Announcement: Starting next week (September 2), I’m testing out splitting up my Friday send.

Wednesdays will be for the essays. Fridays will be for the recipes.

Honestly, I’m personally sooo overwhelmed by the amount of content coming at me all day, every day and I know I’m not the only one. I don’t want The Motherload to become another giant email you have to dig through to find the thing you actually came for.

So if you’re here for the essays, you’ll get those on Wednesdays without having to scroll through the recipes. If you’re really just trying to figure out what the hell to make for dinner, Friday’s email is for you.

I’m trying this because I think it’ll make The Motherload easier to read and, more importantly, more useful to you. As always, tell me what you think.

Join this community of women who are tired of carrying dinner, motherhood, and everyone’s feelings by themselves.

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It is quite literally my job to create, test and share recipes that make life easier for busy moms. But after spending an entire day cooking in the kitchen, the last thing I want to do is make dinner at home.

And yes, sometimes I reheat whatever I tested that day and call it a night. But a lot of times I don’t, which means around 5 pm I’m opening my fridge wondering wtf I’m going to feed everybody.

I’ve gotten pretty good at throwing together meals that don’t make me want to scream into the abyss and still get a thumbs up from Nola and Stevie.

So this week I figured I’d share the 5 staples I keep in my house at all times to get dinner on the table in 30 minutes or less (and of course I’ll give you ideas for how to use them because we’re friends).

Without further ado, here you go:

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^{When I was a child
Every single thing could blow my mind
Soaking it all up for fun
But now I only soak up wine
They say to play hard, you work hard
Find balance in the sacrifice
Yet I don’t know anybody
Who’s truly satisfied - Adele, “I Drink Wine”}

Since the age of about 25 I have gone few days without having a drink. Exceptions have happened of course but my longest bouts of sobriety have been pregnancies, the occasional Dry January and random bouts of illness (it’s not so fun having a cocktail when you have a stuffy nose and raging fever). But other than that, for almost 15 years, alcohol has been a pretty constant companion.

And I’m good at it.

If you’re tired of figuring out dinner over and over again, I’ve got you. I map out the week, give you the grocery list, and show you how to use what you bought in more than one way so it actually goes somewhere.

Just a gentle reminder that the annual and monthly subs are still 20% off until next week.

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I’m good at shaking up cocktails, picking out just the right bottle of wine. I’m good at drinking two and maybe three but never four cocktails in a night. I’m good at waking up the next morning feeling a little sluggish but getting on with my day. Packing lunches, brushing hair, making dinner, kissing boo boos. The whole bit.

At the end of the evening when the kids are tucked in safely and my husband is somewhere decompressing on his own, I get to clock out with a glass of wine or an ice cold martini. It feels like the only me time I get most days. That quiet first sip of a boozy reward at the end of another day where I had to be everything to everyone all at once.

I don’t drink because I want to be drunk. Being too tipsy isn’t fun for anyone who’s had the experience.

I drink because I want to come down and I don’t think I’m particularly unique in wanting that.

A lot of moms are walking around overstimulated as hell with very few reliable ways to clock out of the job. The drink isn’t always about wanting to get drunk. Sometimes it’s about wanting the day to stop touching you.

And maybe motherhood just gave a new name to something a lot of millennial women were already doing (or maybe just my friend group).

I learned to drink in my twenties in Washington D.C. where happy hour was basically an extension of the workday, bottomless brunch was a weekend activity and having a favorite gin made you feel like a real grown up. Before anyone told us that moms deserved wine because our kids were exhausting, women my age had already been taught that drinking was how we celebrated and socialized and dated and unwound after a shitty day.

We went from bottomless mimosas and rosé all day to mama needs wine and I’m not sure the underlying message ever really changed.

A few sips into a martini something in me loosens. My shoulders drop. My breathing slows. The volume comes down. I stop bracing quite so hard. For a little while I don’t have to manage every thought or anticipate every possible thing that could go wrong. Alcohol gives me peace or at least a very convincing imitation of it.

Sometimes it’s the only true moment of quiet in my brain all day. And that feeling, that relief, is a much harder thing to give up than drinking.

Because I can’t tell you how many mornings I’ve woken up and thought you know what, I’m not drinking today.

And then 5:30 rolls around.

I’m overstimulated. Somebody needs something. There are still emails to answer, this newsletter needs to be written and dinner needs to get on the table and shit, I need a drink.

And honestly, when I really sit with it, I don’t want to stop.

This is the part where I remind you that The Motherload is not just about dinner. Yes, paid subscribers get the full weekly dinner plan, recipes, and grocery list every Friday, but the bigger goal is helping women carry less.

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I love alcohol. I love the ritual around it. I love tasting notes and the pageantry and the fanciness. I love pulling a coupe out of the freezer. I love opening a gorgeous bottle with dinner. I love a martini made exactly the way I like it.

And I’ve probably used all of that as evidence in my own defense too.

Can I really abuse a 2020 Château Margaux?

Do I really have a problem with alcohol if I won’t drink shitty wine or a badly made cocktail? If sometimes I won’t drink at all because the thing I actually want isn’t available?

I know how ridiculous that sounds when I write it out.

Alcohol doesn’t become less alcoholic because it came out of an expensive bottle but somehow the taste and the ritual and the knowledge around it have always made it feel different from drinking drinking.

I don’t necessarily hate how I drink.

I hate some of the reasons I drink.

Alcohol has had a job in my life for a very long time. Sometimes that job is pleasure. Sometimes it’s ritual, celebration, a great bottle with dinner or sitting at a bar with someone I love.

And sometimes its job is to make me feel less.

So, maybe the question isn’t whether I have a problematic relationship with alcohol. Maybe noticing doesn’t have to be an accusation. Maybe I don’t need to decide whether my drinking is good or bad or normal or problematic before I get curious about the pattern.

Because I think that’s what scares me more than the number of drinks is the coping. I feel overwhelmed. I have a drink. I feel better and then my brain remembers.

I don’t want to be drunk. I want a freaking break. I’m just starting to wonder what happens when the fastest way I know to find it is alcohol.

Sometimes a martini is just a martini.

And sometimes I need an exhale.

I’m trying to learn the difference.

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Hi friends,

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Last Monday, my mom, Shep, Stevie and I walked Nola to school on her first day of kindergarten.

A few of you might remember that we moved last October and a massive part of the reason behind moving was to get our kids into a better school district. The fact that our house happens to be an eight-minute walk from the front doors of campus is certainly a perk. But really, the enthusiasm of the staff and (I’ll likely regret saying this) the PTA moms was and is also so charming.

Over the summer we enrolled Nolie in a one-week KinderCamp to introduce her to her new school and her new teacher and, looking back on it now, I think it also introduced me to the idea of my baby entering elementary school.

The morning of her first day we all woke up giddy and excited. Nola picked out her outfit (a dress, of course), we had a huge breakfast and off we went to escort her.

If you’re tired of figuring out dinner over and over again, I’ve got you. I map out the week, give you the grocery list, and show you how to use what you bought in more than one way so it actually goes somewhere.

And for the next two weeks subs are 20% off 👀

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The school hosted a coffee and Kleenex for all the new kindergarten parents (a lot of whom we’re actively bawling) and over the weekend my friends and some of you on social media kept asking if I was going to cry taking her to school and I’m proud to report that I did not.

Not because it isn’t absolutely insane that this little human I swear I just delivered is onto her next adventure...but because I don’t want to get in the habit of mourning her growing up.

Hell, thank God she is.

Our family walked her to class, took a few pictures, gave her kisses and hugs, told her how proud we all were of her and promised we’d be waiting outside when school was over. No tears from her or us. Just pure excitement.

And I hope I always meet my kids’ next chapters that way.

This week I’ve also really gotten back into the kitchen.

For weeks I was either too tired or too nauseous to test or make much of anything and then later, after learning about my miscarriage...too damn sad.

But the kids have got to eat and, apparently, so do I...so I eased back in.

I don’t know that there was some big moment where I decided I was ready. I think I just started doing things again.

Walking Nola to school. Opening my laptop. Wandering around Trader Joe’s. Looking at the basil in my backyard that has completely lost its mind and thinking okay...I guess I should make pesto.

Little pieces of my regular life.

This week’s meals are basically what accessible comfort looked like for me. Things that tasted really good but required the least amount of effort possible. There’s a pesto that shows up twice (yes, I made it from scratch because of the aforementioned basil situation) and a callback to one of my favorite meals my mom used to make growing up...meat patties in gravy.

And I gotta be honest, as a woman who prides herself on cooking...I took a lot of shortcuts this week.

Like, a lot.

This is the part where I remind you that The Motherload is not just about dinner.
Yes, paid subscribers get the full weekly dinner plan, recipes, and grocery list every Friday, but the bigger goal is helping women carry less.

Subscribe now

Almost everything I made came from Trader Joe’s or Costco. Things were prepped. Things were already seasoned. Somebody else did some of the work and I let them.

Costco, by the way, has my favorite store-bought pesto if making your own sounds like some bullshit you simply do not have time for this week.

There’s something strange about coming back online after something terrible happens because your life does not actually pick back up where you left it.

You’re still sad.

You’re still standing a little outside of yourself.

And then your kindergartner needs breakfast and someone can’t find a shoe and it’s 5:47 and dinner has somehow become your problem again.

Life keeps asking you to participate.

And lately...I have been.

Before we get to dinner, I also really want to thank you all for sticking around these past few weeks.

I haven’t been very active here. I haven’t sent the newsletters I normally send. There haven’t been recipes showing up like clockwork and somehow...you all just stayed.

My subscription numbers didn’t tank. Nobody sent me an angry email asking where the hell dinner was. You just gave me space to be gone for a minute and get back on solid ground physically and emotionally and I don’t know how to say thank you for that without making this whole thing way more emotional than I want it to be so...

Thank you.

Really.

As a little sign of appreciation, I’m putting both my monthly and annual subscriptions 20% off for the next two weeks. So the math looks $4.80/month (usually $6) and $52/year (its normally $65). If' you’ve been hanging around on the free side and thinking about joining this community, now is a great time ❤️

Subscribe now

I also wanted to do something for those of you who have already been here.

So next Tuesday, August 18 at 8:30 p.m. ET, I’m hosting a little 20-minute virtual happy hour for paid subscribers.

Nothing formal. Nothing you need to prepare for.

I’ll send the recipe for what I’m drinking ahead of time if you want to make it with me (you absolutely do not have to). Show up with wine, a cocktail, sparkling water, Diet Coke...whatever is already in your house.

Come sit with me for 20 minutes and we can chat about whatever you want.

I’ll send the link soon.

I’ve missed y’all.

Okay...here’s what’s for dinner.

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A note before you read: This essay discusses miscarriage and pregnancy loss in detail.

I don’t know what made me take a pregnancy test.

My period wasn’t late. Shep and I weren’t technically trying yet. Nola, my oldest, was home early because we’d enrolled her in a kindergarten camp at her new school, hoping that getting familiar with the place might make the transition easier in the fall. I was in the middle of shooting content for Krusteaz.

There was nothing particularly cinematic about the moment. I had to pee, so I grabbed one of those cheap paper pregnancy tests, dipped it, set it on some toilet paper, and walked out of the bathroom.

I forgot about it for more than an hour.

When it was time to pick up Stevie (my 2 year old), I walked past the open bathroom door on my way to grab my shoes and remembered the test. I went back in to throw it away.

Wait. Was that two lines?

I stared at it in silence. It had to be an evaporation line. I’d left the test sitting there far too long. I needed to take another one before I got carried away.

I managed to squeeze approximately one teaspoon of urine into a plastic cup and pulled out a Clearblue test—the kind that doesn’t ask you to interpret lines like some kind of hormonal Rorschach test. It simply says Pregnant or Not Pregnant.

The little hourglass appeared on the screen. It didn’t blink or move for what felt like five full minutes. I decided the test was broken and went to toss it away when the word flashed across the screen.

Pregnant.

“No fucking way,” I screamed.

Nola sat up in my bed. “Are you okay, Mommy?”

“Yes, I’m fine, honey,” I said, standing in the bathroom with one hand over my mouth and the test in the other.

I FaceTimed Shep immediately. When he answered, I didn’t say anything. I just held the test up to the screen.

We were going to have one more baby. Another Aquarius.

I did the math and realized the baby would be due around Nola’s birthday—February 13, possibly right down to the day. Then I called my OB’s office to cancel an appointment I’d already scheduled to make sure I was ovulating normally.

My favorite nurse, Mia, answered.

“Hey, girl,” I said.

“Hey, Mrs. Shepard.”

“I’m going to need to cancel my appointment next week. I’m pregnant.”

We both started laughing.

“Okay,” she said. “Then let me schedule you for six weeks from now to see Dr. Simmons.”

Those six weeks flew by. I knew this would be my last pregnancy, and before I had even opened myself up to trying for another baby, I’d made a decision: I was going to enjoy it.

No anxiety. No health scares. No spending nine months waiting for my body to betray me. This pregnancy would be my peaceful goodbye to the childbearing years of my life.

I had been pregnant twice before, so I knew what was coming: the exhaustion, the all-day nausea, the irritability. Thankfully, as luck would have it, Shep and I were sending the girls to Los Angeles for six weeks for their annual summer with my side of the family.

The timing felt perfect. I would be exactly six weeks pregnant when they left, which is usually when the symptoms really kick my ass, and about twelve weeks when they came home—just past the worst of it.

I was happy to be pregnant. I was also scared in a way I hadn’t been before.

Could we really handle another child? I had been working so hard on my career, and I knew I would probably have to slow down after the baby arrived.

Did I want to? My family and I were in the shittiest place we had ever been in. What would it be like to have another baby my sister wouldn’t be there to meet in the hours or days after the birth?

And, perhaps the most daunting of them all: Could my body carry another baby and keep cancer away?

Shep, my doctors and I had discussed all of this before we decided to try. But there is a difference between discussing a hypothetical baby and staring at the word Pregnant in your bathroom while your actual life begins rearranging itself around someone you haven’t met.

“I’ll figure it out,” I kept telling myself.

And so I waited for my telltale symptoms to arrive.

The exhaustion made an apperance first. Every morning, I would reliably pass out for two hours after breakfast and then crawl back into bed by eight every night. My Oura sleep score had never been better. I was averaging around fourteen hours of sleep a day.

The nausea came too, but it was much milder than it had been during either of my other pregnancies. I attributed that to starting anti-nausea medication almost immediately, and also to the fact that I’d asked God to take it easy on me this last time.

I thought maybe He was answering my prayer.

When my first appointment rolled around, it never occurred to me that there might not be a heartbeat.

And there was one: strong, clear, 154 beats per minute.

I think I will remember that number for the rest of my life.

Shep and I considered telling our families right then, but something in me wanted to hold on to the news a little longer. I wanted to keep the baby ours for as long as we could.

We had planned a trip to Newport, Rhode Island while the girls were away, where we intended to eat oysters, drink cocktails, and officially start trying for another baby. Instead, we scrapped that itinerary and pivoted to the Bahamas, where we’d taken our babymoon when I was pregnant with Stevie. I figured if I was going to feel like shit, I might as well do it on a beach.

The trip was amazing. I was about nine weeks along, and my little belly had popped out. I experienced some nausea, but nothing so crazy that I couldn’t lie on the beach drinking virgin piña coladas. And for four days, that’s exactly what I did. I walked around quietly carrying the biggest secret in my world.

We came home on Friday, July 17.

The next morning, I woke up and told Shep I wanted to check on our baby. I said it was because he hadn’t been there to hear the heartbeat at my first appointment.

I wonder now whether some part of me knew.

My body was still showing every sign of pregnancy, but maybe beneath all those hormones and symptoms, something felt off.

We booked a late-afternoon appointment at Little Bellies, an ultrasound studio I had visited while pregnant with both Nola and Stevie. We sat in the waiting room while women much further along than I was waddled out with their happy families, carrying long strips of black-and-white sonogram pictures.

I briefly thought—I shit you not—I wonder if they ever have to tell people here that their babies died.

The sonogram tech brought us into the room. Shep sat on a long leather couch to my left while I lay flat on the table. The tech squirted warm gel onto my stomach and moved the wand across my belly.

Our baby appeared right away.

My first thought was, Oh, it’s sleeping.

It looked like it had its back turned toward me.

“I’m sorry,” the tech said. “I’m not seeing any cardiac activity.”

“Oh,” Shep said beside me.

I wish I were a good enough writer to explain everything that one word meant. How deflated, and startled, and heartbroken it sounded. How one syllable could hold the exact moment our entire future collapsed.

But I’m not.

“What do you mean?” I asked her, even though I knew exactly what she meant.

“I’m so sorry,” she started to say as she wiped my stomach. “You can have the room for as long as you need.”

“Wait. Can we get a second opinion?”

I asked Shep to call our OB. Dr. Simmons—God bless her—answered on the first ring. I listened as he told her what was happening. She said the sonographer might not have the proper equipment to see the heartbeat because I was still early. We needed to go to Grady (Memorial Hospital) and have another ultrasound.

We drove there and waited about four hours to be seen. When the doctor finally came in and set up the transvaginal ultrasound, I wouldn’t look at the screen. I could not watch another person confirm what I already knew.

Instead, I watched Shep’s face. I watched his eyes search the screen for even the smallest amount of hope.

There was none.

The doctor gave me two options: I could have a D&C, or I could take medication to expel the pregnancy at home.

I wanted neither option.

I wanted my baby.

I asked if they could perform the D&C right then. They told me the operating room was closed except for emergencies. I asked about the medication, and Shep—who knew how terrified I was of miscarrying at home—said what I couldn’t yet say for myself: no. He also understood that even if I took it, there was still a chance I would need a D&C afterward.

“But I look pregnant,” I wailed into his shoulder. “What am I supposed to do now?”

Go home, apparently. Go home and wait for Dr. Simmons to call and tell me when they could fit me onto the surgical schedule.

It was Saturday night. For the next three nights and two days, what had once been a home for my baby and all my hopes became a tomb.

Dr. Simmons called the next morning and told us my surgery was scheduled for Tuesday, July 21, at 11:30 a.m. For the next few days, I lay in bed sobbing and afraid to move around too much. I thought if my body realized the baby was gone, I would miscarry at home. I stayed as still as possible, leaving the bed only when I really had to use the bathroom.

