On May 5, 2022, Sharon Brecher chatted about her new book with Just Jenny.
]]>As a parent who has vowed to move to the same city my son decides to go to college in (I’ve even said I’ll find on campus housing for myself), this is the book I didn’t know I needed.
It’s uproariously hilarious, but also extremely real. When she talks about needing her mother who she lost to cancer, I get it. Boy do I get it. I keep thinking about raising my son without my sister in my life and it’s overwhelming.
I digress.
This is a short, easy to read book. Chapters include:
-High anxiety: Pre-college Preparation!
-Holy Shit: Move in!
-The New Normal: Back Home!
-Live & Learn
All chapters include hilarious graphics featuring do’s and don’ts. Some of my favorites are:
DO: encourage your child to spend time with high school friends, knowing they will miss them.
DON’T: behave like Kathy Bates in Misery
DO: kiss your child goodbye and actually leave.
DON’T: stay.
Oh how I loved this book. Being a parent is so hard. Raising them is tough, giving them wings may be even tougher.
"Welcome to that special time of every parent’s life - when they’ve done all they can to prepare their kids for the next step, and the time has come… their kid is leaving home and going to college! Miserable Mom celebrates the ups and downs of one of life’s most emotional parenting moments, conveniently coinciding with mid-life.
Mom-blogger, illustrator and popular influencer Sharon Brecher shares her first-hand experience with the daily angst and indignities of motherhood in her humorous comic strips that portray the do’s and don’ts of sending your kid to college. Through illustrations and transparent slice-of-life narrative, Miserable Mom: The Do’s and Don’ts of Sending Your Kid to College provides an authentic connection with others who are also navigating this emotional time. Delivering an unapologetic perspective of motherhood, Sharon shines a light on the stream of consciousness we all internalize and helps us laugh at ourselves."
Read the full article here.
]]>On May 3, 2022, Sharon Brecher appeared on The Frankie Boyer Show to discuss her new book, Miserable Mom: The Do's and Don'ts of Sending Your Kid to College.
Frankie's guests include radio host, bank branch manager, and reverse mortgage expert Charles Bachmann, Sharon Brecher author of Miserable Mom: The Do's and Don'ts of Sending Your Kid to College, and Whitney Scott highlighting the joys of camping with KOA.com
]]>👩🏻🎓At the ripe age of 18 and 3 months, I headed off to the big city to go to college. My brother was already a junior at the same school, so I packed a huge suitcase and a couple boxes and got a ride with him. He dropped me off. My roommate came later and I believe her boyfriend gave her a ride. Nothing in our dorm room matched, so a few weeks later we caught a ride to Kmart and bought matching bedspreads. We were set. My mom called on Sunday nights when the long distance rates were lower. I was very homesick. But long story short, it all worked out just fine.
👩🏻🎓Fast forward to when my daughters went off to college and I swear there were more parents than kids around!! What’s the right balance?
👩🏻🎓Miserable Mom, The Do’s and Don’ts of Sending Your Kid to College by Sharon L. Brecher is a great resource for mom’s of the 2022 graduate. Humor, personal experience, and cute illustrations make this a fun guide and a great gift! A couple of my favorite Do’s and Don’ts include:
Do- Make yourself available to connect even at inopportune times. Don’t- Forget it’s ok to unplug every now and then.
Do- Stay young by staying fit. Use your new found time for you!
Don’t- Race your child to put on her freshman 15 because you miss her!
👩🏻🎓This book brought back many memories from taking my girls to college and how friends can be a great emotional support. Brecher and I have a lot in common!
If you have friend, family, or even someone you semi-like that has a child graduating from high school this year, do them a favor and give the student a gift card and give the mom this book.
@miserablemoms does a great job of telling her story about her first child going off to college and also mixes in great dos and don’ts about the whole college process in a graphic book style.
