So, I’m going to do what every Substack writer does and process it by writing down my racing thoughts and publishing them unpolished out to the world to judge.

It all started when the lovely sent me a DM with an article asking me for my opinion (which I love btw, if you ever want to chit chat in my DMs, please do!)

When I first read the article it was late, I had a long no-nap day with my son and I’ve been spotty solo-parenting for the better part of the last few weeks due to my husbands manic work travel schedule.

So, when I saw the title “Being a stay-at-home-parent is not hard!” my first thought was “wow someone is asking for it, but I applaud the use of a rage bait headline” then I kept reading and thought “yuck”.

As a SAHM myself, I am not offended by what he said. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion. What’s the saying? Opinions are like assholes…

I don’t wish to debate the merits of the points he made. Some are well thought out arguments, sure. But my bigger issue with the whole piece and the cringe comments section is that a man felt as though he had authority to speak on a women’s issue. And I say women’s issue because, although he referenced stay-at-home-parents, he largely focused in on moms.

I haven’t been able to shake the ick I feel from reading his words. I know now, at almost four years postpartum with my first, I’m no longer swayed by the opinions of parents online, but I remember how judged and frankly in identity crisis I was during that first year of motherhood after leaving my career to be a SAHM. This article would have made me feel terrible about myself if “old me” had read it.

I literally wrote a love letter to new moms last week, my bio contains the words ‘SAHM mentor’, my whole reason for existing on this platform is to pass along my experience and knowledge as a SAHM to others who are on their SAHM journey so that another woman might feel less alone and have some freaking resources at her disposal the way all other career moms do.

Who would I be if I read this and said nothing?

This morning it was still on my mind and I was taken back to a memory from my days working in corporate.

I’ll never forget being on a call with a male coworker who was making fun of a woman on our team for listing her career break and PTA volunteer work on her LinkedIn profile. Then he said something to the effect of, “she’s not even qualified to be in this role with an experience gap like that”. I didn’t know what to say, so I chuckled along and moved on to the next topic. And I still regret to this day not stopping him in his tracks and making him feel just as small as he made that woman seem.

In fact, his commentary was the first thing that ran through my mind when doubt would creep up my first year as a SAHM. Was he saying that type of stuff about me when I left, did everyone who wished me well on my way out secretly think I was making a mistake? I cared a lot what career people thought of me my first year or two out of the corporate world. And now I don’t. I see the fruits of my labor as a SAHM blossoming within my son. I see all of the moments I would have missed and I can’t imagine not being in the thick of all of it.

So to read this man on the internet write things like:

Being a stay-at-home parent is, in the main, a really simple and arguably easy job. I’m not saying that it doesn’t involve work, sometimes a lot of work. But the work does not overall bear the normal markers of “hard” work, and it shouldn’t be labeled as such.

I think the discourse is being driven largely by a distinctly female set of impulses, and moreover I think our present discursive culture is apt to incentivize and reward those female impulses very strongly. A stay-at-home mother who stands up and says “This work is hard” will be by-and-large validated and commended for making this statement

But that’s the norm now — to act as if this vocation of being a full-time at-home parent is uniquely, cripplingly difficult. It’s what the mommy bloggers mean when they say, repeatedly, “Being a stay-at-home parent is hard.” But it’s not. It’s, in the main, really quite easy.

Caring for children is really not that hard

All direct pull quotes from “Being a stay-at-home parent is not hard!”

… it all brought me back to sitting in that meeting and saying nothing. I know better now, I’m a mom and I know that being a mom, regardless of your W-2 status, is hard worthwhile work.

of Have it All-ish has a viral, incredible article about the realities of being a SAHM despite men (in this case LeBron James) having antiquated opinions… and she logged her entire day to prove her point. Give it a read here:

have it all-ish

LeBron James Thinks Stay-at-Home Moms Sit on the Couch All Day. So I Decided to Log Every Minute.

A clip of LeBron James recently resurfaced where he said he couldn’t date a stay-at-home partner because he wouldn’t want to come home to someone “sitting on the couch every day just chilling…

Read more

2 months ago · 515 likes · 218 comments · Hilary Simon

Reading his article, the question I kept asking myself was “ok, so if being a stay at home mom isn’t hard work, then what does qualify as hard in this man’s mind?” In the comments, he eluded to the fact that being a working mom is hard because they were doing everything that a SAHM does in a smaller window of time. But in large part, he skirted around answering how he defined hard when asked in the comments so I don’t know what his perspective is.

If the bar for hard work is a soldier in combat or a firefighter running into a burning building, then yeah the rest of us civilians have it pretty easy.

I sent the article to my husband and asked for his opinion. He sent me back a strongly worded email, complete with his own thesis on the topic. I honestly might publish it as is because it’s rather good, but I’ll pull an excerpt here for you:

I think what is getting lost in this whole debate is that the wrong word is being used. Taxing is the word that should be used.

It’s taxing mentally, physically, emotionally to be a parent. And when you’re a SAHM, you don’t get to sever yourself away from childcare or housekeeping. It is taxing to tend to little people all day, that’s why daycares have such a high turnover rate. Is it hard the way that building a rocket ship is hard, no. But the work and sleep deprivation combined with not being able to pee without company compounds over time and gets (some) women to the point of pure overwhelm.

Regardless of your stance on this topic, I don’t think any man should be weighing in on how hard, easy or otherwise being a stay-at-home-mom is with authority. I don’t think any man should be comparing stay-at-home-moms to working moms. It’s a women’s sport. OK. Butting in on the issue to give your opinion and feeling like you have the jurisdiction to make definitive statements on motherhood is akin to the husbands of Real Housewives getting involved in the drama. No matter what side of the argument you’re on, the minute a man injects his opinion, the argument stops and everyone is grossed out.

The only articles I want to see about this topic are by moms, for moms. I’d actually love to read a piece by a mom who has experience as both a SAHM and a working mom and compares the two. That would be a fascinating read. If you’ve written an article like that or know of one floating around the Substack-verse, drop it in the comments below please.

Men need flattery, women need a listening ear. So, the notion that we’ve distorted the truth by sharing our hardships with one another just proves your brain doesn’t work the same as ours. Saying out loud that you did something hard and hearing the acknowledgement back from another woman that you in fact did do something hard is all that we need to move on to the next hard thing. The reason we need that is because men across history have gaslit us into believing that we’re making “the hard” up, that it’s all in our heads. Now, I’m stepping on a whole other landmine, but if you’re interested in more on that topic, please go read the incredible writings of .

To wrap this up, Zack, I didn’t intend to pick on you. I actually didn’t want to give your post attention at all, but the point needed to be made. I’m sure you’re a wonderful husband, father, person in general. I actually rather liked your writing style.

But, for you and the four other men reading this, kindly stay in your lane, sirs.

This is a women’s issue.

And for the wonderful women reading this, moms, moms-to-be, aunties, you’re the shit. Never let anyone make you doubt that.

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If you’d like to read about SAHM tips, systems and tricks of the trade that I’ve learned over the past four years honing my craft, links are below:

Never in my wildest dreams did I think an article about tips for being a SAHM would take off the way it did.

It says more about the lack of resources for SAHM’s than it does about my writing. But it has definitely given me the drive to continue to create “onboarding documents” for those of us in this field. Almost four years since deciding to leave the corporate world in favor of raising my son full time, I can’t shake the process oriented part of my brain or the managerial/eldest sister urge to give advice. So, I’m channeling it all for good here on Substack.

Part 1 of “How to Succeed as a SAHM” was the operational foundation and expectation setting. Consider this a scrappy figure-it-out-as-you-go addendum. The ideas that come to me at 6am after broken sleep or when I’m trying to get out the door without looooosing my mind.

Do you know the average mom gets interrupted every 3 minutes, which is about 400 times each day? Ask any SAHM of a child in that 1.5 to 3.5 year old sweet spot and they will say, yeahhh feels about right. (source)

Anyway, Part 2 is a collection of little things that nobody tells you because it sounds too simple to be useful, too niche to apply to anyone else or too unhinged to admit to the general public. I’m still not an expert, just a mom who has figured out what works for my family and wants to share my notes with you.

Moming is a labor of love, it’s the best “job” I’ve ever had and it is filled with so many beautiful, hilarious moments. But some days, you’ve got to get things done and get little people fed.

I’ve bucketed the tips into two themes: Productivity & Meal Time.

The tips are listed below, subscribers get to read the details on how I deploy each one:

PRODUCTIVITY:

• The Coffee Cup To-Do List

• “Yes” Drawers

• Look Ma Two Hands

• Meltdown Scripts

• Nap Time Me Time

MEALTIME:

• Stroller or Wagon Breakfast

• The $5 Family Dinner

• Park Picnic Meal Time

• Dinner Prep with Toddlers

Thanks for reading and subscribing! I’d love to hear your feedback, what you found most helpful and other resources you’d love to have as a SAHM.

Comment below or start a thread in the chat!

Leave a comment

The program was meaningful to me as a little baby freshman and meaningful to me as a senior in that helper position. And as I was writing the below essay in my notes app during pockets of free time in the preschool car line, I kept coming back to this teen girl onboarding system.

Nobody assigns you a senior helper when you become a mom. No one pairs you with a woman who is three-ish years ahead of you, close enough to remember the early days but far enough along to have found her footing. Someone who can serve as a beacon of hope, a lighthouse in the newborn fog showing you the way back to feeling like you again. Someone to help you cut through the picture perfect postpartum that Instagram portrays without falling into the horror story traps set by news media and your out of touch relatives on Facebook.

I would have loved that type of mom-mentor almost four years ago when I started my journey. Not all of us have that older sister, cousin or friend built in. And sometimes, a third party who isn’t woven into the fabric of your every day life is a more helpful resource. I know my window of relevance is slowly closing. Once I hit four years out of the newborn bubble my perspective will be perceived as cheerleader energy with a side of “enjoy it, it goes fast” eye roll.

So, here’s my love letter to you, new mom in the thick of it, written with love and through a few tears, by your preschool mom helper.

For whoever needs to hear this today…

I never changed a diaper before my son.

I never soothed a baby before my son.

I wasn’t a “baby person” before becoming a mom, I never felt the pull to hold or interact with a baby in a cutesy way.

While I was pregnant, I’d tell myself “I don’t think I’ll like the baby days, I don’t know how to do any of it”.

The day he was born my heart didn’t swell with love, the swelling was primarily isolated to my ankle region. My memory is a total blur actually. After a nineteen hour labor followed by an emergency c-section, the only overwhelming feeling I remember in the hospital those first two days was relief.

Relief that he was healthy and relief that I was there to witness it.

My husband and I bought the L&D and Nursery floor staff pizzas and gift bags knowing we were about to hit them with a barrage of first timer questions. We hedged our time-spent-in-room negotiation from the minute I checked in to triage, as any self-respecting finance bro new dad and corporate marketing exec new mom would. We asked them to show us over and over again how to change a diaper, swaddle, bath basics, feeding schedules. I requested extra visits with lactation because it wasn’t working and I was determined to get it all to work. I distinctly remember laughing with the nurses about how inept yet process oriented we both were.

The first two months at home felt more like survival than bonding. It was really hard but I was learning, I was doing it. The two of us figured it out together. How to put a noodley baby in a carrier, how to slip on my shoes without bending over, blow outs, triple feeding, functioning on broken sleep.

My mom heart slowly developed and deep deep deep visceral unconditional animalistic love for my baby came when the laughing, smiling, babbling, legs kicking when I walked in the room, rolling a ball, playing maracas, baby classes at the library all became routine.

Somewhere around month five or six I started seeing my confidence build. Slightly less reliant on apps and logging everything under the sun. Starting solids and sitting up helped ease some of my new mom anxiety.

Moming out of the house and seeing how other moms took their babies out of the car seat, walked with them, played with them, fed them, juggled a diaper bag and the change table in public restrooms all gave me an example of care akin to the nurses in the hospital and gave me yet another confidence boost that being shut in those first few cold winter months didn’t provide.

I’m so proud of the mom I am today almost four years later. I ended up being a good mom to my baby. A really freaking great baby mom actually. And if you’re in a similar situation to me, doubting your abilities, I promise you, it’ll come. Those instincts do kick in, the confidence does kick in, the fierce love shows itself and connects you in profound ways. For some moms, it’s instant, for others, it takes time.

… ok back to it…

The first two years is a total blur, it is hard, relentless, scary work the first time you’re doing it. You’re growing, they’re growing, you’re learning together. You don’t anticipate the next big joy or frustration that each month brings.

But you do not need to be an expert to be a good mom. The only person in the whole world that your baby needs is you. Even when it doesn’t feel that way. It’s an overwhelming truth but it’s also extraordinarily special.

Feel all the feelings, remember to brush your teeth, you’ll get back to feeling more like yourself one day I promise, don’t rush it, don’t put the additional pressure on yourself.

And take 2638482946 pictures of the every day little moments at home with that baby of yours, prop your phone up and get in the pictures and videos too. Because the day you send them off to preschool, you’re going to want to look back at that little baby and that new mom and remember how wonderful that little window of time really was.

Ok, I’m treading into “enjoy every moment” territory here, sorry.

Being a mom is hard. Really hard. Especially if you are doing it 24/7 in those first two years.

AND

You are a wonderful mom.

The only mom that your baby needs, the only mom your baby wants.

Their little DNA cells are quite literally still floating around in your body.

You’re connected for life. Highs, lows, everything beautiful and heartbreaking in between.

So, don’t you dare talk badly about your baby’s favorite person (you!!), they simply wouldn’t stand for it! :)

• 1 month: exhausted, pp acne, friar tuck balding baby, peep the nipple shield on the nightstand

• 6 months: we made it out of the house that day, baby denim is the best

• 3 yr old birthday: first “friend party” - shortly after this photo was taken he ate multiple cupcakes while I was busy chatting with someone

• first day of school for the sweetest boy in the whole wide world!

Here are some other articles you might like:

The answer I gave: “Not sure, we’re still building our family, but maybe one day.”

The real answer?

I don’t want to make trade offs. That’s why I chose to leave my career.