Before this moment, I truly believed I’d already paid my pound of flesh. I thought that happened in 2023 when they cut out my left breast.

I imagined it being burned as an offering to whatever god or spirit I had clearly pissed off in this life. After cancer, after cancer while pregnant, after losing a breast while trying to stay alive for the baby still growing inside me, I thought the universe might finally be appeased.

I thought I had bought myself a break.

Instead, it asked for another offering.

My baby.

The morning of my D&C, I woke up so angry that I physically held my lips together like two sad sandbags trying to keep the frothy white waves of rage from crashing out of my mouth.

At the hospital, the nurse checking me in was reserved at first.

“Good morning. How are you?” I asked her.

“Fine,” she responded a little warily, looking up at me through her glasses. “What are you here for?”

“I’m scheduled for a D&C,” I said and almost got it out without crying.

Almost.

She immediately hopped up from her swivel chair behind the desk and pulled me into a tight hug. I let her, and I cried and cried and cried.

“Oh, honey. Jesus loves you, baby,” she told me before tucking me into the waiting area with my very own box of tissues.

Two women whose pregnancies had progressed far beyond the point where mine stopped looked up at me briefly and then away.

Does He? I thought as I shifted my body so I could see more of the floor than the room.

After only a few minutes, another nurse came to get me. The process was startlingly similar to giving birth. Change into this gown. Use this bathroom. Here is your charge nurse. Do you have to potty? The same cheerful instructions, the same hospital bracelets, the same careful ushering of a pregnant body from one room to another.

Only this time, no one was preparing to hand me a baby.

My surgery was supposed to begin earlier in the morning, but there was a C-section ahead of me. At 12:45, a voice came over the hospital speaker.

“D&C in Room Three.”

“That’s you,” Shep said.

When the nurse came to wheel me into surgery, Shep and I said our see-you-laters. We have done this enough times now that the routine might be funny if it weren’t so insanely tragic: the kiss, the hand squeeze, the promise that he’ll be there when I wake up.

“How did the C-section go?” I asked the nurse on our way out the door.

“They made it back here to me, so it went well,” she replied.

“Good. I’m happy to hear that,” I said, offering what I’m sure was a weak smile.

And I was. Even then, even there, I was relieved that another mother and her baby had made it safely through the insane process of pregnancy and birth. Her good outcome did not cause mine. Her living baby did not take anything from my dead one.

I’m two weeks on the other side of surgery, and the raw truth is that I am exhausted. Worn thin from being inducted into clubs I never signed up for and would never willingly join: the breast cancer club, the mental health crisis club, the estranged family club.

And now the pregnancy loss club.

There are days I look at Shep and think my husband married a lemon. It is, quite literally, always something with me. That is not what he says, of course. It is what grief says when I am trying to understand why the man I love has had to stand beside so many hospital beds and carry me through so much turmoil.

I’m tired of going to therapy to heal from one trauma only to have another dumped on me. I’m tired of feeling like my worst dreams keep coming true. And I am angry with God. Not disappointed. Not quietly questioning His plan. I’m pissed.

I could have gone lifetimes without the things I have survived. I did not need to lose a breast to learn how much I wanted to live. I did not need my family to fracture to learn that some losses happen while everyone involved is still alive. And I did not need my baby to die inside of me to learn that nothing is promised.

I had learned enough.

I had suffered enough.

I had given enough.

I don’t have a lesson for you. I am not going to tell you everything happens for a reason. I am not ready to call this part of God’s plan, and I don’t need anyone else to do it for me.

I told my best friend Dani that the grief of this miscarriage is surprising to me. At times I felt—and still feel—like I’m standing outside of it, observing it. Like when you lose consciousness because physical pain is too much, I’ve lost a sense of reality. When I first found out I was pregnant, I would tell Shep, “Well, if I miscarry, it won’t be the worst medical news I’ve ever heard.” I know now that I was trying to buttress myself in case loss did happen.

And when I heard it, it wasn’t.

But it wasn’t far off either.

I’m learning that there are many rooms in the house of grief. Cancer introduced me to one. This miscarriage has opened the door to another.

I am grateful for my daughters. Obviously I’m so thankful and so deeply in love with them that I want more.

But I also wanted that baby. The one whose heart beat 154 times a minute. The one who was supposed to arrive around Nola’s birthday. The one who went to the Bahamas with us. The one I tried not to worry about because I promised myself this time would be peaceful.

I don’t know exactly what I believe about God right now, but I know I am seething. I am furious that I begged Him to take it easy on me and I mistook the absence of nausea for mercy. I am furious that I heard my baby’s heartbeat and one day it just stopped. I am furious that after everything my body has already endured, it was made to endure this too.

I don’t want to be told that God gives His toughest battles to His strongest soldiers. I am not a soldier. I’m just a fucking girl.

I am not sure whether shouting at God counts as prayer.

But right now, it is the only prayer I have.

I grew up in Calabasas, which is a pretty well-off neighborhood in Los Angeles County. Before that, I lived in Ladera Heights, basically the Black answer to Beverly Hills, and when we moved, I was in third grade. Old enough to know my world had changed, but not old enough to have the language for what exactly had changed.

I didn’t move from Black struggle into white opportunity. I moved from one kind of Black comfort into a much whiter kind of affluence, and that difference mattered. There were other Black kids at my schools, but most of them were bused in from LA. I was one of the few who lived there, which meant my Blackness became so familiar people stopped seeing it as something they needed to think about.

Most of my formative years were spent around groups of people who looked nothing like me. If you’d asked me then, I would’ve told you I was fine. More than fine, probably. I had friends. Real friends. Some of them are still in my life now. When I ran the London Marathon in April, one of my dearest friends from high school, Nicole, was there cheering me on. When I had my baby shower for my youngest, two of my high school friends flew in from LA.

So this isn’t one of those stories where I’m pretending everyone was awful and I was secretly miserable the whole time. That wouldn’t be true, and honestly, it would be too easy.

The more uncomfortable truth is that I was loved by some people, used by others, and too young to know the difference.

If you’re tired of figuring out dinner over and over again, I’ve got you. I map out the week, give you the grocery list, and show you how to use what you bought in more than one way so it actually goes somewhere.

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Because I can look back now and see that, for a lot of people, I was less a friend than a kind of proof. Proof that they were open-minded. Proof that they weren’t racist. Proof that they could say whatever they wanted because I was there and I laughed and I didn’t make things weird.

For lack of a better phrase, I was the “exceptional Negro” in a lot of rooms before I was old enough to understand there was a job being assigned to me.

I remember this one time, I was walking through the halls at school when a girl named Rachel came up to me and said, “You’re friends with Evan*, right?” (*not his real name)

I was. I’d known him since fifth or sixth grade, so I said yes.

“Well,” she said, “you know he’s racist, right? He doesn’t like Black people.”

I think I laughed in her face. Racist? Evan? Please. I’d spent plenty of weekends at the same parties as him. He’d been swimming at my house. We had one of those mildly flirty, completely innocent friendships that feels kinda of sweet to describe when you’re grown.

Surely she had it wrong.

I remember looking for him between classes, almost excited to tell him this ridiculous thing I’d heard.

“Evan!” I said when I finally found him. “Rachel told me you’re racist. Isn’t that crazy?”

I expected him to laugh with me, and he did.

“Racist?” he said, exactly the way I knew he would. “No, that’s dumb. I just hate niggers, and you’re not a nigger.”

I remember the smile staying on my face after he said it. Like my body had not yet received the message from my brain. He may have touched my arm before he walked away. He may have smiled. I know he left easily.

I stood there feeling like I’d gotten the wind knocked out of me, but I didn’t know enough about myself yet to understand why. I didn’t know how to explain that I had just been separated from myself in front of my own face.

That was the violence of it. Not just the word, though God knows the word was violent enough. It was the exception. It was the way he offered me safety by cutting me away from everyone else who looked like me. It was the way he thought he was being kind. It was the way I almost understood, for half a second, that I was supposed to be grateful.

There is a kind of racism that does not begin by calling you a nigger. It begins by teaching you that the slur belongs to somebody else. Somebody louder. Darker. Poorer. More embarrassing. More threatening. More Black. It lets you believe you have been spared, when really you have been recruited.

Another time, right before I left for college, my friend Nina and her boyfriend, Wyatt, stopped by my house to drop off cookies they’d made for me. Warm chocolate chip cookies in a red-top Tupperware container. A small, sweet gesture.

From the rumor mill, I knew Wyatt’s brother was a known white supremacist. I had heard things about Wyatt too. And still, there he was, standing at my door, wishing me luck.

That was the confusing part. The racism was not always wearing a hood. Sometimes it came close enough to hug you. Sometimes it had good manners. Hell, sometimes it even brought cookies.

This is the part where I remind you that The Motherload is not just about dinner.
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And these moments were not remarkable because they were rare. They were remarkable because of how quickly I learned to make them ordinary.

The well-meaning white friend saying, “OMGGG look how much darker I am than you,” while my body lay next to hers on a beach towel. The room full of people who didn’t skip the word “nigga” while rapping along at a party, even though I was standing right there. The boys who flirted with me like I was beautiful and different and safe, but only in the dark.

There was something insidious, and if I’m honest, seductive, about being both exotic and accepted. About being treated like I was special enough to be invited in, but not powerful enough to actually be a threat.

That is one of the defining experiences of being a suburban Black kid. You are constantly negotiating your own visibility. You are too Black to forget it entirely, but often surrounded by people who need you to make your Blackness easy for them. You learn when to laugh. You learn when to swallow. You learn which comments are “not worth it.” You learn how to be offended privately so nobody else has to feel accused publicly.

You learn to read a room before you enter it. You learn which version of yourself makes people relax. You learn when your silence will be mistaken for agreement and when your correction will be treated like aggression. You learn that being invited does not mean you have power. Sometimes it only means you’ve been approved.

You become fluent in comfort. Not your own of course. Theirs.

It wasn’t until I went away to college and joined a Black sorority that I started to understand how much the role of the “acceptable Black girl” had taken from me. It had not only separated me from certain white people. It had separated me from Blackness as a place of belonging. It had taught me to measure myself against stereotypes instead of asking who benefited from me hating the stereotype in the first place.

Because that is the trick. Whiteness does not always reject you outright. Sometimes it invites you in, compliments your manners, praises your intelligence, touches your hair, dates you quietly, brings you cookies, sings the word next to you, and waits to see whether you’ll ruin the vibe.

When I joined Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Incorporated, and yes, you have to say the whole thing, iykyk, in the spring of 2007, it was the first time I had a real opportunity to make friends with Black women. Not just be near them. Not just know them. But belong to them.

And I have never looked back. Not once.

There was relief in not having to translate myself all the time. Relief in not having to decide whether a joke was worth confronting. Relief in not having to be the ambassador, the exception, the cool one, the safe one, the Black girl who would not make everybody pay for what they had just said. I didn’t know how exhausted I was until I was around women who did not require me to perform ease.

And then, decades later, I became a mother.

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Motherhood has a way of dragging your childhood back into the room and making it sit down. Things you thought you had metabolized start showing up in your rules, your fears, your overexplaining. Suddenly the old stories are not just old stories. They are data. They are warnings. They are the reason your chest tightens when your child gets invited somewhere and everyone sounds lovely and normal and kind.

And here is where I think about Nolan Wells.

At the time I’m writing this, what has been publicly reported is that Nolan Xavier Wells was 18 years old, disappeared after going to Horn Island, Mississippi, during a July 4 outing, and was later found dead.

I don’t know what happened to him, and I won’t pretend to. His family deserves answers, not strangers turning his life into a lesson before they’ve even had a chance to grieve. But I keep thinking about the discourse around him. About all the people saying he should have known better than to go somewhere as the only Black person. As if Black children are born with a full historical risk assessment tucked behind their ribs. As if being young and trusting and wanting to have fun is a luxury we are supposed to forfeit because of the potential that other people cannot be trusted to see us as fully human.

And I can’t stop thinking about how many rooms I walked into at his age without understanding the math.

The all-white sleepovers, except for me. The spring break trip to Lake Havasu in Arizona that I came home from. The endless car rides with teenagers high or drunk as hell while I happily climbed in the back seat and trusted that I would make it home.

The parties. The boats. The houses. The parents who loved me, or liked me, or liked the idea of me. The boys who flirted with me because I was different, but not too different. The friends who knew I was Black, of course they knew I was Black, but needed me to be the kind of Black girl who didn’t make Blackness inconvenient.

I survived so many rooms because of the grace of God. Truly.

But beyond the gratitude, there is rage.

Because I was a contortionist and I didn’t even know it. I folded myself into every space I was invited into. I made myself easy. I made myself funny. I made myself cool. I made myself the kind of Black girl who could watch whiteness orbit around me and still feel lucky to be included.

That is what scares me now. Not just racism as open hostility, though that fear is real enough. What scares me is the softer thing. The invitation. The affection. The casual intimacy that makes a child believe proximity is protection. The sleepover where everybody loves your kid until something goes wrong. The friend group where your child is included but not defended. The house where your child is welcome but not fully seen.

And now I am bracing for those invitations for my own children.

We moved into the affluent part of town for the school, which is a very normal parent thing to do and also the kind of choice that comes with a shadow I can’t pretend not to see.

Nola is moving toward kindergarten, which means I can already feel the next version of this beginning. The birthday parties. The playdates. The sleepovers I will have to say no to before I can fully explain why. The mothers who will be lovely and organized and warm. The casual invitations that should be simple, but won’t be for me.

I can already imagine standing in my kitchen with my phone in my hand, reading a message from another mother about snacks and pickup time, while another part of my brain starts doing its own quiet audit. Who is in the house? Who is driving? Who has been drinking? Who has a gun? Who says “I don’t see color”? Who thinks my child is “basically white”? Who loves Black culture but not Black correction?

Who would tell the truth if my child could not?

I hate this part of mothering while Black.

And still, I refuse to raise my children inside nothing but suspicion. That is its own kind of theft. I don’t want them to believe every white person is waiting to harm them. But I also do not want my children to confuse being liked with being safe.

When I was a kid, I thought being liked meant I was safe. I thought being invited meant I belonged. I thought being the exception meant I had escaped something, when really it meant I had learned to abandon parts of myself before anyone else had to ask.

I don’t want to raise children who know how to shrink beautifully.

I don’t want them to be the Black friend who makes the room feel progressive. I don’t want them to be the Black girl somebody’s parents adore because she is polite and articulate and never makes anybody uncomfortable. I don’t want them to be the child everyone claims to love, but no one knows how to protect when protection becomes inconvenient.

I want them to know the difference between welcome and safety, between friendship and access, between affection and protection. I want them to know that their discomfort is not a social problem to solve for other people. It is information. I want them to know they do not have to laugh when something hurts. They do not have to stay because someone invited them. They do not have to be grateful for proximity to people who require their silence as the cost of admission.

This is the impossible work of Black motherhood, at least for me.

I am trying to give my children what I had and what I did not have. The confidence to move through different rooms, but not the obligation to disappear inside them. The freedom to make all kinds of friends, but not the burden of becoming anyone’s evidence. The discernment to know when they are being loved and when they are being collected.

And God help me, I want them to come home.

No, I need them to come home.

Every time.

A note before you go: The Motherload is where I write honestly about motherhood, marriage, mental health, and the work of feeding a family while trying not to disappear inside the job. Paid subscribers also get my weekly dinner plans, grocery lists, and recipes. If you want the essays and the practical help, I’d love to have you here.

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What’s for dinner this week

This week, we’re building dinner around one very hardworking head of cabbage. I’m not being dramatic when I say these are some of my favorite recipes I’ve come up with in weeks. I’m literally eating the leftover pork noodles while typing this.

You’ll start with crispy chicken cutlets and a peanut-lime cabbage slaw, then move into smoked sausage with sautéed cabbage, apples, crispy roasted potato medallions, and mustard cream. Later in the week, cabbage shows up again in these sesame-ginger pork noodles with peppers (that I’m clearly obsessed with) that is tossed that same peanut-lime sauce. Divine.

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For the second summer in a row, my kids are in Los Angeles without me.

And for the next few weeks, Shep and I get to be boyfriend and girlfriend again.

That sounds cute, but I don’t mean it in a rom-com way. I mean it in the very adult way where your marriage has been running underneath the noise of small children, school schedules, dinner, laundry, work, sunscreen, bedtime, and somebody sobbing because their banana broke. I mean we get to remember that before we were Mommy and Daddy, we were two people who chose each other on purpose.

The girls are with my parents and my extended family. They’re safe. They’re loved. They’re being fed, spoiled, corrected, passed around, and pulled into a world that existed long before I became someone’s mother. And because I’ve written honestly about my family before, I’m not going to pretend this is all uncomplicated just because everyone has matching pajamas and somebody bought the girls popsicles.

Family can be loving and complicated. Help can be real and still come from people you have history with. Both things can be true, which is annoying, but also basically adulthood.

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When my mom first asked if she could start taking the girls for a few weeks every summer, I wasn’t immediately on board. Nola had spent six weeks in Los Angeles once before, when she was two and I was recovering from my mastectomy. That made sense to me. I needed help. My body had been through hell, and there wasn’t a prize for pretending I could muscle my way through it.

But making it a tradition? Sending both of my girls across the country for over a month every summer? I had questions. Concerns. Several tabs open in my anxiety browser.

So I asked a few moms who’ve been doing this longer than I have, and they were basically like, “Girl. Throw those kids at your mama and have a ball!

One of those moms also reminded me that Black families have been doing some version of this forever. Kids sent down South for the summer to stay with grandparents, aunties, cousins, and church mothers. My version is geographically reversed — my girls are leaving Atlanta for Los Angeles — but the impulse feels familiar. They’re going back to my people. They’re getting a version of family that doesn’t need me standing over it barking about bedtime routines and schedules.

And maybe, for the first time, I’m letting that be enough.

Not because every family is easy. Not because grandparents are automatically saints. But because children can be loved by more than one set of arms. Because help can be imperfect and still helpful. Because sometimes your kids get to have their own relationship with family, separate from the exact shape of your own.

And because sometimes your marriage needs the space too.

Shep and I got married in September of 2019. I got pregnant with Nola in May of 2020. So we had about eight minutes of being married before the world shut down and we became parents. We didn’t get years of slow mornings or lazy weekends or figuring out who we were as husband and wife before children. We got vows, a pandemic, babies, cancer, recovery, and the regular relentless business of building a family.