I’ve been there 3 times already and will be sending my 4th off to college in August. This one feels different because this is the last to leave home and when I drop her off I’ll be heading off myself 18 hours away to a new city.
It will for sure be a transition time for both of us so I appreciate this book.
There is a graphic of a do which is to say your real goodbyes in the comfort of your own home and that’s great advice because I vividly remember standing in front of the bookstore sobbing uncontrollably in front on the University of South Florida bookstore saying my goodbyes to my oldest daughter.
If you or a friend is about to send a child off to college you NEED this book! It's written with so much honesty, humor, and grace, and the advice is practical and super helpful. I loved the illustrations and the do's and don'ts, and I laughed and cried a little as I'm in this stage of life and it is daunting. This guide is just what I needed to help me get through it!
]]>Miserable Moms is a giggle worthy, fast paced book about the dreaded day your child leaves the nest. Obviously every parent wants their child to excel and go to college, I mean we spend 4 years of high school making sure there on the right path! We pay money for SAT/ACT and when it’s all done we have PTSD! We know sending them off is really what they need and what we want for them but no amount of preparation makes it easier. I haven’t had a child move far away to attend college but I know when my daughter moved out it was still life changing. I also remember when my mom drove me to my dorm ( only 30 minutes from home) and pulled away I sobbed. ( softy here)
Author Sharon L. Brecher shares her experience of sending her first born to college. I loved her humor and honesty about how the experience broke her heart but warmed it at the same time. The book is broken down into Do’s and Don’t’s with cartoon re-enactments throughout that had me smiling. I’m going to be in Sharon’s shoes next year and I’m trying not to think of it, but will definitely try and use some of the tips from this book and keel my cool.
Thank you Sharon for a silly retelling of one of your hardest days…leaving your baby to start her new college life!
]]>This school year is going fast and soon high school seniors will be getting ready for their first year of college. This is a terrifying time for parents who are sending off their first child to college. Miserable Mom is the perfect book for those parents. In between Insightful text of each chapter is the Comic's Do's and Dont's Section that had me laughing. From College Preperation, moving into the dorm and feeling that freedom back home, Miserable Mom's will help you survive with humor.
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On March 22, 2022, The Douglas Coleman Show published a video interview featuring Miserable Mom, Sharon Brecher. Check out the description:
"Sharon L. Brecher is a mom-blogger, writer, illustrator, wife, and Miserable Mom. Her first book, Miserable Mom: The Do’s and Don’ts of Sending Your Kid to College, calls out the absurdities of this stage of motherhood with a wry sense of humor and a self-deprecating wink to her own place in the emotional merry-go-round. Sharon is a born and bred New Yorker, living in Southern California. She has raised two young adults (one in college and one recently out) and has an MA in Education… as if that gave her all the answers!
Sharon was the Educational Director of Futurekids and spent several years working as a consultant for companies like Disney Interactive and Disney Online, where she created educational content for kids and guides for parents. Upon an emotional return from dropping her oldest off at college for the first time, Sharon needed to process some unfamiliar and vulnerable feelings. With one kid out and one to go, mid-life was upon her. This new phase would require the honesty and humor she always internalized, to process life’s challenges. But this time Sharon needed to share with other moms out loud! So, she sat down at her computer and Miserable Moms was born."
]]>𝘏𝘪𝘭𝘢𝘳𝘪𝘰𝘶𝘴 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘥𝘦𝘭𝘪𝘨𝘩𝘵𝘧𝘶𝘭!
Omg, I had so much fun reading this book, it is the perfect guide for parents sending kids to college. I think life is always better with some humor in it, and this guide shows it. I loved it.
On May 6, 2022, Miserable Mom joined KWAY Radio to chat about The Do's and Don'ts Of Sending Your Kids to College.
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On April 5, 2022, Sharon Brecher joined Sara Troy on her show, Choose Positive Living.
