Her writing has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, Harper’s Bazaar, Psychology Today, Mother Tongue, The Strategist, and Vogue. The Motherload is her first book.
Am I managing? It doesn’t feel like I’m managing! It feels like I don’t even know what managing would look like! But for me, I tried to turn my interests into my work. I write about my life, I try to do projects about my hobbies (art, ballet). On a daily level, I write first thing when I wake up and I’m most fresh. Once I dip into the world of the internet I don’t have the ability to extricate myself. So I save that for after nine or ten am, and then I do emails and meetings. I try to be home for the kids from after school through dinner time, and fortunately, cause they are little, that’s pretty early. So I can do another round of work or something social after they go to sleep. But realistically that all requires having people—my husband, babysitters, etc—who are really helpful.
My book incorporates the art history and cultural theory that I studied, actually; I use both as a lens via which to delve into motherhood more deeply. I tried to mix it all up so a reader could get a sense of the mess inside my brain. But motherhood felt like the narrative most ripe for disruption and brutal honesty, so that’s what I leaned into.
I hope women feel, en masse, more seen, more acknowledged for their unique experiences—I hope they feel empowered to delineate their personal boundaries and the kind of care they expect from medical professionals, their partners, their relationship to the maternal. I also hope I entertain people. I hope I make them laugh, that’s so important. I didn’t tell all the grossest stories of my life for people to not laugh at them!
That no one is coming to save you but you, and you’re very capable of it—in fact you owe it to yourself. You get to decide your life and your happiness in many ways but that requires intentionality and practice. I practice announcing my boundaries in front of a mirror. Once you own your story, your shame, your insecurities, you won’t have a problem naming them and that takes away the power of anyone who wants to use them against you.
I don’t know that I feel successful. But I try to stay emotionally honest and I think whatever your story is, if you can own it, refuse to feel shame about it, you will feel personally fulfilled.
Just one?! Virginia Woolf, today.
Those gross powders you put in water for “electrolytes” but actually just so that it doesn't taste like water anymore
I pay no attention to trends, but I hope that women standing up for themselves gets easier and easier.
