Marginalia: True, Sanity-Saving Words About Parenthood by Cool Women Writers

Screenshot and save these for when you need them most!

Recently my eldest son turned seven. Seven! When I gave birth to him I was only a few weeks into my thirties, and here I am – emerging from the partial eclipse of parenthood* – at the beginning of midlife. Early motherhood is far behind me now; and the ceaseless push and pull of needs and domestic graft – is so familiar as to be ordinary. It can be wearing, but this dailiness is also beloved to me. Family life – with its lulls and rush hours; its endless admin, mess and paraphernalia – is quite simply my life.

And yet, one of the things you learn very quickly as a parent, is that parenting is essentially improvisation. None of us know what we are doing.

I long ago abandoned prescriptive parenting manuals. Instead, these seven years, I have found the words of other women to be guiding lights as I have moved through motherhood.

By now, I have read sentences and sentences and sentences about parenthood, but the sensation of finding myself on the page is as valuable now as it was in the early days. The words of other mothers have given me relief from maternal rage and guilt; I have felt validated at times when society’s disregard for carework has made me, as a stay at home mother, feel insignificant, and I have felt less alone at times when I have felt desperately lonely.

There are some sentences I think about so frequently, they have become mantras.

I have chosen seven of my favourite truthful, sanity-saving passages about motherhood, written by women writers who are, frankly, awesome. These are the words that, on reading, I have photographed and immediately sent to all of my best mum friends.

I recommend screen-shotting the ones that resonate and saving for the moments when you need to be validated.

*I love talking about the ‘partial eclipse of parenthood’, but the phrase is not my own. I have borrowed it from Nell Frizzell’s brilliant book Holding the Baby.