The popular Netflix series MAID has everyone talking. The story portrays a likeable, poor, white woman, Alex, a young mother who flees an abusive relationship and takes a job as a maid to provide for her daughter, striving to build a better future.
MAID touches on a number of incredibly heavy topics including domestic violence, homelessness, alcoholism, the generational cycle of addiction and the systems that keep people in poverty. It’s no easy watch, yet we are all watching it and talking about it.
In this episode I discuss Netflix MAID with Celeste Yvonne a popular writer and personality who writes about all things parenting. We chat through what makes this incredible series so good. Drawing from our own experiences, me living with my husband’s alcoholism, for Celeste, her father’s alcoholism and her own addiction, we talk about the unspoken conversations of addiction in the family and the generational cycle of addiction.
Here’s a glance at this episode:
[2:49]It’s not a light subject. It’s not an easy watch, is it? It’s not. In fact, I’m trying to convince my mom to get past episode one. She watched up to someone and like, you got to keep going, mom, I know it’s heavy. I know it’s hard. But it’s worth it because it’s covering subjects that many, many mothers can deeply connect with in a way that’s never been visually. Explained or identified in the way it has been. And I think that’s what makes it so provocative the way they are able to convey this main characters.
[4:24] I think there’s something in there that everyone can identify with. Definitely the aspects around motherhood and trying to juggle everything and get it right. One of the things that I got a little bit frustrated about, if I’m honest, is when I hear people talking about MAID there is so much focus on the domestic violence, which rightly so there should be. But very few people mentioned the addiction, the, the alcoholism.
[13.28] Alex needs to figure out what, who to trust, how much to trust them. And she still gets burned, you know, like she still gets friends every time and it’s, it’s heart wrenching, but it is so true to life because they’re all human there. There’s no good guy and bad guy, right. We’re all just somewhere in the middle.
[19.42]I think one of the, the biggest struggles, when you are trying to do something that you feel like in your gut is the right thing to do. But people are pushing back on you and friends are saying that’s not the right answer or think about your children. You know, it, it’s hard not to keep listening to that intuition and gut. And when it comes to addiction, it adds a whole another element because you see somebody trying to. Recover or they’re going through the motions of recovery and you’re thinking, well, maybe things are better now. But ultimately when Alex and as this character listened to her gut, it took her to that same place where she started. I know what I need to do.
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Learn more about Celeste’s bookFrom Gray Area Drinking to Sober and Free
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