Untangling the Horrors of Being Parented Resentfully
In the ‘Beloved,’ ‘The Baby,’ and ‘Barbarian,’ Black women grapple with vengeful mothers and children. In my life, I’ve broken that cycle.
In the ‘Beloved,’ ‘The Baby,’ and ‘Barbarian,’ Black women grapple with vengeful mothers and children. In my life, I’ve broken that cycle.
I can’t give up the invisible labor of making “holiday magic” because that’s how I feel closest to my late mother.
Is Kate McCallister a “good mom”? That’s beside the point. Her example shows the shallowness of such standards: She loves her kid. She proves it.
All these self-styled experts online drown out the intuitive voice of the parent and sow doubt in every decision that they make.
My poverty is the most dangerous kind of poverty. It is religious. This is what I know, what my family and community know.
The wall that divided us in those early weeks of my first child’s infancy became a continued separation.
My daughter understands object permanence—the idea that what vanishes continues to exist. As the planet warms, I worry I may have oversold the concept.
In the emergency room waiting for a potential diagnosis, I soothe myself with loops of pudgy toddlers tripping into the antics of babyhood over and over again.
My affirmations teach me the things I still need to learn.
I grieved the chance to have an uncomplicated pregnancy. I grieved the fact that having more babies could be potentially fatal. And I grieved a younger, more carefree me.
In the face of overlapping and unprecedented crises, an immigrant mom protects her family through play.
My mind is years ahead, trying to imagine an America whose cherished ideals hold true even for a little Black boy like mine.
When I first discovered I was pregnant, we were deep into a very strange spring.
I do not wish to have not been a parent. But I think it is normal to imagine new existences when the world is crumbling.
Nothing in my son’s life has gone according to plan. Why would school be any different?
When I say I love you, you know exactly what I mean, that this, our love, our family, is a small, fierce revolution.
Our son will grow up without grandmas, but we want him to remember these wonderful women he'll never get the chance to meet.
If there was one thing I was clearly not cut out for, it was being a stepmom.
We all have them, those unmet needs or wishes from our own childhood, the painful bits that creep in and affect how we parent.
On the heels of my diagnosis, I feel there is no way to construct a narrative around what’s happening to me—a deep betrayal for a writer.