Mutha doesn’t usually do tidy endings, so I won’t give you one. I’ll just say this: yesterday, I sat in the car in the Target parking lot for seventeen minutes. I didn’t go in. I just sat there, watching a crow peck at a bag of spilled popcorn. And I thought: That crow has no spreadsheet. That crow is just being a crow.
Let me explain.
Because that’s the thing about this load. It’s invisible. It’s unpaid. And somehow, it’s still the most important job I’ve ever done. mutha magazine article by alison
This is the mental spreadsheet. It runs 24/7. It has tabs for: pediatrician appointments, birthday party RSVPs, who last used the EpiPen, whether the school’s “spirit week” is tomorrow or next Tuesday, and the exact emotional temperature of my partner. No one taught me how to build it. I just woke up one day three years postpartum and realized I’d become the CEO of a failing startup called Us . Mutha doesn’t usually do tidy endings, so I