I have been a mom for almost 21 years now. I’ve been a mother longer than I have not. For most of those 21 years I have been a single mother. It is core to who I am in a way that little else is. And yet, motherhood is a role that is always evolving into something new, as our children grow and change. Motherhood is always surprising, even when we wish it wouldn’t be.

Mother’s Day is a hard day for a lot of people for a lot of reasons. It’s honestly long been a very hard day for me. Single moms don’t get the flowers and the spa days. They get macaroni cards from young children that eventually devolve into, “oh, happy Mother’s Day,” from surly teens as they rush out the door. If you are a single mom, Mother’s Day is a day - like so many other holidays - to avoid social media and all of the reminders that other mothers are being supported and appreciated in very many lovely ways.

I am fortunate enough to have a close and reasonably healthy (I mean, there’s only so much one can ask for in mother-daughter dynamics) relationship with my mother. My mom was also a single mom, so I’ve always tried to make the day special for her since I was small. I remember at 11 stealing the flowers from the sign at the entry to our apartment complex to put in a vase for her and making my signature (only) dish for dinner: meatloaf and devilled eggs. I remember how sad my mom used to be at the beginning of every Mother’s Day, and now as a mother, I understand how you can love being a mother and hate Mother’s Day on a much more personal level.

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And I do love being a mother - even when I don’t like being a mother. I love my children in a way that I didn’t think it was possible to love anyone. They are the electric pulse that keeps my heart pumping. I’m so grateful for them and don’t know who I’d be without them.

At the same time I know that nothing - nothing in the world - has the power to undo me the way my children do. It is terrifying at times to love someone so deeply, to be so very tied to their wellbeing and yet at times have so little control over their wellbeing. It feels cruel at times to spend so many years dedicated to people who, if you are doing it right, will pull away from you in sometimes very hurtful ways.

Motherhood means a lot of things to a lot of people. And I feel like at times we aren’t allowed to talk about all that motherhood is to us. How very toxic, to not be able to talk openly about something so important and impactful. So I’m going to talk about a few things. A few things that everyone knows. A few things that people sometimes are afraid to say. Not everyone will be a mother. Not everyone had a mother. But motherhood, and how we talk about motherhood, impacts us all. So here’s some of my observations on motherhood, in no particular order. I can’t promise they will be wise or revelatory. They are just mine:

