An ode to the women who have mothered me

And musings on motherhood & care work

I always knew I wanted to be a mother. I didn’t always want to get married, but I knew I wanted to have kids. The idea of my not having kids wasn’t one that I ever seriously entertained or considered. I wanted at least two, but preferably three, kids. I wanted a loud, warm house, full of little kids, who would grow into teenagers who would hang out with their friends around my kitchen table, who would grow into adults who would come home for loud, warm holidays every year. This fantasy had a husband in it, but largely because I thought at the time that was a recommended, if not necessary, ingredient to this fairy tale family life.  

And a “fantasy” it was. I am a mother, but almost none of the rest of that fantasy materialized in the way I thought it would. As a divorced and unpartnered mom of one child, nearly every expectation I had of motherhood has been flipped on its head. And I couldn’t be more grateful – this version, this real version, of motherhood is infinitely richer and more interesting than I ever could have imagined in my fantasy of conventional family life.

My son’s father and I split up when my son was eight months old, and my first few years of early motherhood are inextricably tied up with going through a surprising and traumatic divorce. One of the dark worries that plagues me at 3am on sleepless nights is the fear that I wasn’t the best mom in those years because I somehow transmitted all my anxiety and stress and trauma onto my infant and toddler son and that I’ve permanently damaged him because of that. In the light of day, I will sometimes allow myself to be more objective and see that I did manage to be a pretty decent mom at that time. I’ve accepted that there are no do-overs, that I did the best I could do and that maybe I should go easier on myself, but I suspect it’s a worry that will take up space in my head for the rest of my days regardless.

What I’ve come to see over the years is that not being married lets me experience being a mother without being a wife. My identity as a mother is pure and undiluted. I am not “wife and mother” or “mother and wife” – I’m just “mother.” (Why does “mother” sound so creepy when used like that?!) I’ve also come to see that I like this. I like being a mom who is not a wife. I like it very much. Motherhood forced a reckoning with my own self and my own identity. Strangely, becoming a mother pushed me to think more intentionally than ever about who I am independent of my identity as a mother. I’m not sure I would have gone through this reckoning if I was also a wife. Maybe I would have, I’ll never know. 

I love being a mom more than I ever thought I would, and for reasons I didn’t expect. My kid isn’t a typical kid in many ways. He’s way better and more interesting than any kid I could have dreamed up in my pre-motherhood fantasies. Mothering this particular not-typical child has made me a not-typical mom, and undoubtedly a better and more interesting mom than in those fantasies. The reasons I love being a mom have little to do with that fantasy. Because it’s not the fantasy – it’s about the kid, right? It’s the kid. Getting to be part of this human’s life and getting to witness and to know at the level of my bones this person. Well, that’s just pretty fucking amazing, isn’t it? Is there anything more truly amazing than that? 

So yes, I love being a mom, and I love being a single mom. Know what I don’t love? Mother’s Day. Rather than value the work of mothering and parenting in substantial ways, we buy flowers and scented candles and schmaltzy greeting cards, we take our moms to a mediocre brunch, and most importantly because this is America, we use emotional manipulation to sell and buy stuff. Mother’s Day is a marketing campaign. Instead of creating a system and a society where mothers and the work of mothering and caregiving is actually valued, protected and nourished, we put the onus on individuals to buy their moms something nice and pretty and flowery one day a year. Our matriarchs and our care work are subsumed by capitalism.

I’ve always been a little icked-out by Mother’s Day. It’s not just that it’s sold to us as an individualistic, consumerist “holiday,” but also one that holds up motherhood as the apogee of womanhood. After I got divorced, it dawned on me that Mother’s Day should really be called Wife’s Day. Because let me tell you, if you’re a single mom of a young child, you are the one planning and executing your Mother’s Day, which you will be reminded of in a social media onslaught on every second Sunday in May. You might even end up feeling more unseen than usual on Mother’s Day. Just more invisible labor with no one around to witness it, to witness you. Now that my son is a little older, Mother’s Day has become a bit less work; he gets and understands what it is and does his 11-year-old best. But Mother’s Day still feels … false, and inadequate.

Not to mention that Mother’s Day can be a landmine for people who have deceased mothers, who have challenging relationships with their mothers, who long to be a mother themselves, who have lost children – the list goes on. It can be a sad holiday.  

One doesn’t need to have birthed or raised a child in order to mother. Our society devalues mothering in all its forms, which are many. (

Jo-Ann Finkelstein, PhD

wrote a terrific piece on just how devalued care work is.) So for this Mother’s Day, I want to thank and acknowledge some of the women who have mothered me. 