My career was always my #1. My husband and I were corporate zombies, switching between our little screen and our medium screen while sitting in front of our big screen. Ping ping ping, nary a teams chat went unanswered. Flying to different corners of the country for meetings. Never saying no to an opportunity we were presented with. Climb climb climb. Exceeds expectations. Dinners celebrating promotions and raises.

Then we spent weekends traveling to places other people invited us to: weddings, family parties, etc. never allowing ourselves enough free time to get the peace of mind needed to decide what WE wanted. Basing our worlds, our happiness, our schedules around work or others. Never each other.

Then came baby.

And a switch flipped in both of us. We looked inward instead of outward for the first time in our lives as a couple. This little person needed us in ways we never needed each other. Our marriage was never about needing the other person, we loved each other enough to cohabitate. This was different. I needed him to survive a traumatic birth. He needed me to care for this baby while he was spending his paternity leave cramming for grad school exams. We were reliant on each other the way our son was reliant on us.

And it saved our marriage.

The best decision I’ve ever made in my life is choosing family over career, tied with the choice I made to marry the right man. Both are a decision I would make 10x over.

My son still needs me and will continue to need me despite his (very few) hours spent at school. My husband’s schedule is not conducive to a shared parenting role Monday through Friday. Early mornings, late nights, events after work, travel both planned and out of the blue. It’s just how his industry is and I fully understand and accept that. Our marriage works better when one of us has eyes on work and the other has eyes on home life.

TLDR: I’m not going back to work unless I have to.

I know some of you reading this will disagree with my point of view. That’s okay, I respect your opinion. Our own personal choices shouldn’t offend other people, but they often do. That’s not a reason to stay quiet or shrink away from what you want for your own life.

Whether it’s making the decision to work outside of the home, stay home full time or something in between, only you know what is best.

I did what was right for me, right for my baby, right for my family.

My hope is that you have the option to make the right choice for you and your family. And I hope that the below resources help in that decision making process.

If you’re in the season of life thinking about becoming a SAHM here are a few resources for you:

Free Subscriber Resources (all subscribers get access):

• Book Recommendations

• Expectation Setting Infographic for SAHMs at different ages and stages (0-3yrs)

Paid Subscriber Resources (behind the paywall):

• What models and scenarios we had our financial advisors run to understand the long term financial trade offs of moving to one income.

• The Budget Planner spreadsheet we used to understand if we could actually live off of one income and what spending would need to change.

• Questions to ask yourself (and your spouse) before making the decision

• My actual resignation announcement

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Hi! Thanks for reading!

If you’re interested in upgrading, Paid Subscribers get exclusive access to practical SAHM how-to toolkits, scripts and templates. Think all the resources that every other career path has that SAHM’s have gone without for all these years.

I’d love to hear your feedback, what you found most helpful, other questions you have about making the leap to become a SAHM or resources you’d love to have as a SAHM.

Comment below or start a thread in the chat!

Leave a comment

I am returning to my family tired, a little hungover, and remembering something I had apparently needed a reminder of: I am just a girl. I am going through life for the first time too. That everyone has the same questions, that no one has figured it out, that no one is an expert, that we all vibe off of each other, that it is okay to be vulnerable but even more okay to have fun. To sing, to dance, to wear matching pajamas and talk about ridiculous stories and ask insane questions and over share and over serve and over eat. That live music is a religion of its own. That lake air in your lungs gives you a high that no drug can quite scratch. That butter dripping from a lobster roll onto your fingers while you sip a cold beer watching the sunset listening to your sister-in-law tell a hilarious story is about as close to perfect as you are going to get.

One of the women on the trip kept saying “we're just girls, okay” as a joke. But it is true. Now I know some people can’t get behind the “just a girl” trend, and if you know the Gwen Stefani origin story you understand why the phrasing has some baggage. But I’m stealing it anyway, because in this context it has nothing to do with being dismissive and everything to do with permission. Permission to just be a woman for a few days, untethered from every other title we wear the other 362 days of the year.

We carry the literal world on our shoulders as women. The mental and physical load of the families we come from and the ones we create. The sandwich generation is a female led role. We are killing it in the workforce, tackling side hustles, volunteering in our communities, staying alert at the playground to watch our own kids while subconsciously keeping an eye on every other child in the vicinity. We are the ones learning about mental health and development so we can coach our spouses and our parents and our children through it, while knowingly neglecting our own.

No amount of therapy, date nights, Pilates classes, spa days, journaling, or bible studies does for your soul what three days with ten other women in their mid-thirties to mid-forties will accomplish. There is something tribal about women of the same age and life stage spending uninterrupted time together. Dinners are fun, couples trips are nice but there is simply no way to replicate the feeling or the impact of a group of women together with no other agenda, no one else to take care of, just talking and dancing and getting ready together and solving the world’s problems and eating and laughing. Getting the mental space to let go and just be a woman. Not a mom, not a wife, not a daughter, not an employee. Just a girl.

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Make the time. Plan the trip for next year. Start saving. Your child will be okay. They may cry, they will miss you, you will miss them, and your husband will figure it out.

There is an element to being a SAHM that I don’t think gets talked about enough in a matter of fact context. (Most) working moms have built-in systems. Daycare, a nanny, a schedule that already requires separating from their kids and trusting them in someone else’s care on a regular basis. They have practiced the release, go on work trips, have mornings where someone else is in charge and they have learned to trust that or at the very least tolerate it. It doesn’t make it easy or hard, they’ve simply done it before.

(Most) SAHMs of the 3yr old and under variety do not have that practice. I am with my son almost every hour of every day by design and by choice and I would not trade it. But what that also means is that the idea of leaving, of actually handing over full control of the house and the kid and the routine to someone who does not know where everything is or the daily rhythm can feel not just logistically complicated but unsettling. So with the prospect of a trip away, it is not a matter of can my husband handle it. It’s can I handle not being the one handling it.

And it seems to be a trait us SAHM’s share. Trouble releasing control, trouble trusting others with our children. Not in a virtuous sense, in a control freak sense. I talked to several of my SAHM friends before this trip and that was almost universally the biggest hurdle. Not the logistics themselves, but the release of control we have never had to practice.

You have to practice it anyway. Start small if you need to, but practice it.

I know what you are thinking because I thought all of it too. The anxiety, the very valid reasons this cannot work for you or in your life or right now or ever: no one to watch the kids, husband can’t do it alone, work will not allow it, waste of money, no friends to go with, must be nice for you lady on the internet but I could never. Have I covered all of the rationalizations yet? Okay good.

Do it anyway. No matter how big or small, whether it is for a birthday, a bachelorette, or just getting together with women you have not spent real quality time with in ages. And if you are not sure if you are ready, say yes to whatever opportunity comes up first. It may have taken me a lot longer than most, but I am so glad I proved to myself that I can do it, that everyone is okay, and that I deserve time with friends that goes beyond just a dinner.

And because I’m me, I included some practical tips for getting your family ready so you can actually leave.

… but also, because I’m me, first I want to address something. There is a certain brand of advice out there that will tell you that you should not have to prepare your husband to care for your own children, that he should just know, that doing this emotional and logistical prep work before you leave is just more unpaid labor and you should refuse it on principle. And look, in a perfect world, sure. But preaching that to a woman who is already anxious about leaving and trying to actually get out the door is not helpful, it is just another thing to feel bad about. So if prepping your family before you go is what gets you on the plane, do it without guilt and without anyone making you feel like doing so is a feminist failure. Save that conversation for another day when everyone is home and rested and you have the bandwidth for it…

Now, the tips:

Skip the documentation. Same philosophy as maternity leave prep. Do not waste your time creating long lists, process documents, or laminated schedules. No one is going to read them.

One physical sheet of emergency contacts. Pediatrician, dentist, medications, hospital. Hang it in the kitchen, and share them as contacts he can save in his phone before you leave too.

Start chipping away weeks before you go. Have your partner take the lead on bath time, bedtime, drop off, walks to the playground, kid laundry put-away, diaper bag prep. Not all at once but gradually over the course of a few weeks so that by the time you leave it is not the first time he has done any of it and everyone is less panicked about the whole thing.

Send them ideas. I am in neighborhood groups, local Facebook groups, and mom groups that function as my personal rolodex of things to do. Screenshot anything you think they might enjoy and send it over before you leave so the weekend does not default to everyone sitting at home watching the same movie three times.

Translate the big things. If your child is anything like mine, their favorite books, toys and movies are not referred to by their actual titles. Give your partner the lowdown before you leave so you are not fielding texts about what “the one with the guy and the thing” is while you are trying to enjoy yourself.

Record a video instead of scheduling FaceTime. FaceTime is hard to coordinate when you are in a group and everyone is on different schedules. Record a quick check-in video and send it via text so your partner can play it for your kids when the timing works best for them.

Count down calendar. Set your child up for success by making the trip something they can track and understand rather than a sudden absence. This is the one I made my son, we went over it a few days before I left and my husband said he referred to it several times while I was away.

Bring one of their small toys with you. I asked my son if I could borrow one of his toys to keep me company on my trip. Reverse psychology at its finest. He excitedly went through his toys and handed me a little cheetah. I sent him photos of cheetah on the trip. Before I left I told him when he missed me he could hug his favorite stuffy and when I missed him I would hug cheetah. It worked better than I expected.

One more thing I want to say before I let you go, and I know I’ve already said a lot.

Part of why we talk about loving Substack is because it creates space for meaningful conversations with strangers. But I want to challenge you to do that in the real world too. It is not something special about Substack that makes it possible. It is just what happens as humans when we put our phones down and actually talk to people.

Pre-kid I never talked to anyone. Head down, headphones in, annoyed if someone tried to make conversation in an Uber. On this trip I sat next to an older man on the ride down who told me about his restaurants in Detroit, his trips to Hong Kong, his son who was a pilot, and the full life he has led. My driver on the two hour ride to the airport talked about his legacy in a small town and we laughed about Midwest things and as it turned out he recognized my grandfather’s name when we started talking football. A god wink I would have completely missed if I had been on my phone the whole time. I met friends of friends, heard new stories and new jokes and got different perspectives on things I thought I had already made up my mind about.

If you want a 90s summer, if you have nostalgia for the way things used to feel, you have to talk to people. It is what we used to do… remember :)

And the last thing (promise!!!): so much of what stops us from taking trips like this, or going to the wedding, or traveling in for the birthday, is that it is inconvenient. Relationships are inherently inconvenient. Inconvenience is part of the deal. Empathy, showing up, putting someone else first for a moment, all of it is inconvenient. Think about how quickly we let work inconvenience us without a second thought, yet we churn and agonize when it comes to the people we actually love. My default is still ugh, this is going to mean I have to change or plan or rearrange something. I’ll probably continue to do it out of habit. But the most joyous occasions in life require leaving your house, leaving your town and showing up for other people. Showing up for yourself now apparently qualifies as inconvenient too, which tells you everything you need to know about how we have been spending our energy.

Make the trip. Let it be inconvenient. Go anyway.

I came home exhausted and happy and my husband looked at me before we went to sleep and said “see Jess, it can be done.”

He’s right. It can.

Drop a recent trip you’ve taken or one on the books below for inspo. Let’s normalize moms getting together with friends and being just a girl for a couple of days.

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As always, thanks for reading (and listening) and hope this inspires you to get that girls trip out of the group chat and into reality.

If you enjoyed this article, here are a few more to add to your Substack TBR:

What Type of Mom Are You? (A Completely Unscientific Quiz)

Q1. Your child has a meltdown in the grocery store. You:

A. Kneel to their level, validate their feelings, narrate the experience back to them in a calm, measured tone.

B. Abandon the cart, get everyone in the car, drive home in silence.

C. Hand them your phone and a snack. Problem solved.

D. Make eye contact with a stranger and mouth the words “I’m sorry.”

Q2. Your approach to after-school activities is:

A. Scheduled, optimized for college application appeal.

B. Whatever they ask for, within reason, no more than two at a time.

C. We tried soccer. We tried gymnastics. We’re currently really into dinosaurs.

D. Unstructured play is a form of enrichment according to the reel I watched.

Q3. Your feelings about screen time are:

A. Limited, educational, earned.

B. Fluid depending on what kind of day it has been.

C. If the show is on, dinner is getting made.

D. What qualifies as screen time, really.

Q4. Your child’s lunch contains:

A. A balanced meal, a handwritten note and one treat in a reusable container.

B. Whatever is in the fridge that they will actually eat.

C. A Lunchable.

D. I forgot to pack it. Purse snacks for the win.

Quiz Results:

Mostly A’s: You are giving Tiger Mom, Helicopter Mom, or possibly Dolphin Mom energy depending on the day. Your calendar is color coded, everyone knows their marching orders.

Mostly B’s: Solidly in Gentle Mom or emerging Beta Mom territory. Doing it your way, no apology required.

Mostly C’s: Silky Mom, proudly. Mainstream, efficient.

Mostly D’s: You are a Scrunchy Mom at best and a woman surviving at worst.

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Now that we have established absolutely nothing about your parenting style, let’s talk about why we are all being sorted into categories in the first place.

The internet loves a label. And society is obsessed with micro-labeling every possible type of mother.

We have the Tiger Mom: high standards, achievement above all else.

The Helicopter Mom: hovering at all times, swooping in so nothing goes wrong.

The Crunchy Mom: organic everything, cloth diaper and co-sleeping advocate.

The Silky Mom: loves the purple monkey playmat, pro-sleep training and has the best packaged snacks at the playground.

The Scrunchy Mom: sometimes referred to as the Type C mom, she lands somewhere in between the two.

Then there’s also Gentle Mom, Free Range Mom, Snowplow Mom, Dolphin Mom (I thought this one was a joke when I was doing research for this article, but alas, she exists).

And the newest category, Beta Mom. A Beta Mom lives by a code of fewer activities, more neighborhood play and evenings that adults can enjoy too. This new classification of mom has gone viral thanks to a recent Wall Street Journal article. Beta Moms were born out of a response to decades of more intensive parenting styles, a la the Tiger mom, leaving those of us currently parenting little ones to question if the extra effort of the more traditional parenting styles amounts to “better” results.

And then there are dads.

No categories, competing philosophies, online communities debating whether a father is Crunchy or Silky based on his diaper brand preferences. No WSJ trend pieces about the Beta Dad. Rich Dad, poor Dad, sure. But mostly just Dad.

