"Did you miss me?" Meghan McCain asks in the trailer of her new podcast.
The world hasn't heard much from the daughter of the late Arizona Sen. John McCain since she announced her departure from ABC's "The View" in 2021. On the show, the 39-year-old McCain was known for her conservative and sometimes controversial political views, and for getting into near-screaming matches with her liberal co-hosts.
Now McCain has her own show: a podcast called "Meghan McCain Has Entered The Chat." Launched in November, the podcast features McCain discusses things like politics, trending news and pop culture.
As for her personal life, much has changed. From post-partum depression to urging new moms not to lose their identities, McCain shares how the past few years have really been in an exclusive with Parents magazine.
Life shifted dramatically for McCain after giving birth to her first daughter, Liberty, in 2020, when she was still a co-host on "The View."
“I had never even diapered a child before. I had to be taught by the nurses in the hospital,” McCain told Parents. “And I was really bad at it for a long time.”
That wasn't the only thing foreign to McCain, who also discussed difficulties with breastfeeding and pumping with Parents. But the toughest factor of all was, she told the outlet, was her bout with postpartum anxiety.
It wasn't until McCain failed a screening at her daughter's pediatrician's office that she sought help, though her friends and husband recognized the signs early on.
“I remember getting in the car and crying and my husband was like, ‘You're not doing well. You're definitely having a lot of problems and you're very emotional and you're scared about things you shouldn't be scared about,'" McCain told Parents, adding that she was imagining situations in which her baby would be harmed, and she couldn't turn that off.
McCain started treating her postpartum anxiety through antidepressants, therapy, acupuncture, and meditation, and within half a year she felt like her old self again.
There needs to be a rebranding around motherhood, McCain told Parents, a reality check that helps other mothers feel less alone.
"I am just not physically capable of doing it,” she joked. “I have had to really sort of curate out the Pinterest-perfect Instagram mom stuff because it makes me feel bad about myself.”
Pinterest-perfect Instagram feeds weren't the only thing she need reprieve from, though. McCain shared that by 2021, she was done getting into yelling matches on TV.
“I want a real break after 'The View,'” she told Parents. "“I don't want to yell at anyone; I don't want to be yelled at. I think there's enough anger and intensity in the world that I don't need to contribute to it. And as cheesy as it sounds, having daughters really changed the way I felt about what I was putting out in the world.”
McCain gave birth to her second daughter, Clover, on Jan. 19, 2023, but did not experience the same postpartum lows as she did with Liberty, for which she is grateful.
One coping mechanism McCain developed for handling the intensity of motherhood is thinking about her dad, she said. John McCain died in 2018 after a battle with an aggressive form of brain cancer.
“The gift my dad gave me when he died was, every single day, I'm truly happy to be here,” she told Parents. “It's probably because I had such a front-row seat as a caregiver for my dad when he was dying of brain cancer."
McCain is blazing a trail of her own these days. She hasn't just launched her own podcast, but her own production company. Citizen Cain Productions will produce "podcasts, scripted, unscripted and documentary content for all platforms with a mission to tell female-led and American stories," McCain told Variety.
She hopes other mothers will continue to dream, as well.
"You are not lobotomized," McCain said to Parents, speaking to career women who are also parents. "You're still interested in everything you were interested in before you had a kid and I wish somebody had told me that because I was really scared the only thing I would get to think and talk about is motherhood. And honestly, it's not the case.”
You can keep up with McCain on X and listen to her show wherever you get your podcasts.