What Is
“Momsplaining”?
“Momsplaining is a Substack newsletter about being a mother, a daughter, a parent, and a woman, often through the lens of my relationship with my own mother. No parenting advice. Instead, I want to talk about how it feels to mother with all the messages and lessons I have internalized from my own mother: messages I’ve relied on or rebelled against or am recovering from.”
For all the recent explosion in writing about motherhood and taking it seriously as a literary topic over the past decade or so, an adult woman’s relationship with her own mother continues to be underexplored. “Momsplaining” dives into those underexplored aspects.
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Recent Momsplaining Posts
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The End of Matrescence
When the younger of my two children turned six last October, a pain seized me. Like with every other sudden pain I’ve ever had—emotional, physical, or somewhere in between—I ignored it. But it didn’t go away. So, I started to write about it.
“I do miss a baby now and then,” I wrote.
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Nuns and Other Odious Women
This month marks 25 years since I graduated high school, and I think I needed all 25 years to figure out what I actually think the nuns who educated me. … I have grappled with sisters whom I remember as both devoted to a patriarchal institution that has wreaked colonial havoc around the world, and also, nonetheless a sisterhood.
As you work on your piece of writing, you probably crave feedback. Feedback can be very helpful! But, this post isn’t about that. :p This post is about whom NOT to ask. Yes, there are so many ways to give terrible writing feedback that is unhelpful or worse, discouraging.