A word from a tired mother.
Good morning loves.
FIRST OF ALL: USE THE CHAT. USE THE CHAT. USE THE FOREVER CHATLANDIA CHAT. It is about 7:30am EST. GO SAY HI TO THE REST OF PATRONS ON THE CHAT RIGHT NOW. Let’s keep it populated and thriving. Go go now. I’ll post some photos.
The chat is there for us.
Thank you all for tuning into the webchat yesterday. It’s archived here. I cried.
https://www.crowdcast.io/c/7arac61201y0
I have great sweet-ass art news for you later today but first, your vegetables.
I wrote this upon waking and posted to socials. Im about to head into mom-land to make Ash breakfast and to take him to school.
A word from a very, very, tired mother & artist about what is about to happen.
When I left my marriage in April 2020, a month after Covid lockdown hit, I was in a foreign country (Aotearoa New Zealand). My son was 4. My ex left the country and I found myself raising my kid alone for about a year. It changed my life.
I stayed in New Zealand because there was no Covid for a long time and my kid could play with others and be free – in some senses. But we were alone. It was the loneliest thing I’ve ever experienced. And I had to mother.
While many artists and songwriters thrived during Covid, I did not. I effectively left the art workforce and focused on raising my son, who was sad and scared and confused. I technically had the resources to hire more childcare, but I didn’t want a stranger raising my kid, especially given what was happening. I effectively stopped writing and recording songs. I also lost touch with the world of politics, music, my friends, and art. It was extremely isolating.
Many, many, many mothers had to do this during covid: drop everything and prioritize the emotional well-being of their children before anything else: before work, before art, before staying connected to old friends and other family, before reading a book, before taking a damn shower, before following the world news, before *anything*.
Because? Mothers know. We are smart. We have been children ourselves, and we have empathy, and memory, and a basic instinct that tells us that if we screw up our children’s early emotional landscapes and experiences, they’re going to suffer all their lives with the knock-on effect. We do not want to do that to them. We want to give them stability. So we deprioritize the wider world, and we prioritize our young.
Men work on the assumption that women will drop their work and friends and family and prioritize the well-being of their children. Patriarchal society assumes this.
And they are right. We will. We do. Because we love our kids.
Trump’s posse will strive for a national abortion ban.
They want to force a woman to have a baby even when it’s not the woman’s choice to have a baby, and they – highly ironically – also want slash welfare and health care access. They won’t help these mothers with basic shit like easily affordable childcare.
Here’s the thing: the knock-on effect of this oncoming abortion ban is seismic for a subtler reason:
Women who are raising children have way less time to fight the system.
Women – especially solo women – who are raising children have less time to work other jobs, to march and protest, to make meaningful art, to rage against the fucking machine. We are too busy breastfeeding and cleaning up poop and doing lego and making sandwiches and doing laundry and cleaning up jammy, shitty messes we didn’t know we were gonna have to clean. Even with help, even with babysitters, even with family stopping by, it’s overwhelming.
Do not be fooled.
Trump and the Project 2025 maniacs know this.
A national abortion ban isn’t just some religious thing about the sanctity of a fetus. It’s also about keeping women out of positions of power.
It will work. If there is a national abortion ban, not only will women die due to lack of access to safe abortion care, but women will disappear into the domestic realm.
A NATIONAL ABORTION BAN IS NOT JUST ABOUT ABORTION.
It’s about power, and it’s about subtracting women from the national meeting, the world conversation. Not because it’ll be illegal for women to speak, but because they’ll be absent from the meeting, because they’ll be busy doing lego and making sandwiches.
What next? FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT against the abortion bans. If you’re a man, this shit also effects you and your world. March, protest, stay engaged. If you’re a person without kids: FIGHT FOR JUSTICE. If you’re a person who had kids but they’re grown and you don’t have to make sandwiches all the time; FIGHT FOR JUSTICE.
If want to do something immediate and practical to help; head to the kitchen of one your struggling solo mom friend and do her undone dishes and clean the counters and take out the trash. Clean the toilets and wipe down the bathroom sink, if you’re feeling extra angelic. You will be a human miracle, trust me.
HELP YOUR PARENT FRIENDS. They may be ashamed to ask for help. OFFER.
The fight is going to be long and hard.
Stay in community.
Don’t isolate.
Stay in community.
Don’t isolate.
Stay in community.
PS I wrote this between the hours of 5:30am-6:30am this morning and am posting it from bed before I make my kid breakfast and take him to school. I could have just doomscrolled. I didn’t. Yay me.
I love you.
You can go share this on Facebook or IG. I just posted it on both.
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Ps. Comment here at length. USE THR CHAT FOR ONGOING DISCUSSION. USE. THE. CHAT.