The point of me writing this isn’t to assign blame, declare a winner or pledge my allegiance to any one style. I’m simply making an observation… It’s a lot of boxes for one woman to be sorted into.

Every classification of mom exists for a reason and most of them were created by moms, for moms, as a way to find community and feel less alone in our preferred approach. Noble in it’s origin, but like a lot of good things in modern society, the internet took it, twisted it and fed it back to us as a partisan sport.

Let’s pause on the sheer volume of it all. The sorting, the labeling, the quizzes, the trend pieces, the comment sections where (typically women) debate the merits of each category with the energy of people who have been told their choices require defending. Sparing with strangers over how we each choose to parent our own children. As if differing opinions on snacks and sleep habits will make it impossible to get along.

We have been fed the narrative of sameness = safety in motherhood. Often without thinking ten steps ahead to realize that our children will be out in the world, the real world one day. Without us and without a curated group of children raised by parents who all think and parent in the same way.

I’m in a Facebook sleep group that I joined one night during the newborn haze. At this point it is less a resource and more an anthropological lens into the mind of mothers, and I cannot bring myself to hit “leave group”. It is a group of moms who religiously defend against sleep training, so much so that when a new mom mentions sleep training in any capacity, even if it’s asking a question, she is immediately met with a pack of wolves ousting her, shaming her, making her feel like the worst mother ever for even asking a question. For the record, I didn’t sleep train either, it’s why I joined the deranged group of sleep deprived women in the first place… but Jesus ladies, put the pitchforks down!

Maybe we are truly too different in our approaches and keeping with our respective mom teams is better for us in the short term. But maybe we are all just moms, doing our thing, caring for our kids in the specific way that works for our specific family, in this specific season of life.

But where is the fun in that? :)

Would love to hear your takes on this topic and I’m so curious to see the results of this poll!

As always, thanks for reading and I hope you’re all having an amazing summer so far.

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If you enjoyed this article, here are a few more to add to your Substack TBR:

If you’re naturally a relaxed, go-with-the-flow, don’t-sweat-the-small-stuff type of parent, this article is not for you. Also, can you bottle whatever that is and sell me some?

Since becoming a SAHM three and a half years ago I’ve been fascinated with the logistics of motherhood. The micro-processes we deploy throughout our day to keep kids safe, keep the day moving, and keep everyone at least partially sane.

YET there are no guides for any of this!

Before our first few trips with my son, I had so many questions. I wanted to know how to prep for travel with kids. What to pack, what not to pack, I wanted to know the logistics of how to walk through the airport, security and board a plane with all of the “stuff” without being detained or heckled. I wanted to know how to change a diaper mid-air. I wanted to know how to make a hotel room work for our family so my husband didn’t need to run errands for the first three days of our five day vacation buying things to make life easier.

We love to travel. I went back and counted, my son has been on twenty-two flights since he was six months old. I did four of those solo, one of which was a cross-country move. His first hotel stay was at three months old. About half of our trips have been hotels, half staying with family. Add to that a dozen road trips and overnights for Disney, family visits and the occasional piggyback on my husband’s business trips for a change of scenery.

Is traveling with kids more work than doing it solo, yes. Is it way more fun than sitting at home, yes. Is the best thing in the world watching your child experience new and exciting places, big yes. My goal with this post isn’t to scare you or stress you out, it’s to give you the info I wish I had so that you feel more prepared and more confident traveling with your kiddos. So if you’re a new parent, new to traveling as a parent and/or neurotic adjacent (like me), I think this post is worth your time.

I’ve organized my thoughts by travel element: Packing & Travel Prep, Plane, Hotel, Car, Disney/Theme Parks and provided details for both babies and toddlers.

Disclaimers:

Some of my tips include products I love. You do not need ANY of the items I mention, I’m simply linking my travel go-to’s that I’ve found have made life easier. I did set up affiliate links on Amazon, so just want to be transparent about that bit.

I would love to hear your feedback! If this is helpful and you want more guides or have a specific “how to” logistic you’d like me to break down, let me know! The other “How to’s” in this series are linked at the end.

As always, thanks for reading! xo Jess

PACKING & TRAVEL PREP

You First

The most recent trip we went on, I packed myself last and forgot contacts, foundation and the one nice dress I bought specifically for the birthday dinner we were going to. I’ve never forgotten any of my sons items. I’ve forgotten my own about half a dozen times. Pack yourself first.

• Do yourself a favor and get a diaper clutch. It’s impractical to lug your entire diaper bag/carry-on into small plane, airport and restaurant bathrooms. I have this one and love gifting it to family and friends. I’ve also used a straight up Ziploc bag with a travel size wipe, a few diapers and a fold up mat as my “clutch”. More on the importance of Ziploc bags later… but toss your clutch into the bottom of your stroller or top of your carry-on for easy access.

• What to wear on travel days?

  • If breastfeeding: I used to travel in a built-in-bra cami with my favorite nursing cover around my neck as a scarf. Do not travel in a real bra or a real shirt. It’s hard to maneuver in a plane seat while trying to nurse a crying baby. A nursing cover will pull triple duty on your trip — a nap cover over the stroller and a shawl for al fresco vacation dinners after getting too much sun.

  • With toddlers: Dress for a workout. You’re going to get one. Leggings with pockets, throw on a layered zip up with pockets. You’re going to need as many free hands and places to hold/tuck things as possible. Your outfit will get all boogery looking between the crumbs and bodily fluids, pack a change of clothes for yourself in your carry-on so you don’t feel as gross when you arrive at the hotel.

Practice Makes Perfect

Like anything else in life, the more you practice something, the easier it gets. I’m a huge advocate of practicing before something new — If you haven’t done the below with your child, I highly suggest practicing at home before any upcoming trips:

• The stroller change: you won’t have changing table access everywhere you go and some are down right nasty. Practice laying your stroller all the way back and doing diaper changes. It’s a safe place for a change in a pinch.

• The standing toddler change: bathrooms on planes are tiny and the drop down changing tables over the toilets are infant sized. If you haven’t changed a poopy diaper/pull-up standing up before, try it out at home a few times before your trip.

• Safety systems: Travel typically means crowds and it also means adults are occupied with bags and gear. Practice “hold mommy’s leg”, “hands on the stroller” or your action of choice to get little people to stay close by and not wonder off into a crowd when you turn around to talk to the gate agent.

• Practice installing the travel car seat. It will save your marriage.

Got Milk?

Traveling with breastmilk should be included in the hospital’s Breastfeeding 101 class. It’s unnecessarily complicated and can be really stressful the first time you do it, so let me show you how I learned to simplify it:

• You absolutely CAN travel with your pump, bottles, and accessories in an additional carry on. It’s a medical device. TSA will need to “test” your milk by opening whatever milk container you’re traveling with and holding a test strip over the top. Always give the agents a heads up, I’ve never had a bad experience. Don’t let the internet scare you out of traveling while breastfeeding and pumping!

• Some people love to use ice packs and lunch boxes. I was not one of those people. I also was very much a “just enough-er” when pumping so didn’t have bags and bags of milk to contend with. The single most game-changing travel “device” I used while pumping on the go was the Ceres Chill. If you have never heard of her, let me introduce you — She’s a TSA approved thermos that you can pump directly into. She stays cold, can be taken through security (I had a TSA agent once tell me “this makes my job so much easier”), fits in your carry on, easy to travel with in the car, works in the hotel if you don’t have access to a freezer (ice cubes can go in the outer chamber) and bonus it can double as a wine cooler when you’re done with breastfeeding. It’s NOT good for storing milk longer than one day. It’s very much meant for pumping and keeping milk cold while on the go with your baby, not for a multi-day trip away from baby where you need to store milk.

  • On travel day I would: pump & dump into my pre-chilled Ceres Chill before leaving home →pack an empty bottle → clear security with the pumped milk in the thermos→ make a bottle after clearing security.

• Pack a bottle wash stand that has a bottle brush and pack a little travel size dish soap. You’ll be washing the bottles you bring over and over again in your little hotel sink, so this makes it easier.

• For pumping in the car or on the go, these pump wipes are super convenient.

Plastic is Fantastic

In the airport, calories don’t count and neither does your carbon footprint. You cannot travel with too many plastic bags. And I’m talking the actual old school Ziplock bags, not the cute reusable Stasher bags. Nothing ruins a plane ride or hotel stay like the aroma of poopy diaper or blow out onesie emanating from a tiny trash can. I pack doggie poop bags, Ziploc bags and empty plastic grocery bags on every single trip we take.

Worst Case Scenario Items

My son got sick with his first bout of flu at eight months old the day we were scheduled to travel home on a five hour flight. It started as a runny nose on the drive over to the airport and went downhill at lightening speed as we were taxiing toward the runway. Multiple mid-air blow outs, so many tears, rosy red fevered cheeks and two newbie parents terrified for their precious baby, feeling like jerks for bringing a sick baby on a plane. Sick happens, here’s what I’d recommend:

• Pack your preferred fever reducer/pain reliever & thermometer… that way your husband isn’t running to CVS in the middle of the night and can actually help you with the screaming baby while you’re trying to figure out if they’re sick or just popping a tooth.

• Assume the worst as far as #2 is concerned. Travel size wipe packs — stash them everywhere. Put the doggie poop bags in your carry-on. Pack twice the number of diapers in the airport/on the plane that you think you’ll need. Pack everyone an extra change of clothes in your carry-on for the plane ride. We went through three onesies in five hours. I had to change my shirt for the same reason. My husband was grateful to be married to a doomsday prepper that day.

• My fellow Americans: Travel with a copy of any relevant prescriptions, child’s birth certificate (serves as ID and proof that you’re the parents) and insurance cards. If you need to make an unplanned trip to the hospital while out of state, there’s a good chance you’ll need all of those.

PLANE TRAVEL

Appropriate Expectations

I didn’t make the rules, I’m just sharing them. You simply cannot expect your two year old to sit still and quiet on a plane for four hours. You likely already know this. The asshole in seat 5A might not. That is his problem, not yours.

The trick to successful travel is to put your “what will other people think” blinders on. Your only job is to get yourself and your family safely from point A to point B. What happens during is up to the travel gods. Cut yourself and your kids a break.

*52 year old men in first class: several seconds when faced with a minor inconvenience. 6 hours when looking at their phone.

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Order of Operations

• Traveling with 2+ Adults: Send one parent to board solo with all of the stuff, the other parent should run toddler in the waiting area and be last person in line to board. A hot motionless plane with people anxiously shuffling around is no place for a baby or toddler.

• Solo Plane Travel: I was so scared to travel solo with a baby and a connecting flight, but having flown with my son solo several times now, I’ve never felt closer to royalty. Everyone was so kind and bent over backwards to help. I definitely clocked a few eye rolls, but the good samaritans by far outweighed the bad.

  • Check everything except for your carry on and stroller, yes car seat too.

  • Pee right before you board and if you can’t fit a stroller in the airport bathroom stall, baby wear while sitting. Do one last diaper change prior to boarding while you’re in there. Save snacks and drinks/milk for take off if at all possible. You need as many in-air distractions as possible.

  • If you’re a nervous nelly flying, board with your group. If not, wait until the end. You don’t have any overhead bags so you’re okay to wait. Baby wear your child onto the plane for boarding unless they’re a confident walker. You’ll need two hands to collapse your stroller and place it for gate check at the end of the walkway before you board.

Gear. So. Much. Gear.

Stroller

My philosophy with airport travel and strollers is that you need a travel stroller separate from your every day one. I’ve seen way too many people trying to squeeze an entire Uppa Baby stroller system onto the people mover in the Atlanta airport (iykyk) or struggle disassembling it at the gate. We bought an inexpensive travel stroller on Amazon (they no longer sell our exact model but this one is similar) — easy close, built in tray to eat on the go, don’t care if it gets beat up, lays almost all the way back for naps and diaper changes on the go… its our workhorse for every trip to this day and I prefer it to our brand name stroller.

Car Seat

Most flights we’ve checked our carseat. We chose not buy my son his own plane seat until he turned two (legal age limit for lap child). So, we’d gate check the car seat (it’s free, along with your stroller) and stuff the car seat bag with sleeves of diapers to save suitcase space (don’t forget swim diapers!)

The one time we did install his carseat on the plane, he kicked the seat in front of him the whole time. It was like playing wack-a-mole with his little feet the entire flight.

Eat. Play. Poop.

Eat

• BYO restaurant/airport survival kit - Roll up a silicone bib, utensils and the best placemat known to man into a zipper pouch to use in all restaurants. That way you don’t have to worry about your one year old throwing plates on the ground or putting their food directly on the table, yuck. When done eating, take it to bathroom and rinse off before leaving or wipe with a baby wipe and clean back at the hotel. If they’re too young or too squirmy to sit at the table, sit them up in the stroller and use the snack tray for airport meals by the gate.

• If you take nothing else away from this long ass article, this is a critically important PSA: When flying with a flip top water bottle, if you do not “depressurize” it first by unscrewing the top of the water bottle off BEFORE you flip the straw, then you will lift the straw and water will spray out like a water gun all over you, your child and the poor man behind you. File this under “things I learned the hard way”.

Play

We don’t do iPads. Not here to debate that, just a fact. So, that means we’re on the entertainment committee the entirety of the flight. And it’s manageable, most of the time :) Trade off with your spouse, decide on a time clock and play pass the baby every 5, 15, 20 minutes. That way you distribute the playing-in-a-confined-space burn out and you each get a breather, even if it’s only for a few minutes.

• Ask the flight attendant for extra empty cups — 10/10 times my son prefers playing around with these to his own toys from home.

• Buy a few new toys or pull a few old ones out of storage and reveal them on the plane… one at a time. Each toy needs to get maxed out before they’re shown you have another one.

  • Some ole’ faithfuls: Suction cup spinners, sticky hands, window decals, sticker books, mess free markers/paint kits.

• Take the kids for a walk to the bathroom, whichever one of you (my husband) is the chattier of the adults, send them with the kids to the back to chat with the flight attendants.

• Snacks, soooo many snacks. My sister-in-law does “snackle boxes” for her kids. They each have their own and it becomes a game. Pinterest has endless examples.

