Mutha Magazine Article Allison May 2026

The Unbecoming: Allison on Shedding the Good Mother Myth

It has been fourteen months since the cereal aisle. Allison is not “cured.” She still loves her children with a ferocity that frightens her. She still packs lunches sometimes, but now it’s because she wants to, not because she believes the universe will collapse if she doesn’t. She still cries in the car. She still has days where she wants to walk into the ocean. mutha magazine article allison

Her legs went soft. She didn’t faint. She simply sat down on the linoleum floor, right between the flaxseed and the chia. She pulled her knees to her chest. And she wept—not the elegant, tear-streaked cry of a movie mother, but the guttural, snotty, animal sound of a creature who has been running for so long that the idea of stopping feels like dying. The Unbecoming: Allison on Shedding the Good Mother

What Mutha understands—what Allison learned the hard way—is that motherhood is not primarily an emotional experience. It is a physical one. The body keeps the score. She still cries in the car

It wasn’t a fight. It wasn’t a diagnosis. It wasn’t even a tantrum.