• My own mother. The OG, the one who did actually birth and raise me. I got pretty damn lucky to have a pretty damn good mom, I have to say. It exceeds the bounds of this post to articulate all the ways my mom has mothered me. But most importantly, I know (and have always known) that my mom (and my dad, but this isn’t about dads) is in my corner, more than anyone else on this planet. I know that she has been, is, and will always be there for me and have my back, no questions asked. At the end of the day, what more can a person ask for from a parent? If nothing else, I hope my son grows up knowing deep in his core that I’ve got his back, no matter what. (She also makes the best grilled cheese in the world.)

• The ghosts of my grandmothers. I never really knew my maternal grandmother, who died when I was quite young. I knew and utterly adored my paternal grandmother, who died when I was 12. I miss knowing them both. But their own mothering comes through both of my parents to me. 

• My twin aunts (dad’s sisters). They showed me that a girl from Taylorville can go explore the world, go to grad school, live in cities, try out new ways of being. I’m not sure I would have gone to law school or moved to New York if they hadn’t blazed this trail before me.

• My auntie (mom’s sister). She has shown me a different lens through which to see my mom, her baby sister. And she showed me early on in my divorce journey that I would be okay, I really would.

• My son’s nanny. Her job is to care for my son, but she has cared for me just as much. Over the years, she has always been the one to help my son make a card and gift for me for my birthday and for Mother’s Day. She has shown me the value of patience and empathy (I don’t think I’ve ever once heard her raise her voice at my kid in the 11 years she has been with us, even when he is at his most annoying and frustrating). I would be utterly lost as a mother without her. It takes a village, and my village would be depleted without her.

• My friends who have known me since before I had kids. They know the old me, they can transport me to that previous iteration of myself.

• My friends who don’t have kids. They remind me that I am a whole person outside of being a mom. They inspire me. 

• My mom friends. Outside of my nanny, my mom friends are the VIPs in this village of mine. I would not have gotten through the first few years of motherhood without them. If you are just starting out on your motherhood journey, make sure you’ve got some mom friends. When you accidentally spill, and thus ruin, the liquid gold breast milk you spent two weeks pumping and saving, you’ll want to have someone to text those pictures to.

• My “divorce guru” friend. I met her just a few months after separating from my then-husband. She approached me at a party of a mutual friend and asked me if I was going through a divorce. I said I was, and she said “I thought so, I could sense it.” She’d been through it herself. We became fast friends, and she helped me through a lot of, frankly, shit. She also sent me flowers on Mother’s Day, which made me cry. She saw me.

• Every mother I’ve ever worked with. Goddamn superheroes, every one.

• The boss who took me under her wing at a moment of deep personal crisis that she didn’t even know about. She changed the trajectory of my life.

• The boss who showed me how to lead and manage with empathy and compassion at the center. 

• The boss who taught me to know and ask for what I’m worth.

• The woman at the bodega across the street. When I first moved to this neighborhood 12 years ago, I was about five months pregnant. A very large five months pregnant (this kid was almost 10 pounds when he was born!). I was at the bodega, and she was behind the counter. As I was checking out, she said to me “Soon, yes?” pointing to my swollen belly. “Um, not really,” I said. “Oh. Twins?” she said. “No,” I said tersely and walked out. Since then, she has always been kind to me. I don’t know her name, she doesn’t know mine. She’s seen my son grow up, and she sometimes gives me white chocolate truffles (his favorite) to give to him. I think she might own the bodega, but I’m not sure. I like knowing that she’s there, that she’s seen me from being massively pregnant to being the mom of a tall tween kiddo. She’s witnessed me in the day-to-day of being a mom.

• Myself. We all have to mother ourselves sometimes, so let’s honor that too on this Mother’s Day.

Happy Mother’s Day to all who do the incredibly hard and vital work of caring for others. Maybe the world could use more mothering right now. 

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What’s got my attention this week

• Loved this interview with Brittney Griner and Megan Rapino. Obviously Griner has been through a lot, but doesn’t it just seem like she and Megan would be super fun to hang out with? Call me!

• For a newsletter about women who are A Lot, I don’t mention Madonna enough. The woman just put on a free concert for more than 1 million people, at 65 years old. Queen.

• Women will always find ways to be more than just society’s childbearers.

• Monsters: A Fan’s Dilemma was one of my favorite books I read in 2023, and I think about it all the time. I was most recently thinking about it when pondering country music. So I loved this interview with the author Claire Dederer and

  Anne Helen Petersen
  . 

• Another thing I’ve been thinking about a lot is whether feminism is letting boys and men down.

  Ruth Whippman
  in this smart essay notes that “The feminist movement needs to sell dismantling patriarchy to boys as liberation. Instead they have sold it as a punishment.” 

• This kinda blew my mind. 

WAL woman of the week

A woman out there in the world, being A Lot

This 19-year-old race car driver Bianca Bustamante has been focused on competitive racing, a male-dominated sport, since she was six years old. She seems cool. And quite driven (hahaha).

Out of the mouths of babes

“Age is just time going by, and that’s very mysterious.” The remarkable Maxine Hong Kingston.