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What do you do when everything falls apart at once and nobody’s coming to save you?
Shireen Jones has lived a version of that question most of us can’t imagine. She was one of Singapore’s first 200 COVID-19 cases. She lost a nine-year teaching career weeks after discharge, for a reason that has to be heard to be believed. Then came a pregnancy that broke her, a baby who wouldn’t stop crying for three months, and a comeback story she didn’t see coming.
Chris sits down with the mum-of-one, content creator, and host of the Rawmama podcast for a conversation about survival, mom rage, broken systems, and the kind of advice every new parent actually needs but rarely gets.
Some weeks, motherhood is hard. Some weeks, life piles on so much that you genuinely wonder if you’ll come out the other side. Shireen Jones has had a lot of those weeks and this conversation is what happens when you talk to someone who’s lived through several at once and is willing to share the raw truth outloud.
She and Chris cover what it was actually like inside NCID as Singapore’s COVID case #200, how systems and communities fail the people they’re supposed to protect, the mental toll of a colicky newborn, and what helped her crawl back to herself.
What you’ll take away
- What 26 days inside NCID was actually like as one of Singapore’s earliest COVID cases
- The real story behind Shireen’s termination, and the ten months of job-hunting that followed
- Why community failure (not just system failure) is happening
- What infant colic genuinely looks like from the inside, and why most “quick fixes” don’t work
- Shireen’s 50,000-view rule for protecting her mental health from comment sections
- The postpartum symptoms nobody warned her about, including 18 months of night sweats she mistook for early menopause
- Why “trauma bonding” with other new mums creates friendships that last decades
About Shireen Jones
Shireen Jones is a Singapore-based content creator, mum of one, and host of the Rawmama podcast. A teacher of nine years before motherhood, she now uses her platform to talk about parenting without a filter, the rage, the recovery, the dark comedy of it all.
Keep up with Shireen on Instagram @shireenbruha
Growing Pains is HoneyKids Asia’s podcast for the conversations you want to have after the kids go to bed.
If this one moved you, share it with a parent who needs to hear it. Or send your feedback and topic suggestions to podcast@honeykidsasia.com — we’d love to hear what you’d like us to talk about next.
Growing Pains is produced in partnership with Poddster, Singapore’s podcast studio.
