For a moment, I was jealous. And then I went inside and bought the oval crackers.
This is the mental spreadsheet. It runs 24/7. It has tabs for: pediatrician appointments, birthday party RSVPs, who last used the EpiPen, whether the school’s “spirit week” is tomorrow or next Tuesday, and the exact emotional temperature of my partner. No one taught me how to build it. I just woke up one day three years postpartum and realized I’d become the CEO of a failing startup called Us . mutha magazine article by alison
Mutha doesn’t usually do tidy endings, so I won’t give you one. I’ll just say this: yesterday, I sat in the car in the Target parking lot for seventeen minutes. I didn’t go in. I just sat there, watching a crow peck at a bag of spilled popcorn. And I thought: That crow has no spreadsheet. That crow is just being a crow. For a moment, I was jealous
Here’s a short piece written in the style of an article for Mutha Magazine , by a writer named Alison. Mutha typically explores the raw, unvarnished, and often humorous or painful realities of motherhood—centering voices that challenge the pristine, conventional narrative. The Unseen Load: On Motherhood and the Mental Spreadsheet It runs 24/7
Because that’s the thing about this load. It’s invisible. It’s unpaid. And somehow, it’s still the most important job I’ve ever done.
Let me explain.