Tag: motherhood
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They say a father is a daughter’s first love. But really, he’s her first case study—her first example, her first unintentional teacher. Long before girls learn equations or phonics, they learn tone. They learn tension. They learn what affection looks like in practice, not theory. They learn how it feels to be prioritized—or quietly placed…
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I didn’t cry when I saw the headline. I didn’t pause long enough to let it sink in, and I didn’t feel that sharp intake of breath that used to come with this kind of news. I registered what happened, clocked the location, skimmed the details, and kept scrolling like my brain had already decided…
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A Reflection on Safety, Autonomy, and Mother’s Intuition I’m not homeschooling because I believe I’m some untapped academic prodigy who can outperform the entire public school system. I’m homeschooling because I refuse to gamble my daughters’ safety on the hope that everyone else in the building is paying attention. We like to pretend motherhood is…
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A Love Letter to My Lingering Linguistic Trauma There are breakups you walk away from with a box of old hoodies, a regret or two, maybe a Spotify playlist you pretend you don’t miss…and then there are the ones that leave you flinching at random words like you’re being hunted by a rogue Scrabble tile.…
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A love letter to the women who stopped apologizing for choosing themselves. The Myth of Completion Somewhere between Disney movies and dating apps, we were brainwashed. Conditioned to believe that a woman’s story isn’t whole until a man enters the frame—until there’s a ring, a “Mrs.” before your name, and a happily ever after that…
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The Man and the Child None of us actually remember seeing them.My mom told us about it years later—at least a decade after it happened. Apparently, when we were really little—around three to five years old—all three of us kids saw the same thing: a man and a child. Different years.Different rooms.Same description. We each…
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Where Every Chapter of Womanhood Collides The last time I sat in my OBGYN’s waiting room, I couldn’t stop thinking about how strange it was—how full of life and loss that space always is. I was there to talk about a hysterectomy, while across from me, a young couple flipped through a parenting magazine, giggling…
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When Sleeplessness Isn’t Mania — It’s the Weight of Everything Anybody who knows me knows I don’t do all-nighters.Jamie used to make fun of me for it — no matter what we were doing, I’d hit my wall by 2AM like clockwork. My brain would just…power down. So when I stayed awake for nearly a…
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When Survival Mode Becomes the Default During a therapy session, I was telling my therapist all the things I’ve been doing to make sure the girls feel safe and secure through all this chaos—because, as always, they’re my #1 priority. She took a pause, then asked:“But how are you holding up?” And I froze. Because…
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The Ghost of the Girl I Used to Be That girl in the photo? She’s a stranger to me now. She was in her first year of homeownership and her first “grown-up” job. Working on her bachelor’s degree. Juggling a goofy dog and an even goofier fiancé. She battled her own demons, sure, but she…