Mutha Magazine Hot! [ Free Access ]

Because saying something is the job, too. The project management of asking for help is often harder than just doing the task yourself. The mental load of delegating is a second shift no one clocks.

It’s the ghost that lives in your skull, whispering reminders during sex. It’s the spreadsheet you run while you’re trying to enjoy a glass of wine. It’s the fact that I can tell you, without looking, that we have 11 wipes left, but I cannot tell you the last time I finished a thought. mutha magazine

Welcome to default parenthood. It’s not a title you campaign for. It’s a slow, insidious coup where one day you wake up and realize you are the only person in your household who knows the Wi-Fi password, the children’s clothing sizes, the name of the weird rash, and that the air filter needs changing. Because saying something is the job, too

And then I’m going to sit in the uncomfortable, glorious silence of not knowing. Because the goal of motherhood shouldn’t be to run the machine perfectly. It should be to burn the manual and teach everyone else how to build a new one. It’s the ghost that lives in your skull,

Here’s the hard truth I’m learning at 3 AM, while scrolling my phone in the dark, hiding from my own family so I can have 10 minutes of silence:

I tried to go on strike once. A quiet one. I stopped reminding. I stopped refilling the soap dispenser. I stopped mentally tracking the expiration date on the car seat. For three days, we lived in chaos. The four-year-old wore two different rain boots. The baby ate a cracker off the floor of the bus. My husband looked at me with genuine confusion: “Why didn’t you say something?”