We’ve spent more of our marriage as parents than we ever spent as just married people.

I love our girls. I love the life we’re building. But parenthood can turn even a good marriage into nothing but a very efficient logistics department. You become excellent at the handoff. You know who packed lunch, who booked the appointment, who grabbed the wipes, who has pickup, who needs to stop for milk, who has five minutes left before they become a person no one should speak to directly.

That kind of partnership matters. A family doesn’t run on vibes.

But a marriage can’t only be management.

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It can’t only be “What time are you home?” and “Can you grab that?” and two exhausted people collapsing onto the couch after bedtime, scrolling in silence because talking would require a level of brain function neither of you has left. At some point, you have to make room for the part of the relationship that doesn’t produce anything except closeness.

I don’t think marriage only needs attention when something is wrong. I think that’s how people get in trouble. Sometimes you tend the thing because it matters, not because it’s on fire.

For us, this summer is that room.

We’ve been eating dinner late outside, listening to jazz, going to the movies on a random Tuesday because no one has to be bathed, negotiated with, tucked in, retucked in, or located under a pile of stuffed animals. The other night we sat outside longer than we usually can, and nothing spectacular happened. No big speech. No dramatic revelation. We just talked without someone interrupting every fourteen seconds to ask for a snack, a wipe, justice, or a full investigation into who touched whose toy first.

And it felt like something.

In two weeks, we’re going to the Bahamas, and I plan to be deeply unavailable to responsibility. I want to swim, read, flirt with my husband, and pack a bag that doesn’t include emergency snacks, children’s Tylenol, tiny hair ties, and the fear that somebody will need to poop at the worst possible time.

I want to be Ryan for a little while, and I want Shep to get to be Shep.

Not Daddy. Not the pediatrician. Not the person I’m tossing a child to while I finish dinner. Just my husband. The man I married. The man I still choose. The man I’d like to sit across from without cutting someone else’s food.

I miss my children. Of course I do. I miss their voices and their faces and their little bodies climbing all over me like I’m public infrastructure. I miss the chaos because it’s our chaos. But I’m trying not to confuse missing them with needing to prove my devotion by being miserable while they’re gone.

That’s a trap mothers know too well. We think if relief shows up, we have to apologize for it. We think enjoying the quiet means we love the noise less. We think taking help, especially imperfect help, requires a public defense case so no one can accuse us of being selfish.

Most of us won’t get four weeks. Sometimes the room is one dinner, one walk, one morning where nobody talks about the calendar. Sometimes it’s asking your sister to take the kids for two hours so you can sit across from your husband and talk about something besides camp forms, grocery lists, and who needs new shoes. But however small it is, marriage needs room before it becomes an emergency.

I can miss my kids and enjoy my marriage. I can be grateful they’re loved and still have complicated feelings about family. I can want them home and still want these weeks to stretch a little. I can be a good mother and a woman who needs room. I can love my children with my whole life and still believe my marriage deserves more than whatever is left after bedtime.

Maybe that’s the real gift of this summer. Not the quiet, though my God, the quiet. Not the freedom from lunchboxes, tiny shoes, or fights over objects nobody cared about until someone else touched them.

It’s the reminder that my life is allowed to have more than one center.

My children are one of them. They always will be.

But my marriage is one too.

So am I.

What’s for dinner this week

This week is built around the stuff that makes summer dinner feel like summer dinner (well at least for us California girls): tomatoes, poblanos, corn, cabbage, cilantro, lime, and tortillas.

We’re starting with creamy roasted poblano chicken, made with roasted garlic, cilantro, herbs, cream, and lime, served with rice, black beans, avocado, tomato, and lime cabbage. Make extra chicken, because later in the week it gets crisped in a skillet and turned into tostadas with mashed black beans, pickled onions, cabbage, crema, and lime.

To finish, we’re making charred tomato and corn rice plates with fried eggs and cilantro-lime sauce. It’s cheap, bright, filling, and exactly the kind of dinner that proves eggs, rice, and good produce can still do a lot.

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Last Monday, I was driving to therapy when Noah Kahan’s “Orbiter” came on the radio. There’s a line right at the start of the song about losing not being new, and not being done with you either, and for whatever reason, it stayed with me longer than the song did.

Maybe because I was already on my way to therapy, which is usually where I go when some old version of myself starts making noise. Maybe because the line caught me in one of those small, ordinary moments when you realize your whole life has been shaped as much by what you didn’t get as what you did.

I started thinking about all the times I have lost.

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The grade I wanted and did not get. The boy I loved who still left. The jobs I wanted badly. The rooms I thought I was walking toward. The opportunities I had already started building a life around before anyone actually handed them to me. The versions of myself I had imagined so clearly they almost felt promised.

And then, of course, the quiet humiliation of having to keep living after the answer was no.

That is the part people tend to skip when they talk about resilience. They make it sound clean. Almost athletic. You get knocked down, you get back up, and now you are stronger. Very simple. Very inspirational. Very Nike commercial coded.

But a lot of losing just plain fucking sucks. It is wanting badly and not being chosen. It is working hard and learning, sometimes brutally, that effort is not always currency. It’s being embarrassed by your own hope. It is having to sit inside the life you actually have while grieving the one you thought you were building.

I don’t think winning has ever taught me as much.

Winning is wonderful, obviously. I love winning. I am not above winning. Winning will have you convinced you are gifted, healed, favored, correct, and possibly chosen by God. Losing is less flattering, but it tells the truth faster.

Losing has shown me where I am brittle, where I am vain, where I am more attached to being impressive than being honest. It has shown me how much of my identity I have placed in being good, being picked, being right, being exceptional.

Of course I’m not saying that losing automatically makes anyone better. That is the lie people tell when they want pain to sound useful. Losing can make you bitter. Losing can make you cruel. Losing can make you spend your whole life trying to prove something to people who have long since stopped thinking about you.

Losing only becomes useful if you learn how to carry it.

Which brings me to Nola.

Last week, without putting all of her business in the street, I noticed my girl isn’t good at losing. And yes, she is five. Of course she’s good at losing. Children are still learning how to be people. Plenty of adults haven’t figured this out either, and they are allowed to vote (my God) and raise other people.

Still, I noticed it.

If she can’t grasp something quickly, she falls apart. A word she can’t read. A math problem she misses. A game she doesn’t win. A new concept that refuses to become easy on her preferred timeline. The second she feels herself not being good at something, she wants out.

“I can’t doooo it.”

The voice gets high. The hands go up. The pencil gets abandoned. The whole body collapses under the weight of one wrong answer.

And I knew that voice.

I knew it because I’ve heard it in myself. Not always out loud, but somewhere underneath the performance of adulthood. The part of me that hates being new. Hates being corrected. Hates being bad at something in front of other people. The part of me that would rather decide something is not for me than sit there and be seen trying.

Ahem gestures wildly at my career lol

So I grabbed both of her hands and said, “My sweet girl, you have a lifetime of failing ahead of you. That’s the first step of learning.”

It sounds dramatic written out like that, but I meant it. Because I don’t want to raise children who believe their worth depends on being good immediately. I don’t want to raise children who only feel safe when they’re winning.

I do not want to raise children who interpret difficulty as evidence that they do not belong.

I want to raise good losers.

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And I don’t mean children who accept every disappointment quietly. I don’t mean children who swallow their feelings because it makes them easier to manage. I am not interested in raising girls who confuse politeness with self-erasure.

I mean children who can lose without becoming hardend. Children who can be wrong without becoming ashamed. Children who can try again without needing the whole room to rescue them first. Children who can hear no and still know who they are.

Children who can say, “I am not good at this yet,” and believe the yet.

Parenting is a funny thing. You think you are teaching your child how to sound out a word or finish the math problem or lose a board game without acting like the family has betrayed her, and then suddenly you are staring at your own relationship to failure across the kitchen table.

Because what am I modeling? Not what am I saying. What am I showing?

Do my children see me recover? Do they see me attempt things I may not be good at? Do they see me handle disappointment without turning sharp? Do they see me lose and remain generous? Or do they see me treat every inconvenience like a referendum on my life?

I keep chewing on that . Not just, “Is my child a sore loser?” but, “What have I taught her losing means?”

Because children learn from the speech, yes, but they also learn from the mutter under your breath. The way you talk about the person who got what you wanted. The way you respond when plans change. The way your whole body changes when you are not in control. They learn from how quickly you rush in to fix things. They learn from whether you let them struggle long enough to discover they can survive it.

And I wonder how many of us are raising children to be winners because we never made peace with all the ways we have lost.

I do it too. I see her struggling and I want to smooth the whole thing over. Give the answer. Let her win. Move the game along. Rescue the mood. Preserve the afternoon, because honestly, some days I do not have the bandwidth for a full emotional production over 2 + 2.

But I’m starting to think some of the best parenting happens in the space where we don’t rescue them immediately. Where we stay close, but we don’t fix it. Where we let the loss do a small, useful work. Where we say, “I know. It feels bad. Try again.”

Because they are going to lose. Our children are going to lose in ways we can’t prevent. They will not always be chosen. They will not always be the best. They will want something and not get it. They will work hard and still come up short. They will be misunderstood. They will be left out. They will meet closed doors with their names nowhere on them.

I hate that love can’t exempt them from life. I hate that I can’t stand in front of every disappointment and tell it to turn around and find another house. But maybe the work isn’t to raise children who never fall apart. Maybe the work is to raise children who know falling apart is not the end.

That feels more important to me than raising children who always win.

I want my girls to know that one wrong answer isn’t an indictment. One lost game is not a crisis. One rejection isn’t a prophecy. One failure isn’t a finished life.

I want them to be able to say, “That hurt,” without deciding it ruined them. To say, “I wanted that,” without deciding they were owed it. To say, “I lost,” without disappearing inside the loss.

So maybe this starts small. At the kitchen table. In the living room. Over a board game. Over a word they can’t read yet. Over the kind of little loss that feels enormous to a child because, for them, it is.

Maybe we teach them by not letting them win every time. Maybe we teach them by not rushing in with the answer. Maybe we teach them by allowing frustration to exist without treating it like an emergency. Maybe we teach them by staying near enough that they know they are not alone, but far enough that they still have to try.

I want to raise good losers because I want to raise children who can stay soft without staying helpless. Children who can take the hit, feel the sting, and not become hard. Children who understand that losing isn’t the opposite of becoming great.

Sometimes losing is the apprenticeship.

And if I do my job right, my girls will know that getting knocked down isn’t the thing that defines you. Hell, everybody gets knocked down.

The life is in what you do next.

A little anniversary announcement

The Motherload turns one on July 4th, which feels both impossible and exactly right. I started this newsletter because I wanted to build a place for women who are trying to feed their families, feed themselves, keep a little bit of their mind intact, and not make dinner feel like a nightly punishment from God.

Somehow, a whole year later, we are still here.

So, to say thank you, I’m offering 40% off annual subscriptions through July 4th. If you’ve been reading for free and thinking about joining the paid side, this is the best time to do it.

And year two is going to be even more focused on making this space useful for paid subscribers. I’m planning more ways for us to actually connect, including an IRL Motherload meet-up, online cooking classes where we can cook and yap together, and special weekly sends just for paid subscribers — an extra recipe, a cocktail I cannot stop sipping, a menu idea, a little kitchen save, whatever feels helpful and worth opening.

Basically, more food, more community, more “here’s what we’re making so you don’t have to figure everything out alone.”

The sale ends July 4th. After that, annual subscriptions go back to full price.

Subscribe 40% Off

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This week’s special send is for the women who are very good at feeding everyone else.

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Nola got her first real big girl braids this week.

Not the little toddler ponytails. Not the puff situation we could still pretend belonged to a baby. Braids. Real ones. The kind you get before a beach trip because your mama is trying to make pool days, sunscreen, sand, sweat, snacks, and general survival slightly less chaotic.

We are in Amelia Island, Florida for the next few days, calling it a family vacation because Shep has a conference and I am not one to let a fancy hotel room go to waste.

So all four of us packed up and got on the road early Thursday morning at 4 a.m., which is a deeply unserious time of day in general and especially to travel with kids, but here we are. I packed like we were relocating permanently. Clothes, snacks, swimsuits, chargers, more snacks, backup clothes, random medicine, wipes, sunscreen, the emotional support water bottles. The usual circus.

The girls head to Los Angeles soon for the rest of the summer, well, until school starts back in August, so this little trip feels like a pocket of time before the next thing. Before the suitcases get repacked. Before the airport goodbye. Before the house gets quiet in that strange way where you think you want silence and then immediately miss the people who were making all the noise.

That’s why the braids got me.

Because I wanted Nola’s hair done so I would not spend the whole trip detangling, negotiating, moisturizing, re-braiding, and silently cursing Florida’s humidity.

So we got her braids and then I looked at her. Really looked at her. And she looked so big I almost didn’t know what to do with myself.

It felt like five minutes ago she was two months old. Then she was one. Then she was three. And now she is five, standing in front of me with big girl braids, talking like she pays our mortgage, asking questions I am not emotionally prepared to answer, and becoming herself right in front of me.

And I felt this ache that kind of knocked the wind out of me because I realized that I spend so much time trying to raise my children that I sometimes forget to enjoy them.

I am always parenting. Correcting. Redirecting. Packing. Buckling. Feeding. Wiping. Explaining. Repeating myself until I sound like a haunted Fisher-Price toy.

Shoes on.

Don’t lick that. Gentle hands. Finish your dinner. Stop screaming. Where is your water bottle? Pleaseeeeee do not put that in your sister’s hair.

So much of motherhood is management.

And I understand why. These tiny hurricanes did not arrive knowing how to be people. Somebody has to teach them not to run into parking lots, drink bathwater (which btw Stevie will not stop doing), hit their sibling with a sandal, or announce family business at school with the confidence of a federal witness.

But somewhere in the middle of all that managing, I think I have been missing some of the good stuff.

Not all of it. I mean, I’m not dead inside. I laugh at the weird things they say. I take the pictures. I save the drawings. I notice the little voices and the sticky hands and the way they still reach for me without thinking.

But there are whole weeks where I am so focused on getting through the day that I forget to actually be in it.

I am surviving bedtime instead of noticing their sleepy faces.

I am rushing through dinner instead of listening to the extremely long, deeply confusing story about what happened at school.

I am cleaning up the mess while they are still making the memory.

I am trying so hard to raise good humans that I forget I already have two really good little humans right in front of me.

And one of them just got big girl braids.

That’s what shocked me in the feels.

Because childhood does not announce when it is moving on. It does not send a calendar invite. It does not say, “Hey, this is the last summer she’ll look like this,” or “This is the last time she’ll say that word wrong,” or “This is the last year she’ll need you in this exact way.”

It just changes.

One day they need you to do everything, and then one day they are standing there with braids down their back, looking older overnight, and you are left in the doorway trying to act normal about it.

And I know the whole “enjoy every moment” thing is mostly trash.

Nobody enjoys every moment. Some moments are awful. Some moments smell like old milk. Some moments are a child screaming because you gave them the banana they asked for, but apparently you gave it to them with the wrong energy.

I do not want to enjoy every moment.

I just do not want to miss the whole thing because I was too busy trying to survive it.

I don’t want to look back and realize I spent their childhood waiting for the next phase to get easier.

When she sleeps through the night.

When she can talk.

When she can buckle herself.

When she stops needing help with every single snack, shoe, bathroom trip, and emotional crisis involving a sticker.

Because the next phase does get easier in some ways. And then it gets harder in new, ridiculous ways. Motherhood loves a plot twist.

But the child in front of you is always changing.

And lately I’ve been wondering what would happen if I slowed down enough to actually enjoy the version of my kids I have right now. Not the fantasy version who listens the first time, eats the dinner without commentary, and leaves the house without acting like we asked her to cross the Oregon Trail (wait do you remember that game?)

The real ones. The loud ones. The funny ones.

The ones who need too much and ask too many questions and leave crumbs in places crumbs have no business being.

The ones who are growing while I am managing.

This week, I want to try to look up more.

From the packing lists. The grocery bags. The lunchboxes. The car seats. The sunscreen. The dinner plans. The mental math of who needs what and when and whether we have enough clean underwear to make it through the weekend.

I want to look up and see them.

Actually see them.

Because I do not just want to raise my children well. I want to know them. I want to enjoy them.

I want to remember what their faces looked like in the summer sun, covered in sunscreen and snack dust, before they got on a plane to Los Angeles and came back a little taller, a little older, a little more themselves.

Which brings me to this week’s food.

Normally, this is where I would tell you about the recipes I tested, adjusted, shot, and made sure were ready to hold your hand through dinner.

But this week, I packed up what felt like my entire house, got everyone ready for a road trip, and left Atlanta early as hell with two kids, too many bags, and the fragile optimism of a woman who thought she packed enough snacks.

So no, I did not recipe test a brand-new menu this week.

And I don’t want to bullshit you.

Instead, I’m taking this week as a chance to revisit a few older recipes that still work. Recipes I trust. Recipes that can do what I need food to do right now, which is feed people without asking me to become a better version of myself first.

Because honestly, that feels like the whole point this week.

I don’t need to reinvent dinner every time I show up here. You don’t need to reinvent yourself every time you feed your family.

Sometimes we need the thing that already works.

Sometimes we need to stop performing competence and just get everybody fed.

And speaking of showing up in ways that actually feel useful, I have a few things coming for paid subscribers that I’m really excited about.

First: I’m going to start rolling out a midweek send where I cook one of the dinners from that week’s plan. Nothing overly produced. Nothing fake-polished. Just me, in my kitchen, making the thing so you can see what it looks like in real life — the pace, the swaps, the “oops, forgot the scallions” of it all.

You will likely hear me fussing at one of the girls, the dogs, the cats, or Shep in the background because this is a home, not a soundstage. But honestly, I think that’s the point. Sometimes a recipe is helpful, but watching someone make dinner while also existing as a human woman with people and animals needing things from her is even more helpful.

And because we’re coming up on the one-year anniversary of The Motherload (which wtf that was fast!) I’m going to start rolling out monthly virtual cooking classes for this community.

I’m thinking of them as part cooking class, part real-time dinner help, part check-in. We’ll cook something together, talk through the recipe, answer questions, and make it feel a little less like you’re figuring out dinner by yourself every week.

