![]() They must all hang their heads in guilt and shame because they haven’t done it perfectly, and motherhood is, if anything, the assumption of perfection. The woman who steels herself and puts on noise-canceling earphones to erase the screaming of her child in the next room has failed just as spectacularly. The woman who shares her bed with her baby has failed. The woman who picks her child up late knows from the teacher’s cutting glance that she is a failure. The woman who screams for the epidural is a failure. The woman who is unable to breastfeed is a failure. There are failures of the body and failures of the heart. Always, there are a thousand ways to fail at this singularly important job. I am the bad mother.īut here’s a secret: in America there are no good mothers. ![]() They hate me because I am the worst thing possible. I have parted the veil and crossed into that other unseen country. ![]() Where I come from, it connotes absence, death, and loneliness. ![]() The walls of my cell are painted an industrial white. ![]()
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