A store employee in a blue vest crouched next to her. “Ma’am? Do you need me to call an ambulance?”
Allison stood in front of the bulk granola. She had not slept more than four consecutive hours in eleven years. She hadn’t had a bowel movement without someone knocking on the door in seven. She hadn’t finished a thought—a real, unbroken, private thought—since 2013. mutha magazine article allison
“The myth is that mothering is instinctual,” she says. “But instinct doesn’t require you to remember 47 passwords for 47 different school portals. Instinct doesn’t require you to pack a ‘calm-down kit’ with kinetic sand and a breathing star. Instinct doesn’t make you the CEO of a failing small business called your family.” A store employee in a blue vest crouched next to her
She is writing a book now. Not a parenting guide. A memoir about the year she stopped performing. She calls it The Unbecoming. The working tagline is: “What you lose when you stop being everything to everyone is not a tragedy. It’s a beginning.” She had not slept more than four consecutive