I’m still working through the details, but I’m excited to tell you more in next week’s newsletter.

Ahem. Now would be a very good time to become a paid subscriber so you don’t miss a thing.

The midweek cooking sends, the monthly virtual cooking classes, the real-time dinner help, the recipe walk-throughs, the community yap sessions all of that is where The Motherload is headed next.

If you’ve been meaning to upgrade, consider this your sign. Year two is going to be good.

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I’m really proud of what The Motherload has become this first year. For year two, I want it to feel even more useful, more personal, and more connected — a place where you can get dinner handled, but also feel a little less alone in everything that comes with feeding a family and trying to be a person.

So this week, we are revisiting the recipes that already work.

The ones that can get dinner on the table without requiring a new personality, a perfect mood, or a second trip to the store.

And maybe that is the reminder I needed most.

Sometimes we need to look up from all the managing long enough to notice that the tiny humans around us are only this tiny once.

Even when they are loud. Even when they are sticky. Even when they are asking for another snack while actively holding a snack.

They are here.

They are growing.

And I don’t want to miss all of it.

So I’ll see you next week with what was supposed to be this weeks recipes. For now, enjoy this video of my water babies running full speed to the ocean. Fearless those two.

xo,

Ryan

The night before I moved out of my childhood home and went off to college, I started having heart palpitations.

I tried, for what felt like hours, to calm myself down. I breathed. I shifted around in bed. I told myself I was fine. But pretty soon I was sure I was dying, so I ran to my parents’ room, woke them up, and told them we needed to go to the emergency room.

Instead, they told me I was having something called a panic attack, and that I was not, in fact, dying. My mom went downstairs to make me a warm mug of milk, and my dad rocked me slowly on his side of the bed, something he likely hadn’t done in years and wouldn’t do again until my cancer diagnosis, ages later.

I spent that night curled between my parents, both of their arms draped around me.

I felt safe. I felt protected.

I was eighteen years old, and this was my hard launch into what would become a twenty-year battle with my mental health.

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I didn’t know then that anxiety would become one of the most consistent relationships of my adult life. More loyal than some friendships. More reliable than good Wi-Fi. Always somewhere nearby, clearing its throat.

And for years, I did what a lot of women do. I managed it. I performed around it. I built a life around being high-functioning enough that no one had to worry too much.

Dating was a disaster. I would spend hours taking online quizzes trying to figure out if my relationship was doomed to fail.

They were, by the way. So at least the quizzes were not completely useless.

At work, I obsessed over my bosses’ tone. I overanalyzed emails. I read every period, every “thanks,” every “let’s discuss” like it had been sent from the Pentagon with redactions.

And then there was my body. I noticed everything. Every cough that lingered too long. Every headache that appeared out of nowhere. Every random pain that my brain immediately turned into a full medical mystery with a tragic ending.

Eventually, my anxiety landed me in a therapist’s chair in D.C. After a few months of working together, she looked over her glasses at me and said, with so much tenderness it almost felt like a hand on my back, “I think I’ve reached the limits of what I can do with you without medical intervention. I’m going to refer you to a psychiatrist.”

A few weeks later, I sat in that psychiatrist’s office and told her everything. About the panic attacks. About my need for certainty. About the obsessions. The checking. The rechecking. The way my brain could grab onto a fear and worry it down to the bone.

At twenty-five, I was diagnosed with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.

OCD.

And honestly? The diagnosis helped. Not because it fixed anything overnight, but because suddenly the thing had a name. I was not just dramatic. I was not just “too much.” I was not just a woman who needed to calm down, which, as we all know, is historically the least calming thing anyone can say to a woman.

I was put on medication. Risperidone. Paxil. The occasional Xanax for breakthrough anxiety, which of course broke through fairly often because she is nothing if not committed.

That cocktail helped me for years. It quieted my mind enough for therapy to actually do its job. I learned coping mechanisms. I learned how to recognize spirals. I learned how to stop feeding every thought like it was a tiny demanding pet.

And for a while, life was good. Manageable.

Or at least, I thought it was.

Looking back, I can see that alcohol was doing more of the heavy lifting than I wanted to admit. I had built a little life around being functional, funny, productive, and quietly self-medicating. But that is another story for another day.

In 2021, pregnancy forced sobriety on me. Without alcohol, and with a baby growing inside of me, all those obsessive thoughts came back with more ferocity than before.

This time, the fear had a new target.

My baby.

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I remember calling my first OB’s office in Decatur and telling the nurse I was having extremely anxious thoughts. I was cramping. It was my first pregnancy. I had no idea what was normal and what was terrifying. I also told her about my history of mental health issues.

She basically told me there was nothing they could do because antidepressants and anti-anxiety medications weren’t good for the baby. Drink some water, she told me. Maybe you’re just dehydrated.

That practice was white, and I am naming that because it mattered. Not because every white doctor dismisses Black women, but because too many Black women know exactly what it feels like to say, “Something is wrong,” and watch the room decide we are exaggerating.

So I called my old OB at Morehouse, where I still am today, and she said, “Come back home, baby.”

A Black woman heard me. She believed me. She treated my mental health like it was part of my prenatal care because it was.

A few days later, I had an appointment. They put me on Zoloft. And for a while, that was the right answer.

Then 2023 hit, and I was diagnosed with breast cancer while pregnant with my second daughter.

Cancer eviscerated decades of work I had done in therapy and on medication. So much of my OCD had always centered around harm, around the belief that something bad was going to happen to me, around this relentless need to stay vigilant because it could keep me safe.

And the cruel part is, that time, my vigilance did help keep me safe.

I found something. I pushed. I got seen. I got diagnosed.

Despite no family history. Despite no genetic marker. Despite doing everything “right,” whatever that even means.

My brain took that diagnosis as confirmation.

See? it said. I told you. I told you something was coming.

That is the work I am still doing now. Trying to teach my brain that being right once does not mean it gets to run my life forever.

After cancer, my therapist, my doctor, and my husband kept gently suggesting that I increase my Zoloft. I went from 25 milligrams to 50, then to 75.

I am in no way anti-medication. Medication has saved me before. Medication helped me survive seasons where my brain felt like an unsafe place to live.

But this time, the answer kept being more.

More Zoloft. A higher dose. Give it more time.

And I was frustrated because the intrusive thoughts were not going away. If anything, they were louder. I kept thinking, how far are we going to take this? Do we just keep increasing until we hit the maximum? What happens if the maximum still does not get me back to myself?

I did not want to be numbed into compliance.

I wanted to be helped.

I wanted someone to be curious with me about the root of the noise, not just keep turning up the dose and hoping I would eventually become quiet enough to function.

Then, in late summer of 2024, Shep and I took the girls to Mexico with some of our closest friends. One night, after the kids were asleep, one of my friends offered me shrooms.

I thought I was about to trip. I was prepared to see God in a throw pillow or become emotionally attached to a palm tree. But what she gave me was a microdose.

And nothing happened in the way I thought something would happen.

I did not see colors. The walls did not breathe. Nothing sparkled.

But my brain got quiet.

For most of my life, my mind had felt like a radio station turned all the way up. Always playing. Always scanning. Always asking me to check, anticipate, prepare, worry, brace.

And that night, for the first time, the volume turned down.

I got into bed with my husband and said, “Oh my God. My brain feels so quiet.”

He said, “Yeah?”

And I said, “Wait. Is this what your brain feels like all the time?”

He said, “Yes.”

And I started crying.

Because it was relief. Not escape. Not numbness. Not being taken out of my body. Just quiet. Just enough space between me and the noise to realize I was still in there.

After that, I understood what I was looking for.

I did not need to disappear from my life. I did not need to become a different person. I did not need to be fixed into someone serene and candlelit and deeply annoying.

I just needed the volume turned down.

So I did more research. I watched How to Change Your Mind on Netflix. I talked to my therapist. I talked to my doctor. I treated it like a serious mental health decision, not a cute little wellness dare.

Eventually, I decided that psychedelics, specifically psilocybin, were something worth exploring.

So I did.

And it changed my life.

And when I say it changed my life, I do not mean it made me euphoric or permanently healed or suddenly the kind of woman who wakes up at 5 a.m. to journal beside a single flickering candle.

Please. I still have children.

What I mean is that, for me, psilocybin gave me something alcohol had been giving me for years, but without the next-morning anxiety, jitters, or shame spiral. It quieted my brain. It gave me enough room to think. Enough room to be present. Enough room to notice that I was not actually in danger every second of the day.

And I want to be careful here because I am not your doctor, your pharmacist, or your mushroom concierge. This is not medical advice. This is my story.

One of the hardest parts for me was finding information that felt reputable and not like I was trusting some man named River in a comment section with my mental health. Basically, I didn’t want to unintentionally fuck myself up worse.

For transparency, there are three companies I personally tried during this process: FlowDose, Schedule 35, and Golden Rule. I personally preferred Golden Rule. I liked their sourcing, how open they were about their strains, how much information they provided, and that I could sample before committing to a larger subscription.

I am not linking them here because I do not want this to read like a shopping guide for something that is still legally and medically complicated. But I do want to tell you the truth about what I used, because access to honest information matters.

It is also expensive. My monthly subscription from Golden Rule is about $130 with shipping included. For comparison, my Zoloft prescription was around $25 out of pocket with insurance. I do not want to talk about healing like cost is some cute little footnote. Cost is often the whole damn paragraph.

There is research suggesting psilocybin-assisted therapy may help people with alcohol use disorder. In one randomized clinical trial, psilocybin combined with psychotherapy was associated with fewer heavy drinking days compared with placebo and psychotherapy.

Psilocybin has also shown promise in clinical studies for depression, especially when combined with psychological support. It is still not broadly FDA-approved as a mental health treatment, and the research is not the same thing as doing this alone in your house with vibes and a prayer.

But I think women deserve to know that these conversations are happening.

Mothers deserve to know.

Black women deserve to know.

Because so many of us are out here holding entire households together while quietly falling apart. We are making lunches, answering emails, remembering spirit week, booking appointments, managing marriages, surviving grief, surviving diagnoses, surviving our own minds, and still somehow being asked what is for dinner.

And when we finally say, “I am not okay,” too many of us are met with suspicion, dismissal, fear, shame, “Have you tried praying more?” or honestly, mom wine culture.

I know there are real barriers here. Legal barriers. Financial barriers. Medical barriers. Cultural barriers. The fear of being judged. The fear, especially for Black mothers, that admitting we are struggling will not be met with care but with consequences.

There are also barriers to the traditional options. SSRIs are not always easy to access. Therapy is expensive. Finding a therapist who understands your body, your motherhood, your race, your marriage, your trauma, and your faith can feel like trying to find a ripe avocado and affordable childcare on the same day.

So no, I am not telling every woman to take psilocybin.

I am saying women deserve more information.

We deserve more options.

We deserve to know that healing does not have to look one way. It can be therapy. It can be medication. It can be sobriety. It can be rest. It can be community. It can be a doctor who looks at you and says, “Come back home, baby.” It can be alternative medicine explored carefully, seriously, and with support.

I have been taking psilocybin since November 2024, and I am better than I have ever been.

As my husband and I started preparing my body and mind for what we hope will be our last pregnancy, my therapist and my doctor both told me it was time to stop psilocybin and go back to Zoloft. So I started the intake process on Hers to get a prescription.

I shit you not, when I filled out the screening forms, I was told I no longer fit the profile of someone who was clinically anxious or depressed enough to qualify for Zoloft.

After twenty years of my brain sounding like someone left a smoke detector chirping in another room, I no longer met the threshold.

Of course, I can’t separate that from the work I’ve been doing with therapy, mindful drinking, and general support. But I know psilocybin was a major part of that shift for me.

I also know that will not be everyone’s story. I know psilocybin is not magic. I know access, legality, medical history, pregnancy, breastfeeding, medications, trauma, and support systems all matter.

If you have questions after reading this, ask me. If there is something you want me to explain more clearly, a resource you want me to point you toward, or a part of this you want me to expand on, send me a message. I am not a medical professional, but I am happy to share the best information I have, what I learned, and where I would start if I were trying to understand this for the first time.

Mostly, I want you to know you are not alone.

If your brain is loud, you are not alone.

If motherhood made your anxiety worse, you are not alone.

If you have been using wine or cocktails or productivity or perfectionism to get through the day, you are not alone.

If you are scared to try medication, scared to stop medication, scared to need help, scared to admit how bad it has gotten, you are not alone.

This essay is for anyone who has ever needed relief.

But if I am honest, it is especially for Black women who have been told, directly or indirectly, that our only acceptable setting is strong.

I do not want to be strong all the time.

I want to be well.

And I want that for us.

What’s for dinner this week

This week tastes like the part of summer I still believe in: sweet corn, ripe peaches, juicy tomatoes, basil, lime, avocado, and the kind of dinners that make you feel like you did something without requiring you to become a whole new woman.

We’re leaning on simple black beans to carry the week in that quiet, useful way pantry cooking should. They sit next to crispy tilapia tacos with cabbage and peach-avocado hot sauce salsa one night, then come back later as the base for summer squash tostadas with lime, herbs, and crema. No one-night ingredient cameos. No “why did I buy this?” containers haunting the fridge.

And then there’s the chicken skillet: golden leg quarters, corn, butter beans, basil, and lemon. It’s the kind of dinner that feels like eating outside, even if you are very much inside because the mosquitoes have lost their minds. Peak summer, low patience, dinner handled.

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I meant to send this out the same day Stevie burned her foot, and then, very quickly, life became less “cute little bonus send” and more “cool cool cool, we’re doing wound care now.”

So thank you for your patience.

I also want to say, genuinely, thank you for being here as paid subscribers. Your support makes The Motherload possible. It gives m…

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I used to love summer.

I mean loveeeeeeeee summer.

I’m a Southern Californian, so of course I did. When I was younger, and by younger I mean old enough to drive and with no real responsibilities besides making sure I came back home alive, the late sunsets, rising temperatures, and easy days meant one thing.

Freedom.

And the beach.

I lived about 20 minutes from Malibu or Zuma, depending on which canyon I decided to take. I’d grab a sandwich from Dave’s Super Subs, still one of the best sandwiches in the world in my opinion, roll the windows of my Jetta all the way down, and head toward the water.

I can still remember the smell of Hawaiian Tropic and Love Spell body spray clinging to me. Cool waves. Sand everywhere. Hours with whichever of my high school friends were also home from college, lying around like we had nowhere to be because we really didn’t.

It was bliss.

Summer is already asking enough of you.

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Less fridge-staring. More dinner handled.

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As I got older and moved to D.C., summer still meant freedom, just with no beach. It meant rooftop cocktails, late dinners, humid nights, short dresses, and walking home with my friends feeling like life was wide open.

Summer used to feel like possibility.

Now I am sitting here with an electric pump that damn near burned my thighs trying to blow up an inflatable pool I specifically begged my mom not to send, only for it to arrive at my house the next day.

Anyway…I think I hate summer now.

Not the food. Not the peaches or tomatoes or grilled corn. Not the way my daughters smell like sunscreen after they’ve been running around outside. Not the late sunsets.

I hate what summer has become for mothers.

Which is different.

Somewhere along the way, summer stopped being a season and became another performance review.

Did you make it magical enough? Did you sign them up for the right camps? Did you plan enough outings? Did you get them outside? Did you limit screens? Did you capture the memories? Did you create the kind of summer they will look back on one day and weep over in a tasteful Instagram caption?

And hovering over all of it is that little phrase that means well but has started to make me want to lie down on the kitchen floor:

You only get 18 summers with your kids.

I understand what people mean when they say it. I do.

It is meant to be tender. A reminder to look up. To pay attention. To remember that childhood is short and that one day no one will ask me to push them on a swing or watch them jump into a pool 47 times in a row.

I know.

I know it so much that sometimes it feels like a second job.

Because “only 18 summers” can turn every ordinary day into a memory-making emergency. It can make a random Tuesday feel like a referendum on your motherhood. Was I present enough? Did I say yes enough? Did we go outside enough? Did I make it special enough? Did I ruin one of our limited-edition summers because I needed everyone to be quiet for an hour?

That is a lot of pressure to put on a season that already requires sunscreen, camp registrations, childcare gaps, laundry, work, heat, dinner, and the emotional resilience to answer “what are we doing today?” before you have had coffee.

Last week the girls were home with no school, no camp, no real structure, and I tried. I really did.

I made a plan. I did the crafts. I baked with them. I pulled out the activities. I gave out popsicles. I put on the movies. I tried to make the days feel sweet and full and special.

And by the end of it, I felt completely spent.

Not because anything was particularly wrong, but because everything required me. Every transition. Every snack. Every sunscreen application. Every fight over a toy no one cared about five minutes earlier. Every attempt to create a little bit of summer magic required another decision, another mess, another small piece of me.

I want to be the kind of mother who loves summer with her children.

I want to be easy and breezy about it. I want to say yes more. I want to let them run through sprinklers and eat popsicles before lunch and remember these months as golden and slow and warm.

But I also want to be honest.

The version of summer the internet keeps selling mothers is exhausting.

Now we are supposed to have a “90s mom summer,” which, depending on the video, seems to mean a summer with fewer screens, more outdoor time, less structure, and more old-school freedom.

Which, hell yes. Big fan.

But I don’t know about you, my 90s summer was not some beautifully curated child-led experience. My mother would send us outside with sandwiches, a pitcher of ice, access to the garden hose, and instructions not to come back inside unless someone was bleeding, someone had to pee, or there was a weirdo around.

That was it.

There were no activity bins. No sensory stations. No laminated summer rhythm chart. No one was setting up an invitation to play. The invitation was the door opening and an adult pointing outside.

And I say that with love.

Because sometimes I think we have taken the loosest, least-managed parts of our childhood and somehow turned them into another thing mothers have to execute perfectly.

Even “do less” has become a project.

Even “let them be bored” now comes with a caption, a philosophy, and a list of supplies.

And I am tired.

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Last Thursday, Shep headed to New Jersey for his grandfather’s funeral and, because it was a holiday weekend, we agreed he should extend the trip a few days to see friends and have some time to himself. I was genuinely happy for him. He rarely takes time away.

But I would be lying if I told you I wasn’t also dreading five days of solo parenting during, arguably, the shittiest month of the year for parents: Maycember.