• Once old enough, bring headphones with a jack for movies on the plane TV (we pack his Tonie headphones but leave the box at home to save space) Yoto is smaller, we’ll probably graduate to that in another year or two.

Poop

• How to change diapers on planes:

  • Behind the toilet on the wall at eye level is the change table. It pulls down to form a shelf over the toilet. There’s usually a sloped wall above it, so it’s very cramped. But, works fine for a baby. My big tip is to always bring change of onesie into the bathroom with you along with your diaper changing essentials. You know why…

  • For toddlers, do a standing change either with them standing on the floor and you sitting on the toilet OR close the toilet lid, have them stand on the toilet and you stand on the floor… if you practiced at home this will be a piece of cake.

  • Wrap all the nasties in a doggy poop bag and if it doesn’t fit into the tiny garbage can, let the flight attendant know you have some stinky trash. They’ll appreciate you telling them vs. finding out the hard way.

• For any potty training or newly potty trained littles — my advice is always put them in a Pull-up, it’s simply not worth the panic and anxiety of them telling you they have to go when the fasten seatbelt sign is on and the flight attendant drink cart is blocking the aisle. Keep them calm, keep yourself calm.

HOTEL

• Call ahead about requesting a crib and thoroughly wipe it down before using. Pack your own linens. Request a room with a tub, remember to snag empty to go coffee cups to use in lieu of a bucket for rinsing.

• Bring your own black out curtains or use clip pant hangers vertically down the hotel blinds. We never traveled with one of those popular baby tents, the pant hanger trick worked just fine for us.

• If you’re driving and prefer your toddler sleep in their own space low to the ground, we love this toddler travel bed. Grandma and Grandpa have one at their house and we have one for travel. If you prefer to bed share, I recommend requesting a room with two queen size beds. One of you bed share with the toddler and pack one of these toddler bed bumpers. That way, once they fall asleep if you want to sneak into your spouses bed to watch a laptop movie together, you can.

• Hotels don’t have good places for dirty diapers — dog poop bags are the MVP once again.

• For longer hotel stays, buy yourself the cheapest portable high chair you can find at Walmart or pack the cutest mini high chair on the market. It’s annoying to go downstairs or to a restaurant for every snack and meal. Plus, new solids eaters can’t exactly sit in the hotel room desk chair and eat. I’m probably (definitely) insane but we did this a few times - brought and bought. The mini high chair has so many uses at home too. Some of my favorite memories are lawn picnics (and the occasional living room picnic) with that thing.

CAR TRAVEL

• Diapers: trunk or backseat changes > gas station change tables any day. Keep that in mind when you’re playing Tetris with everything that you’re packing.

• Potty Trained: This fold out potty has saved us a handful of times. Comes with bags to throw away the mess instead of being stuck with a bed pan in the back of your car for the rest of your drive.

• If you’re driving solo, your passenger seat is your workstation. Have all snacks and toys easily accessible. Don’t give them their water bottle until they ask for it. One trip, my son poured the entire water bottle on himself and another he drank so much he peed through his pull up.

• Add this Spotify Kids Audiobook Playlist to your favorites, immediately!!!

DISNEY/THEME PARKS

• The Disney app has every single thing you need for your trip to the park, including dining reservations. You don’t need a special travel concierge, months of planning and prepping (funny coming from me, I know). You CAN wing Disney. Especially with toddlers and preschoolers who are more interested in the characters and being immersed in the “worlds” than standing and waiting in line for rides.

• Pack all of your stroller contents inside a big reusable bag, then stuff into the stroller storage compartment. You will need to take everything out for security and to get on/off trams, Ubers, etc… it just makes life easier.

• Always bring wet and dry clothes to change into — there are water elements at most parks.

• Pack every snack you can, lines for food with hangry kids are vacation killers. Even if it says no outside food allowed, we’ve never been stopped with kid snacks before.

• If you’re okay splurging for convenience, there is no better experience than the “Minnie Van” via Lyft. They partner with Disney hotels and are a door to door hotel to park car service with carseats!!! Info here if you’re interested. They are NOT cheap, but worth it if you’re uneasy about the bus times or traveling to a park that’s farther away.

• Bring water shoes for them and you if you’re going to a water park, hot concrete+little feet=ouch. Don’t forget a wet case for your phone if you want to keep it on you for pictures.

• Dress them in memorable clothing. No one wants to think about losing sight of your child in a crowded theme park, but it happens. Bright colors, remember to yell out their name, age, height and exactly what they’re wearing. Screaming “wearing a mickey shirt” at Disney isn’t exactly a unique detail.

If you made it this far, congratulations. And, thank you, I’m impressed.

None of this advice is meant to scare you or to signal that traveling with kids is a chore. I don’t think that at all. I love traveling with my son. The more you do it, the easier it is.

Happy Travels! I’d love to know how your trips go this summer and which of these tips were most helpful. Comment below or join the subscriber chat if you want to share any of your traveling-with-littles wins!

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I came to this platform with the idea to marry my business acumen with my experience as a SAHM. I still held the belief that my value was based in business sense, not motherhood. That people would care about my managerial experience, the teams I built, the marketing campaigns I ran, and that motherhood would be the sprinkles on top.

As it turns out, those are some of my worst performing posts and notes.

What people actually seem to resonate with is my voice in motherhood, my observations. The humanness of motherhood, the humor and the loneliness in the chaos. The things I almost didn’t write because I wasn’t sure they counted as content.

I started this Substack between Christmas and New Years with myself, my husband and my mom as my only subscribers. Six-ish months later, this post is to say a big “thank you!” to the community of over 550 subscribers, and the many more followers and fellow writers that I interact with here on a weekly basis, for giving me the confidence to see that there is value in writing about being “mom”.

I know I’ll still post about business adjacent thoughts from time to time. It was my life for longer than I’ve been a mom or wife or anything else. But I no longer feel the need to lead with it in order to feel like what I am saying is worth reading.

So for anyone else who needs to hear it too: your value is not stored in your former title, your LinkedIn headline or the career you paused or left behind. It is in YOUR voice, your own observations about the specific, ridiculous, sacred season of life you are living right now this second. Write your truth, if for no one else, for yourself.

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Motherhood doesn’t just benefit our children, it changes us at our core and, if we let it, spits back out a more honest, capable, vulnerable woman on the other side. There is so much we can all gain from reading someone else’s journey through to that other side. I learn so much from other women on this platform, particularly those who are farther along on the motherhood continuum than I am.

I only know what I’ve experienced up to this point – how to be a SAHM to a 0-3.5 year old boy. Receiving comments about how my writing has helped some moms who are now where I was a few years ago does something to my soul that I can’t quite explain. I’m an eldest sister, so I think any time I’m given a pat on the back for big sisterly things, my heart flutters. But more than that, it makes me feel connected to a special community of women who can sometimes get swept under the rug.

People like to talk about SAHM’s. It stirs up nostalgia in some, holds up a mirror and can light a fire of angst or preconceived notions in others. But we’re just moms, doing our very best to figure out a life that has no guardrails, no manager, no quarterly check in, no performance review, and no onboarding docs. It can be overwhelming in the way that any parenthood experience can be. These little people who we love more than anything else in the world are in our care 24/7. The overwhelming desire to “get it right” drives heaps of micro decision making all day long and can leave us depleted with nothing left to give by bedtime. I’m sure this is not an exclusive SAHM experience, but a reality of parenthood. One slight difference, SAHMs don’t have built in systems to reflect, collaborate or disassociate from that parental overwhelm for a bit. Well, we do have nap time, sometimes. But if you’re able to say to yourself “I have to go to the bathroom” and then get up, walk calmly to the bathroom, do your thang, wash your hands and walk back to your desk… you are not living the same existence as a SAHM to a young child.

I’ve been told repeatedly over the course of my SAHM experience, by people I love, trust and respect, “I could never do that”, “I need to use my brain”, “I need adult interaction”, “what you’re doing is so much work”, “hardest job in the world”.

I never know whether to be insulted or proud. And I don’t know that I necessarily agree with the sentiment of that last bit either.

Life is hard. No one way of living is better, worse, easier, harder. It’s all just different.

Going to work and watching your baby take their first steps on the daycare monitor – heartbreaking.

Being a single parent and not having a partner to lean on – relentless.

Unexplained infertility preventing you from reaching the experience of motherhood – devastating.

Cleaning up messes all day behind a tiny tornado while simultaneously trying to keep them from injuring themselves or others- exhausting.

There is no escaping that you’ll encounter your own version of hard regardless of what your life or title looks like outside of motherhood.

Being a human is hard work.

Being a mother to a human is a profoundly spiritual experience.

There are simply no words for the feeling you get when a piece of your heart runs at you yelling “mama” to give you a big hug and slobbery kiss. No amount of parental hard will ever out weigh parental joy.

I’ve sort of lost the plot here in my ramblings… but it all comes back to this:

There is inherent value in motherhood, value in our experiences, value in who we are as women now and not just the before of it all.

Thank you for reading, thank you for extending me the gift that is pieces and parts of your attention (and your inbox), thank you for helping to make this community of writers one of the most thought-provoking corners of the internet.

Here are a few of my favorite reads the past few weeks, all written by brilliant moms I’ve grown to admire that I would have never crossed paths with if not for Substack.

• The Parent Who Notices Everything - And Trusts None of It by of Think Soup

• I Had a Phone Full of Answers and No Reason to Sit With the Question by of What, Like It’s Hard?

• What I’m Doing Instead of Scrolling This Summer by of Your Precious Seconds

• We need to love our things more by

• You are more than the sum of an algorithm by

• We Might Be Teaching Kids to Be Anxious by of Development Decoded

What have you learned about yourself from writing on Substack that has surprised you?

Also, pretty please drop some of your favorite writers and articles in the comments below.

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Housekeeping note – that post I promised over a month ago about all things travel with littles… she’s coming and she’s hefty. I just can’t bring myself to pay attention long enough to put the finishing touches on, but she’ll be in your inbox soon.

If you found this article relatable, I think you’ll also enjoy:

TTC or Struggling with Pregnancy Loss? I have a second publication, just for us:

Miscarriage Diaries

Raw and real stories about TTC and miscarriage from someone in the thick of it. Building a community where we can share our stories freely without ever hearing the dreaded phrase "at least" in response.

By Jess Plett

“You are so busy trying not to be a burden to anyone, you've forgotten how to be a friend.”

It got me thinking about friendships and the village we all say we want. I think we have gotten so caught up, as people and particularly as moms, in not saying the wrong thing, not doing the wrong thing, having opinions about everything and knowing entirely too much about each other from the internet, that we have retreated. Not because we do not want the connection. We do. We desperately do. But we have lost sight of something simple: needing help, support, advice, or just some company is not a burden. It is how friendship is built and sustained. It is how we create the village we all say we so desperately want and need.

A village is not something that happens to you. It’s not something you go searching for and magically find one day. It is a network of genuine community that you build, snack preference by snack preference.

My mom was not the parent with the biggest house or the coolest toys or the loose rules that made our house the cool house. What filled our entry way with other kids shoes year round was her presence (and her food). She is the most loving, thoughtful, attentive version of a mom I could have asked for, and the way she showed up for the people in her life, our neighbors, our friends, all of these kids who weren’t hers but ended up at our kitchen table anyway, taught me more about community than anything I have read since.

She did not wait for a village to arrive. She just set the table and started feeding people. She shared some of the mental load with other moms, being sure to fully stock our friends favorite foods, volunteered to car pool, asked our friends about school, their lives, actually got to know them. She’d make an effort to go to everyone’s birthday parties, we were always invited to other kid’s major life events - school plays, first communions, bar/bat mitzvahs. They could count on her being there, gift in hand with a shared pride for their kids success. I once had a friend tell me “I’m only friends with you because of your mom” she was joking… I think :)

Since becoming a mom, being that mom is one of my goals.

I’ve already written about the importance of finding your village, or as I prefer to call them, your co-workers in motherhood (link), and how to ask for help as a mom (link). But wanting a village and actively building one are two different things. In order to find or create a supportive group of women to share your motherhood experience with, you have to be an active participant. You have to be a villager. And in a lot of cases, if you are building from scratch, you have to be the first mover.

Follow me on a quick detour into marketing principles… I promise it applies.

First mover advantage is the competitive edge gained by the first significant player to enter a new market. It is why you ask for a Kleenex instead of a facial tissue and why you Google something instead of searching for it. The first mover establishes the brand, builds the loyalty, and sets the standard before anyone else has the chance to. You want to do exactly this within your village. By being the first to put yourself out there, you set the tone, establish your brand within the community, and make it easier for the people around you to reciprocate. It also dissolves that awkward early “what kind of friends are we” feeling. You are the helper. The one who shows up. The reliable, dependable presence who wants to support others. That reputation builds faster than you think and becomes self-sustaining.

If you are anything like me, you want to be a villager but it is easier said than done. I am the type of person who, when I read parenting advice, struggles to apply it if it doesn’t come with a script. Ok, but what do I actually say? What do I actually do? I find myself in the same situation with the idea of being a villager at times. The concept resonates completely, the desire is there, but the execution is where I stall. Three years into motherhood and a cross-country move later, I’ve found what has worked for me and how to better put myself out there. I’m still learning on the fly and have room for improvement but I’m getting there!

This post is meant to serve as your how to be a villager “script”:

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Share the love (& some of the mental load):

Know their coffee order. Ask every new mom friend what she drinks and put it in her contact notes on your phone. When she has a hard week, a DoorDash Starbucks order takes you four minutes and will make her genuinely feel seen. Lowest possible lift, highest possible return.

Double the recipe. If you made something good for dinner, make twice as much and drop half off to someone who could use a night off. Text ahead, leave it on the porch, done.

Pass things forward. Before anything your kid has outgrown goes to a donation center, post in your local mom group first. Someone in your neighborhood can use those clothes, that gear, those toys. It costs you nothing and builds exactly the kind of goodwill that comes back around.

Invite people over. Your house doesn’t need to be perfect. Invite a few families over for pizza and a chance for kids to run themselves ragged in the backyard before bedtime. No one will turn down the opportunity to skip dinner planning for the night.

