(not) Just a mother

I am a tired momma.

I must admit it. Finally. Through damned pride leaking from clenched teeth.

There’s a particular version of womanhood I swore I’d never become. My nightmare. My fear as a girl from tired-mamaville Utah, surrounded by moms snapping at toddlers to put down the jar of pickles as they sprinted down supermarket aisles, one hip propping a baby while the other two zoned out on phones in the cart. I feared becoming them.

I feared the swollen eyes, the new wrinkles, the broad shoulders, the softened stomachs. One year they were fresh. Sexy. Alive. Then months passed, years, and when they finally reemerged from their energy-sucking cocoons, babysitter secured, lipstick reapplied, I saw the grays, the cracked skin, the under-eye bruises barely hidden by caked-on makeup.

I denied it. That would never be me. I was the strongest of all the women, of all the mommas. Two years of diapers, tantrums, and grease stains smeared across the walls by tiny hands. A career slowly slipping as I wrestled time with a mini dictator. Two years without a single full night of sleep. Pssh, bring it on.

Then I looked in the mirror.

***

I never read books about women, about our struggles. About motherhood. Even when I wrote a fucking memoir that could sit dead center in the feminism section of a bookstore, I refused. I was above it, or so I thought. I left the stay-at-home-mom chamber of Utah, became a college athlete, built a career at the United Nations, started my own company, wrote my own book. I broke the mold.

Tired, house-bound mama? Not me. Never.

Lately, I’ve been leeching off my family’s entertainment accounts... Netflix, Disney+, Audible. It means I’ve stumbled into books I never would have picked myself.

That’s how Lessons in Chemistry found me. I didn’t know it was a Hollywood darling, didn’t know it was blowing up in the U.S. I almost turned it off after a few minutes. Too cheesy. Too predictable. Another feminist sob story. Ugh.

But the writing had something. A pull. Even when I learned it wasn’t based on a true story, I kept listening. And when she had a child, I was hooked, because the protagonist didn’t want a child. She wanted a career. She wanted the world to see her as a scientist. Not “just a mother.” She wanted proof. Proof that she wasn’t confined to the label. And god, I wanted proof too. Proof that I wasn’t just a mother. That I was an international communications expert. A United Nations staff. A writer.

When the protagonist became a mother, the truth hit me in the gut: You are never “just” a mother.

That word — just — is the insult. Just means small, lesser, not enough. A filler. A shrug. But motherhood doesn’t merit that word in front of it. You are never “just” anything when you’re raising a human. It’s said again and again in the book. A mantra I need to stitch into my own gut: You are never just a mother.

Never.

JUST.

A mother.

What I’m about to say is cliché. Words you’ve heard five million times. But reading that book forced me to admit the truth: Being a mother is the hardest, most undervalued job in the world.

And half the time, I’m failing.

***

Right now, she’s screaming “Mami, Mami, Mami!” from her room. The door is shut, locked in by a handle too high for her to reach. I’m not opening it. She needs her nap. Me in there doesn’t work. She won’t fucking sleep.

I feel like I’m failing because I’m not babying her enough. I’m letting her cry, letting her curl up by the door like a sad dog. Most of the time I feel like I’m failing because I baby her too much, stroking her head for hours until she drifts off. Spending five hours a day crouched on the floor, playing pretend like a half-crippled adult.

The cooking, cleaning, diaper-changing? That’s not the hardest part. I give myself a B- there. Maybe a C.

Then came the scene in the book that gutted me. The protagonist’s daughter, about five, realizes her mom couldn’t be a scientist because of her. Because she was born. Fuck. That’s not the story I want my daughter to tell.

Yes, I complain. Because it’s hard. So fucking hard. Every week I meet young women in Buenos Aires, other expats, digital nomads, drifting free and relaxed, exactly like I once was. Hopping countries, wide-eyed at every new street, every new friend, every new possibility. And I envy them. I ache for that freedom I traded away. And I wonder… was it worth it?

(She’s still screaming as I type.)

And still, I’ll always say yes. Not because I have to. Not because it’s the script. But because she is innocence. She is pure. She is what we lose with age. She brings it back. I grow gray, she grows full. And in her growth, I find new life.

The way she says “I wuv you,” eyes locked on mine, her little chubby hands holding my chin, planting kisses with those plump lips. It’s pure. And it reminds me that through all this chaos, this tired momma life, I am doing the hardest, most undervalued job in the world. One that drains me, but also gives me back life through her.

***

I picture it like a split-screen movie. Two images, side by side.

Left image: young woman.

Right image: mom.

Left image: young woman sleeps soundly until 9 a.m.

Right image: mom jolts awake at 7, toddler crying, changes diapers, reheats cold coffee, packs a daycare bag, wipes grease streaks off the wall, pulls on yesterday’s clothes, yawns, keeps moving.

Left image: young woman makes avocado toast, flips open her laptop, joins her first call of the day.

Right image: mom races through meetings, then a daycare text—pinkeye—everything canceled.

Left image: young woman finishes work, slips into a sundress, laughs with friends over drinks at a trendy bar.

Right image: mom drags through bedtime battles, rubs a tiny head until sleep finally comes, collapses onto the couch.

And at the very end…

Left image: young woman swipes on Tinder, phone glow on wet eyes and an empty face.

Right image: toddler wakes up, mom returns and gets smothered in sloppy kisses, “I wuv you” whispered through giggles, and the exhaustion melts just enough to make tomorrow worth it.

A tired momma. :)