"Comedic illustrator and popular influencer Sharon Brecher, author of Miserable Mom: The Do’s and Don’ts of Sending Your Kid to College
Welcome to that special time of every parent’s life – when they’ve done all they can to prepare their kids for the next step, and the time has come… their kid is leaving home and going to college! Miserable Mom celebrates the ups and downs of one of life’s most emotional parenting moments, conveniently coinciding with mid-life. Mom-blogger, illustrator, and popular influencer Sharon Brecher shares her first-hand experience with the daily angst and indignities of motherhood in her humorous comic strips that portray the do’s and don’ts of sending your kid to college. Through illustrations and transparent slice-of-life narrative, Miserable Mom: The Do’s and Don’ts of Sending Your Kid to College provides an authentic connection with others who are also navigating this emotional time. Delivering an unapologetic perspective of motherhood, Sharon shines a light on the stream of consciousness we all internalize and helps us laugh at ourselves. By normalizing common parenting and mid-life insecurities with a dose of humor, Miserable Mom will help you feel supported while enduring this incredibly special time of parenting college students."
]]>Graduation is coming up and this would make a great gift for a parent of a graduating senior.
]]>On April 1, 2022, Sharon Brecher joined Tom Sumner on The Tom Sumner Program.
]]>On August 5, 2021, Susan Salzman of the Power of the Pivot Podcast featured Sharon Brecher of Miserable Moms on the show.
"They say life starts when you realize you’re living one, but in the case of full-time mom Sharon Brecher, that one cathartic moment in her life that changed everything was when her eldest daughter started to move out for college. Her pent-up emotions and feelings about midlife crisis all the while being a mom gave birth to Miserable Moms, an unfiltered comic relief about moms for moms made by a mom.
In this episode, Sharon talks about her eureka moment in grad school and a newfound interest in using educational software that landed her a job at FutureKids, then Disney Interactive and Disney Online. She also shares how she started Miserable Moms out of emotions, the idea behind each illustration she creates, and her two- to five-year vision and plan following the success of her naturally funny comics."
]]>On September 16, 2021, Maria Tabela of the Palasadian-Post published her article on the magic of Miserable Moms, stating:
"When it comes to parenting, no matter what the internet or influencers tell you, no one has all the right answers.
It is inevitable that the day will come when the kids are embarrassed by Dad’s full-volume song of choice at school pickup. It is unavoidable that there will be days when Mom feels like she is the only one in the whole house who got the memo that cupboards are actually able to be closed after they have been opened.
All we can do in these moments is laugh, and no one has captured the essence of these relatable experiences better than the Huntington’s very own Sharon Brecher.
Brecher is the mastermind behind popular Instagram account and blog Miserable Moms, a space where parents can check in on her lovable character, Miserable Mom, and laugh while simultaneously saying to themselves, “Yes! I’ve totally done/thought that!”
Brecher’s website offers both hilarious and heartfelt blog posts on everything from failed juice cleanses to working through turning 50. Her illustrated posts, which can take hours or even days to create, play on both her own experiences as well as the experiences of others, creating a multifaceted character that has a little something for everyone.
“We all go through life,” Brecher, a 20-year resident of
the Palisades, explained. “Life has challenges, and
sometimes they’re huge and sometimes they’re just because something weird or annoying happened during your day. I think it’s fun to stop and shine a light on that, and realize that we are all the same. It also takes the air out of it, and we can all laugh at it and realize that we are not alone, it’s OK and it’s actually kind of funny.”
While Brecher has managed to perfectly capture the spirit of parenting, marriage and middle age in the 21st century, becoming a social media maven was never where she thought she was headed. While she admitted that Miserable Moms was something that was completely new to her, her background as the former educational director of Future Kids in Pacific Palisades, as well as her time working at Disney Interactive as a consultant for educational software, may have helped pave the way for her future success.
It wasn’t until her daughter was ready to be dropped off at college, though, that the seeds for Miserable Moms were fully planted..."
For the full article, check out the Palasadian-Post, or just click here.