Ahhhh, Maycember. That glorious time when it feels like literally everything is happening at once. School graduations. Teacher gifts. Random ass “dress as your favorite superhero” days. End-of-year class celebrations. A concert. A picnic. A “quick reminder” email that somehow requires a trip to Target, a Ziploc bag of cut fruit, and your last functioning brain cell.

All of it…on me.

This week’s full Motherload is free because Maycember is trying to kill us and I believe in public service. Usually, the full recipes, grocery list, prep notes, and extras are for paid subscribers.

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Literally the day after Shep landed in Jersey, I was schlepping Nola and Stevie to their end-of-year school concert, which was adorable, except for the part where Stevie refused to sing and instead screamed for me the entire time. Also, there were bugs everywhere.

It was a nightmare.

And to be clear, I wanted Shep to have that time. That’s the annoying thing about motherhood sometimes: you can be genuinely happy someone else gets rest and still feel completely buried under the logistics they left behind.

And now this week, the kids are home while we wait for summer school to start. My God, please hurry up.

I am basically a regular at craft stores at this point, wandering the aisles like the desperate woman I am, trying to find one more thing that might keep them entertained long enough for me to write this newsletter, test recipes, answer emails, and maybe drink a cup of coffee before it becomes iced coffee against its will.

Basically, I’ve been in survival mode. Granted, as a friend said over the weekend, my survival mode looks pretty good. The kids’ hair is done. They’re clean. They have more snacks than they know what to do with. The floors are mostly clean thanks to this vacuum mop thing my mom sent me, which is high key a lifesaver. And more importantly, they’re really happy.

All I hear is giggling. And a fair amount of fighting too, let’s be so for real.

Still, cooking near constantly has started to feel like a drag. It’s easy enough to make food they want to eat: PB&Js, butter noodles, cheese sticks, snack plates, the emotional support yogurt pouch. But making dinner I actually look forward to eating after spending the entire day feeding everyone else?

That is always the hard part.

Because there is a very specific kind of exhaustion that creeps in when you’ve spent the whole day cutting grapes, opening string cheese, wiping counters, negotiating over the blue cup, and then 5 p.m. rolls around and everyone looks at you like you are the executive chef of a tiny, unreasonable resort.

And technically, yes, I am.

But also? I quit.

If you know a mom who is tired of figuring out dinner over and over again, send this to her. I’ve got the week mapped out, the grocery list handled, and a plan for using what you bought more than once so it actually goes somewhere.

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At least emotionally.

So that’s what we’re doing this week. I wanted real food. Deeply Southern food. Food that tastes like somebody’s auntie was in the kitchen cooking for you. Food that feels like it was made with you in mind too. The kind that makes you close your eyes and hum a little when you take that first bite.

And because Maycember is a lawless hellscape and I believe in public service, I’m opening the full Motherload dinner plan to everyone this week. Usually, the recipes, grocery list, prep notes, and leftover ideas are for paid subscribers, but this week felt like the right time to let everybody taste the whole thing.

Paid subscribers, I didn’t forget about you. You’re the reason I can keep doing this, and I’m deeply grateful you keep this little kitchen running. I also filmed you a quick Sweet Tea Mint Julep because if we are making it through Maycember, we deserve a porch drink and five uninterrupted minutes. Emotionally, spiritually, legally.

And yes, a few of the cook times are longer this week, but before you get irritated with me, hear me out: most of that time is hands-off. Season it. Put it in the oven. Let it do what it came to do.

That’s why I’m asking you to bake a few turkey legs low and slow until they’re tender, smoky, and falling off the bone, then serve them over rice with some simply steamed broccoli on the side. Nothing precious. Nothing fussy. Just the kind of dinner that makes the whole house smell like somebody knows what they’re doing.

Then, if you still have some meat clinging to those bones the next time you go to cook, great. That’s not a problem; that’s the plan. Toss it into a stewy okra and tomato skillet with smoked sausage and serve it over, you guessed it, rice. It’s leftovers, but not in a depressing “here’s the same plate again, good luck babe” kind of way. More like: take what you already made, turn it into something new, and avoid the emotional damage of eating the exact same dinner three nights in a row.

And then on Friday, grab a few red snapper fillets. We’re blackening them and serving them over roasted corn and tomatoes, because if we’re going to limp across the finish line of the week, we might as well do it with a plate that tastes like summer in the South.

Also, brew a pitcher of sweet tea. There is something so right about having an ice-cold glass at the end of this meal. And if it’s been a hell of a week, throw in some mint leaves and a splash of bourbon. I won’t judge. Hell, I’m doing it too.

Basically, everything is anchored by the same grain and a few of the same vegetables, all very accessible — canned, frozen, fresh, whatever makes your life easier — but still deeply, deeply delicious.

That’s the whole point this week. Southern, smoky, comforting food that gives you a real dinner to look forward to without asking you to perform a damn miracle on a Tuesday.

Because sometimes the goal is not a perfect family dinner. Sometimes the goal is feeding everyone, including yourself, without losing your damn mind.

And sometimes the goal is even smaller than that. Sometimes it is standing in your kitchen at the end of a long day, eating something warm and smoky over rice, taking one sip of sweet tea, and remembering that you are a person too.

Not just the snack opener. Not just the cup finder. Not just the keeper of sunscreen, camp forms, teacher gifts, clean underwear, and everyone’s emotional weather patterns.

A person.

A woman.

Someone who also deserves to sit down to a plate that tastes like somebody thought about her.

So this week, that’s what I’m giving you: three dinners, one grocery list, a plan for leftovers that does not feel like culinary punishment, and enough Southern comfort to carry us through the end of this ridiculous month.

This is the part where I remind you that The Motherload is not just about dinner.
Yes, paid subscribers get the full weekly dinner plan, recipes, and grocery list every Friday, but the bigger goal is helping women carry less.

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A little bonus for paid subscribers

Keep your eyes peeled on Saturday. I’m sending over the recipe and a quick video for my favorite Sweet Tea Mint Julep, plus a little update on the in-person Motherload happy hour I’ve been dreaming up.

Because yes, dinner should be easier. But also? We deserve somewhere to exhale that isn’t just standing over the sink whispering, “I’m fine,” into a glass of bourbon.

Just me?

Here’s What We’re Cooking

***Grocery List***

You can grab the full list here.

Weekly Prep: You’re Gonna Need A lotttttttt of Rice

This week’s quiet hero is rice. Make one big batch at the beginning of the week and let it carry you through dinner like the dependable friend who actually texts back.

Ingredients
4 cups long-grain white rice
6 cups water
2 tablespoons unsalted butter or olive oil
2 teaspoons kosher salt

Instructions

1. Rinse the rice until the water runs mostly clear. Add the rice, water, butter or olive oil, and salt to a large pot.

2. Bring to a boil over medium-high heat. Reduce the heat to low, cover, and cook for 15 minutes.

3. Turn off the heat and let the rice sit, covered, for 10 minutes. Fluff with a fork.

4. Cool completely before storing. Refrigerate in airtight containers and reheat throughout the week with a splash of water to bring it back to life.

Oven-Smoked Turkey Legs with Rice and Broccoli

These turkey legs are seasoned the night before with liquid smoke, smoked paprika, garlic, onion, and poultry seasoning, then baked until tender, smoky, and wildly satisfying. Serve them over rice with steamed broccoli and spoon a little of those smoky pan juices over everything, because rice was born for this.

Active time: 20 minutes  Cook time: 1 hour 30 minutes to 2 hours  Total time: about 2 hours, plus overnight seasoning
Serves: 4

Ingredients
4 turkey legs
1 head garlic, cloves separated and finely grated or minced
4 cups cooked long-grain white rice
2 large heads broccoli, cut into florets
2 tablespoons neutral oil
2 tablespoons unsalted butter or olive oil, for the broccoli
1 tablespoon liquid smoke
1 tablespoon kosher salt
1 tablespoon poultry seasoning
2 teaspoons smoked paprika
2 teaspoons onion powder
1 teaspoon garlic powder
1 teaspoon black pepper
½ teaspoon cayenne pepper, optional
Hot sauce, optional

For cooking
1 large oven bag
1 tablespoon all-purpose flour, for the oven bag Or
Heavy-duty aluminum foil

Instructions

1. The night before you plan to cook, pat the turkey legs dry.

2. In a small bowl, stir together garlic, neutral oil, liquid smoke, kosher salt, poultry seasoning, smoked paprika, onion powder, garlic powder, black pepper, and cayenne, if using.

3. Rub the seasoning mixture all over the turkey legs, getting into every little crevice. Place the turkey legs in a large bowl, baking dish, or zip-top bag. Cover and refrigerate overnight.

4. When you’re ready to cook, remove the turkey legs from the refrigerator and let them sit at room temperature while the oven heats.

5. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

6. If using an oven bag, add flour to the bag and shake it around to coat the inside. Place the bag in a large roasting pan or baking dish. Add turkey legs in a single layer, close the bag according to package directions, and cut a few small slits in the top.

7. If using foil, place the turkey legs on a large sheet of heavy-duty foil set inside a roasting pan or baking dish. Spoon any extra seasoning mixture over the top. Cover tightly with another sheet of foil and crimp the edges together to make a sealed packet, leaving a little room inside for steam to circulate.

8. Roast for 1 hour 30 minutes to 2 hours, or until the turkey legs are tender and register at least 175 degrees in the thickest part. Turkey legs can handle a higher temperature than breast meat, and they’re better when the connective tissue has time to relax and stop fighting for its life.

9. If you want more color, carefully open the bag or foil packet during the last 15 minutes of cooking and let the turkey legs roast uncovered.

10. Let the turkey legs rest for 10 minutes before serving.

11. While the turkey rests, steam broccoli until bright green and tender, about 4 to 6 minutes. Toss with butter or olive oil, salt, and black pepper.

12. Serve turkey legs over warm rice with steamed broccoli. Spoon some of the smoky pan juices over the rice.

Make it easier: Season the turkey legs on Sunday night. That is the whole move. Monday you’re basically putting dinner in a bag, or a foil purse if we’re being resourceful, and letting the oven do its job.

Chicken drumstick option: If turkey legs aren’t your thing, use about 3 pounds chicken drumsticks instead. Reduce the kosher salt in the seasoning mixture to 2 teaspoons. Bake at 400 degrees in an oven bag or foil packet for 35 to 45 minutes, opening the bag or packet during the last 10 minutes for color. Cook until the drumsticks register at least 175 degrees and the juices run clear.

Leftover remix: Pull leftover turkey from the bone and use it in fried rice, sandwiches, quesadillas, soup, or tucked into tortillas with hot sauce and something crunchy.

Okra & Tomato Skillet with Smoked Sausage Over Rice

This is the kind of skillet dinner that tastes like summer veggies got invited to a cookout, without asking you to dice a pound of tomatoes on a weeknight. Frozen okra, canned tomatoes, garlic, onion, smoked sausage, and rice turn into something savory, saucy, and comforting, with enough left over to help you coast into another dinner later in the week.

Active time: 15 minutes  Cook time: 35 minutes  Total time: 50 minutes
Serves: 4, with reserved okra-tomato base for another meal

Ingredients
1 pound smoked sausage, sliced into rounds
1 pound frozen sliced okra
1 small yellow onion, diced
4 garlic cloves, finely chopped
2 14.5-ounce cans diced tomatoes or stewed tomatoes
4 cups cooked long-grain white rice
½ cup chicken broth, vegetable broth, or water
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 tablespoon tomato paste
2 teaspoons kosher salt, divided, plus more to taste
1 teaspoon smoked paprika
1 teaspoon garlic powder
1 teaspoon onion powder
½ teaspoon black pepper
½ teaspoon cayenne pepper or chili flakes, optional
Green onions, thinly sliced, optional
Hot sauce, to taste

Instructions

1. Heat a large skillet over medium-high heat.

2. Add sliced smoked sausage and cook until browned on both sides, about 5 to 7 minutes. Transfer sausage to a plate and set aside.

3. Add olive oil to the same skillet.

4. Add frozen okra straight from the freezer with 1 teaspoon kosher salt. Cook over medium-high heat, stirring occasionally, until the okra has released its moisture, the liquid has mostly cooked off, and the okra is beginning to brown in spots, about 10 to 12 minutes. Let it sit between stirs so it can actually get some color instead of steaming into sadness.

5. Add onion and cook until softened, about 4 minutes.

6. Add garlic and cook for 1 minute.

7. Stir in tomato paste, smoked paprika, garlic powder, onion powder, black pepper, cayenne if using, and remaining 1 teaspoon kosher salt. Cook for 1 to 2 minutes, until the tomato paste darkens slightly and everything smells deeply savory.

8. Add canned tomatoes with their juices and broth. If using stewed tomatoes, break them up with your spoon as they cook.

9. Stir well, scraping up any browned bits from the bottom of the pan.

10. Reduce heat to medium and simmer until the tomatoes cook down and the mixture becomes saucy but not soupy, about 12 to 15 minutes.

11. Before adding the sausage back in, scoop out about 2 cups of the okra-tomato mixture and save it for the fish later in the week. Let cool, then refrigerate in an airtight container.

12. Add browned smoked sausage back to the skillet and stir to combine. Simmer for another 3 to 5 minutes.

13. Taste and adjust with salt, pepper, or hot sauce.

14. Spoon okra and tomato skillet over warm rice and finish with green onions, if using.

Make it easier: Use frozen sliced okra and canned tomatoes proudly. This is not the week to stand around trimming okra and chopping tomatoes unless the spirit moves you, and frankly, the spirit has enough going on. Frozen okra works beautifully here as long as you cook it straight from frozen and give the moisture time to evaporate before adding the tomatoes.

Leftover remix: The reserved okra-tomato base becomes the bed for blackened fish later in the week. Leftover sausage and rice can also become a quick lunch with a fried egg on top, because putting an egg on leftovers remains one of adulthood’s most reliable personality traits.

Blackened Red Snapper with Corn Relish over Okra & Tomatoes

This is the fast, fresh end-of-week dinner. The fish gets a smoky blackened crust, the corn relish brings sweetness and crunch, and the reserved okra-tomato skillet underneath makes it feel like you planned ahead because, technically, you did.

Active time: 20 minutes  Cook time: 10 minutes  Total time: 30 minutes
Serves: 4

Ingredients
For the corn relish
3 ears corn, kernels cut from the cob
2 green onions, thinly sliced
1 small jalapeño, finely chopped, optional
1 lime, juiced
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 teaspoon honey, optional
½ teaspoon kosher salt, plus more to taste
¼ teaspoon black pepper

For the blackened fish
4 red snapper fillets or tilapia fillets, about 5 to 6 ounces each
2 tablespoons neutral oil, plus more as needed
1 tablespoon smoked paprika
2 teaspoons garlic powder
2 teaspoons onion powder
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1 teaspoon dried oregano
1 teaspoon dried thyme
½ teaspoon black pepper
½ teaspoon cayenne pepper, plus more if you like heat
½ teaspoon brown sugar, optional

For serving
2 cups reserved okra-tomato mixture from earlier in the week
3 to 4 cups cooked long-grain white rice, optional
Lime wedges
Hot sauce, optional

Instructions

1. Make the corn relish. If using fresh corn, you can leave it raw for something crisp and sweet, or char it quickly in a dry skillet over medium-high heat for 3 to 5 minutes.

2. In a medium bowl, combine corn, green onions, jalapeño if using, lime juice, olive oil, honey if using, salt, and black pepper.

3. Taste and adjust with more lime, salt, or jalapeño. Set aside while you cook the fish.

4. In a small bowl, stir together smoked paprika, garlic powder, onion powder, kosher salt, oregano, thyme, black pepper, cayenne, and brown sugar if using.

5. Pat fish very dry.

6. Season both sides generously with the blackening spice.

7. Heat a large skillet over medium-high heat. Add neutral oil.

8. Once the oil is hot and shimmering, add fish. Cook for 2 to 4 minutes per side, depending on thickness, until the fish is deeply browned on the outside and flakes easily with a fork.

9. While the fish cooks, warm the reserved okra-tomato mixture in a small skillet or microwave until hot. If it feels too thick, add a splash of water or broth to loosen it.

10. Spoon warm rice onto plates, if using.

11. Add okra-tomato mixture, then place blackened fish on top.

12. Spoon corn relish over everything and serve with lime wedges and hot sauce.

Make it easier: Tilapia is totally fine here. Red snapper is gorgeous and a little more special, but tilapia is affordable, easy to find, and cooks quickly. The point is the blackened seasoning, the bright corn relish, and the fact that you already did half the work earlier in the week.

Leftover remix: Flake leftover fish into tortillas with the corn relish and a little yogurt or sour cream for quick tacos. If you have leftover okra-tomato mixture, spoon it over rice with a fried egg or tuck it into quesadillas with cheese.

Pro Tip of the Week: Let the Shortcut Be the Strategy

This week is your permission slip to use the shortcut and not apologize for it.

Frozen okra. Canned tomatoes. A big pot of rice. Turkey legs baked in an oven bag or wrapped up in foil. Tilapia instead of red snapper if that’s what makes sense.

None of that makes the food less thoughtful. It makes the food possible.

The trick is knowing where to spend your energy: season the turkey the night before, brown the sausage, cook the frozen okra long enough to drive off the extra moisture, and finish the fish with something bright.

You do not need to make every part of dinner from scratch for dinner to feel good.

You just need to make the parts you do touch count.

If this week’s plan made dinner feel even a little less overwhelming, that’s exactly what The Motherload is here to do.

Every Friday, paid subscribers get the full dinner plan: the essay, the recipes, the grocery list, the prep notes, and the leftover ideas that help you feed your family without reinventing your entire life at 5 p.m.

Not perfect dinners. Not fantasy-mom cosplay. Just real food, planned with care, written by someone who understands that sometimes the hardest part of dinner is having to think about it at all.

So if you’ve been meaning to become a paid subscriber, this is your nudge.

Let me help with dinner next week too.

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❤️ Ryan

We have built an entire cultural conversation around male loneliness.

Experts warn us about what happens when men become isolated, resentful, radicalized, and violent. We are told to take their loneliness seriously because, when it curdles into rage, women often become the collateral damage.

And we should take it seriously.

I live in Atlanta, and in the past week alone, there have been two stories involving violence against women that have been jarring. Add to that the very public deaths of prominent Black women at the hands of their partners, and it becomes impossible not to notice the pattern. We are constantly being asked to understand the loneliness of men, even when that loneliness becomes dangerous to women.

