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More specifically, what we expect mothers to tolerate before we consider their suffering legitimate. 

I want to be very clear up front: I did not watch the trial. I haven’t watched the news since 2016, and I struggle to stay on top of the news generally given the pace of developments in the last few years. I’ve educated myself on the gist and high level summaries of this case (the best summaries I’ve found are from PBS, The Guardian, and the BBC), but I am not coming at you to comment on the facts, or even argue for a particular outcome, even though you probably know me well enough at this point to know I have an opinion. But there are things to process here, and things we need to see as humans so we can try not to repeat them. I feel physically ill for her kids, heartbroken in the most piercing way. 

But I feel physically ill for her, too. 

If your kids, like mine, go back to school when it’s still hotter than the devil’s undercarriage, then happy first day of school! As my youngest said when she popped her head up after a wave knocked her over in the ocean this summer: “I made it! I didn’t die!”

A little over two years ago, my husband and I were not in a good place, and hadn’t been for awhile. We’d had a rough couple of years (baby during a pandemic, anyone?!?), and were generally coexisting in the same space, often not peaceably. I was miserably unhappy, and I had started to wonder whether maybe I couldn’t be happy with him at all...couldn’t be my true self with him. We both, candidly, didn’t like each other very much. Thankfully, he agreed to start couples therapy, we found the most incredible therapist for us, and now I can confidently say that we have the tools to figure things out when shit goes awry (one of the tools being said therapist, who we’ll see for as long as she’ll have us).