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The beauty of vaginal delivery that is often pushed upon pregnant people - the thing that makes beautiful scenes in movies where you are clutching a screaming baby to your sweaty chest and crying - is really just about realizing that you are still alive after being sure that you were going to absolutely split in half and die. It’s only beautiful in relation to how fucking terrifying the whole ripping your birth canal thing is. But just like I don’t need someone to hold a gun to my head to value life, I don’t feel like I need to scream in horrific pain while a baby stretches my hoohah far past capacity in order to value my baby. There are plenty of opportunities to feel terrified and exhausted and in unbearable pain throughout motherhood down the road. Epidurals are great. C-Sections are great. Whatever gets that baby out.
Babies smell either amazing or horrible. There is no “neutral” smelling baby. They either smell like powdery heaven or rancid milk. Like a magical mix of fresh snow and warm linens or actual shit. You never take a sniff of a baby and get…..nothing. You know how in Harry Potter (JK Rowling is an asshole btw -not totally relevant but it’s always good to say) those wizard kids are always eating those jelly beans that might be some amazing flavor you didn’t think was possible but also might taste like boogers? Baby smells are like that. I always wondered why those kids didn’t just stick to muggle candy that was guaranteed to NOT taste like boogers or vomit, but then again, I’m never not leaning in and smelling a baby that I’m holding even though I’m fully aware of the risks.
The first year of parenting is one of the hardest years imaginable and people who say it is magical are part of why it’s so hard. You will never feel so exhausted. You will never feel so defeated. You will scream the worst obscenities in your head at your screaming child who is on day three of refusing to sleep more than ten minutes at a time. You will never feel as out of control as when your child won’t eat and yet won’t stop screaming that it’s hungry, or won’t sleep but won’t stop screaming because it’s tired. And people will come and tell you how lucky you are and how beautiful that baby is and how happy you must be and they will leave the moment the baby’s tears interrupt their conversation and you will be alone feeling like your urge to set the screaming child in a crib and move to another country makes you a bad mother.
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Every parent who is actively involved in raising a baby will at one point or another need to leave the room that their screaming child is in for everyone’s safety. It is a horrible and terrifying feeling and any parent who has been through these years and says that they haven’t had to walk away is fucking lying.
Nothing will make you more comfortable with bodily fluids than parenting. I am not fazed by blood, shit, piss, vomit - none of it, in any amount short of actual murder, can bother me. It has all been on me more times than I can count.
Since motherhood so often keeps you from things you want to do, I feel it’s only fair that you use motherhood as an excuse to get out of anything you don’t want to do. It is totally fine to lie and say you can’t do that thing because of your kids. Those kids owe you.
It’s really fucked up that we are all to various degrees flawed, traumatized, hurting humans who are not responsible for what has happened to us, and yet also are fully responsible for how that trauma impacts our parenting.
Sometimes you don’t really see how truly human your mother is until you’re the fully human mother struggling to not fuck your kid up with all the ways you are fucked up. Somehow that can make how your mother raised you more understandable and at the same time more indefensible.
Children tell the worst jokes when they are trying to and the best jokes when they aren’t and they often get really pissed off when you laugh at the latter instead of the former.
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It can be really hard to tell if your teenager’s being an asshole to you because you created a safe bond with them that they feel comfortable testing or because you coddled them and they don’t respect you. Usually I try to ask myself, “Is my kid trying to hurt me, or annoy me?” and that helps me figure out which side I’m on.
Speaking of teenagers, the difference between baby smell and teenager smell is that the box of jelly beans is literally all earwax and vomit.
Your kid is going to find your vibrator. There’s no place you can hide it where they won’t find it. If you get your kid all the way through 18 and they didn’t find your vibrator, they just didn’t tell you that they found it.
A lot of other moms suck. Not because women suck and you’re “not like other women” or whatever nonsense. But because a lot of people suck. We’re told that we have a natural bond with other mothers even if we have nothing else in common and we’re also expected to lie about what motherhood is all about so none of us seem like worse mothers than the other mothers and it’s all so fucking weird. And motherhood can be so isolating it can make us desperate. Believe it or not, desperation, exhaustion, loneliness and the requirement to lie while also fighting the compulsion to confess all of our deep dark mom secrets don’t often make us fun people to be around. I mean, I think a lot of other moms suck, but also I know that I’m also the “other moms” I’m talking about. Actually, I’m probably worse because I’m a writer so I like to fill up desperate, awkward spaces with so many words that nobody asked for.
All kids have different ways of showing affection and those ways evolve sometimes quite drastically over the years. It’s really important to respect and accept that love from kids - be it a hug, a high five, or a sarcastic joke - while also doing your best to be really clear with them about when you are showing them love while not expecting them to reciprocate in the exact same way. Just as it can be hard to recognize affection from your kids, it can be hard for them to recognize it from you.
I feel like the sign of how thoroughly “mom” you are is how everyone in the room can be about to pull their hair out by the 50th time your kid says “mom, mom, mom…” and you won’t even hear it, but if they are genuinely sad or hurt they can’t even get out “mo-” before you’re like, “OH MY GOD WHAT’S HAPPENED ARE YOU OK.”
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One day when I was feeling particularly guilty about how little patience I had to play cars with my 6 year old who was obsessed with vehicles and how many dirty dishes had piled up in my sink my therapist told me something like: “One of the most damaging things a parent can do to their kid is act like they are perfect and that they only exist to parent. No child can live up to that expectation of perfection and nobody else in their life will be able to live up to that expectation of devotion. One of the most important lessons a kid can learn is that their parents are people with needs and wants and flaws who can be tired or cranky and can have personalities and preferences that are different than their own and that is okay.” I feel like moms in particular are held to this dangerous standard in a way that harms both them and their children deeply. Letting go of that has been so important to my wellbeing and the wellbeing of my children.
