'The 1950s sh!t they want from me.'

On the shame I don't feel about being a half-time mom.

Melissa Urban recently posted this video on Instagram about being a “half-time mom.” She said while she wishes she had a committed, reliable partner from the beginning and that they didn’t get divorced when her son was one, she appreciates her weeks off. She said, “I don’t feel guilty about any of it.” I watched the video and thought, yes, same, and moved on.

But not before I peeked at a few comments.

I shouldn’t have been surprised at how horrible many of them were. It’s not like it’s news to me that mom-on-mom shame is among the most violent, unrelenting sports out there, but wow. They ranged from the patronizing, I’ll pray for you, to the downright vile, You don’t deserve to be a mom, and 99% were from other mothers. The whole thing felt like a giant projection of every mother’s fears, anxiety, and shame—like a veritable puke pile of internalized misogyny. It also just felt like, wait…really? What decade—century!—am I in right now? Have these people never heard of divorce? Of the reality of the working mom? Of…reality?

It’s been stuck in my brain like an earworm ever since.

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Alma’s dad and I got separated when she was three years old, and we’ve had 50-50 custody from the go, so I’ve been a half-time mom for over ten years—most of her life. We have the same schedule: she’s with me for one week, then with her dad the next. Of course, I’m not actually a half-time mom, not energetically, emotionally, psychologically, or spiritually. But physically and logistically, when she’s with her dad, I’m off duty unless I’m called in. The hundreds of tasks and data points one has to hold in one’s brain and juggle and sort and re-sort and troubleshoot on a daily basis while parenting: laundry, lunches, homework, playdate schedules, sports schedules, cooking, getting ready for school, getting out the door on time, getting to bed on time, arguing, disciplining, monitoring, juggling with work, and on and on—all outsourced to her dad.

Here’s where I’m supposed to say that I am in some form of constant grief about missing her, that all these precious moments of her childhood are something I’ll never get back, and that I feel this as an ever present loss, like a heavy backpack I carry wherever I go. I’m supposed to say that being a mom is the most important part of my identity. I’m supposed to say that I feel guilty, guilty, guilty for the schedule she has, for not being there with her every other week, for deeply appreciating and even enjoying my weeks off. I’m supposed to say I wish it were different but that I do my best to accept it, with a far-off look in my eyes, like I’m always on the verge of tears.

That’s not how I feel at all, though.

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We didn’t plan to have Alma, although we also didn’t plan not to have her. We knew before we got married that we wanted to have kids, but a couple of years into our marriage, when she was conceived, we were in a bad, bad place. My addiction was gaining momentum by the day, he was finishing grad school and unemployed, and I was already looking for an escape hatch from our relationship and could not articulate or understand why. Getting pregnant was a mistake, a fluke, the result of my being bad at taking the pill, and up until I had her, I was despondent about the whole thing.

For the first three years of Alma’s life, I was in a personal hell: drowning in unresolved pain, in alcohol, in lying, in the shame of being incapable of changing for the things I was supposed to be able to change for, like her and our family. Whereas before I was a lying, cheating, drunk wife, now I was all these things and a mother: the ultimate monster. I loved her incredibly, fiercely, in an otherworldly way, and I was also overwhelmed by her, cripplingly depressed and anxious, and unable to catch my breath much of the time. I loved her, and it felt like becoming a mom made my world as tiny as a dime. I was deadened by the dailiness of it, suffocated by the physicality, itchy every moment with no ability to scratch hard enough to make it stop.

When we separated, I was able to breathe. Within a year, I was faced with getting sober, and the time without her meant I could go to meetings, sleep the hours I needed to sleep for my body and brain to begin healing, and work as much as I needed to work to keep up. It meant I didn’t spend every single day in an adrenalized, survival mode state trying to “balance” being a single mother with a full-time, high-pressure job. I was able to begin writing and podcasting.

As she grew and I became more stable in my sobriety, the time she spent with her dad meant I could travel easily to teach retreats and workshops or attend them myself. I could work the hours I needed to work to switch careers, write books, build a business. Could I have done these things while staying married to her dad? I don’t think so, and not so much because of the parenting-free time the divorce afforded me, but because I was not okay in that marriage. I don’t know that I could have become sober with someone watching me. I’m positive I couldn’t have written We Are The Luckiest because so much of that was born from telling the truth about who I really was and what I really wanted, and those truths were not compatible with our relationship.

All of this is real and honest, and—and—at times, I have despaired about my time away from her. Some seasons have been hard. Some weeks my body has ached to hold her. Particularly as she’s gotten older and we’ve become more and more connected, I long for more time, more everything. I genuinely love spending time with her as a person; when she’s not around, I miss her humor and her face, her smell, braiding her hair, and answering all the incessant mom questions and requests. I’m aware of time passing in a way I wasn’t before. There have been holidays where I’ve hated not being with her, or being with her just for parts of it, and wishing she didn’t have to do what I had to do as a kid and shuffle from house to house. But do I categorically wish it were different? Do I feel so guilty for the way it is? Do I miss her constantly, all the time, every day?

I do not.

For me, it has been a very good, very healthy setup. For me, and for Alma's dad, it works—and I'd say has made me a far better mother. It suits my temperament, my need for a great deal of space, and for my ambition.¹ Does this make me selfish? Unfit to be a mother, or less of one somehow? Some (definitely a good few in Melissa’s IG feed) would say so, but I don’t.

I love being Alma’s mother. It is my favorite love, my favorite thing about my life; she is miraculous, a wonder, a treasure. But it is also not the defining part of my identity. I am not Mother first; I am Mother, also.

And this is what’s bothered me most about the comments in Melissa’s post: they seemed disingenuous. My visceral response to reading them was something like I don’t believe you. As in, this is a denial of reality. As in, this is pretending that mothers are one-dimensional because it makes you feel better and more in control. As in, if women can be contained, maybe the chaos of life can be contained, too. Deep down, we know it can’t, but all that fear has to go somewhere; all that anger and repressed desire needs a scapegoat. What better target than creation herself?

Love,
Laura

ICYMI, I’m doing an entire year of newsletters inspired by Taylor Swift's lyrics. This one, This 1950’s sh!t they want from me, is from the song "Lavender Haze” on the ‘Midnights’ album. I have hummed this lyric to myself at least 4,000 times since Midnights came out. Also: WE GOT TICKETS! Seeing her with Alma on May 21. Melt.

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1. This is made possible because her dad has always been a fully responsible, engaged, agreeable co-parent—a privilege many do not have.