Magazine Author Z — Mutha

Motherhood, I’m learning, isn’t about balance. It’s about learning to live in the wreckage and finding that the wreckage is actually just a very messy, very loud, very beautiful new kind of home.

I realized I had been mourning a ghost. That woman at the dive bar? She didn't die. She transformed. And transformation is not polite. It is not pretty. It is a caterpillar dissolving into goo inside a cocoon before anything useful emerges. mutha magazine author z

I remember staring at a photo of myself from a year prior. I was at a dive bar, laughing, wearing a stained band t-shirt, drinking a cheap beer. I looked… light. Unburdened. I felt a pang of grief so sharp it shocked me. I wasn't sad for the baby. I was sad for her . The woman who could sleep in until noon. The woman who didn't know what “cluster feeding” meant. Motherhood, I’m learning, isn’t about balance

I am still in the goo phase, honestly. But I am learning that the liquidation sale isn't a loss. It's a trade. I traded the ability to sleep in for the ability to catch my daughter’s smile at 6 AM—that gummy, uncoordinated, miraculous thing. I traded the quiet of my own mind for the noise of a tiny person learning to laugh. That woman at the dive bar

Mutha Magazine is a publication focused on the complexities of motherhood—the raw, unfiltered, funny, painful, and real experiences that often get left out of the glossy parenting magazines.

The turning point wasn't a yoga class or a “self-care Sunday.” It was a Tuesday afternoon at 2 PM. My daughter was finally napping. I hadn't showered in two days. My hair was in a knot that required scissors to remove. I sat on the couch and instead of crying, I just… laughed. A dry, cracked, ugly laugh.

The first time I sat on the bathroom floor at 3 AM, holding a screaming infant who refused to latch, with my own t-shirt soaked in breastmilk and tears, I had a terrifying thought: I don't exist anymore. I am just a set of hands that changes diapers.