Moms are the worst

Especially the ones who make motherhood their entire personality

Essay note: I love a lot of moms. But the ones who make motherhood their entire personality? Yeah, no thanks.

Given the title of my essay and the immediate subsequent note, you’ve probably picked up on my complicated relationship with motherhood. It hasn’t always been this way. When I was younger I wanted 3 things: to be a published author (working on it), to be a successful woman in business (I think having my own business qualifies?), and to be a mom (thus far, unsuccessful).

Clearly things have changed. Both my infertility journey and the general attitude around being a mother (the identity of it!) has made this desire a bit more fraught.

Infertility has been… awful, and exhausting, and demoralizing. In pursuit of starting a family, I let myself become a science experiment, first as a body to be carved up then as a petri dish and pin cushion. Each procedure felt like another chapter in a medical horror novel—one where I was Frankenstein. Five surgeries. Three rounds of IVF. One failed transfer. Years lost to waiting rooms and anesthesia fog. My body, a battlefield.

This is a long-winded way of telling you it was a miserable few years. After that first surgery in France, I began seeking reasons not to want children. I wouldn’t be able to travel as much. I value my quiet time and reading. I love sleeping in on weekends. I didn’t want to lose myself.

It was around this time I began noticing how women were making motherhood their whole identity. You know the kinds—the ones with Instagram bios that say ‘Momma to [Insert YouNeek Name].’

When we moved to Connecticut, we knew all of 0 people. My husband works in the city. I was trying to build my business from home and I was lonely. I joined every book club I could find and walked my dogs ad infinitum, but it was flipping impossible to make friends. The women my age I did meet in the beginning were all mothers who only hung out with their kids’ friends’ parents. In a way, I get it. Their time is limited so combining socializing and kids is time efficient. But the more I tried talking to these women about their mommy crowds, the more I realized the only thing they had in common was their kids. So they only talked about their kids.

Farewell to your identity, I guess?

Slowly, I began finding a community of more like-minded women, one of whom invited me to join an email distribution list for working moms. There are something like 1,500 women on this list, several, like her, didn’t have kids. The list and emails she forwarded me were about recommendations for contractors and emergency numbers for plumbers. Or new restaurants popping up. Job openings. Selling this used car or dresser or workout machine.

I was used to infertility shutting doors for me. But I wasn’t prepared for this one.

When I was told I couldn’t join the group, it wasn’t just exclusion—it was a reminder that motherhood is a club, and I would never get a membership card.

Never mind that I had spent years trying. That I had carved up my body for the chance. That I had injected myself full of hormones, endured loss, let doctors root around inside me like I was less a person and more a project. None of that counted.

Motherhood, apparently, wasn’t just about wanting it. It was about having it. And if you didn’t? You were out.

I know the woman who runs this group. I worked for her. She had fertility struggles, too. Once, she would have understood. But now, she had her place in the club, and I was left standing outside.

I cried when I got the email. Not just because I was lonely, or because I needed those resources, or because making friends as an adult is an Olympic-level challenge. I cried because, for the first time, I saw it clearly: Women champion each other—until they’re part of a more exclusive club.

Identity is a powerful thing. I know that.

Motherhood shouldn’t consume your entire identity. I’ve watched brilliant, razor-sharp women become unrecognizable the moment they become moms. Their writing, once full of wit and insight, dissolves into toddler anecdotes and snack discussions. And I can’t help but grieve what’s been lost.

I love so many mothers out there because I fundamentally believe that motherhood doesn't have to change you. And it really shouldn't change much about you. Sure your heart may grow three sizes and you have new priorities and way less time… but you still have preferences, personality quirks, pet peeves. You have strong feelings about Will Ferrell and whether or not you can eat sushi on a Monday.

It is possible to make children part of your life and not your whole life. And if you do, well you’re the worst.

Book and wine pairing

Paul Murray’s The Bee Sting is a family saga set in a small Irish town post-2008 crash, where financial ruin isn’t the only thing crumbling—so are the characters' relationships, self-perceptions, and general will to function like normal humans. It’s a novel about self-isolation, avoidance, and the damage done when people refuse to confront their own mess. Families built on love and honesty? A rare and beautiful thing. Families built on secrets and self-delusion? Absolute carnage.

It’s a lot—a bit long, a bit heavy, but undeniably poignant. So you’ll need a wine with depth, layers, and a little grit to match. Enter: a Syrah from its birthplace, France’s Rhône region. Syrah is bold, intricate, and full of complexity—just like this novel. Try Gérard Bertrand’s Prima Nature Syrah Blend 2022. It’s rich, nuanced, and (bonus) organic, so you can pretend it’s a health-conscious choice while you spiral into family drama.

“People imagined poems were wispy things, she said, frilly things, like lace doilies. But in fact they were like claws, like the metal spikes mountaineers use to find purchase on the sheer face of a glacier. By writing a poem, the lady poets could break through the slippery, nothings surface of the life they were enclosed in, to the passionate reality that beat beneath it. Instead of falling down the sheer face, they could haul themselves up, line by line, until at last they stood on top of the mountain. And then maybe, just maybe, they might for an instant see the world as it really is.” - The Bee Sting by Paul Murray

What I’ve been enjoying recently

Lesser Evil Popcorn (I think I had two jumbo bags last weekend) | David Kushner, every song | The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden | Hostile Government Takeover by AGiftFromTodd and Vinny Marchi

xx,
bb