But I keep thinking about the other loneliness epidemic.

The one happening in kitchens and nurseries and minivans and marriages. The one that does not usually announce itself with violence, but with women slowly going quiet inside their own lives.

Modern motherhood is lonely as hell.

If you’re tired of figuring out dinner over and over again, I’ve got you. I map out the week, give you the grocery list, and show you how to use what you bought in more than one way so it actually goes somewhere.

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Not because we don’t love our children. Not because we aren’t grateful. Not because we want to run off into the woods with a linen sack, a fake identity, and no one asking us what’s for dinner.

Although, honestly, some days? Yeah. Sign me up.

It’s lonely because you can be touched all day and still feel unseen. Needed constantly and still feel uncared for. Surrounded by people and still feel like no one is actually looking at you.

A few days ago, a piece I shared on TikTok got some traction. I was talking about how Shep and I found our way back to each other after a really hard season in our marriage. I’ve written about that more deeply here before, but one comment from a mom stopped me cold.

She said she had just had her first baby and felt so alone. That she would give almost anything just to feel validated.

And my heart broke because I knew exactly what she meant.

I knew the loneliness of becoming a mother and realizing that while everyone could see the baby, almost no one could see me. I knew what it felt like to be recovering, leaking, bleeding, learning, feeding, worrying, loving, spiraling, and still somehow expected to be the emotional thermostat of the house.

I knew what it felt like to become fundamentally different overnight while everyone else seemed to keep moving like the world had not cracked open.

After I brought Nola home from the hospital, I felt like a stranger to myself. My body was different. My brain was different. My heart was walking around outside of me in a swaddle. I was in love, absolutely, but I was also scared, raw, overstimulated, and so tired I could have cried if someone looked at me with too much empathy.

It felt like everyone else was fine. Normal.

This is the part where I remind you that The Motherload is not just about dinner.
Yes, paid subscribers get the full weekly dinner plan, recipes, and grocery list every Friday, but the bigger goal is helping women carry less.

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Moving through the house. Going to work. Answering emails. Sleeping like their nervous system had not just been snatched out of their body and handed to an infant.

A few months into Nola’s life, Shep and I got into a fight. Well, more like, I fussed at him while he sat there looking at the floor like a boy being chastised by his mother.

I said something I still remember because it came from such a deep place in me:

I feel like you left me out here alone. Not as my husband, but as my friend. I have been hurting for a long time, and it feels like you haven’t even noticed.

He didn’t really say anything. He just looked at me like a person who knew he had fucked up but couldn’t do anything about it in that moment. Which didn’t help, obviously.

Because what I needed was someone (him) to build a world for me, the way I was building one for everyone else.

I needed someone to look around and think: What would make Ryan feel safe here? What would make her feel held? What would make her feel less alone in a life that is asking so much of her?

We take a whole woman and flatten her into a role. Mother. Caretaker. Default parent. Then we turn motherhood into a test of endurance. How much can you give? How much can you carry? How much can you perform? How much of yourself can you lose before anyone notices?

We make motherhood about tasks. Dishes. Bottles. Laundry. Lunches. Appointments. Who packed the diaper bag? Who remembered the extra wipes?

And yes, the tasks matter but they will also grind you into a fine powder if no one helps.

It’s not just that mothers are doing too much. It is that so many of us are doing too much while feeling emotionally alone inside the very families we are holding together.

So many moms are overperforming in their relationships because somewhere deep down, I think we’re afraid that if we stop, everything stops. If we stop anticipating, reminding, planning, regulating, softening, absorbing, translating, forgiving, and making life livable for everyone else, the whole thing might collapse.

Because who supports the support beam?

Who checks on the woman everyone leans on?

Who notices when the person holding the emotional center of the family is quietly coming undone?

I’m not just talking out of my ass. The data is starting to catch up to what so many mothers have been saying in comment sections, group texts, school parking lots, and whispered conversations after bedtime. According to analysis from the National Survey of Children’s Health, the share of mothers reporting “excellent” mental health dropped from 38.4% in 2016 to 25.8% in 2023, while the percentage reporting “fair” or “poor” mental health rose from 5.5% to 8.5%. The decline showed up across socioeconomic groups.

Want dinner handled before the week handles you?
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In 2024, then-Surgeon General Vivek H. Murthy released a study called Parents Under Pressure and called modern parenting “an urgent public health issue.” These numbers should make us sit up straighter. Because this isn’t just “moms are tired.” Tired is a nap. Tired is going to bed early.

This is something deeper.

This is the loneliness of being responsible for everyone’s emotional life while no one feels responsible for yours.

This is the loneliness of modeling self-regulation for tiny humans while you are learning it on the job, in real time, with a toddler screaming because they “wanted the blue one.”

This is the loneliness of being told to ask for help when the actual work is knowing what help is needed, deciding who can do it, explaining how to do it, following up, and then managing everyone’s feelings about being asked.

This is the loneliness of sitting next to your partner on the couch and wondering how the person who used to know when you were sad from one text message now does not seem to know you are drowning in the same room.

And mothers can make loneliness look dignified…normal even.

We can braid the hair. Pack the lunches. Send the birthday gift. Remember spirit week. Find the pediatric dentist. Make the dinner. Text the friend back with “I’m good girl, just tired!” and add an exclamation point so no one gets suspicious.

A mother can be vanishing and still look productive. She can be heartbroken and still know what’s for dinner. She can be lonely and still be the person everyone else calls home.

I know in my soul we weren’t meant to live like this. I sure as shit am not. Neither are you.

I don’t think we were meant to carry the emotional weather of an entire household in our bodies. I don’t think we were meant to be praised for our strength so often that no one remembers to offer us tenderness.

We need support, yes.

But we also need witnesses.

We need people who notice. People who make plans. People who ask real questions and stay for the real answer. People who see the mother behind the meal, the calendar, the clean uniform, the packed bag, the bedtime routine.

People who do not wait until we are sobbing in the kitchen to realize we have been lonely for months.

This is why I keep harping about community. I can write all day about dinner, and I love that. I really do. Feeding people is one of the clearest ways I know how to love. But the older I get, the more I understand that mothers do not just need recipes.

We need, I don’t know, a space maybe? A place for us to just be…women. Untethered if only for 2 hours.

Which is to say: I think I want to host a meet up in Atlanta. A real one. In person. With wine or cocktails or something snacky enough to count as dinner if you’re tired. I have no idea where yet because, truthfully, I am scared like a girl planning her first birthday party and convinced no one will show up.

Very cool. Very healed. Love that for me.

But I keep thinking about that mom in my comments. The one who said she would give almost anything to feel validated.

And I keep thinking: what if we made a place where women did not have to beg for that?

What if, for one night, nobody had to earn being seen?

Would you come?

What’s for dinner this week

It is finally tomato season here in Georgia, so naturally we’re making it everyone’s problem.

This week starts with slow-roasted tomato chicken tossed with pasta, burrata, and basil. The tomatoes collapse in the oven with garlic, olive oil, and herbs until they’re jammy and sweet, then get tossed with tender chicken and whatever noodles you have. I used linguine, but truly, the pasta police are off duty.

Later, that same chicken becomes a toasted sandwich with jammy tomatoes, burrata, basil, and arugula. Leftovers, but with self-respect.

And for Friday, we’re making creamy sun-dried tomato and white wine cod with herby panko, roasted potatoes, and broccolini. Cook with the wine, pour yourself a glass, and take the win.

Tomato season. Pasta. Sandwiches. Friday fish. We did it.

👉🏽 Want dinner already figured out every Friday?
Join The Motherload for $6/month or $65/year and get the full weekly dinner plan, grocery list, and recipes—so when 5 p.m. hits, you already know what’s for dinner.

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Every Sunday around 5:30 p.m., you can find me shuffling around my kitchen barefoot, apronless, stirring, blending, straining, or sautéing something.

Inevitably, my front door opens and closes without my needing to answer it, partly because I’m usually elbow-deep in food and partly because my friends all know my security code. It feels like a small detail, but it really isn’t.

It means everything that the people I love can let themselves into my home.

If you’re tired of figuring out dinner over and over again, I’ve got you. I map out the week, give you the grocery list, and show you how to use what you bought in more than one way so it actually goes somewhere.

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Usually, my first guest is my girl Tarina, walking in with her girlfriend Britney and Britney’s daughter, Sydney. Nola reliably squeals loses her shit the second she hears Syd’s voice, and the two of them grab hands and bound outside to the backyard, where they climb onto the swing set my parents bought my girls for Christmas.

Next come the Wiggins. Danielle — who is basically in every one of my newsletters at this point — her husband Jonathan (aka Uncle Jon), and their two girls, Lenox and Emerson. Again, more screams. More tiny feet. More giggly laughter as all the girls reunite and run outside like they have not seen each other in years instead of, you know, 48 hours.

My kitchen window faces the backyard, so mostly, we all congregate there, pour a drink, and take a break. We all take turns watching from the kitchen while the girls run around outside, the five of them laughing, climbing, and shrieking in the grass, all of them watched by more adults than they even realize. Usually, right before dinner, one of my best friends, Monae, pops in.

I almost always have a theme around the meal. Sunday gravy. Smash burgers. Taco night. This upcoming Sunday is a full-on Big Mama-style dinner I’ve been craving: fried pork chops, collard greens, candied yams, macaroni and cheese, and a sweet tea mint julep because there is always a cocktail.

It probably sounds like a lot of work. And technically, it is.

Seven adults. Five kids. Multiple dishes. Drinks. Plates. Somebody’s kid asking for a snack six minutes before dinner. Somebody else needing water. Me trying to remember if I salted the greens and whether the mac and cheese needs five more minutes or if I’m just emotionally attached to browning.

It should be the hardest dinner of my week. Somehow, it is the easiest.

Not because the cooking is effortless. Fried pork chops and collards are not exactly a “throw it on a sheet pan and reclaim your evening” situation. It feels easy because I am not doing it alone.

I think so much of modern motherhood teaches us to solve exhaustion by becoming more efficient. Make a better plan. Prep earlier. Shop smarter. Wake up before the kids. Use the crockpot. Use the air fryer. Buy the bins. Label the bins. Become the kind of woman who can hold an impossible amount of labor without looking like she is holding an impossible amount of labor.

This is the part where I remind you that The Motherload is not just about dinner.
Yes, paid subscribers get the full weekly dinner plan, recipes, and grocery list every Friday, but the bigger goal is helping women carry less.

Subscribe now

And look, I love a system. I have built an entire newsletter around making dinner feel less chaotic, so clearly I am not above a grocery list. But I’m starting to wonder if some of what we call disorganization is actually loneliness. If some of what we call burnout is really the absence of enough hands. If some of what we call “I hate cooking” is actually “I hate being the only person responsible for making everyone feel fed, regulated, remembered, and okay.”

Even though I make a living creating recipes, the truth is, a quiet dinner for my little family of four can undo me if I am the only one managing the food, the feelings, the dishes, the complaints, the bedtime math, and the invisible little checklist running through my brain. But dinner for twelve can feel light when the children are outside, another mother is watching with me, and nobody needs me to explain where the plates are.

A few weeks ago, I wrote:

At the time, I thought I was writing about groceries and pantry staples and freezers and making what you bought stretch a little further. But maybe I was also writing about this: food was never meant to be a solo act. Not in my family. Not at The Ranch. Not now, in my kitchen on Sunday evenings.

When I think about my great-grandmother’s house in LA, I remember the food first. The pantry. The freezer. The full plates. The sense that somehow, no matter how many people showed up, there was always enough.

But the more I think about it, the more I realize it wasn’t just the food that made that place feel safe to me. It was the women.

My great-grandmother. My aunts. Her church friends. Women cooking, supervising, laughing, chasing children, stirring pots, making plates, calling somebody’s name from two rooms away because they had eyes in the back of their heads and probably in the side yard too.

There was always a woman watching. Not in a controlling way. In the way a child can run around barefoot and sticky-faced and loud because somewhere, some auntie has already clocked where she is, what she’s doing, and whether she is three seconds away from hurting herself.

That was the magic. The kind a child doesn’t recognize as work until she becomes one of the women doing it.

Magic like a grown woman fixing your plate before you even knew you were hungry. Magic like someone knowing you liked the corner piece. Magic like being surrounded by so many women that childhood, for a few hours, could feel soft.

I didn’t have the language for it then, but I think I felt covered there.

Loved. Free.

Like I could be a child because enough women were paying attention that I didn’t have to scan the room for myself.

And now, as an adult, I can look back and admit that my childhood did not always feel that way. It did not always feel steady or predictable. But The Ranch did. That’s the complicated thing. There were places where I didn’t feel held the way I needed to be, and then there were places where I felt completely surrounded.

Want dinner handled before the week handles you?
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The Ranch was one of those places.

And I think a lot of what I am doing now, raising my girls in Georgia while all of my family lives in California, is trying to recreate that feeling. Not The Ranch exactly. I can’t. That house belonged to another time, another city, another generation of women who knew things I am still learning. But I can build my own version.

A house where women gather in my kitchen. Where our daughters run in and out of the backyard. Where someone is always stirring, someone is always laughing, someone is always watching. Where my girls are mothered by me, yes, but also covered by women who love them.

These women don’t just come over and eat. They help me mother.

Not in a formal way. There are no assigned roles, no chore chart, no village spreadsheet because I would rather pass away. It’s quieter than that. It’s Danielle noticing one of the girls needs water before I do. Tarina redirecting a my babies from doing something questionable near the swing set. Britney helping get plates together. Monae walking in right before dinner, pouring a drink, and listening to me finish a sentence I have been trying to get out for 45 minutes.

It’s another woman saying, “I got her,” and meaning it.

That is a kind of relief I don’t think I fully understood until I became a mother. Because modern motherhood can make you feel like the entire emotional weather system of your home lives inside your body. You are the calendar, the snack inventory, the sunscreen reminder, the feelings translator, the lost-shoe detective, the person who knows which child is about to unravel because the tone of her whine changed by half a degree.

And then on Sundays, for a few hours, I am not the only one watching the sky.

I truly think this is why Sunday dinner feels sacred to me. Not because it is perfect. It is very not. The kitchen is loud. The floor is sticky. The children are feral in the specific way children become feral when they are happy and slightly under-supervised. Someone is going to cry. Someone is going to spill something. Someone is going to take off her shoes and then freak out when she can’t find them later.

But still, it feels like ease. Not because there is less work, but because the work is shared. The watching is shared. The children are shared. The laughter is shared. The remembering is shared.

And that’s what I want for all of us. Not necessarily Sunday dinner. I realize that’s not everyone’s bag. But something. A rhythm. A doorway. A standing invitation. A group text that turns into a meal. One friend who can come over when the house is not perfect. One family who knows where the cups are. One small way of refusing to do motherhood like an island.

Maybe dinner isn’t hard because you are bad at it. Maybe dinner is hard because you were never supposed to do it alone. Maybe motherhood feels impossible because it was never meant to be carried by one woman standing in one kitchen, trying to become the entire village by 5 p.m.

And maybe what we are hungry for is not just a plan. Maybe we are hungry for people. People who know our children. People who see us before we have to explain that we are tired. People close enough to help us watch the sky.

That is what Sundays have become for me: a meditation, an offering, a small rebellion against the isolation we have been told is normal. A family I have built on purpose, for my daughters, for my friends, and for myself.

Where I welcome them all to come hungry because there’s always enough.

What’s for dinner this week

This week, we’re building dinner around one smoky, charred scallion-lime dressing that works harder than most of us want to.

You’ll start with a grilled hanger steak salad layered with crunchy cabbage, romaine, avocado, and a charred corn salsa. The steak is kept simple with plenty of salt and pepper, then seared in a hot grill pan and sliced over everything like you casually make restaurant salads on a weeknight.

From there, pearl couscous gets two lives: first with one-pan coconut-lime shrimp that’s creamy, bright, and very much not asking you to buy skewers, then again with roasted zucchini, white beans, feta, herbs, and the same scallion-lime dressing stirred into something creamy.

Fresh corn is best if you’ve got it, but frozen roasted corn absolutely counts. We are not here to make dinner harder for funsies.

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I’m having the best sex of my life with Shep.

Which is not exactly the sentence I expected to write after the shitshow that was 2025.

Last year, Shep and I were in one of the darkest places we’ve ever been in our marriage. Not the dramatic, plate-throwing, someone-sleeping-in-a-hotel kind of dark. More like the quiet, terrifying kind. The kind where you’re sitting next to each other on the couch after the kids go to bed, both of you exhausted, both of you lonely, both of you technically still there, and you start wondering if this is what the rest of your life is going to feel like.

I wasn’t trying to blow up my children’s lives. I wasn’t packing bags or making some grand declaration. If anything, I think I was beginning to resign myself to enduring.

And that scared me more than almost anything.

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Because I love my husband. I wanted our marriage to work. But I had also started asking myself a question I couldn’t unhear: does this relationship work for the woman I am now?

Not the woman I was when we met. Not the woman who needed saving. Not the woman who could make being easygoing and endlessly capable look like a personality trait. The woman I am now. A mother of two. A woman who has lived through a cancer diagnosis. A woman approaching 40 with significantly less interest in being in charge of every single thing just so everyone else can be comfortable.

For a long time, I was the adult in the room in our marriage.

Planning? Me. Date nights? My ideas. Gifts for his parents? Somehow also me. The emotional temperature of the house? Me again, carrying a job title no one gave me and a workload everyone benefited from.

I told Shep once that I felt like a museum curator, and he got to be an admirer of all my hard work.

And I was tired.

Not just “I need a nap” tired, although please know I have needed a nap since Nola was born. I mean soul tired. Body tired. Marriage tired. Tired of being the person who remembered the things, anticipated the things, softened the things, managed the things, and then somehow was supposed to feel sexy at the end of the day after spending twelve hours as the human equivalent of a shared Google Calendar.

It is hard to desire someone you feel like you’re managing.

Society talks about libido like it’s this mysterious little candle that randomly blows out after kids, when sometimes desire doesn’t disappear. Sometimes it gets buried under resentment, exhaustion, loneliness, and the quiet humiliation of having to ask another adult to participate in the life you thought you had built together.

