Introduction
In October 2019, I stood in my kitchen staring at a birthday card, which sparked a full-blown identity crisis and eventually led to my burning a lot of my life down (in the best way). The card, which read, Happy Birthday, Mom! You're the best wife and mother in the world! We you! was well-intentioned and sweet. But as my eyes traced the words in front of me, I struggled to catch my breath. The room suddenly felt smaller, the walls closing in around me.
It was my thirty-first birthday. That morning, my husband and kids presented me with a handmade birthday card in an envelope and some garden-picked flowers. My six-month-old sat in her high chair next to my three-year-old. They beamed with pride at what they'd made me.
As I stood in the kitchen holding the birthday card, I was running on fumes, barely holding it together. I was deep in the raw, never-rested fog of my youngest's first year while also navigating life with a threenager. On top of everything, I was only eight weeks into a new teaching position at a new school. I'd had the rug pulled out from underneath me that June when, just days into my maternity leave, my position was eliminated and I'd been laid off. After a summer of uncertainty, I started a new job in September and now, two months in, I was still scrambling to find my footing. I was pumping on my prep periods, grading papers after bedtime, and using periodic child-free trips to the grocery store as my main source of self-care. I'd worked hard to hold on to bits of myself through my transition into motherhood-staying involved with neighborhood organizations and finding creative projects I could do from home-but those things were the first to go as I struggled to maintain balance. I'd been powering through the days and weeks, but I was beyond exhausted.
Right as I was reading the birthday card, my husband, Jack, announced that it was a "whatever Mom wants to do" day! My heart sank. I was the "best mom and wife" according to them, and yet, all I wanted for my birthday was to not figure out the plan. A real gift would have been an entire day during which I didn't have to make a single decision. I didn't want to have to think about what kind of activity everyone would like, what restaurant had the chicken strips the kids might eat, or take into consideration how we'd work around nap and nursing schedules. Even on my birthday, which was supposed to be a celebration of me as a person, I was a mother and a wife first. Despite all the good intentions and love being launched my way that morning, I couldn't help but notice how suffocated I felt.
Jack was doing everything in his power to encourage me to put myself first, but what wasn't clear to either of us at the time was how many barriers were in the way of actually making that possible. He thought he was being supportive, but by tossing the reins to me, my husband was unintentionally giving me more work. Just telling me to do "whatever I wanted" disregarded all the mental and emotional labor that went into having a fun day with a family of four. The Mom Day and the card that addressed me by my roles, with no mention of me as a person, felt like clear proof of what I'd feared: that my value was measured by what I was to others, and that the work I was doing was invisible. I didn't want to force my family into doing something I wanted to do; I wanted them to notice what might be enjoyable and then make considerate plans for me.
The sting of sadness that came with my gifts was paired with shame. I felt like an ungrateful brat for being bothered by the sweet gestures of the people who loved me. I felt like I had no reason to be upset. I thought I was being a total fool for not being satisfied. I didn't have the energy or the understanding to express what was actually going on with me. So rather than ruining the mood by confronting whatever weird feelings were coming up, I sipped my coffee, choked back confused tears, and picked a place for lunch that I knew had something my kids would eat.
On the surface, that birthday looked the same as all the others-buying a few plants and getting ice cream-but something in me had changed. I'd frequently found myself in a cycle of rumination and resentment, acting like a nag or denying my feelings so I wouldn't come off like one, but as the day went on, rather than pushing away the feelings that came up for me, I let them linger. I realized I'd been walking around most days with a rain cloud over me, going through the motions without giving myself time to process anything. I was so tired and worn out, exhausted from making decisions all day every day about the kids, the house, my job, and the groceries. I wanted a break. A real break. Not just a solo trip to Target. But I was so tired that the thought of the effort I'd have to put in to getting that break made me want to scream. The thought of picking out what I wanted to eat for lunch felt like one decision too many. On the day of my thirty-first birthday, rather than wallowing in familiar self-pity, I allowed my feelings of resignation to transform. I couldn't accept a future full of tearful birthdays during which I felt like a ghost. That card propelled me forward.
You Got This, Mama
I'd been told through Instagram and Facebook posts featuring tired but happy moms that the struggle would be worth it, and if I could just try to be present, motherhood would fulfill me. I was smart and resilient and had great support, so whenever I felt like I was hitting a wall, I figured if I kept moving forward, things would eventually ease up. I thought motherhood was a muscle I needed to keep exercising, and if I continued to pick up more responsibilities, I'd just get stronger and more capable, like all those model mothers online. I'd heard every variation of "It's just a season, Mama!" but the seasons just kept hitting, always with inclement weather. Standing in the kitchen on my birthday, fighting back tears, I didn't feel strong. I felt deflated and defeated. I felt resentful and alone. I had been quietly Momfluenced and had internalized the ways motherhood requires martyrdom.
I was Jack's wife, Charlie and Frances's mom, dedicating myself willingly to those roles and then quietly resenting them for how much I'd felt pressured to sacrifice for them. I'd allowed myself to be swallowed up by those titles to the point where I didn't recognize myself that morning. I was a wife and a mother, and I loved my husband and kids, but who was Laura? Believing my primary contribution to the world was how I could provide for the needs of others, especially as a mother, I wasn't sure how to provide for my own anymore. In fact, I wasn't even sure what my own needs were.
How had I gotten to that point? I had always seen myself as a progressive feminist. I'd been outspoken about women's issues since I could remember. I was involved in local activism, studied social issues, and read feminist theory. I wanted the world to be fair and equitable, and I carried that core belief with me in everything I did-in my friendships, in my work in my community and as a teacher, and, I thought, in my marriage.