Create reasons to show up:

If standing at the park and trying to make awkward please be my friend eye contact with other moms isn’t your thing (SAME!) here’s a few playdate ideas to try. If you have a group of moms already, great. If you’re still finding your community, be bold and post these prompts in your local mom groups on FB or send out an invite to the moms in any mom and tot classes you may be a part of:

Schedule a “swap”. Snack swap, clothes swap, book swap … basically a themed playdate. By swapping you’re creating a reason for people to actually want to show up and you’re inviting discussion on a shared topic to make things less awkward. I recently attended a snack swap and it was actually fun. A pile of mom approved snacks laid out on the picnic table for kids to try something new and take home their favorites.

• “Let’s mix things up with a toddler-friendly favorite snacks party at the park!

  Bring your little one’s go-to favorite snacks and swap with friends for something new. It’s a fun way to discover new treats while the kiddos play and snack together!”

• Other themed playdates in my notes app: books and bottles, bagels and bubbles, dinos and donuts, chalk… just chalk

Mom lunch club or coffee club. For whatever reason calling something a club makes it easier to plan and more exciting to join. Have it be the same day and time each week or month to encourage attendance. Rotate locations as a way to try new places in your area or choose the coffee shop closest to the park for the kids to play after. You are creating a purpose and lowering the social stakes at the same time.

Create a menu of activities to choose from/invite friends to. Summer is coming, jot down a list of ALL local attractions, parks, restaurants, etc. you know your kids (or you) love as well as some new ones you’ve been meaning to try. Keep it on your phone and treat it as your activity menu for the week. This is the list that makes the spontaneous “want to meet tomorrow morning?” text to another mom actually get sent instead of remaining a good intention that never becomes a plan.

Keep a village mindset, not a village scoreboard.

You are not doing any of this to collect favors. You are doing it because the kind of community worth having is the kind worth contributing to. The person who knows your kid’s snack order by heart got there because she was paying attention. Be the person who pays attention.

How do you show up as a villager? Comment below, I’m always looking for ideas.

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If you found this article relatable, I think you’ll also enjoy:

TTC or Struggling with Pregnancy Loss? I have a second publication, just for us:

Miscarriage Diaries

Raw and real stories about TTC and miscarriage from someone in the thick of it. Building a community where we can share our stories freely without ever hearing the dreaded phrase "at least" in response.

By Jess Plett

Simon Maage/Unsplash

One minute you’re going about your day then you hear a song and it can unravel you. Next thing you know you’re sitting in a Home Depot parking lot on your way to look at tile for your guest bath renovation, sobbing about the fact that you don’t have a baby in your back seat.

Miscarriage and pregnancy loss grief is complicated because you never knew this person. You don’t have a lifetime of memories, you have ultrasound pictures, maybe a recording of a promising heartbeat, a few selfies with a stick you peed on. Yet, these little souls change us at a cellular level. They become and stay part of the very fabric of our bodies. So when the grief dam breaks it tends to monsoon out of you in a way that can’t be rationalized.

When you have a loved one or relative who passes, you can remember the good times and point to the fact that the way in which you love them and they loved you back is the reason why you grieve so hard.

But intellectually, it doesn’t make sense that the loss of a pregnancy can still bring you to your knees months or years later. Unless it has happened to you. And only the tribe of women who know, truly know. Death of loved ones is a guaranteed, it’s a contract we sign with the universe as the price of admission. But loss of a child? Loss of a life that was supposed to be YOUR child? It’s unfathomable and inhumane yet one of the most raw, barbaric and deeply human experiences that one can go through.

I’ve got three under my belt and I can’t make sense of it so I tend not to think about it. I’m analytical by nature. But then freaking Everything Hallelujah by Justin Bieber comes on, you jokingly sing along to “baby Jack hallelujah” and something deep inside of you implodes without warning, grief unravels itself.

I’m eternally grateful for my son who I have with me here earth side.

I’m sad he doesn’t have his three siblings here with him.

But when the time comes and I hear “hi mama” from a chorus of angels of my very own making, I think I’ll fall apart all over again. In the happiest of ways.

I ache for you and with you if you ever have or ever will go through this experience. It’s awful in ways words can’t describe. But I’ve found writing about it privately and publicly is the only way I can come close to trying. You’re not alone, but your feelings of loneliness are entirely valid. Sending you love and belief in miracles.

Ps. I did end up going inside Home Depot and didn’t get asked five times if I needed help, so turns out puffy eyes and emotional instability can be a super power 🙃

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It’s inherently uncomfortable talking about this topic to the masses. I actually hate talking about it IRL. But when I do, I find it a way more helpful, cathartic experience if I’m talking to other women who are in the throws of TTC or who themselves have experienced pregnancy loss. I have a notes app full of thoughts that aren’t for public consumption that I’d love to share with others in my position.

So, I created another publication — Miscarriage Diaries (how creative).

I’m trying to build the community I wish I had after my first miscarriage. I want it to be a “safe” space without lurkers, so I’m putting the chat and posts behind a paywall. This is not a money grab, I put a discount in perpetuity so that it’s $2/mo or $20/year. If you cannot afford that but would benefit from joining the community, DM me and I’ll send you a free paid subscription.

This season of life sucks, but we’ll get through it together by sharing our stories, venting to women who get it and empowering one another.

Miscarriage Diaries

Raw and real stories about TTC and miscarriage from someone in the thick of it. Building a community where we can share our stories freely without ever hearing the dreaded phrase "at least" in response.

By Jess Plett

I am not yelling at you in this post, ok? Only at the special brand of parent described below. We all slip up and have our moments, none of us are perfect.

This is a rally cry for “let kids be kids.” It’s just veiled in a tirade :)

I love my son, fiercely. I love the children in my life - family, friends kids, the random kids I see while out and about in our local area. I’ll expand on that further and say I have absolutely nothing against children as a category of human being.

What I cannot stand, as it turns out, is watching adults lose their minds in response to kids being kids.

For context, I’m writing this in my notes app as I sit poolside on Mother’s Day sipping my second blonde ale. A little truth serum never hurt, right?

I’ve realized I’m a mom who does not enjoy to be around large groups of random children. And it’s not their fault, it’s not the kids. I simply cannot stand being around parents parenting their children loudly, frantically, empty-threateningly, ineffectively in public.

That being said, I am pro bring your kids everywhere and anywhere. It’s the only way they learn how to be people in public. Bar? Bring ‘em. Fancy restaurant? Bring ‘em. Nice resort? Bring ‘em. Post-bedtime live event? Bring ‘em. Children belong in the world. They learn how to exist in it by being in it, not by being kept home until they are somehow magically ready.

But…BIG but, when you do that, as a parent you need to be ready to pack up and leave when things go sideways, or better put, when they have reached their developmentally appropriate limit in adult spaces. A two year old is not a ten year old. Do not expect them to behave like one. And please, do not throw an iPad in front of them to prolong the inevitable. Talk to them. Engage with them. Bring fidgety toys and things to color. And when they can no longer be redirected, calmly pick them up, walk outside, and determine whether they just need a break or if the party’s over and they need to go home.

Do not sit at the table and berate them because you are having a power struggle in public and you have a complex looming over you from your own childhood.

100% of the time, you are the asshole. Not them.

Behind me right this second are a mom and dad barking “if you’re not going to listen we’re going home”, “you’re getting people wet stop splashing” over and over and over again at increasing volume levels at their mayyybe four and six year old (?) for splashing in a hot tub.

We’re at a hotel sir and ma’am, I know you’re not going to yank them out and force them to go home and they know that too. That’s why they’re not stopping. How about take them to the big pool 12 steps away and splash around with them alongside the fifty other kids and parents in the pool. And please stop yelling, can’t you see I’m tipsy typing right now.

My criticism is not of kids having hard moments in public. Every kid has hard moments in public. My kid has hard moments in public. I have had to be the person who picks up their child mid-meltdown and walk calmly to the parking lot while he is thrashing around with my internal monologue saying something to the effect of “will I ever eat a full meal in a restaurant again?”

This is one of the most normal parts of parenting. Being the calm one during your child’s age-appropriate storm and removing them from a situation that is too much for them to handle.

What is not normal, and what makes my soul want to leave my body, is the parent who responds to their child’s behavior with a performance of their own.

Also...

If you are in a space designed for children, let them be children. They are allowed to be loud, excited, running, playing, exploring and testing the limits of what is socially appropriate at places like the zoo or the children’s museum. It is their territory. You brought them to a place built specifically for the purpose of them being exactly who they are. Stop over-correcting every single behavior because you are afraid other adults are watching and judging your parenting. I promise you your attempt at loudly correcting them is significantly more annoying than their behavior will ever be. You’re killing the vibe.

Children belong in the world, “adult spaces” included. And in those adult spaces, the adults in charge of them are responsible for reading the room. It’s really not that complicated. It just requires being more attuned to your child than to the lady two tables over rolling her eyes at you, which is (I think) the whole job…?!

Roast me in the comments.

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Thankfully, my husband is incredibly capable and self-sufficient. The way he folds laundry makes me want to crawl out of my skin, but that is a separate “me issue” and I have chosen to let it go for the sake of our marriage.

If you’re in a long term relationship founded on respect for the other person, I think weaponized incompetence is a little strong of a term. I prefer selective incompetence. And women can do it too. Am I fully capable of breaking down cardboard boxes? Yep. Have I ripped each end of the taped box with my bare hands in front of my husband while grunting instead of taking 15 steps to go get a scissor? Also yep. Do I ever have to break down cardboard boxes anymore? Nope.

Here’s my take on the topic at a 30,000ft view - I don’t think our generation (millennials talking to you) can be the change we wish to see in men who are already grown. Some women married enabled men. That’s a genuinely hard situation and I’m not minimizing it. But the lever we actually control is the boys we’re raising right now. The way we define what capable, present, self-sufficient men look and act like starts in our own homes, with our own kids. That’s the long game and millennial moms are playing it whether we signed up for it or not.

More work for us? Obviously. Eye-roll.

I think what got us in this mess in the first place is that not enough women in the generations ahead of us were direct enough about the type of men to look out for, partially because they were the ones who raised the men in question.

Lucky for me, directness has never been my mother’s issue. My mom’s number one dating advice when I was in my twenties was simple “don’t marry a useless man.”

Crass? Sure. Accurate? You betcha.

I have genuine compassion for anyone who has found themselves married to one of these people, because until you see one out in the wild you don’t realize how bleak it can really be. But putting my big sister hat on here for anyone who is not yet married but wants to be: choose wisely. This is the person who will see you at your absolute lowest, be there for your highest highs, and everything impossibly hard in between. The one who picks you up to take you to the bathroom after birth. Who has seen your literal insides (C-section mama’s, hi). Who will sit with you through the loss of your parents and lie awake with you worrying about your children. Who will be your partner in the most unglamorous, sacred, relentless work of your life.

I followed my mom’s advice, thank God. The laundry folding I can work with. It’s everything else that matters.

Back when we were well-rested and in-shape.

Now turning my attention back to the women in this equation. We may (rightfully) clown on men about weaponized incompetence but my truth is that I too have absolutely no idea how to run a household. And it is totally my fault that I’m now building the homemaker airplane while flying it.

I wish someone had told me that even girlbosses have to do housework.

We were the first generation of girls told we could be anything, achieve anything, that all we had to do was lean in, work hard, and the prize was ours… gender be damned! I believed this completely and I ran with it. Degree in hand, I turned my nose up at anything domestic because I was going to climb the ladder, fast and trample my male peers on the way up. And I did. Objectively, I did.

Yet here I am the one responsible for running my household. Still Googling how long chicken keeps in the fridge. Still calling my mom to ask what cleaning product is safe to use on my stovetop.

My mom was a SAHM. She tried to teach me. She would invite me into the kitchen or the laundry room and narrate what she was doing, walking me through it like the patient woman she is, hoping some of it would stick. I would roll my eyes, wander off, or flat out decline the invitation. Sorry, don’t need to know that. I’m going to be a businesswoman, mom. Lean In? Ever heard of it?

I didn’t give her nearly enough credit for the tsunami of work she was doing at home every day tending to my bratty self and my bratty brother on top of running our household top to bottom like a well-oiled machine. I wish I had leaned into home ec, or at least stayed in the kitchen long enough to learn how to properly mop a floor. Now that I’m a SAHM in the same position she was, I’m grateful to her with every mess I clean up.

And here is the thing everybody forgot to mention while they were busy telling us we could do it all: unpaid skills are still skills. Running a household is real work. It requires planning, systems, consistency, and a baseline level of competence that I spent my 20s actively avoiding developing because I had decided it was beneath me.

It was not beneath me. It was just waiting for me.

If you married someone who can’t or won’t pull their weight at home, I feel for you, I do. But someone still has to learn how to properly clean a bathtub. And in most households, that someone is going to be you, toots.

We were promised equality and encouraged so aggressively to match or beat the boys that some of us intentionally or unintentionally abandoned the other half of the equation - having a functional, well-kept place to land at the end of a long day matters. I don’t bake sourdough. I barely cook. I am genuinely more of a reheater and a “plate it pretty so it looks homemade”-er. But I have picked up enough the past few years to make our house feel less like chaos and more like a home.

Let’s stop minimizing housework as unfeminist or unsavory. Anyone lucky enough to have a roof and four walls needs to know how to take care of what’s inside them.

If you’re also figuring out how to run a household, these are the things that I have found to be helpful.

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The Things That Have Actually Helped

Assign jobs. Sit down with your partner and assign actual jobs. I do not call repair people, deal with the car, take out the garbage (unless my husband is out of town), buy paper goods, or maintain the exterior of our house. Simply not my job. In return, running the interior of our home, the meals, the schedules, the laundry, the daily rhythm, that is mine. Except his gym clothes, I’m not washing those. When the division is explicit nobody has to guess and nobody has to ask. Draw the lines and stick by them.

The rag over the shoulder trick. Keep a microfiber rag draped over your shoulder while you’re moving through the house. You will be shocked how much you wipe down in passing without it ever feeling like a chore. Alternatively, an old sock on your hand works just as well for dusting surfaces as you walk by.

Outsource the baseboards to the shortest people in your house. Give your kids a Swiffer duster and tell them only big kids can do this job. They will believe you and they will be thrilled about it.

