A conversation with Irin Rubin of MamaZen 

I sat down with Irin Rubin — founder of MamaZen, a maternal mental and emotional wellbeing platform — to talk about something I think every parent listening already recognizes: the slow slide into burnout that nobody warns you about, and how to find your way back. By the end of our conversation, I was crying a little, laughing a little, and rethinking everything about the word “superhero.”

Here’s the part that hit me hardest. We are not exhausted because we’re failing. We are exhausted because we’ve been handed an impossible script — and the way out isn’t doing more. It’s getting calmer.

How burnout actually creeps in

When I asked Irin what the earliest signs of burnout looked like for her, she didn’t describe a single dramatic day. She described two or three years of slow self-neglect.

“From the moment I stopped taking care of myself until I was in burnout, it took about two to three years. The exhaustion almost felt like sickness.” — Irin Rubin

That’s the part I think most of us miss. Burnout doesn’t show up with a sign. It shows up as the morning you can’t get out of bed. The afternoon you snap over something small. The evening you can’t even brush your teeth. It’s a slow swap — one day the version of you that copes is replaced by someone irritable, foggy, and constantly underwater, and you don’t quite remember when it happened.

For me, it looks like this: my oldest is 7, autistic and ADHD. My youngest is 4. I have ADHD. My husband is autistic. We are a fully neurodivergent family, and survival mode is our normal — three sensory profiles, three sets of food needs, one kitchen. By the time I realized I’d been operating in a low-grade exhaustion for months, the slide was already long.

If that sounds familiar, you’re not behind. You’re not failing. You’re tired in a way that has a name.

The cycle that’s burning us out

Irin named something in our conversation that I’ve been turning over ever since. She called it the vicious cycle of motherhood.

“Expectations, then failing, then guilt. And until we stop that cycle, we’re not going to feel better.” — Irin Rubin

The expectations come from a culture that hands us a story (good moms have it together) and a feed (look how easy it is for everyone else). The “failing” is what happens when real life doesn’t match the story. The guilt is what we do to ourselves about it — and the guilt, in Irin’s words, is draining us.

I once did a deep dive (with my ADHD brain) into why moms get framed as superheroes, and I came out of it almost relieved. Not because superhero status felt achievable, but because I realized I wasn’t the only one being crushed by it. The pressure to perform isn’t a personal flaw. It’s the air we’re all breathing.

The myth of the superhero mom

Here’s the reframe that turned our conversation. Irin doesn’t think the superhero mom is the one doing it all. She thinks that version is what’s burning us out.

“Superheroes also rest. They are not doing everything all the time.” — Irin Rubin

In her words, the real superhero mom is the one who says no to things she doesn’t need to do. The one who takes five minutes for a walk or a song she loves. The one who creates a calm environment for her kids — not a perfectly clean one. The one who is focused on what matters most: her own state, and her child’s emotional safety.

That landed hard for me. Because I get asked all the time what I want for my son’s future. The answer is always the same: I want a kid who is kind, compassionate, and contributing in his own way. And if that is the goal, the things that actually move us toward it are not the laundry pile or the Pinterest birthday. They are how I speak to him, how I regulate myself, how I show up when it’s hard.

As Irin put it: you can’t tell a child to be compassionate while you’re yelling at them. They learn from what you do, and especially from how you are.

Calm is a skill, not a script

One of the most useful things Irin said was about parenting scripts.

“Scripts work for one specific moment, for one specific behavior. What happens tomorrow when the behavior changes? You don’t have the script anymore. So we have to teach ourselves emotional regulation — how to come back to calm — because then no matter what happens, you’re prepared.” — Irin Rubin

This is gold for parents of neurodivergent kids. Because nothing about our days is predictable. The script for yesterday’s meltdown won’t fit today’s. The strategy that worked in one season won’t fit the next. What does travel across seasons is your ability to come back to your own calm. That’s the skill worth investing in. Everything else is downstream.

Co-regulation, not lectures

This is where the conversation got tender. Irin walked me through co-regulation — the practice of helping your child come back to calm by being calm yourself, not by talking them through it.

“Sometimes it’s okay to pause and not say anything. Start doing co-regulation.” — Irin Rubin

She described her two kids. One is auditory — Irin can speak softly and her daughter takes it in. Her second is more sensitive, and words can’t reach her in a flooded moment. So Irin breathes. After three or four breaths, her daughter’s nervous system starts to match hers. She doesn’t even notice it happening.

Hearing this, I told Irin something I don’t share often. When my 7-year-old is in deep dysregulation, I hold him like a baby and put his head against my chest so he can hear my heartbeat. I take slow breaths until my heart settles. And I watch him — sometimes after a minute, sometimes after several — let his body soften.

“It’s the most calming thing ever. There’s nothing weird about that. It’s beautiful.” — Irin Rubin

It struck me, talking to her, that he’s been listening to my heartbeat since he was inside me. That bond never went away. In his hardest moments, that’s still the place his nervous system trusts most.

If you’re parenting a neurodivergent child, I want you to hear this clearly: lectures don’t co-regulate. Logic doesn’t co-regulate. Your nervous system co-regulates. Find the version of this that fits your child — touch, voice, breath, heartbeat, proximity, silence — and lean into it. It will look different for every kid, and probably different for every season. That’s okay. The point isn’t the technique. The point is that they borrow your calm.

About Irin and MamaZen

Irin Rubin is the founder of MamaZen, a maternal mental and emotional wellbeing app she built after experiencing the gap between the clinical care she received around childbirth and the emotional support she actually needed afterward. MamaZen offers over 1,000 audio sessions blending mindfulness, CBT, and hypnotherapy, with specific tracks for the moments parenting actually wears us down — bedtime, meltdowns, mornings, transitions. There’s a dedicated program for moms raising kids with additional needs, and the app reports a 92% success rate among regular users at lowering the chronic fight-or-flight state most of us are living in.

Listen to the full episode

We covered so much more than I could fit here — including how to break generational cycles, what to do when your script fails, the difference between auditory and tactile co-regulation, and the moment Irin realized that her own state was setting the temperature of her entire home.

Listen to the full episode here

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