whatever, but I just shoot her a smile and shrug, like a silent transmission of I see you, I was, I I've been there, uh, we've all been there. But I it just it just is so um I guess it was a little bit comforting to see that uh we're all struggling. Um don't like to struggle, don't want to see us struggle. That's not exactly the vibe we're going for, but at the end of the day, it is what it is. But I think the part that stuck with me it wasn't even the morning anymore. It wasn't the keys or the gas or the 47 water bottles living in my car. It just that split second of looking at each other and didn't say anything, and somehow everything was like um a connection or a moment. Um and I think that that's what motherhood feels like most days. It's not always the big picture. Um, it's not the ones you set up a camera for. It's the in-between. It's the running late, it's forgetting things, it's talking to your kids on mute while you're on a work call. And and and somewhere in all of that, you start to think that you're the only one not doing it right. And like everyone else has some kind of system figured out and you just miss the memo on it. But then you have a moment like that in a gas station parking lot at 8 30 in the morning, holding a half-crushed water bottle like it's a badge of honor, and you realize no one has it together. We're all just moving, trying, adjusting, surviving the morning so we can do it all over again tomorrow. And I think especially when you're doing life um with kids and work and long hours, um, time's limited and you're holding down it day-to-day more often than not, and it can really feel isolating. Um, like you're the only one carrying it, but you're not, you're not carrying it um just by yourself. You're just carrying it quietly. So if your mornings look anything like mine or completely different, but still chaotic in its own way, I see you. You're not behind, you're not doing it wrong. You just in the season that doesn't always look pretty. Um sometimes the win isn't having it all together. Sometimes the win is just getting everyone where they need to be and making it to the gas station before your car taps out. So thank you guys so much for joining me on my first episode of Jaded Dame. I will see you guys on the next one.