Stop cleaning up toys more than once a day. Let them stay out during the afternoon and focus your energy only on true messes, crumbs, spills, anything that actually needs attention. Keep all toys in open top bins at kid height so that cleanup at the end of the day is something they can do themselves. If your toddler is anything like mine, they dump the entire bin out as part of how they play anyway, so save yourself the aggravation of resetting it three times a day and just make end of day cleanup part of their nighttime routine.

SAHMs, treat Monday like your Sunday. Sunday is your day off too. Do not spend it meal prepping and catching up on laundry. Spend it enjoying the extra set of hands, resting, doing something fun as a family, or tackling a bigger project together. Save the laundry, the deep cleaning, and the dinner prep for Monday when you are back on the clock.

Keep a donation bin in every closet. An empty bin on the floor of your child’s closet means that when something no longer fits you toss it immediately instead of putting it back and forgetting about it. When you finally have time to deal with it, everything is already waiting for you in one place. I do the same thing in my own closet. It makes the idea of a full cleanout infinitely less overwhelming.

Build a capsule wardrobe and actually stick to it. Think in three categories: mom uniform, work or errand uniform, date night. Your closet should only hold pieces that fit your life right now, not the life you had five years ago or the one you’re planning for someday. Anything that doesn’t fit or hasn’t been worn in a year gets donated.

Throw out the tiny stuff the night it comes home. You know exactly what I’m talking about. The little plastic trinkets from school parties and birthday goodie bags that somehow multiply and end up in every corner of your house within 48 hours. Do not overthink it. Toss them before they colonize.

Send them outside. A few nights a week I tell my husband to take my son outside for thirty minutes to an hour. I turn on my music, do a deeper pass on the kitchen, and get more done in that window than I could in an entire day with my son underfoot. He tries to help and I love him for it, but he’s still only three. When I need to get something done I throw them both into the yard and get to work. Three or four of these windows a week is the only reason my house stays functional.

What tips do you have that help you run your household? I’m taking notes here…

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While everyone and their mother (pun intended) will be posting something in this vein over the next few days, I strongly believe in the premise that, as moms, we should be able to dictate what we want our Mother’s Day to look like without having to do the planning. And that’s what is at the heart of this post.

Also, I didn’t go deep into this in my article, as it is not a topic meant for a wholesome neighborhood publication, but Mother’s Day is particularly difficult when you’re in the throws of loss. Whether that be loss of a mom, mother figure or you yourself struggling with infertility, pregnancy loss, child loss. It’s just one of those tricky holidays that can feel like you’re on the outside looking in and can stir up a lot of mixed emotions.

Given I’ve been either pregnant, trying to get pregnant or recovering from miscarriage for the last ten months, I’m dreading any semblance of a “traditional” mother’s day celebration. I told my husband I want to do something that 1) gets me out of the house and out of town 2) allows me a cook free and clean free few days 3) gives my husband, my son and I quality time in a place where it is near-impossible to feel sad. Lucky for us we’re in driving distance to Disney. So, that’s our plan. I’m going to eat and drink my way through the weekend, watch my son lose his mind over seeing all of his favorites come to life and the only tears I plan on crying are happy ones.

If you’re in a similar season, I’m so sorry you’re dealing with this. My Mother’s Day wish for you is that you have loved ones who check in on you, that you allow yourself to let your feelings out in whatever form you’re comfortable doing so and that you get the weekend you want without having to lift a finger.

Now to the article…moms, it was written for you to forward along to your partner too :)

What Mom’s Actually Want for Mother’s Day

Here is what most moms will say when you ask what they want for Mother’s Day: nothing big. Maybe brunch. Sure yeah, a pedicure gift certificate. Whatever the family wants to do is fine.

Here is what most moms actually mean: please, for the love of all things holy, do not make me plan this.

Mother’s Day has become another holiday that moms manage. The reservation, the card situation, the whether-we’re-seeing-both-families logistics, the outfit for the toddler who will absolutely have a meltdown at brunch. By the time the day arrives, moms have already spent more energy on it than anyone else in the family.

The greatest gift you can give any mom in your life is to take the entire day out of her hands. Not just the flowers or the brunch, the thinking. Do the work to figure out what she wants, plan it completely, and hand it to her finished. If you are unsure, ask her directly. Not “what do you want to do?” which will immediately send her mind to what works for everyone else. Ask her: “what does your ideal Mother’s Day look like?” Then listen and do that.

Moms, our job is to resist the urge to people please and be honest with what we want.

Answers will vary.

Some moms want time with their people: a long brunch with friends where no one is cutting anyone else’s food, a workout class followed by coffee with a girlfriend she hasn’t seen in months, a weekend trip with the long-distance friends that never quite gets planned because life keeps intervening.

Some moms want the opposite: time alone in their own home, the house quiet, no one needing anything, the freedom to veg out in their own space without managing a single other person’s experience of the day.

Some want a night in a hotel, uninterrupted sleep, room service breakfast, nowhere to be and no agenda.

Some moms want pampering: spa day, mani, pedi, the works.

Some moms want a wish list item: a special bag they’ve been eyeing, a skincare product they’ve added to cart five times without buying.

Some moms want a family fun day: homemade breakfast, quality time with the kiddos, cards with a nice heartfelt message.

There is no wrong way to celebrate.

What moms don’t want is to spend their day feeling like an afterthought on a holiday that is technically all about us.

It is also worth saying that Mother’s Day is not a simple day for everyone. For those missing a mother or a mother figure, the brunch-and-church itinerary can feel more like something to survive rather than something to celebrate. For women still on their journey to becoming a mom or navigating loss along the way to building a family, the day can be emotional in ways that flowers can’t fix. If someone in your life falls into this category ask what they’re up for (or more importantly, what they don’t want to do) and make it easy for her to tell you the truth.

At the center of all of this is a simple premise: when we celebrate moms, we need to celebrate the woman behind the title. Not the family calendar manager, not the one who remembered to buy the gift for the grandmas, not the one who packed the diaper bag for her own celebration. The woman whose people are lucky enough to call her “Mom”.

Most of us wouldn’t trade the chaos of motherhood for anything.

The sticky hands, the middle of the night wake ups that turn into panic-inducing middle of the night texts, the way they say our name approximately four hundred times before 9am.

We are deeply grateful for all of it.

We just also deserve a day that’s truly ours. A day that feels like someone thought about what we (really really) want.

Now your turn, tell me in the comments — What does your ideal Mother’s Day look like?

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I came here to write about Mother’s Day and somewhere between the first and second paragraph I took a hard left turn. I’ll get back to Mother’s Day next week along with every other content creator in the US :)

As a society, specifically in the states, we spend the first half decade of a child’s life chasing the north star of:

1. independent sleep

2. sleeping through the night

3. bedtime between 7pm and 8pm

4. waking after parents have had a full hot cup of coffee

There are multiple industries built on this premise. And if you do not achieve all four by age five, society tells you the verdict is in:

Marriage – FAIL. Child’s independence – FAIL. Brain development – FAIL. Your own mental health – FAIL.

Your child’s sleep is a pass/fail exam and you are the one being graded.

The pressure placed on parents, and particularly on mothers, from the moment they get pregnant to abide by every rule is elephant-on-chest-level anxiety inducing. Is it a push for mothers to return to the workforce? American values? A focus on self? The very real connection between sleep and health?

Nah, it’s this:

The child sleep industry is a rapidly growing market, projected to reach over $10 billion globally by 2032. How-to guides containing conflicting information authored by self-designated experts. Cribs, sleep sacks, monitors, apps, pajamas, lights, sound machines, supplements, literal cages to put on top of cribs to keep them in. The products in this category span the gamut from harmless yet ineffective to dangerous and predatory, and there are some on both ends of that scale that cost more than my monthly grocery bill.

The sleep industry is robbing us not only of our hard earned money but of our sanity. According to the National Sleep Foundation, most parents would be willing to pay $100 or more for their children to get better sleep, and parents who think about their child’s sleep spend over two hours per day doing so.

Two hours a day. (It’s me, hi)

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Now let me circle back, because you can take the girl out of corporate but you cannot take the corporate out of the girl.

First five years: nonstop pressure to get children to sleep independently.

Ages five to ten: any stragglers better have figured it out by now. Though interestingly, this is also the age range where siblings start to room share. Approximately 70% of US households with two or more children have siblings sharing bedrooms.

By eighteen, our (now adult) kids are heading to college or out into the job market. They are likely dating, a good chunk will cohabitate in their twenties. And in both cases, they are very probably sleeping next to another human being every night or at least on weekends.

So as parents, particularly first time parents, we are LOSING OUR MINDS over getting our children to sleep independently, some of us spending hours each day consumed by it, only for them to spend adolescence room sharing and the back half of their lives voluntarily sleeping next to other people?

We torture ourselves to hit four checkpoints of success in the baby and toddler years, only for our kids to boomerang directly back to the deeply human need to find comfort in close proximity to others when falling asleep?

I have been bedsharing with my husband for twelve years. When he travels for work, we both sleep like crap.

My son has been and continues to be a tough sleeper by US sleep standards.

I intentionally left sleep practices and philosophies out of this because that is not the point, and I have been on the parenting side of the internet long enough to know better than to step on that landmine. My only belief worth sharing: every family should do what works best for the humans sleeping under their own roof. If you are losing sleep over your child’s sleep, pick one or two people you actually trust on this topic and mute everything else. Let yourself tune into your baby and trust your gut. Following an outside influences advice about your own baby often can lead you to miss your own baby’s cues. Follow your intuition.

I have had two cups of coffee today and I am about to pour a third. I have spent three and a half years worrying about my son’s sleep and I am exhausted. I wrote this as much for myself as for you.

I will leave you with the best piece of sleep advice I have ever received:

“Do whatever you need to do to give the most people the most sleep.”

Barf.

I’ve been inundated with this content on Instagram lately.

“But would you live for them” is usually a precursor to scare tactic content that follows about seed oils, ingesting pounds of plastic, your house is killing you, your food is killing you, your glass of wine is killing you, do this exact workout course that I’m selling instead and live forever!

Stop this, start this, YOU STILL DO THIS?! You miserable fuck failure how will you ever run an ultra-marathon with your grandchildren if you don’t start living in the prescriptive manner that I, wellness influencer, say is best!?!

How about we all take a breath and instead start with something basic like… oh, I don’t know… playing with your kid?

But would you play with your kid?

Today? Right now? When you get home after a long day? When you have other things on your to do list? When you haven’t worked out? When dinner prep isn’t done yet? When they’re annoying you?

Instead of a sliding scale of every daily micro-decision being a choice of whether we LIVE or DIE for our children, what if we just stopped spiraling ourselves into analysis paralysis and sat on the floor and played with our kid for half an hour.

As a society we’re so obsessed with longevity that we completely miss the mark on the present. As someone who has lost loved ones long before their time and who currently holds a title no one wants, recurrent pregnancy loss, life isn’t guaranteed. Time isn’t guaranteed.

You can optimize every facet of your life and still get mowed down by a bus while crossing the street.

No one’s making it out alive.

… Except maybe the billionaire class who all have some secret plan to cryogenically freeze themselves into living forever and really who wants to continue to have to live amongst their bullshit any longer than we have to.

I’ve been told who and what to be by society and well-meaning people in my life from the time I can remember. And I used to try so very hard to live up to those versions.

As an act of rebellion and to break the cycle of people pleasing I find myself telling my son the things I wish I heard earlier on in life:

“It’s okay to relax”, “listen to your body”, “don’t rush, take your time”, “let’s chill”, “want some time to calm down?”

The world is crazy, we have too much access to too much advice from people who know too little about what they’re talking about and the only thing I feel like I can control is the way in which I coach my son up on loving himself, talking to himself and to act in ways that let him know I love him and trust him.

Everything else is just noise.

I spent over a decade climbing a ladder I didn’t truly want to be on in the first place. I placed value on achievement, money, status, title. Because that’s what I thought the right answer was.

There is no right answer.

But yes, oh mighty wellness influencer, I do hope I live a very long, very healthy life together alongside my husband and son. Nothing would bring me more joy. But in the event life does what it does, I want to know that my days were spent playing with my son, eating delicious food, enjoying the beauty of nature and being grateful for the life I have. Not trying to optimize my way into greener pastures.

I’m a 36-year-old mom who wants to be. Simply be.

Be with my husband.

Be with my son.

Be with my friends and loved ones.

Be left alone.

Be.

Not even “be me” because I’m still trying to figure out what that even means.

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My recent post — How to Succeed as a SAHM — was created in that vein, a SAHM onboarding guide, and it will now become a series of posts (thanks for all of the positive feedback!)

Today’s post centers around the one piece of free advice we are all given from the moment we announce we are pregnant… “remember to ask for help!”

Easier said than done.

We enter this profession, sometimes by choice, sometimes by force, with no built in system for delegation, no co-workers to help shoulder the burden, no clear expectations, no regimented schedule and (typically) no regular childcare. Learning to ask for help as a SAHM is not a transferable skill from the working world. It is a new skill entirely.

Yes, I Need Help, Now What?

Help doesn’t magically arrive on your doorstep when you leave your career behind in favor of caregiving. Quite the opposite actually. Not only is help not always available, it’s hard to figure out what it is exactly that you need help with or who and how to ask for that type of help. If money was no object, you’d benefit from a housekeeper, chef, personal assistant, on-call babysitter, therapist, errand runner and a live-in hair stylist.

In reality, you need a bit of all of these things rolled into one at different times throughout the week and at different ages and stages of your child. The hardest shift for me in going from working woman to stay-at-home mom is the fact that I no longer control my schedule. Sure I can set out a plan for our days, but there are no childless pockets of the day in which to send a text, schedule an appointment, run an errand or pick something up on my way home. Especially those first two years of your child’s life. For a lot of moms who do work a traditional job from home AND have no outside childcare, this is also your reality. You’re quite literally super human by the way and I don’t know how you do both simultaneously. But, I digress… asking for help can take many different shapes and forms.

Here is a decision tree of sorts to help you help yourself get some help.

1. What do you need the most help with?

• Are you thriving at all things childcare but flailing at all things homemaking?

  • Then you may benefit from:

    • a weekly/monthly housekeeper

    • grocery delivery

    • a weekly ChatGPT drafted meal plan and chore checklist

    • clearer division of labor and expectation setting with your partner

• Are you keeping your household afloat but need moments of the week to tap out from childcare?