And listen. I know marriage is complicated. I know partnership shifts. I know seasons get hard. I know good people can fall into bad patterns. I also know I am not innocent in all of this because, frankly, I am very good at being in charge. But after two kids, a health scare, and years of carrying more than I should have, something in me shifted.

I no longer had any interest in being HBIC…except to my kids, obviously. But in my marriage? I didn’t want to be the household manager.

I didn’t want to be the architect of every meaningful moment. I wanted a partner. A grown ass man. Someone who could look around and see what needed to be done without me pointing it out.

And that realization did not arrive gently.

We got back into therapy last year, and for a while, therapy made everything worse. Which is kinda crazy, by the way. You go in thinking, “Great, a professional will fix this,” and instead she starts asking questions that make you want to crawl inside the throw pillow and live there.

During one session, she asked us, “If you met each other as you are now, do you think you would have dated?”

YIKES.

I started hyperventilating because I knew, in my heart, that my answer was no.

Not because I didn’t love Shep. Not because he was a bad man. Not because there was no tenderness or history or real commitment between us. But because the roles we had been playing no longer fit the people we had become.

When I met Shep, I needed a lot of saving. And frankly, he loved the job. He was good at it. There was something in our early dynamic that worked because I needed someone steady, and he knew how to be steady for me.

But then I grew up. I became a mother. I survived something that changed the way I understood my body, my time, my future, and my tolerance for bullshit. I started standing on my own feet in a way I hadn’t before, and suddenly the old arrangement felt suffocating.

I didn’t need saving anymore. I needed a co-pilot. And those are not the same thing.

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And I think that’s what made the question of another baby so complicated for me.

I’ve been honest about wrestling with whether or not we should have another child. What I don’t think I’ve said plainly enough is that part of my hesitation was my marriage.

Not because there wasn’t love. There has always been love. But love was not the question.

The question was whether this relationship, as it existed then, could hold another version of me becoming vulnerable again. Pregnant again. Tired again. Needed again. Could I trust that I wouldn’t disappear under the weight of everyone else’s needs while convincing myself that endurance was the same thing as devotion?

I didn’t know.

I wasn’t unsure because I didn’t want another baby. I was unsure because I didn’t know if our marriage could hold the weight of one.

I could not imagine willingly putting myself back into a season of nausea, exhaustion, appointments, fear, postpartum, breastfeeding, sleep deprivation, and all the invisible recalibrating that comes with a new baby if I already felt like I was barely being held in the life we had.

That was the truth underneath the truth.

And it took me a long time to say it out loud.

Therapy forced us to look at things we had gotten very good at stepping over. It made us name patterns. It made us admit disappointments. It made us sit in silence with questions we didn’t have tidy answers for. It was uncomfortable as hell, and for a while, I honestly wondered if the honesty was going to break us instead of help us.

But slowly, and I do mean slowlyyyy, things started to shift.

Shep started hearing me differently. It was also a bit of me saying less and watching what happened. It was me trying not to fill every silence, solve every problem, and pre-manage every possible inconvenience. It was him stepping forward in ways I had stopped trusting would happen. It was both of us realizing that if we wanted this marriage to survive, we couldn’t keep asking our old selves to carry it.

That has been the lesson I keep coming back to in this season. I cannot keep complaining about carrying everything while also refusing to put anything down. I cannot keep saying I want a partner while quietly organizing the entire world so no one else has to rise to the occasion. I cannot keep confusing control with care.

That one is hard for me.

Because control has kept me safe. Control has made me good at what I do. Control has helped me build a home, a career, a family, a life. Control is not always the villain. Sometimes it’s the only reason the permission slip gets signed and the chicken gets thawed and the toddler has shoes on the correct feet.

But control can also become a cage.

And I think I had built one so beautifully that I didn’t realize I was trapped inside it.

And then, somewhere in the middle of the mess, desire started coming back. I mean, I want him to touch me all the time.

Truly, we are having quite literally the best sex of my freaking life, and I do not think that is separate from everything else. I think my body is responding to something my mind has been trying to name for months.

The feeling that maybe I do not have to hold every single thing alone.

Because desire is not just about attraction. At least not for me. Desire is about feeling soft enough to be touched. Present enough to be wanted. Safe enough to stop bracing. It is very hard to access that when your nervous system thinks you are both wife and project manager, mother and operations director, lover and household infrastructure.

It is hard to feel sexy when you are constantly thinking, “Why am I the only person who knows we are out of Pull-Ups?”

I don’t think we found our way back because we became the people we were when we first fell in love. Honestly, I don’t want to be those people again. I think we found our way back because we stopped trying to make those people fit a life they no longer live in.

I am not the woman Shep met.

Thank God.

I am older now. Less agreeable. More honest. More tired, yes, but also more awake. I have less patience for being adored from a distance while I do all the labor up close. I don’t want to be admired for how well I carry everything. I want to carry less.

And the wild, deeply wonderful thing is that as I’ve stopped trying to hold everything, I’ve started feeling more held.

Maybe that is what desire needed from me.

Not lingerie. Not a vacation. Not a date night I planned, booked, arranged childcare for, and then tried to be sexy at after doing everyone’s laundry.

Maybe my body needed proof that I was not alone.

And lately, it has been getting it.

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I want to be careful here because I don’t want to make it sound like we fixed everything. That would be dishonest and also very annoying. We are still two people with two small children, jobs, bills, histories, and triggers.

Marriage is not suddenly easy because we are having great sex. Great sex does not magically resolve years of imbalance or make hard conversations unnecessary. It does not erase the work. In some ways, it makes the work feel more urgent because now I can feel what is possible.

I can feel the difference between enduring and being alive inside my marriage.

And I don’t want to go back.

I do not want a marriage I have to survive. I do not want to be the woman quietly congratulating herself for staying while slowly disappearing inside the staying. I do not want to teach my daughters that devotion looks like depletion, or that love requires one woman to become the container for everyone else’s comfort.

I want them to see a marriage where their mother is loved, yes, but also partnered. Desired, yes, but also respected. Held, not just praised for holding.

And I want them to see that repair is possible.

Not always. Not in every marriage. Not when there is harm or contempt or a refusal to grow. I am not here to hand out universal advice from the warm glow of my currently enthusiastic marital bed. Please. I am just saying that in my marriage, in this season, something that felt very close to breaking has started to become something else.

Something more honest.

Something more mutual.

Something I actually want to be inside.

Maybe that is the most surprising part. Not the sex. The surprising part is that after everything, I want him.

I want this. The version we are building now. The one where I put things down. The one where he picks more up. The one where the woman I am now does not have to shrink herself to fit the marriage we built when she was someone else.

And if the best sex of my life happens to be waiting on the other side of that? Hell yes.

What’s for dinner this week

This week, we’re building dinner around one deeply roasted salsa verde with tomatillos, poblanos, onion, garlic, cilantro, lime, and a few glugs of fish sauce because apparently I cannot leave well enough alone. You’ll start with salsa verde chicken thighs simmered until tender and saucy, served with rice and a pot of meaty black beans made with charred onion, roasted garlic, herbs, and a little fatback or salt pork if you can find it.

From there, the beans become crisp tostadas with salsa verde crema, cabbage, avocado, lime, and any leftover chicken you have hanging around. Later in the week, that same salsa verde gets spooned over tilapia with zucchini and corn for a fast sheet pan fish dinner that’s bright, fresh, and very weeknight-friendly. Herdez works beautifully if you need the shortcut, but the scratch version is the reason the whole week tastes like somebody had a plan.

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First, thank you for being so patient with me last week. Between tech issues, travel, and running the London Marathon, things got a little chaotic over here. And by a little chaotic, I mean my brain was giving “37 tabs open, one of them is playing music, and I cannot find it.”

I have so much I want to catch you up on. So much damn content to post. So many thoughts from London. So many things I meant to send you last week. I was originally going to make this the week where I gave you the recipes I owed you, but then I remembered it’s Mother’s Day week, baby, and I don’t want you cooking a damn thing. But let’s be so for real: you’re going to.

Maybe not on Mother’s Day itself, if your people have any sense, shame, or OpenTable access. But this week? Somebody is going to ask what’s for dinner. Somebody is going to need lunch. Somebody is going to stand in front of a full pantry and claim there is “nothing to eat” while making direct eye contact with a box of crackers. So no, I’m not going to pretend motherhood magically stops requiring labor because the calendar says we should be celebrated. But I do want this week to feel lighter.

The recipes will be simple. The plan will be low-lift. And the spirit of the week is this: feed them, yes, but do not martyr yourself in the process.

This week, I want to talk about something else that feeds us, something I have been thinking about since I got back from London: the importance of being loved by women.

And if your Mother’s Day wish list includes “please stop making me decide what everyone eats,” that is literally why I made The Motherload. Every week, I give you the plan, the grocery list, and the recipes so dinner stops being one more thing clawing at your ankles at 5 p.m.

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A few months before the marathon, Shep bought my ticket to London. He told me about the dates after he purchased it, which is both slightly unhinged and deeply romantic because it meant there was no room for me to spiral, overthink, or talk myself out of going. I was gone from the evening of April 21st to April 29th. Eight whole days of freedom.

Eight days where I was not the default parent. Eight days where I was not responsible for finding the missing shoe, packing the snack, remembering the sunscreen, answering “what’s for dinner,” or holding the entire emotional infrastructure of the house together with a half-dead iPhone battery and vibes.

And the thing is, I was not alone.

I think I’ve told you before that my best friend in the entire world lives in London. I call her Dani, but her name is Danielle, which is only confusing because I also have another Danielle in my life, who I met in Atlanta and have written about a lot. For clarity, and because I refuse to make this sound like a police report, London Danielle is Dani. Atlanta Danielle is Danielle. Everyone good? Great.

A few days before I landed, Dani moved into the flat she purchased all on her own and some how fully unpacked before I walked into the door. I was (am!) so proud I kept telling random strangers (and now you) everywhere we went that she’d just bought a flat. Lowkey like I was her mother, publicist, and hype man rolled into one. “She bought this flat by herself,” I found a way to announce to every bartender, waiter, and unsuspecting person within earshot.

Because how could I not? There is something holy about watching a woman you love build a life for herself.

Anyway, back to this race. So there I was, in London, trying to carb load enough to convince my body to run 26.2 miles, while also being surrounded by women I love deeply. Dani, my best friend. Danielle, my Atlanta life partner, who flew in to see me run. Alex, who ran the marathon with me. Nicki, my oldest friend, who also lives in London. Even Shep’s friends Graham and Elizabeth were there to root me on.

I felt surrounded, but not in the way mothers are often surrounded, which is to say needed, touched, asked for, climbed on, cried at, interrupted, and somehow still expected to know where everyone’s water bottle is. I mean surrounded in the way every mother deserves to be surrounded: held, seen, cheered for, loved as a whole person.

I will never forget getting to mile 21, exhausted in a way I do not have language for, and seeing Dani, Danielle, and Elizabeth screaming for me as I rounded the corner. Danielle started running alongside me, yelling at the top of her lungs, and I swear to God it pushed me through the next five miles. Not because my legs suddenly felt better. My legs were filing a formal complaint. But because something in me remembered: I am not doing this alone.

As Mother’s Day approaches, I keep thinking about that feeling. So much of motherhood is about loving other people well. Loving your children through tantrums and fevers and school transitions and weird dinner refusals. Loving your partner through busy seasons and exhaustion and all the tiny negotiations of building a life together. Loving your family enough to think ahead, plan ahead, soften the landing, make the meal, keep the rhythm, do the invisible work no one notices unless it doesn’t get done.

But who loves the mother?

Not in theory. Not with a candle once a year and a card that says “relax today,” while somehow there are still dishes in the sink. I mean who sees the woman inside the mother? Who remembers what makes her laugh? Who asks about her dreams? Who celebrates her wins like they are their own? Who reminds her that she is still sexy and brilliant and funny and ambitious and allowed to want things that have nothing to do with being useful?

That is what female friendship has done for me. It has kept me tethered to the parts of myself motherhood could have swallowed whole. The women in my life have loved me through my becoming. They knew me before babies, before marriage, before breast cancer, before the version of me who now travels with snacks and wipes and a backup plan for the backup plan. They have witnessed every version of me and still somehow make room for the next one.

They do not only love me as a mother. They love me as Ryan.

And God, what a gift that is.

This is the whole reason I care so much about making dinner easier. Because yes, our families need to eat. But mothers need to be cared for too. Sometimes care looks like a friend screaming for you at mile 21. Sometimes it looks like opening your inbox on Friday and realizing dinner is already figured out.

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So this week, for Mother’s Day, I hope you are loved by women who bring you back to yourself. I hope someone sees past the lunches packed, the appointments scheduled, the laundry folded, the bills paid, the groceries ordered, the bedtime routine survived. I hope someone looks at you and remembers the girl, the woman, the friend, the dreamer, the person with an appetite for her own life.

And if you are lucky enough to have women like that, text them. Call them. Send the voice note. Tell them the thing. Because sometimes the most mothering thing we receive has nothing to do with our own mothers at all.

Sometimes it is your best friend buying a flat and letting you be obnoxiously proud of her. Sometimes it is women screaming your name at mile 21. Sometimes it is someone running beside you when your body is tired, yelling, “You’ve got this,” until you believe her.

And sometimes, that love is what carries you the rest of the way home.

So this week, I hope you are loved well. By your people, by your friends, by the women who remember who you are underneath all the doing. And if nobody has told you lately: you deserve support that does not require you to earn it first.

That’s what I’m trying to build here.

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What’s for dinner this week

This is Mother’s Day week, which means I do not want you cooking a damn thing.

But let’s be so for real: you’re going to.

So this week, dinner is fast, bright, and built around ingredients that actually carry their weight. Coconut milk, ginger, garlic, green onions, cilantro, lime, fish sauce, rice, vegetables, and chicken show up more than once, but not in a way that makes the week feel like one long leftover pretending to be dinner.

We’re starting with coconut milk braised mahi mahi over white rice with stir-fried vegetables. The fish gets a quick sear, then finishes in a silky coconut gravy with ginger, garlic, scallions, fish sauce, lime, and cilantro. It is comforting, a little tropical, and exactly the kind of dinner that feels special without asking you to make a whole production out of it.

Then we’re making a tom kha-inspired coconut chicken soup: creamy, gingery, limey, and soothing in the way only a coconut broth can be. It has the spirit of tom kha gai without requiring a special grocery run, and you’ll pull out some of the cooked chicken before serving so Friday’s dinner is already halfway handled.

Finally, we’re turning leftover rice, leftover stir-fried vegetables, and that reserved chicken into ginger chicken fried rice. It’s fast, flexible, and topped with more green onions, cilantro, and lime so it still feels fresh instead of like you’re eating your fridge’s group project.

Every dinner this week is under 45 minutes, with one landing closer to 30.

Because Mother’s Day week is not the time for a dinner project. It’s the time for food that tastes like you had a plan, even if the plan was mostly “please do not make me think too hard.”

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Here’s What We’re Cooking

***Grocery List***

You can grab the full list here.

Weekly Prep: Make Extra of The Little Things

This week isn’t about doing the most. It’s about making dinner feel easier, especially during a week when Mom should not be expected to produce magic from a fridge full of vibes.

Cook extra rice on the mahi mahi night. Make more stir-fried vegetables than you need. And when you make the coconut chicken soup, set aside some of that cooked chicken before everyone gets to it.

That’s the prep that carries the week.

By the time you get to the fried rice, you’re not starting from zero. You already have the rice, the vegetables, and the chicken ready to go. All you need is a hot pan, ginger, garlic, green onions, and maybe a couple of eggs if you want to bulk it up.

You’re not cooking three totally separate dinners. You’re letting the first two help you finish the third.

Coconut Milk Braised Mahi Mahi with White Rice & Stir-Fried Vegetables

This is the kind of dinner that feels calm, bright, and a little bit vacation-y without requiring you to pack a bag or develop a new personality. The fish gets a quick sear, then finishes gently in a coconut milk gravy with ginger, garlic, scallions, fish sauce, lime, and herbs. Serve it over rice with stir-fried vegetables and let the sauce do what sauce was born to do.

Active time: 20 minutes  Cook time: 20 minutes  Total time: 40 minutes
Serves: 4

Ingredients
For the fish
4 mahi mahi fillets, about 5 to 6 ounces each
1 medium yellow onion, thinly sliced
1 bunch green onions, white and green parts separated
1 lime, cut into wedges
1 small bunch cilantro, roughly chopped
1 13.5-ounce can full-fat coconut milk
2 tablespoons neutral oil
2 tablespoons fish sauce
3 garlic cloves, finely chopped
1 tablespoon fresh ginger, thinly sliced
1 teaspoon kosher salt, divided
½ teaspoon black pepper

For the rice and vegetables
3 cups cooked white rice
4 cups stir-fry vegetables, such as green beans, snap peas, broccoli, bell peppers, cabbage, or a frozen stir-fry blend
1 tablespoon neutral oil
A good sprinkle kosher salt
Black pepper
Juice of ½ lime, optional

Instructions

1. Pat the mahi mahi dry and season both sides with about ½ teaspoon kosher salt and the black pepper.

2. Heat neutral oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat.

3. Add the fish and sear for about 2 minutes per side, until lightly golden. It does not need to be cooked through yet.

4. Transfer the fish to a plate.

5. Lower the heat to medium. Add the onion and ginger to the same skillet and cook for 3 to 4 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the onion starts to soften.

6. Add the garlic and the white parts of the green onions, sliced into ½-inch pieces. Cook for about 1 minute, just until fragrant.

7. Pour in the coconut milk and stir, scraping up any browned bits from the bottom of the pan.

8. Add the fish sauce and bring the sauce to a gentle simmer.

9. Return the fish to the skillet and nestle it into the coconut gravy. Spoon some sauce over the top.

10. Cook gently for 8 to 10 minutes, depending on the thickness of the fillets, until the fish flakes easily and is cooked through.

11. While the fish cooks, heat 1 tablespoon neutral oil in another skillet over medium-high heat.

12. Add the vegetables and stir-fry until crisp-tender. Season with salt, black pepper, and lime juice if using.

13. Finish the fish with chopped cilantro, the green parts of the green onions, and a generous squeeze of lime juice.

14. Serve the fish over white rice with plenty of coconut gravy spooned over the top and stir-fried vegetables on the side.

Make it easier: Use frozen stir-fry vegetables and microwave rice if that is the difference between making dinner and staring into the fridge like it owes you an apology.

