On Friday nights, I would rush through my daughter’s bedtime books, slurring words and skipping full pages. By Shelley Mann Hite
motherhood
I’m surprised by how many moms give me the thumbs-up for “letting” my daughter be a pirate. By Mimi Lemay
“Birth mom” does not make me feel like a baby machine without feelings, but it does clarify my role in her life. By Adrian Collins
What if birth certificates reflected reality? I imagined three spaces, one for our daughter’s biological mother and two for us. By Sarah Werthan Buttenwieser
The truth is I dreaded my Friday playgroup as much as I craved it. I stood apart from the other mothers in ways I couldn’t quite communicate or change. By Laura G. Owens
As parents of older kids, socializing with other moms was apparently no longer part of the job description. By Anne Helena
I’d been craving more one-on-one time with my kids for so long and now, thanks to those pesky parasites, I had it. By Kate Lemery
We would take a million pictures of our child but none of us. Forget to schedule date nights because we never needed them before. By Elizabeth Newdom
They are part of my life’s topography. Tiny specks on my map of choices, loves and losses, hurts and heartbreak. By Jordan Namerow
“No offense Mom,” my oldest said to me a few years ago. “But you could have been so much more.” By Laura Pochintesta
I worry with the other moms about whether we’re good at it. Raising another person. By Marni Berger
My daughter collapses after an endless tantrum and says, I wish I wasn’t adopted. By Tanya Friedman
I arrive at the office. I mime professional. Am I a professional? For months my identity was pure and unquestioned: mother of an infant. By Janelle Ward
We asked, you answered. In three words.
As parents sometimes it’s a struggle to carve out even a few minutes to breathe. By Steph Auteri
This year is different. Maybe it’s because I’ve had the miscarriages. Maybe it’s because we both recently turned 42. By Angela Kidd
Next to Orion’s Belt are two dimmer stars. These are the babies I lost, one before each of my sons. By Julia Pelly
I am a woman who sometimes needs a glass of wine or two in the evening, because even though her boys are no longer babies, five to six o’clock is still the witching hour. By Fiona Leary Boucher
Our daughter asked good questions—what about the other baby? Were we sad? Why did it happen? By Cynthia Nuara
We can try to compare miseries, heartaches, injustices but, in the end, it becomes impossible. By Diana Kupershmit
Our married life was no longer comfortable. There was no indulgence, no whispered promises of sweet dessert. By Hannah Grieco
Stephanie Land’s daughter learned to walk in a homeless shelter. In her debut memoir, she tells the story of how they survived.
I sent you a bowl of black stones because of the hardness of loving a child for exactly who he is. By Brianne DeRosa
I wanted to believe that bringing teenagers into our life would make it easier to let them go. I was wrong. By Meredith Gordon Resnick
I saw him as I thought he was, an elegant young man for whom I could buy something expressly male. How wrong I was. By Penny Wolfson