This is what I want to tell the woman who is reading this in the bathtub while her partner wrangles the toddler, or the one hiding in the Target parking lot for ten extra minutes just to hear herself think. You are not failing because your kitchen is a disaster zone. You are not a bad mother because you did not make the sensory bin from Pinterest. You are not broken because you sometimes miss the silence.
My daughter eventually handed me back the phone. She had moved on to the next photo: a crisp, perfect shot of our dog sleeping. She smiled, said “Puppy,” and ran off to destroy the living room.
She pointed to it. “Mama. Sad.”
By Allison Carr
My daughter is two years old, which means she has recently discovered the power of the emphatic “No.” But more importantly, she has discovered my camera roll. The other day, while waiting for her oatmeal to cool, she grabbed my phone. I braced for the inevitable butt-dial to my editor or a rogue FaceTime to my ex-husband. Instead, she went quiet. She was scrolling through photos of herself. allison carr mutha magazine
The lens of motherhood is always smudged. It’s smudged with peanut butter, with tears, with the grease from your own unwashed hair. You can try to clean it, but the second you put the phone down, another tiny hand will reach out and touch it again.
“No, baby,” I said. “Not sad. Just… Tuesday.” This is what I want to tell the
Mutha Magazine is the only place I’ve ever seen that acknowledges this duality without trying to fix it. It doesn’t say, “Here are five ways to get your sparkle back!” It says, “Your sparkle is currently in the laundry with a juice box explosion. It’s fine. Have a glass of wine.”