“You do not just wake up one day and feel rage. You accumulate it, bit by bit, while the world tells you to smile.” –Jess Rowe
My Interpretation: It was not a breakdown. It was a build-up. Of all the unsaid. Unseen. Unhelped. & when it cracked? It was not ugly. It was honest. This is a reckoning. A takedown of weaponized peace, performative calm, & the lie that motherhood must always look beautiful to be real. It is a scream wrapped in strategy.
Series 3 – Post 3: Motherhood & Madness
Swallowed Rage & Silent Rooms
Let us just say it aloud:
We are furious.
Not all the time. Not at our children.
But somewhere beneath the diaper bags, the mental math, & carefully worded texts,
there is a simmering burn that never fully leaves.
It is not hormonal.
It is not irrational.
It is not “crazy.”
It is the weight of everything we have been forced to carry silently.
Because a calm mother is a good mother.
Swallows it all.
They call it mom guilt.
But it is not guilt.
It is gaslighting.
They tell you to be gentle → but judge you for being too soft.
They tell you to sleep when the baby sleeps → but call you lazy if the house is messy.
They tell you to breastfeed → but shame you for doing it in public.
They tell you to work → but not too much.
Stay home → but do not lose your ambition.
Discipline → but do not be too harsh.
Be playful → but keep the routine.
Do not hover → but do not be absent.
Have a life → but make sure the baby is your entire world.
I was doing everything right.
& still felt like I was failing.
Let me tell you when the rage cracked through:
📍It was in the diaper aisle.
When I had a screaming newborn, a healing scar, & zero help –
& the man next to me (who did not even know what size his kid wore) said,
“You look exhausted.”
📍It was in the parking lot, when Cade went back to work two days after my C-section,
& I lifted the car seat alone, bleeding, trying to do it all with a stitched-up body & a smile.
📍It was during the 3AM feed when I was giving Rowan cold formula (on purpose)
because I did not want to waste it –
& someone had the audacity to say I was being lazy due to the cold formula.
📍At girls’ night.
A few months after Rowan was born.
I used talk-to-text in the car to explain Rowan’s exact schedule to Cade:
≫How to make the bottle.
≫How to cluster feed to ensure he would stay sleeping through the night.
≫How to keep him awake before bed.
≫How to put on the Owlet sock.
Blaire, Sabrina, & the others (not Sabrina) were stunned.
They called it “controlling.”
Held it over me for years.
But ask yourself-
≫Why was that not basic knowledge to the father of the child?
≫Why is it controlling/ “nagging” when a mother expresses an infant’s needs?
📍It was every time someone cooed,
“He is such a good baby!”
as if he magically came that way.
As if I was not the reason he was sleeping, thriving, smiling.
As if I was not doing the invisible labor of regulating him & myself.
“You are so calm.”
No, I am trained.
Trained to suppress.
To smile instead of scream.
To freeze when I want to fight.
The myth of the calm mother?
It is a lie we wear like makeup.
To look acceptable.
To avoid making people uncomfortable with our truths.
But here is the reality:
I do not yell because I have trained myself not to.
I plan
& schedule
& prepare
& anticipate
because I have had to.
I cry in private
& scream in the car
because the world does not know what to do with mothers who rage.
But rage does not mean I love him less.
It means I am awake.
It means I see the system.
It means I am exhausted from carrying a world that keeps telling me I should be grateful for every second –
even the seconds that hollow me out.
So, no.
I am not calm.
I am coping.
I am trying.
I am showing up.
& I am allowed to be fucking tired of being expected to do it with a smile.
Let mothers speak without softening.
Let us tell the truth without disclaimers.
& then?
Let us get ice cream with our kids.
Let us tape their weeds & wildflowers to the walls.
Let us kiss their foreheads & mean it.
Let us be soft again.
But do not ever mistake that softness for ease.
We earned it.
Through fire.
Xoxo ♡
Whisper to the ghosts. Yell into the void. Just don’t be an asshole.