Mutha Magazine Article Allison ((install)) [TRUSTED]
She wrote a piece for her local parenting newsletter—just a raw, unedited list of ten things she would no longer do. Number four was: “I will no longer pretend that ‘we’ decided something when ‘we’ means I decided and you nodded.” Number seven was: “I will no longer apologize for my body taking up space in my own home.”
It has been fourteen months since the cereal aisle. Allison is not “cured.” She still loves her children with a ferocity that frightens her. She still packs lunches sometimes, but now it’s because she wants to, not because she believes the universe will collapse if she doesn’t. She still cries in the car. She still has days where she wants to walk into the ocean. mutha magazine article allison
It wasn’t a fight. It wasn’t a diagnosis. It wasn’t even a tantrum. She wrote a piece for her local parenting
Allison’s husband, Mark, is not a villain. He is a nice man who coaches soccer and takes out the recycling and genuinely believes he is “helping.” But when Allison stopped—when she sat on the kitchen floor one morning and said, “I am not making lunches today”—Mark’s first reaction was confusion. Then frustration. Then a quiet, devastating: “But who will do it?” She still packs lunches sometimes, but now it’s
Then another: “Reminder: Soccer pictures tomorrow. White jersey, shin guards, no jewelry.”
Her kids are fine, by the way. They forgot their lunches twice. They wore mismatched socks to picture day. They complained. They adapted. They now know how to boil an egg, how to set a reminder on their phones, how to ask their father where the sunscreen is without running it through their mother first.