It was 1991, I was in my early 40s, living in the south of England and trapped in a marriage that had long since curdled into something quietly suffocating. My husband had become controlling, first with money, then with almost everything else: what I wore, who I saw, what I said. It crept up so slowly that I didn't quite realise what was happening.
"Perspective is a huge thing. The smaller things in life are so much more precious. Our days are filled with lots of cuddles and laughter and love. It's just endless joy."
As I chuckled at my son and his friends, I thought about how I jumped through so many hoops and skirted around perceptions of modern motherhood so I could live the life I envisioned and built my work around it. This meant being home with my kids when they were little and eventually, taking advantage of the privilege to work remotely, something not all women have.
In today's era, where beauty typically demands doing the most, it's liberating to opt out occasionally, even if it's just one thing. My FYP was a shrine to chrome hues, 3D and rhinestone designs, aura nails, and more - all of which I'd screenshot to show my tech. People rarely saw me without colorful, intricate tips; they were a source of social-media likes and IRL compliments. Birthday nails were a thing. Wedding nails, too (pastel tie-dye, in case you were wondering).
Tucked away amid tall grasses and verdant woods in rural Montana, it seems idyllic. But Grace (played by Jennifer Lawrence) appears uncomfortable as soon as she sets foot inside her new home. She flops over like a rag doll while her boyfriend, Jackson (Robert Pattinson), explores the building, which he inherited from his uncle. Months later, she and Jackson have a baby. Grace becomes a doting mother.
From the moment Megan Walerius made her appearance in the pods, Netflix gave her a main-character edit: Gwen Stefani's "Rich Girl" soundtracked her walk, the camera zooming in on the glittering shoes and jewelry befitting her nickname, Sparkle Megan. "The biggest reason I think I'm still single, honestly, is that men are intimidated by me - by how I live, my level of success, the car I drive, the house I live in," she said in her first confessional.
"I had Brooklyn. I moved to Manchester, which is where David was living and playing for Manchester United. And by this point, he is on the first team; he's a big star," Beckham told podcast host Alex Cooper. "And it was quite the transition for me because I was so happy to be with David, to have a baby. I felt so blessed, but I felt a bit lost as well."
I'm best known for being a party girl, which I definitely was when I first starred on MTV's "Jersey Shore." These days, I still love going for drinks occasionally, but my whole world is centered on being a mom. When I was first pregnant, people in public would often wonder how I could do it. I heard them asking, "What is she going to do? Leave her babies?" But to me, the transition from party girl to mom always felt very natural.
Growing up, I was lucky enough to have a mom who always built me up. She was good about complimenting me, reminding me to feel confident in myself and however I looked. I struggled with my weight a lot as a young person, flucuating between sizes, and she never once mentioned anything about the size of my body. I feel like she's some kind of magical unicorn considering I grew up in the '90s and early '00s when almond moms were all the rage.
One of the most surprising things about motherhood for me has been discovering just how similar every one of our experiences can be, while also being incredibly different. We're all juggling a million things and feeling overwhelmed, but each of us has different items sending us over the edge - and that is proven true every time moms submit their Scary Mommy Confessions for the week.
Succinctly put, Kylie replied, "Who the f**k is we?" "Men can be so annoying," the wife of Jason Kelce quipped, before admitting, "Now I do think I've corrected myself a couple times on this show about me saying 'we were pregnant' or 'we got a positive pregnancy test.' " However, Kylie strongly related to the pregnant woman, saying, "I completely see where this woman is coming from. Also, being on the other side of things, being out of pregnancy, that feels like my brain during pregnancy.
It's this series of mundane problems that start to snowball until Linda is about to reach her breaking point. And that's where If I Had Legs I'd Kick You, Mary Bronstein's surreal and tense new psychological thriller, holds you in its iron grip, forcing you to feel every new stressor and inconvenience that Linda is experiencing, until you feel like you are about to explode.
