Sarah Aswell Was Seven Minutes Late to Our Meeting

Sarah Aswell photographed by Tiffany Williams.

Sarah Aswell was exactly seven minutes late to the meeting we’d set up at Clyde Coffee because — she mentioned later — she was preparing questions for her interview with Vice President Kamala Harris the next day.

“I’m going to talk to her about why medical professionals don’t listen to Black women,” Aswell said, citing studies that show disparities between the care white and Black women receive during pregnancy. As the new Senior Editor of parenting website Scary Mommy, Aswell gets to ask the tough questions. 

I didn’t mind (I’m always approximately five minutes late to everything). But now I was intrigued. I wanted to know if Aswell ever imagined her path, which began as a staff writer for a rural Iowa newspaper making $7.25 per hour, would lead to interviewing the nation’s first female Black vice president from her home in Missoula. 

“I don’t think 10-year-old me would be surprised I’m the editor of a magazine. I think teenage me might be a little disappointed it’s a parenting publication.”

But Scary Mommy isn’t just any parenting publication. Launched in 2008 as a blog, Scary Mommy has evolved into an online empire with 13 million readers and 20 million social media followers. It’s what would happen if The New Yorker and Parents magazine had a baby. It’s mothering with the irreverence, honesty, a humor that attracts millennials in the parenting trenches. 

Aswell is in those trenches herself with daughters Willa, 9, and Joey, 7. She is recently divorced.

Aswell, who was born in Massachusetts, moved to Missoula to work toward her MFA in Creative Writing at UM. Upon graduation, she moved to New York City to pursue her writing career. She remembers taking any freelance writing job she could get — “whatever pays the bills” — sometimes writing hard-hitting news for publications like The Advocate and sometimes writing ad copy for products she couldn’t care less about.

Eventually, the demands of NYC life became untenable, and along with her husband at the time, bought a car and fled their tiny, roach-infested apartment bound for Missoula. Parenthood came next, and like so many mothers, Aswell shifted her role to full-time parent when her daughters were born, working only in the margins of the day when they were asleep. Aswell says she cherishes the time she was able to spend with them at home when they were young. But like so many mothers, she also admitted she felt herself slip away. 

Then, in 2016, Aswell decided to try out stand-up comedy as a dare. 

“I saw this moment where I could take my life back,” she said. “Stand-up opened a whole new world to me and allowed me to embrace who I am. I did some humor writing in college and suddenly I remembered what it was like to make people laugh.”

In 2018, Thrillist named Aswell one of the best undiscovered comedians in America. 

“It gives me joy to make people laugh because that is connection. It’s creating a line between me and another person. The things that make us feel alone or weird are things anyone can relate to if only we would say them out loud.” 

But as Aswell’s career was flourishing, her marriage struggled.

“That sucks,” she said simply, bypassing more complicated and blame-y explanations that formerly married people usually give for unraveling. 

Post divorce, Aswell had to navigate the world as a single person for the first time in more than a decade (you can read more about that in her piece about the Worst Wives Club). She also had to become the sole breadwinner in her household. She accepted a position at Submittable, Missoula’s largest tech company. But last year, Aswell left Submittable, citing changes that came with new leadership.  

So she landed a job as Special Projects Editor at Scary Mommy in 2021. This March, she was promoted to Senior Editor. Her assignments have included trending news like school book bans, celebrity pregnancies, and the challenges of parenting during a pandemic. And she’s even interviewed a Jonas Brother. Okay, it was Kevin Jonas, but it still counts.

“Now I feel supported,” she said. “How much more ideal can it get when I can write about something I’m seething about and get it published the next day?”

And that’s just it. Aswell’s comedy and writing is sometimes bawdy and irreverent (Google her), but her countenance when she talks about hardship is relaxed and respectful. She holds so many complexities, I found myself wondering how Aswell stays so bright and joyful.

“My aura is yellow,” she said, half jokingly. 

Matching her aura, Aswell wore a yellow cardigan and sipped a golden-colored tea during our meeting. She spoke about the joy she finds outside of work, hosting a free comedy workshop every first Tuesday of the month at 5:30 p.m. at The Roxy. She also serves on the Board of Directors of the ZACC. 

When I asked her what is next, she told me she’s entering the phase of parenting where her children will need more attention. 

“I think that means I will be driving them everywhere.”

And she’s working on a book. When I asked what it was about, she demurred. 

“I’m not ready to talk about that yet,” she said, thoughtfully. 

That’s okay. If there’s one thing I learned about Aswell as she shared her insights and journey with me, it’s that she’s worth waiting for.