  • Then you may benefit from:

    • a mother’s day out program

    • a part-time early preschool

    • a part-time nanny/babysitter that comes on a regular basis to support you in caring for your child

    • a busier social calendar, events with and without kids in tow

• Need a mix of both?

  • Then you may benefit from:

    • a revised weekend schedule that allows you to be off duty for a shift or two

    • a Mother’s Helper (different than a babysitter, nanny or housekeeper)

      • At the end of this post in a “resources” section I pasted a mother’s helper job description that I created when my son was 18 months old and I desperately wanted/needed help at home.

… And to answer a question you may be asking yourself: Yes, as a SAHM, you are absolutely allowed to want or need help in this way. Even if that help requires a paid service.

Now, Time to Get Creative

Most of us fit into that last bucket above — a mix of both. Also, almost none of us fit into the money is no object scenario I described. So, you have to find reliable help at an affordable price.

Housekeeper:

I told my husband I needed someone to help around the house and we decided on a budget we could realistically afford. That amount wasn’t enough to get a full house cleaning each month, but I worked with an incredible housekeeper to come up with what I needed most and what was fair to her in that price range. We settled on a full clean of all bathrooms and all floors throughout the house. Let me tell you the first day she left I called my husband and cried. The relief to have something checked off my to-do list and the smellll of a clean home was too much to handle. Finding someone local who is independent vs. a company will allow you (and them) to be more flexible.

Childcare:

• Split a babysitter between another neighborhood mom once or twice a week/month.

• Trade childcare with another mom (for free) and switch off to give each other a few hours each week to get things done or to trade date nights.

• This summer, ask a neighborhood kid looking to make some money be your nap time babysitter. A warm body to be at home during naps while you run out to the grocery store, go for a walk, etc. If shit hits the fan while they’re there, you’re nearby. The lower the stakes, the more likely you are to ask for and accept the help.

Socialization:

Some of the drowning feeling is because you’re spending too much time at home alone and not enough time with your peers, other moms… Don’t shoot the messenger! I rolled my eyes when my mom told me this piece of advice early on, but turns out, she is always right.

If you notice, the common thread throughout this post is getting comfortable with relying on others. We simply cannot do it all, all alone.

Where do you think I got babysitter, housekeeper, preschool recommendations from?!

Be Specific, Be Be Specific

Do not assume your family, even your favorites, will know how to support you in the way you most need to be supported postpartum and through the toddler years. This requires you to muster up some directness. At first, you may feel a bit bossy — this comes naturally to me being an eldest daughter :) — but you need to be your own biggest cheerleader by vocalizing the help you need in exactly the way you need it.

Some moms prefer to have someone hold their baby while they do things around the house, some don’t want anyone else holding their baby and could use the extra set of hands to throw some laundry in. Be up front with what type of help you want.

I had a weird thing about no one feeding my son except me. I was deathly afraid of him choking for the first two years of his life. So, I took meal time and snack time out of the equation automatically whenever anyone was at our house visiting.

If someone well meaning offers help, take it — here are some ideas for what to ask for when someone says “please let me know if I can do anything to help!”

• Let them know you’d kill for a shower and ask if they have any time this week to pop by and watch the baby while you shower. Try to squeeze in an everything shower if you can.

• Tell them you’re in a dinner rut and that you’d welcome any food or recipes they have to offer.

• Need something from the grocery store or drugstore and don’t have time to wait for a delivery order? Text local friend or family member and ask if they run out today if they could pick up XYZ for you and you’ll venmo them.

I Want You to WANT to Help!

If Jennifer Aniston taught us millennial women anything, it’s that “The Rachel” is not a universally flattering hair cut and that, unfortunately, no one wants to do the dishes.

There are one million articles that better speak to the division of household labor than I am about to. So, I won’t try to boil the ocean. If you have a partner at home who is also a parent to the child in your care, that person needs to pull their weight when they aren’t working. Fin.

SAHM may be a 24/7 job, but it should not be done alone.

My husband and I have gotten pretty good at a weekend routine that gives me some breathing room. I’ve had to learn to be explicit in my needs and he’s had to learn how to become confident caring for our son without me. Both have taken practice.

• Dad Duty: every weekend since my son was about 1.5 years old, my husband has taken him grocery shopping. It gets both of them out of the house for a few hours and allows me time alone in our house to do whatever I want: clean, read, shower, scroll, write. At first, it lasted about 45 mins. But now that my husband knows he can handle anything my son throws at him (literally), he’ll hit up a grocery store, the hardware store, sometimes the park and they will really take their time. I now typically get 2-4 hours each weekend to myself and let. me. tell. YOU. it is a game changer.

• Night Time Rush: dinner, bath, teeth, books, bed, closing shift. A pace akin to 4th of July in the ER (anyone else obsessed with The Pitt?!). My husband gets home from work anytime between 6pm to 8pm and is out of town about every other week for a few days. So, I clock this night time rush alone way more than I’d like. When he IS around for the nightly sprint, he takes on: bath, distracting my son (while I do the closing shift early and get myself ready for bed), teeth, books and I swoop in for bedtime. We worked up to this, but it is now automatic. He comes home, picks my son up in a giant bear hug and taps in for the night.

Slow clap — we both didn’t marry losers. But we’ve also been married for 8 years, together for 11 and only have a 3 year old. SO… we’ve had the time pre-kids to learn how we operate and what we can both handle, when.

It takes time, arguing, finding balance and it doesn’t always happen as picture perfectly as I described. But a lot of my early SAHM frustration was that I expected him to know what I needed and to want to take on more of the household burden. But who wants to do that? I don’t want to do that.

I got really good at delegating during my decade plus in corporate and I’ve had to look at nights and weekends in a similar fashion. Sexy? Not exactly. But it works for these years in the “little kid” trenches.

Hubby teaching my little butter ball how to want to do the dishes

Help Can Come From Unexpected Places

Stick with me here… local churches offer some of the best (typically free) resources for moms, no strings attached. I know not everyone is comfortable with the idea of using a church’s resources, but I’ve found some of the best mom’s day out or playgroup options have been churches that we are not members of.

Often times it is about having a common place to gather that already has kid toys and playground equipment. Alternatively, if you are a member of a church that doesn’t currently have a program that supports moms and young children meeting together on a regular basis, start one yourself! A local mom did just that at a church near us and last summer my son and I had the best time getting together with a dozen other moms and kids every Tuesday morning for free-play time. The kids played, the moms chatted, the sweet church ladies set up coffee carafes for us and would put out art supplies for the kids. We enjoyed a free air conditioned space where we didn’t blink and spend $50 on snacks like we do at the zoo, museums, etc.

You Get What You Give

You’re finally grasping that you do in fact need help and dreaming up what type of help you’re going to ask for… and now I’m telling you to help someone else. WTF!

Figuring out what you need is step one, finding creative ways to seek out that help is next, but in order to build a lasting support system, you need to show up for other people so that showing up becomes the “culture” of your inner circle.

There are seasons where we are capable of helping others and seasons where we can hardly help ourselves. Always, always, always put your oxygen mask on first. But, once you’re no longer drowning, the help you give others will coach them on ways to extend help back your way. That’s not why we do it, obviously, but it’s typically human nature that it plays out this way.

RESOURCES

~ I created a resources guide for this post that includes exact text that you can copy and paste for scenarios I mention throughout this article. If you’re like me, you may be able to dream up what you need help with but don’t have the time or energy to follow through and find the words to ask for help.

It is behind a paywall and is posted here:
RESOURCE GUIDE - HOW TO ASK FOR HELP AS A SAHM

I’m going to start pairing paid subscriber resource guides alongside my free posts if that’s something you’re interested in receiving.

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But first, here’s a freebe you can use to post in your local Facebook page, Care.com request, library job board, etc. Also, if you live near a university, utilize their job boards as well to look for help.

Mother’s Helper Job Description

Putting this out into the universe for any mom who may feel the call to ask for help but is not sure how to go about doing so. I spent hours typing this up and then never had the guts to post it in our local FB group to actually try to hire someone.

Be braver than I was! Ask for the help 🤍

MOTHERS HELPER WANTED!

Hi! My family is looking to hire a Mother’s Helper 6 hours per week $20 per hour who is comfortable doing household cleaning and playing with our 18 month old.

Below are specifics of what we’re looking for:

Tuesdays (3hrs) 9am-12pm: Play Day

• Play with my son while I’m home working around the house

• Occasionally I’ll run a quick errand outside the home while you are here

• Offer him a snack (cheerios, granola bar, milk) that I will have ready

• I will feed him lunch around 11p and put him down for nap around 11:30a/12p

  • While I’m doing that, you will do toy pick up, lunch clean up & tidy any mess made while playing

Thursdays (3hrs) 9am-12pm: Cleaning Day

• I’ll have a different rotating list of housekeeping/cleaning tasks for you to tackle each week - example of tasks (I will provide all supplies):

  • Clean bathrooms

  • Swiffer & vacuum floors

  • Dust/wipe counters

  • Put away my sons clothes

  • Do a load of laundry

  • Put away dishes

I am a SAHM and will be home the vast majority of the time, occasionally running for an errand when the need arises on “Play” days. On Cleaning Days I do not expect you to do any childcare.

We’re looking for someone who can consistently be a part of our “village” and will extend a bonus of $100 after 3 months of continued work.

Must have reliable transportation, non-smoker, love to play, read & explore the outdoors with toddlers.

Please DM me if you’re interested!

Thank you for reading and listening — this community is growing (351 of you beautiful people!) and I can’t thank you enough for your continued support and participation in making us all feel a little less alone in this crazy journey called motherhood.

Would love to hear your feedback and ways that you tackle finding help in motherhood in the comments!

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I’m testing out paid only content. My idea is to pair resource guides with my free post that have more detailed information corresponding to whatever the topic might be.

This weeks resource guide corresponds to the post, How to Ask for Help as a SAHM. The intent is that you’d read the “free” anchor pos…

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A recent post of mine (How to Succeed as a SAHM) has taken off a bit and made me realize that there truly is a need for SAHM content. That we deserve to have onboarding guides, peer reviews and lunch and learns as much as our working counterparts do. That post was focused on practical applications — stay-at-home motherhood best practices, if you will. This post is all about the emotional realities of the early days of pivoting away from career and towards full-time or full-er time caregiving. It is one of the posts I’m most proud of in that I had to force myself to look in the mirror and be honest with myself in order to put words to the page.

I’d love to hear your own experiences of joining the caregiving workforce if you’re open to sharing in the comments.

Also, because I have anxiety about re-sharing an already published post… I’ll be posting a new article this weekend all about the art of asking for help in this stage of life. With no built in system for delegation, co-workers to help shoulder the burden, regimented schedule or regular childcare, learning to ask for help as a SAHM is not a transferable skill from the working world, but a new skill to learn and practice — more on that in a few days!

I didn’t think of myself as someone who defined herself by her job. I wasn’t leading with my title or slipping it into conversation like a credential. But my confidence had a source. My inner voice had a tone that was shaped, slowly, over years of meetings, feedback, deadlines, and being needed by people who were not my family.

And then I left at the top of my game.

I chose to step away from my corporate role to pursue what I genuinely believed was my purpose in that season of life: mothering. That decision felt clear. What didn’t feel clear (what nearly took me out, honestly) was the identity car crash that followed.

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Leaving the Workforce Didn’t Feel Like I Expected

I thought the hardest part about staying home after corporate life would be deciding whether to work or not work. My maternity leave was spent filling out budget spreadsheets, pros and cons lists, long talks with my husband. But once the decision was made, once the emails stopped and the calendar cleared, I realized I had wildly underestimated what comes after.

Because you don’t just leave a job.

You leave a language.
A rhythm.
A way of being known.

The actual photo I sent our family group chat after bringing my son with me to clean out my cubicle.

There are endless guides on how to prepare financially, how to tell your boss, how to optimize your exit. Horror stories. Glow-up stories. Career pivot success stories. But almost no one talks about the emotional whiplash.

Redefining your identity after leaving the workforce is disorienting in ways that are hard to articulate until you’re in it. Your daily vocabulary changes. Your media diet changes. Your sense of urgency shifts. What once felt automatic suddenly feels foreign.

Even your markers of time dissolve. There are no quarters. No deliverables. No casual “How’s work?” to anchor small talk.

And you are not simply opting out of work.

You are joining a different labor force entirely.

Welcome to the Other Workforce

Full-time caregiving is work. Deeply physical. Deeply emotional. Often done alone. Often done without a shower. It requires a different cadence, a different stamina, and a different kind of leadership than a corporate role. When you’re doing it solo, during the day, for long stretches, you learn quickly that this is not “less than” what you left. It is simply different.

Your eyes are opened to a whole world that has been hiding inside the 9-5. You discover entirely new geographies in your own city.

Which coffee shops are toddler friendly at 10 a.m.
Which parks have the trifecta of sufficient energy burn, easy parking and a shady spot to eat a snack.
Which library has the best storytime hour.
Which music class has the best baby bops.
Which places you should absolutely never under any circumstances bring a child unless you enjoy public humiliation. (see: The Incident of Spring 2023 — trendy boutique slash coffee shop with tiny trinkets perfectly sized for the toddler fist grip of death)

You start recognizing the same faces over and over again. People who seem to already know how this world works. Making friends here is its own skill set. You are between two worlds — no longer fully belonging to the one you left, not yet fluent in the one you’ve entered.

And if I’m being fully honest, the social transition has been the hardest part for me. Harder than the logistics. Harder than the loss of structure.

In the beginning, I fought hard to hold onto the caliber of friend group I thought I still belonged to. Not because those people were better, but because they felt familiar. Safe. They spoke a language I still knew.

I initially kept some distance from moms who seemed fully at home in motherhood. The ones who were happy and a little silly. The ones who leaned into it. At the time, it felt like if I let myself join them, I’d be admitting something I wasn’t ready to face yet.

I had spent over a decade in corporate America, in leadership roles, building an identity that came with a certain tone. A certain polish. I gravitated toward moms who still sounded like work. The ones who checked email at the park. The ones who talked about “bandwidth” between snack breaks. It wasn’t about thinking they were better parents or better people. It was about holding onto a version of myself that still felt legible.