Leftover remix: Save the extra rice and stir-fried vegetables for ginger chicken fried rice later in the week. Cold rice is exactly what you want here, so technically this is not leftovers. This is strategy.

Tom Kha-Inspired Coconut Chicken Soup

This is a weeknight, pantry-friendly take on tom kha gai: creamy coconut broth, tender chicken, ginger, garlic, fish sauce, lime, herbs, and just enough vegetables to make it feel like dinner. It’s soothing and bright without requiring a special grocery run or a personality built around sourcing makrut lime leaves.

Active time: 15 minutes  Cook time: 20 minutes  Total time: 35 minutes
Serves: 4

Ingredients
For the soup
1½ pounds boneless, skinless chicken thighs or chicken breasts, thinly sliced
1 medium yellow onion, thinly sliced
1 lime, plus more for serving
1 bunch green onions, white and green parts separated
1 small bunch cilantro, roughly chopped
4 cups chicken broth
1 13.5-ounce can full-fat coconut milk
2 cups sliced mushrooms, optional
2 cups baby spinach, napa cabbage, or leftover stir-fried vegetables
2 tablespoons fish sauce, plus more to taste
3 garlic cloves, finely chopped
1 tablespoon fresh ginger, thinly sliced or finely chopped
1 teaspoon sugar, honey, or maple syrup, optional
½ teaspoon kosher salt, plus more to taste

Optional, but lovely
1 stalk lemongrass, smashed and cut into 3-inch pieces
1 to 2 teaspoons chili crisp, sambal, or Thai chili paste
Cooked white rice or rice noodles, for serving

Instructions

1. In a medium pot or Dutch oven, combine chicken broth, coconut milk, onion, ginger, garlic, the white parts of the green onions, fish sauce, salt, and lemongrass if using.

2. Bring to a simmer over medium heat.

3. Add the chicken and mushrooms, if using.

4. Simmer gently for 10 to 12 minutes, until the chicken is cooked through and tender.

5. Use tongs or a slotted spoon to remove about 2 cups of cooked chicken and transfer it to a container for the fried rice later in the week.

6. Add spinach, napa cabbage, or leftover stir-fried vegetables to the soup.

7. Cook for another 2 to 3 minutes, just until the greens are wilted or the vegetables are warmed through.

8. Stir in the juice of 1 lime.

9. Taste and adjust with more fish sauce, salt, lime juice, or a tiny bit of sugar if the broth needs rounding out.

10. Remove the lemongrass, if using.

11. Ladle into bowls and top with the green parts of the green onions, chopped cilantro, and chili crisp or sambal if you want heat.

12. Serve as-is, over cooked white rice, or with rice noodles.

Make it easier: Use rotisserie chicken and add it near the end with the vegetables. If you do that, this becomes a 20-minute soup, which is the kind of math we support around here.

Leftover remix: Save about 2 cups of chicken for ginger fried rice later in the week. If you have extra soup, add rice noodles the next day and call it lunch with your whole chest.

Ginger Chicken Fried Rice with Leftover Vegetables

This is the dinner that makes the rest of the week make sense. Cold rice, leftover stir-fried vegetables, reserved chicken, ginger, garlic, green onions, cilantro, and optional eggs come together fast in a hot skillet. It’s clean-out-the-fridge food that still feels like you had a plan.

Active time: 10 minutes  Cook time: 15 minutes  Total time: 25 minutes
Serves: 4

Ingredients
For the fried rice
2 cups cooked chicken, shredded or chopped
4 cups cooked white rice, preferably cold
2 cups leftover stir-fried vegetables
1 bunch green onions, white and green parts separated
1 lime, cut into wedges
1 small bunch cilantro, roughly chopped
3 tablespoons neutral oil, divided
2 tablespoons soy sauce
1 tablespoon fish sauce
3 garlic cloves, finely chopped
1 tablespoon fresh ginger, finely chopped or grated
1 teaspoon toasted sesame oil, optional
½ teaspoon kosher salt, plus more to taste
½ teaspoon black pepper

Optional for more protein
2 to 4 large eggs

Instructions

1. Heat 1 tablespoon neutral oil in a large skillet or wok over medium-high heat.

2. If using eggs, beat them in a small bowl, add them to the skillet, and scramble until just set.

3. Transfer the eggs to a plate.

4. Add another tablespoon of oil to the skillet.

5. Add the white parts of the green onions, garlic, and ginger.

6. Cook for 30 seconds to 1 minute, stirring constantly, until fragrant.

7. Add the chicken and leftover vegetables.

8. Cook for 2 to 3 minutes, until warmed through.

9. Add the remaining tablespoon of oil, then add the rice.

10. Break the rice up with a spoon or spatula and let it sit for 1 to 2 minutes so it can crisp in spots.

11. Add the soy sauce, fish sauce, and sesame oil if using.

12. Stir everything together until the rice is hot, glossy, and evenly seasoned.

13. Fold the eggs back in, if using.

14. Taste and adjust with more soy sauce, fish sauce, salt, black pepper, or lime juice as needed.

15. Finish with the green parts of the green onions, chopped cilantro, and lime wedges on the side.

Make it easier: Make extra rice on the mahi mahi night and spread it into a shallow container before refrigerating. Cold, slightly dried-out rice fries beautifully. Fresh rice turns into sadness with steam.

Leftover remix: Top leftovers with a fried egg and chili crisp (if you have any leftover homemade chili crisp use it!), or tuck the fried rice into lettuce cups with extra herbs and lime for a very chaotic but deeply useful lunch.

Pro Tip of the Week: Let Them Feed You, Too

This is Mother’s Day week, which means someone in your house should be helping you cook.

Not because dinner needs to become a precious family activity where everyone is smiling and flour is floating through the air like a Nancy Meyers movie. Please. We live in reality. Someone will complain. Someone will spill something. Someone will suddenly need to tell you a 14-minute story about a bug.

But feeding a family should not only be something your family receives from you.

This week’s menu is a good one for letting people step in. Your spouse can cook the rice, slice the onions, wash the herbs, or handle the stir-fried vegetables while you make the fish. Your kids can tear cilantro, squeeze limes, scatter green onions, stir the soup, or crack eggs for the fried rice. Older kids can help chop vegetables or scramble the eggs. Little kids can dump things into bowls and feel wildly important, which honestly is half the point.

And yes, it may be slower. It may be messier. It may require you to resist the urge to snatch the spoon back like a woman fighting for her life.

But it matters.

Because when your kids see dinner being made, they learn that food doesn’t just appear. When your spouse helps, they are not “helping you.” They are participating in the care of the home they also live in. Revolutionary. Alert the press.

So this week, pick one place to hand something off. The rice. The vegetables. The herbs. The lime wedges. The eggs for the fried rice.

You don’t have to turn dinner into a production.

You just have to stop being the only person on stage.

Happy Mother’s Day my loves. I hope you feel rested, appreciated and supported. Thank you so much for being a part of my village ❤️

Until next week.

Love,
Ryan

Not in a romantic, “look at me making magic out of nothing” kind of way, but in a very real, I’m not going back to the store and we’re still eating something good tonight kind of way.

And if I’m being honest, I don’t think I learned that in culinary school. Culinary school taught me technique. It taught me how to build flavor, how to season properly, how to make almost anything taste good.

But scrappy came way earlier than that.

If you’re tired of figuring out dinner over and over again, I’ve got you. I map out the week, give you the grocery list, and show you how to use what you bought in more than one way so it actually goes somewhere.

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Scrappy came from being a Black woman in America.

When I was a kid, my great-grandmother had a house in Compton we all lovingly called The Ranch. It wasn’t fancy—three bedrooms, two bathrooms, a butter yellow kitchen that always felt warm—but it sat on a few acres of land, back when that stretch of Los Angeles was still agricultural.

My great-grandparents bought it either just before or just after World War II, and by the time I came along, it had already become this place where everything seemed to gather.

People, mostly.

Every week it felt like our entire family was there. I’m talking 60, 70 people deep at any given time—barbecues, fish fries, random drop-ins that somehow turned into full plates.

But what I remember just as clearly is the food.

That house was always full of it. Canned goods stacked high, pickled okra, jars of jam, succotash, things that had been put up and saved and stretched.

And somehow, no matter how many people showed up, there was always enough.

Not barely enough.

Enough enough.

My mom’s house is the same way.

Her pantry is honestly ridiculous, and I mean that with love. Seasonings, marinades, potatoes, pasta, snacks tucked into every available corner, three freezers that stay full.

We’ve joked for years that in the event of a zombie apocalypse we’re all going to her house because she could feed us for a solid year without leaving.

I used to tease her about it, call her a hoarder, like why do you need this much stuff?

And now, standing in the grocery store looking at prices, I’m like…wait.

Was she just ahead of her time?

Because you turn on the news and there’s another war.

You go to the store and the same gallon of milk that was $3 is suddenly pushing $5. Beef is up. Juice is up. Chicken is creeping.

And it’s not random.

Prices have been climbing for years—supply chain issues, the war in Ukraine, companies raising prices because they can—and now with everything happening in Iran, even things like oil and transportation are getting more expensive, which touches everything from how food is grown to how it gets to the shelf.

So even if you’re not following it closely, you feel it.

Right there at checkout.

And what’s been sitting with me is that the women I come from didn’t wait for things to get expensive to start cooking this way.

They just always did.

They stocked what they could when they could. They preserved what wouldn’t last. They cooked in a way that assumed people might show up.

They knew how to stretch, how to repurpose, how to make something feel like a real meal even when it started as what do we have.

Somewhere along the way, a lot of us moved away from that.

We started cooking one recipe at a time, shopping one meal at a time, relying on the store always being there, always being stocked, always being affordable.

And now that system feels a little shaky.

So for me, this isn’t about panic buying or turning your house into a bunker.

It’s about returning to something that actually works.

Keeping a pantry that can hold you—not perfectly or aesthetically, just reliably—has made the biggest difference for me.

I’m talking about the basics that show up again and again: canned beans, rice (a lot of rice), pasta, canned tomatoes, frozen vegetables, oils, vinegars, spices—things that don’t ask much of you but give a lot back when you need them to.

It’s also changed how I shop.

I pay more attention to where my money is actually going and let the cheaper stores do the heavy lifting, places like Lidl, which is essentially a no-frills discount grocery store, or international markets like Buford Highway Farmers Market and H Mart, where things like rice, herbs, and meat are often significantly less expensive if you know what you’re looking for.

Then I layer in the rest where I need it—my regular grocery store, Trader Joe’s, the farmer’s market when I want something a little nicer.

It’s not a strict system, just a way of shopping and stocking my kitchen that makes my life feel a little less fragile at 5pm.

If you want a much more in-depth look at what’s happening with grocery prices and how to think about preparing for it, my friend wrote a really thoughtful piece on it. It’s the kind of thing you read and then quietly start looking at your kitchen a little differently.

But for me, the more immediate question is always the same.

What do I have, and how do I make it feel like enough?

And I think that’s really what I’m trying to do here with this newsletter.

Not just give you recipes, but show you how to cook in a way that stretches. A few ingredients, used different ways across the week so you’re not buying something once and watching it go bad in the back of your fridge. So your palate stays interested, but your grocery bill doesn’t keep climbing with it.

Because the goal isn’t just to make dinner.

It’s to make what you already bought feel like enough.

👉🏽If having a plan that helps your groceries stretch a little further each week sounds useful, you can join The Motherload here.

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What’s for dinner this week

You’ll start with a chili crisp meatloaf that feels a little more put-together than your average Tuesday dinner. It’s deeply savory, layered with garlic and just enough heat, and it comes with a proper gravy and something green on the side so the whole thing doesn’t tip into heavy.

It’s the kind of meal that makes you feel like you cooked—even if you were answering emails and breaking up fights while it was in the oven.

From there, we stop overthinking it.

One night it’s buttery garlic noodles with crispy mushrooms—glossy, deeply savory, and exactly what you want when you’re tired but still want something good.

Another night, those extra noodles turn into a brown butter shrimp lo mein with whatever’s left in the fridge. Fast, flexible, and somehow still feels intentional.

And running quietly in the background of all of it is a garlicky chili crisp you make once and use all week—not in an aggressive way, just enough to make everything taste finished.

Big flavor, low lift, and built for the kind of week where your brain is already booked and dinner needs to meet you where you are.

👉🏽 Want dinner already figured out every Friday?
Join The Motherload for $6/month or $55/year (for now) and get the full weekly dinner plan, grocery list, and recipes—so when 5 p.m. hits, you already know what’s for dinner.

Subscribe now

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A few months ago, on my birthday, I had lunch with two of my good friends.

They’re both, objectively, stunning. The kind of women who don’t just enter a room, they shift it. I’ve been the lucky one sitting at a table waiting for them, watching heads turn before they’ve even taken off their coats. They’re in their late thirties and early forties, deeply themselves, with full lives that they’ve built with intention.

They’re also both single. Never married.

We spent the first part of lunch the way ladies do…talking over each other, debating what to order, deciding whether we were in a martini mood (I was) or something lighter. It was easy, familiar, the kind of conversation that exists when no one is trying to impress anyone else.

Eventually, as it often does, the conversation turned to dating.

And…it was not good.

If you’re new here, this is generally what we do—talk about life, marriage, motherhood, and then I quietly solve dinner for you in the background. You can join The Motherload if that sounds useful.

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What they described wasn’t just disappointing, it felt…bleak af. Not just bad dates or the usual mismatched expectations, but this creeping realization that the kind of partnership they want might not exist the way they thought it would. That the life they always pictured—marriage, a real partner, maybe kids—was starting to feel less inevitable and more like a big question mark.

It wasn’t even that they wanted a relationship—it was how clear they were about wanting a partner. A husband. A marriage. Not perfection. Just someone who meets them where they are, adds to their life, and can build something real with them. And yes…someone they actually want to sleep with.

I caught myself saying the thing I tend to say in these types of moments, that a lot of what they’re describing already exists in their friendships. The closeness, the support, the way they show up for each other…it’s already there.

But, now looking back, I think I was a bit dismissive.

Not because what I said was untrue, but because it missed the point. There’s a big difference between having a full life and being told you shouldn’t want more. And those things don’t cancel each other out.

And there was also, if I’m honest, a positional gap that neither of us could ignore.

I was sitting across from them as a married woman with two children. It is very easy, from that vantage point, to say that marriage is not what it is made out to be. To downplay it. To gesture vaguely at its challenges.

But the truth is, I would not choose to be single again.

And I think that’s where the tension lives.

Because I do believe that many married women, myself included, participate in a kind of double-speak. We romanticize marriage when we are outside of it, and then we minimize it when speaking to those who are not. We say it is everything, and then we say it is nothing. We present it as both the goal and an illusion.

It can’t be both.

So what is it, actually?

Marriage, as I have experienced it, is not an answer. It’s long-form exposure therapy.

It does not resolve the questions you have about yourself; it brings them into sharper focus. It does not complete you; it places you in close, sustained proximity to another person in a way that makes it difficult to avoid yourself.

There is a particular kind of intimacy in being known over time that is both comforting and confronting. The longer you are with someone, the less you are able to curate which parts of yourself are visible. The impatience you thought you had under control. The defensiveness. The need to be right. The quiet ways you keep score. The moments when you withdraw instead of engage.

Marriage does not create these things, but it does illuminate them.

And then, without any coddling, it asks you to decide what to do with that information.

It demands you take responsibility not only for your own behavior, but for the impact it has on someone you have chosen to build a life with. It asks for a level of consistency, of self-awareness, of repair that is ongoing and, often, exhausting.

It is meaningful work. It is also unavoidable work.

None of this negates the fact that marriage can be deeply stabilizing and joyful. There is a particular kind of comfort in having a partner in your daily life, in sharing the logistics and the weight of it. There is intimacy, humor, history, a sense of being “in it” with another person.

But I don’t think we serve anyone—least of all the women we love—by pretending that marriage is some sort of solution to the fundamental experience of being human.

It is not a cure for loneliness. It does not guarantee safety. It does not prevent disappointment. If anything, it raises the stakes of all of those things.

So when I think back to that lunch, to my friends sitting across from me and speaking honestly about what they want, I don’t see absence. I see clarity.

And I find myself wondering what it would look like if we, as married women, were more precise in how we talk about this.

If we could say: yes, marriage can be beautiful, and yes, it can add something meaningful to your life.

And also: your life, as it exists now, is not a placeholder.

It is not a prelude to something more legitimate.

It is not waiting to begin.

At the same time, wanting to be married is not a failure of imagination or independence. It is a desire for connection, for collaboration, for being witnessed in a particular way.

Both of these truths can exist without diminishing each other.

And perhaps the work, for all of us, regardless of relationship status, is to build lives that feel supportive and expansive as they are, rather than contingent on who may or may not enter them.

That idea, more than anything, is what sits underneath what I share in The Motherload.

On the surface, it is a dinner plan. A way to remove one decision from the end of your day.

But at its core, it is about something else entirely: reducing the friction of daily life so that you have more capacity for the parts of living that actually matter to you.

Whether that life includes a partner, children, both, or neither.

Ease should not be something you access only once your life looks a certain way. It should be something you can build, deliberately, right now.

👉🏽 If having dinner handled would make your life feel even 10% easier, you can join The Motherload here. From now until April 15th, all of my annual subscriptions are on sale.

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What’s for dinner this week

You’ll start with a citrusy, garlicky pork shoulder that marinates while you ignore it, then cooks low and slow until it’s fall-apart tender. You crisp it up at the end (non-negotiable), and suddenly you have a dish that slips into your regular rotation without asking permission.

Not to be cocky, but…this is a good fucking recipe.

One you make when people are coming over, and you want to impress. Also, the one you make on a random Tuesday when you just want to eat something that’s actually fucking good.

From there, we stop thinking.

One night it’s a crunchy, limey cabbage salad that feels fresh and alive. Another night, it’s crispy quesadillas with melty cheese and pickled jalapeños, ready in 15 minutes flat.

Big flavor, low lift, and built for the kind of week where your brain is already booked, and dinner needs to figure itself out.

👉🏽 Want dinner already figured out every Friday?
Join The Motherload for $6/month or $55/year (for now) and get the full weekly dinner plan, grocery list, and recipes—so when 5 p.m. hits, you already know what’s for dinner.

Subscribe now

Read more