I wrote them letters for special days because I asked people who had lost parents what they wanted most from them. I'd write a sentence and sob. But little by little, sometimes at 3 a.m., I wrote them. For weddings, pregnancies, graduations, the first and last day of school. I even wrote one for a grandchild I may never have.
When schoolteacher and influencer Joanna Cluskey was diagnosed with the chronic pain condition fibromyalgia, she worried she would never become a mother - but she has learned how to manage the pain and is now a mum of three A cursory glance at Joanna Cluskey's Instagram page and you might think she leads a perfect life. The 42-year-old mother of three and primary school teacher, from Galway City, also works as a model and a stylist, and has amassed 74.5k followers in just three years on her account, @stylebyjo.
I was on maternity leave and, looking back, I may have been having a manic episode. I'd had a long string of admin jobs that I hated. Usually, it was the case that I didn't know what my job was and nobody else did either. When I was 29, I thought: I haven't really done anything creative or put myself out there. Here I am with two kids, what am I doing? So I signed up for an open mic night.
Bronstein's film-her first since her début feature, " Yeast " (2008)-boasts its own version of that line. "I'm one of those people who's not supposed to be a mom," a mother named Linda (Rose Byrne) laments. Her young daughter (Delaney Quinn) has a chronic gastrointestinal illness, and her husband, a ship captain, is away at sea. In the space of several fraught days, an already difficult situation is compounded by nightmarish setbacks.
Some of us want to raise kids who never know a moment of discomfort; some of us are focused on raising kids who achieve all their dreams, no matter how much it costs. Some of us just want to be present and engaged, filling our kids with core memories, and some of us just want to go to bed every night knowing we did our best to keep our kids healthy, happy, and safe that day.
Now I have to learn to do the hardest thing a parent has the privilege of doing and let you go. No, it's NOT forever, but it's the end of one big chapter, so - yeah - I'm going to cry. (I'm also 100% percent going to sit on your Dad's shoulders to work on the lighting in your dorm room.) I love you, Monkey. Always No matter what,
Sasha Bonét's matrilineal memoir, " The Waterbearers," traces the lives of her mother and grandmother: powerful, complicated women whose personalities have been shaped by the rough edges of American society. Mothers, she suggests, can pass on both grace and grief. The flow of the bayous of Houston, where she grew up, remind her of "the way my mother and grandmother pour into me, and I into my daughter; the valuable and the harmful, the minerals and the mud."
In 2019, Locke's first memoir, From Scratch, became a Reese's Book Club pick and, soon after, a global hit miniseries on Netflix. We all fell in love right along with her as she recounted her life with Saro, the beautiful Sicilian man she met while studying abroad in Italy in college. But life is full of challenging transitions. As we discovered in the book and miniseries, while Tembi and Saro's love for each other seemed transmutable from day one, it would ultimately have to take another form following his death.
That not your [family member]'s formula entered the vernacular in a 1988 US car ad, when it was directed at dads: Not your father's Oldsmobile. Now, though, it seems mostly to have defaulted to mothers. It's a lazy marketing brag or headline, a shorthand for new, directional and disruptive, and I've started to hate it. I'm not usually actively angered by reflexive sexism and ageism; I tend to let it wash over me in a dispiriting wave.
Sarah McLachlan's singing voice is one of the wonders of the pop music world. It has alternately belted out and whispered hit songs ("Adia," "Building a Mystery") as well as the most devastating Disney song of all time (Randy Newman's "When She Loved Me" from "Toy Story 2") and is a pristine musical instrument. It can elegantly vault octaves, scoop notes without a croaky glottal fry and crack words into multi-note, velvety yodels. It can be breathy and ethereal or a searing flamethrower - and she transforms into an angelic chorus of one when she tracks layers of her own harmonies.
Look, I don't claim to have all the answers, but as a millennial mom of three who feels a little flustered every morning when she opens her eyes and imagines what's out there in the world, waiting for us that day, I do have one: Everybody has their secrets. And I don't mean super dark, dastardly secrets, but just little things. Like when you told your bestie it was fine for her to cancel on you again, but really you went home and cried.