Looking back, I see it for what it was: fear. I wasn’t turning my nose up at other moms. I was afraid that if I stopped identifying with my old world, I’d have nothing solid to stand on. I wasn’t ready to be new yet. I was terrified of who I’d be if I stopped sounding like my old job.

I’ll never forget sitting at a table of strangers at my husband’s fancy work awards dinner. His colleagues, primarily women, at the table with their spouses, all buzzing in corporate speak. I so badly wanted to jump in, to be seen as part of their inner circle. But when asked what I did for work, my answer instead paired me up with the one other SAHM at the table. We talked about cleaning products all night. Household fucking cleaning products. I was humiliated. How would any of these chic working mothers take me seriously if they overheard me and Susie homemaker talking about laundry detergent.

The irony is that the moms I resisted at first were the ones who saw right through me, welcomed me with open arms and showed me how to enjoy the little things again. How to laugh at the chaos. How to let the day unfold without narrating it like a performance review. They were fully themselves in a season I was still trying to keep at arm’s length.

The irony, or rather karmic wink is that, to this day, I still use Susie Q’s recommended stain remover on my kids clothes…Miss Mouth’s Stain Remover on Amazon, do yourself a favor and grab some.

Network Like a Mother

What surprised me most about post corporate life wasn’t the work itself, it was how quiet it got. No Teams pings. No casual “how was your weekend?” or “did you finish The Bear yet” to ease into the day. No “love your outfit” from work friends. Just long stretches of time where the only adult voice I heard was my own. That’s when I realized that staying home didn’t just require stamina, it required rebuilding a social world from scratch.

And I was not prepared for it.

In my old life, networking was a given. It was something you learned how to do early, refined over time, and used strategically: Coffee chats, warm intros, follow-ups, industry events.

No one tells you that those same skills matter just as much once you leave the workforce. Maybe more.

Because when you’re home full time, especially in these early years, your mental health and your day-to-day sanity depend on other adults. On having people to text. People who can say “same” without needing context.

At first, I resisted this. When I had a question, I Googled it. Or tried to figure it out alone. It felt easier in the moment than reaching out. But it was also lonelier.

What I didn’t realize is that every time I chose the quick answer over the human one, I was opting out of connection. Of the very thing I was craving.

Building a mom network is its own skill set. It doesn’t look like your old friend group, and it’s not supposed to. It’s functional. Proximity-based. Built around shared schedules and mutual help. Some of these women will become close friends. Many won’t. And that’s okay.

Release the pressure for your village to look a certain way.

Your village is the mom who answers your text about swim lessons. The woman you see at the park every Tuesday at 10 a.m. The one you trust enough to say, “Did she say that to you at parent teacher conferences too?”

A few months ago, I saw a TikTok where a woman asked her mom how she built such a strong support system. Her mom’s answer stuck with me: “Everyone wants a village, but no one wants to be a villager.”

Networking like a mother means being the first to say hello at the park. Going to the thing even when you don’t know anyone. Posting the question in the local mom group instead of silently spiraling. Inviting the music class mom over for a playdate. Asking a neighbor for help when you’re out of town. Booking the babysitter and going to a moms night out dinner even when it feels inconvenient.

It’s uncomfortable. It feels awkward. It requires energy you don’t always have.

But it works.

Having people helps. A lot. But it doesn’t magically make you feel like yourself again. There’s still a level of disorientation that lingers as you strip away decades of habits and creature comforts from your “old life”.

Reinvention Is Not Optional

Here’s what I wish someone had told me: even if staying home is the right decision, even if you’re happier than you’ve ever been, you will not recognize yourself for a while.

All your old routines are gone. Your reference points are gone. Your confidence may wobble in unexpected ways.

The only way through it is through it.

You have to rebuild. Not just your days, but your sense of self. That means making new “coworkers.” Following the accounts you once rolled your eyes at. Joining the neighborhood book club or playgroup when you know no one. Saying yes when it feels awkward. Letting yourself be new at something again.

It’s humbling. It’s uncomfortable. And it’s necessary.

Work was a shortcut to identity. Without it, you have to do the real work.

From the Other Side (Or at Least, Further In)

More parents, particularly mothers, are leaving the workforce right now. Sometimes by choice. Sometimes by force.

What’s missing from the conversation is the part where you’re happier than you’ve ever been AND grieving what used to be at the same time. Where you feel deeply needed by your child AND strangely invisible to everyone else, even those once closest to you. Where you question your own worth even though you’d tell a friend in the same position that what she’s doing does matter immensely.

Work can be meaningful. Motherhood can be meaningful. Neither should be the only place your identity lives.

If you don’t recognize yourself yet, that doesn’t mean you’re lost.

Only you know who you want to be as they grow up.

What has your experience joining the other workforce looked like?

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PHOTO CREDIT: Gerad Taylor (https://www.behance.net/gallery/1641146/Rosie-Riviter-homage/modules/11596750)

My hesitation is that I’m not living my own advice right now. We’ve been hit with two weeks of communal sickness, my husband’s work schedule is insane and solo parenting has become my status quo. On top of that, I’ve been privately working through some pretty heavy stuff that I’ll get to eventually. My phone has become my safe space, and as vomit-inducing as it is to admit, scrolling has been both my connection to the outside world and an escape from the things I need to confront instead.

So. Here is my do as I say, not as I do post about parental screen time.

We’re already aware of the harm our own device time can create for our children. Consider this a kick in the pants for both of us to do better along with some practical ideas for breaking the scrolling induced dopamine high and actually enjoying our weekend.

As parents, we’re constantly preached to about how harmful screens are for our children. Everyone has their own rules at home, varying levels of device access and differing opinions about what is and what isn’t considered screen time. This evolves as kids get older and schoolwork increasingly requires screens.

I’m not a childhood development specialist or educator. But from my vantage point, it isn’t the hour of TV our kids watch while we make dinner that’s going to make or break their future media habits. It’s the hours we’re on our phones right next to them while they sit and watch us scroll that draft the blueprint for their long-term relationship with screens.

We excuse away our own less-then-ideal screen habits, “I’m right here with them,” “I’m only checking once”, “let me just…”, but research suggests kids learn far more from what we do than what we say. One study out of UC Santa Barbara found that when parents use smartphones in the presence of their children, it is strongly linked to lower emotional intelligence in kids ages 5–12, regardless of how much actual screen time the children themselves have.

That’s because kids respond to the signal (or lack there of) more than the screen. They notice our attention drift, our unresponsiveness, our “still face” when their caregiver looks at a device instead of them and they interpret it as, “I’m not as important.”

Parents’ use of their mobile devices around their children was associated with having children they rated as lower in EI (emotional intelligence) generally. Given that parents have, at best, divided attention when using their phones in the presence of their children as well as the evidence that parents exhibit “still face” when on their mobile devices, it is reasonable to imagine that children lose the benefits of their parents’ emotional responses to their words and deeds when their parents are occupied with their mobile devices. (Does Digital Media Use Harm Children’s Emotional Intelligence? A Parental Perspective - Robin L. Nabi)

This isn’t groundbreaking. Nor is it surprising when you think of your own interactions with your children while trying to do something on your phone.

Nonetheless, it’s a hard truth to swallow, especially because we’re sick of our device dependence too. Pew Research found more than half of parents (56%) feel they spend too much time on their smartphones, and 68% of parents admit that phones distract them when they’re with their children. Phone usage around our kids is hurting our own mental well-being too.

In parents specifically, higher global ratings of depression symptoms have been positively associated with more phone use around children (National Library of Medicine)

Now What?

So here we are, exhausted after a long day of toddler negotiations, work emails, dinner prep and now we’re supposed to muster up a meaningful connection with our children, some of whom don’t yet know how to start a conversation.

Creating connection hacks for yourself is a realistic way for us as parents to put down the phone, turn off the TV and get ourselves into the zone with our kids. Sometimes it’s as simple as finding something for us to fidget with other than our phones.

Schedule Connection

Family dinners used to be the default. These days, schedules are wild. If dinners aren’t working because of late practices or crankiness, pivot.

One mom I know made breakfast her family’s ritual, that daily half hour is now their family time that no one skips.

If weekdays are too hectic, make Sunday morning waffles your thing. Take walks where screens stay at home or in airplane mode.

Conversation Cards

When screens are turned off, conversation gets easier if the first words out aren’t awkward. Keep a list of simple questions at the table. Here is an easy conversation guide to keep near your kitchen table or family room to defer to when conversation stalls.

My family keeps a deck of Brain Quest Smart Cards on our kitchen table. An age-appropriate Q&A card game with different decks for ages 2-12 that’s fun for them and stops the “so, how was your day” conversation killer. (🔗 $12 on Amazon)

For a more creative list of daily questions that gear toward older kids and can help spark conversations with your spouse, here is an awesome 100+ printable question guide I found online as a resource: 🔗LINK

Coloring Placemats or Tablecloths

Make dinner a hands-on place for creativity, Target sells a lot of great options.

• Coloring Roll with Tearable Sheets (🔗 $5 Mondo Llama brand)

• Color Your Own Tablecloth - Several different themes (🔗 $3 Spritz brand)

Keeping a few loose sheets of construction paper and crayons on the table works too.

Screentime Together

If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em… without your phone.

• YouTube “Word on Beat Challenge” or kids’ karaoke

• AirPlay a slideshow of family photos on the TV

• Family movie night, their choice — some of our recent favorites below

  • Movies: Lady & The Tramp, 101 Dalmatians, Lion King, Finding Nemo, Wall-E, Ice Age

  • Shows: Frog & Toad, Give a Mouse a Cookie, Clifford, Stinky & Dirty (can you tell I’m a boy mom?)

Physical Distance

We bought a Brick, it made it out of the packaging but is still sitting on my husband’s nightstand, unused. Clearly, we aren’t Brick people, but here’s what has worked:

• Create phone free spaces in your home. My husband and I treat my sons room as a phone free space. Lying with him in his bed as he drifts off to sleep with nothing but my own thoughts is the most peaceful part of my day.

• Dedicate a drawer to “hang up” your phones.

• Set a timer — I use timers with my son to aid with transitions, so it is a method he understands. I tell him, “Mama has to do some work on my phone for the next 10 minutes, when the timer goes off, let’s play”. This holds me accountable and helps me focus on what I actually need to get done instead of scrolling.

You don’t need earth-shattering dialogue every night. What counts is simply being attentive when they talk.

When we do that, we’re giving them something no screen, no matter how educational or entertaining, can replicate… that they matter more than whatever popped up in our notifications.

And one final note — It’s so important to ground ourselves in not only what we don’t want our children to emulate, but what we do want them to. In my hemming and hawing about hitting publish this week, I came across a Note from one of my favorite writers on Substack who put it perfectly:

How do you combat this dilemma within your own family? I’m all ears for more ideas:

Leave a comment

Nothing celebrates the Resurrection and “new beginnings” quite like a basket full of plastic that will end up in the trash in 2-14 days and enough sugar to trigger simultaneous zoomies and an epic meltdown.

Here is a mix of basket stuffers that are practical and fun for kiddos of any age.

And no, these are not affiliate links, just a collection of ideas that I’ve used in the past or current toys that hold my sons attention long enough for me to get ready in the morning.

PRACTICAL

Seasonal Size Ups

• Rain Boots, Rain Jacket, Umbrella — Use rain boots or umbrellas in lieu of a traditional basket. Fill with some of the ideas I suggest in this article. Tip: tape basket stuffers to wood skewers so that they stick out of the boots.

• Summer is coming! Size them up in a few summer essentials like sandals, shorts or sun hats that you know they’ll be needing anyway. Have some water lovers? Throw googles or a fun sprinkler into the mix. These are my sons favorite goggles🔗 .

  

(photos from Pinterest)

Replenish Art Supplies

• Some of our recent favorites:

  • Melissa & Doug Water Wow Mess Free Coloring Book 🔗 — great for restaurants and car rides

  • Mondo Llama Coloring Roll 🔗 — jumbo tear off sheets that can double as coloring placemats at mealtime

  • Crayola Bold & Bright Markers 🔗

TOYS

• Color Changing Toys 🔗— Once they unwrap, fill tupperware with hot and cold water and let them explore. My son played with this long enough for the cold to get warm and hot to cool down and demanded a refill.

• Bug Terrarium + Nets — April showers bring… bug hunts! If your child is like mine, no walk is complete without picking up at least one bug, dead or alive. Perfect way for them to stay independently busy in the backyard or at the park. We’ve gone through a few and this bug catcher 🔗 and this set of nets 🔗 hold up to someone who never quite mastered the art of “gentle hands”.

• Self-Driving Train 🔗 — elevate your old school train set. This little battery powered train connects to any magnetic train set and avoids some of the frustration that can come with chunky hands trying to manually drive trains around a track.

EXPERIENCES

Local Attractions

• Tickets to your local zoo, aquarium or museums — don’t under estimate the excitement that a big day out on the town can create for your kids. Print out tickets and fold them up into a jumbo egg or stuff them into rain boots.

• For older kids — fill eggs with gift cards to their favorite restaurants (Chipotle, Chick-Fil-A, Starbucks) so they can go with friends.

Movie Tickets

• The Pout-Pout Fish movie is now in theatres. Pair tickets with a Pout Pout book or stuffie and voilà you have a themed basket and a family friendly outing on the calendar.

  

EASTER TEACHING TOOLS

• Resurrection Eggs (🔗) — An interactive way for kids to learn about Easter

  

• Minno Kids — The Story of Easter (🔗free video)

As always, you do not need any of this in order to celebrate Easter with your child. You don’t need to succumb to the modern parenting pressure of “big Easter” (or any holiday for that matter). My son will enjoy opening and closing his egg hunt eggs, filling them with water, dirt and Lord knows what else for weeks to come.

But if you are short on time and looking to fill that basket, hopefully this helps!

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Hey Substack Friends! I appreciate you taking the time to read and engage with my writing. As a SAHM, finding writing again has become a true passion project. If you’d like to fuel more ideas about all things identity, modern family life and a little corporate escapee humor or if you find anything particularly relatable, think of this “buy me coffee” button as a virtual tip jar. Appreciate you!