Why then, three years and two kids into parenthood, did I feel convinced that I needed to make myself smaller for the sake of being a certain kind of parent or partner? I was so out of practice considering my needs and desires in decision-making. Where would I go if I had a week to myself? What would I eat for dinner if it was really up to me? I didn't know. I'd pushed myself so far to the sidelines that when opportunities came up-weekends away with friends, a leadership role at work-I turned them down without giving any serious consideration to how I could make it work. I cleared my plate of what I felt extra or optional, the personal interests and passions, and tried to suppress the grief of letting go. Dedication to my roles was supposed to bring me all the connection and fulfillment I needed.
Why didn't pouring myself into those roles feel like enough for me? Where had I picked up this belief that I needed to sacrifice myself in order to make myself valuable? I was so terrified to tell the people in my life what I really needed. Why did I feel like my family would stop loving me if I chose to love myself?
I pictured myself as a powerhouse take-no-shit mom with a career and a family, just like any man could have. Unknown to me, I had bought into a toxic version of the American Dream, believing self-reliance was a virtue. I was applauded for "balancing it all" and wore my hard work, tired eyes, and hustle like badges of honor. In an effort to feel empowered in an anti-woman world, I'd unintentionally slipped into a position of hyperindependence, basically writing the same story of inequity but in a different font.
Throughout my twenties, I'd watched as friends began making major life decisions: moving in with partners, relocating for new jobs, getting married, having kids or choosing not to. I'd assumed we'd be different. We were artists, musicians, misfits-"nontraditional" in so many ways. Despite that, we transitioned through milestones, and familiar trends began to emerge. As our couple friends became parents, many of the new dads continued to grab weekly postwork drinks while their wives traded their trivia nights for virtual book clubs or "mommy and me" yoga. Sure, the women in my life were taking on leadership positions at work and the men wore nail polish, but the postwedding thank-you notes always seemed to arrive scrawled in my girlfriends' handwriting. Halloween parties were organized among wives and girlfriends, who coordinated shared dishes ahead of time and began to clean up while saying their goodbyes. Antiquated gender norms reared their ugly heads in my partnership, in my friendships, and in the lives of the people around me. In hindsight, it's obvious I was playing out patriarchal expectations and contributing to my own suffering, but while it was happening, it just seemed like the way things were. Much of it felt like a choice-the marriage, the kids, even the casseroles. The novelty of early adulthood and my sense of belonging made it easier to gloss over the more subtle inequities that were compounding in my life.
An especially glaring example of this was that when I looked at the caregivers around me, martyrdom was not only completely acceptable-it was expected. In the Facebook "mommy" groups, on TV, and in viral videos, I saw the same thing: "Motherhood is hard! Hang in there, Mama!" The motherhood forums made it clear that it was customary to be a little bit (or a lot a bit) miserable, evidenced by the dozens of daily posts about never having enough personal time or venting about husbands. In between stories outlining how to ask reluctant bosses for pump breaks were posts about "husband chore charts,'' under which hundreds of women would laugh together in the comments about the challenges of getting their husbands to pitch in. When one of them shared, "I left the house for a girls' night and the kids stayed up past 10!" the group's members responded with similar stories and gave suggestions for how to better prepare next time.
Carrying the world on your shoulders is a part of the mother archetype. No matter who you are or what your circumstances-whether you're a lesbian parent in a dual-income household, a middle-class straight stay-at-home mom, or a working single mother-against any and all struggles, you're supposed to be able to get shit done. This was the story that was spun in online spaces I hung out in. Mothers endure! We make it work! We do it all! That's our superpower! Don't you forget it! You got this, Mama!
The feeling of overwhelm and loss of identity were considered part of the gig. Senses of isolation and self-abandonment were the norm-not just side effects of motherhood but part of what defined the role. And we overworked moms were expected to bond around it. A lack of support was inevitable, so moms encouraged one another to embrace superhuman strength with pride.
In those first years of motherhood, I turned to my friends online and in person to help keep me going. As often as I could swing it, I'd get together with my mom friends for a picnic brunch, where we would bring our babies to a local park. We'd do a little catching up before shifting to commiserating. We'd air our grievances about feeling constantly tired and overwhelmed, share about our partners casually turning on the TV instead of tackling the dishes, complain about unsympathetic bosses, and then send one another off into battle once more. Each visit, I left wishing we could savor that space of connection and validation for a little longer, always feeling like we'd just scratched the surface and never fully confronted what we'd all been dealing with behind closed doors. Any complaint of motherhood came furiously Bubble-Wrapped with dozens of reasons why it was the most magical thing to ever happen to us, lest anyone be judged a bad mom. "Wouldn't trade it for the world!" Any criticism of a partner who wasn't pulling their weight was met with chuckles and downplaying. "He's a fool, but he's my fool!" "Is it really love if you don't also want to kill them sometimes?" It was comforting that we were all going through a bit of a hellish time, but the comfort also seemed to make us complacent. We were all struggling in our own ways-with finances, health, relationship issues-spread thin and let down in ways we hadn't expected. But we laughed it off. We coped. We softened our disappointment with sarcasm and wore our ability to tolerate it proudly. We were tough. We were chill. We focused more on how things could be worse than how they could be better.
I always walked away from these gatherings feeling less alone, equally grateful for the community and discouraged that this was the reality of modern motherhood. We were living lives that were okay. Good, not great: mediocre.
Copyright © 2026 by Laura Danger. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