Sometimes it’s really important to remind yourself that you’re trying to raise healthy and happy adults, not “good” children. Often, what helps your child grow into a strong, confident adult capable of healthy relationships can make them much more stubborn and argumentative children.
I miss my old pelvic floor and I didn’t even know what it was before it became the saggy, leaky mess that it is now. Nobody told me to appreciate it before it was gone but if you have a vagina and might one day push a kid out of it I’m going to tell you clench - clench often and with joy and marvel at your inner strength while you have it. No, I’m not going to start doing kegels. I don’t have time or inclination to exercise anything, let alone my vag. Most days I can barely remember to brush my teeth. I’ve resigned myself to always needing to know where the nearest bathroom is.
Some of the best moms I know never gave birth to their kids. Some never had kids at all. Some of the best moms I know were neighbors, aunties, friends... Some of the best moms I know were kids who had to be their own moms. All those moms deserve so much love on Mother’s Day.
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Some people shouldn’t be moms. Usually they know it. One of the most loving things you can do if you don’t want to be a mom is to not be one. I’ve seen the damage done to and by women forced into parenthood when they didn’t want to be mothers. I feel like that’s really important to say right now. I don’t think there is something inherent to womanhood that makes us good or natural mothers and I don’t think there’s anything missing from women who don’t want to be or don’t feel like they should be mothers. Motherhood is really fucking hard and really fucking important. There are a lot of things in life that are really fucking hard and really fucking important and usually it’s best to only do them if you’re pretty sure that you want to - and can put the work in and have the resources to - do it reasonably well. Otherwise, it’s best to go find your hard and important thing that enriches you as much as you enrich it - or at least that you can be reasonably sure you won’t be really bad at. There are a lot of really amazing things out there that are really crucial that somebody do well and I’m completely comfortable with that somebody not being me. Motherhood should be no different.
I don’t believe that anyone who can give birth should be forced to give birth if they don’t want to - for any reason whatsoever. Not only that, I believe that if you don’t want to give birth for any reason whatsoever, it is really important that you don’t. But I also believe that we shouldn’t live in a world where people who would otherwise want to have a child, feel that they can not due to gender-based violence, lack of economic resources, or other systemic oppressions. Nobody who wants to have a child should feel like their decision is dictated by whatever disparate resources were allotted to them in a white supremacist capitalist patriarchy.
Usually teenagers will just roll their eyes at you but sometimes you’ll say something really funny that even they have to laugh at and they will be SO ANNOYED at having with their brief laughter admitted that you aren’t perhaps the most uncool mom on the planet and it’s the best feeling ever.
Don’t go to Disneyland with young kids who aren’t fully potty-trained. They will absolutely always have to pee only when you are about two people in line away from their favorite ride, after waiting an hour in line. You will spend most of the day in failed attempts to find a bathroom and then trying to change a hot, tired, wriggling, pee covered toddler in a somewhat (not at all) private spot in the middle of the theme park while your kid screams that they want one of those guns that shoot out bubbles that some other kid got but you refuse to get because you know it will be lost in exactly three minutes and if you think your kid is screaming now…oh just you wait. And then in like 2 years the kid won’t even remember that you took them to Disneyland at all.
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If you are parenting with a partner and you find that your partner is feeling like another child you have to raise, something is really wrong in your relationship. If you become a mother to your child and suddenly that means that you are also mother to a grown-ass man (it usually is a man, but not always) who also expects you to have sex with him (ew?) then something is really wrong in your relationship and with your partner’s expectations of partnership and parenting. If you are coparenting with a partner and yet never seem partnered in that parenting, something is very wrong with your relationship. I know that there is a lot of pressure on mothers (especially mothers in relationships with cis dudes) to do whatever they can to “keep families together” - but you can not raise your partner and your children at the same time, and to try to do so will only rob your children of what limited time and attention you have to give.
One of the greatest gifts I have been so fortunate to be able to give to my two boys was to give them the opportunity to live with, love, and be guided by a woman who has built a life for herself that fulfills her and has unapologetically pursued her passions, and live in a home where she was respected by all who were allowed to enter. I had to make a lot of very hard decisions that a lot of people disapproved of in order to be able to give this to them. I will never regret any of it.
If any part of you is silly, let your kids see that. If any part of you is sentimental and sensitive, let your kids see that. If any part of you is nerdy, let your kids see that. If any part of you holds an audacious dream, let your kid see that. That is the stardust in you left from your childhood. That is the part of you that is still pure possibility. Don’t keep the most magical parts of yourself from your children, all it will do is make them dread the prospect of adulthood.
If you are a mother, you need time away from your kids. You need to exist outside of motherhood. You need to reconnect with your own needs. You need more time away than you are likely getting. So when you do get time, take it. Take it and commit to it and enjoy it. It will make you a happier person and a better mother.

I think that’s enough for now. It is Mother’s Day after all. I want to eat ice cream and watch murder mysteries. I hope that this has helped you, informed you, or at least entertained you. I hope that if you are a mother that you have had a wonderful Mother’s Day. I hope that if it hasn’t been wonderful (and so many aren’t) that you at least know that you deserve a lot of wonderful days. If Mother’s Day is a day you don’t wish to celebrate, or a day that triggers trauma, I hope that you are kind to yourself and know that you are not alone. No matter what, I love you.

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Ijeoma Oluo: Behind the Book

Your kid is going to find your vibrator.