143 Comments
User's avatar
Jenovia 🕸️'s avatar

I worship at the altar of mothers. My favorite women, whom I love more than anything, are mothers, and I had zero interest in reading about mothering. I thought nothing could bore me more. I’m proud to say I was so damn wrong. The way you write about mothering and your boys is so entertaining and cracks open a part of life that I never would have glanced twice at. For that, I am so grateful to you. Your ability to birth these new considerations within me and grow them to enormous proportions is the stuff of literary legend. ❤️‍🔥⚡️💥

Expand full comment
Isabel Cowles Murphy's avatar

THANK YOU. What I realized writing this is that any subject can be deep and interesting--just depends on how seriously we take it. It made me sad to confront my assumptions about motherhood as a deeply unserious subject. Definitely feels like part of a broader cultural dupe to take such a complex and difficult role and chronically minimize it. I suppose I feel the need to start pushing back on that. Your generosity really helps.

Expand full comment
Jenovia 🕸️'s avatar

Most writing on motherhood sounds the same, and after so much of the same, it disappears within itself being overlooked. Yes, we know it’s hard. Yes, we know it changes your identity. Yes, we know it’s a massive event in women’s lives…but what else? Writing about motherhood always felt like it was only for other mothers, which is terrific. Still, the ultimate writing magic for me is to turn a common subject on its side to reveal something I’ve never seen before. That’s your gift, and it’s so refreshing to experience/read.

Expand full comment
Isabel Cowles Murphy's avatar

I wish you could see my blushing. But I won't subject you to live video.

Expand full comment
Helene Van Manen's avatar

I too worship at the altar of Mothers.

Expand full comment
Sarah Kovatch's avatar

A while ago, I heard the NPR music critic Anne Powers talking about Joni Mitchel’s album, ‘Blue' (which was about giving a child up for adoption) and I had to pause the show and write down what she said in my journal: “Critics didn’t get it… people didn’t get it at the time… It’s a testimony to the need for women to tell their stories that aren’t officially in the history books or master narrative. Because unless we tell those stories they are not audible they are not legible. And even sometimes when we do they are not so you have to tell them more than once.”

Women's narratives have been discredited forever. But I do believe this is changing!

I really love what you said at the end: "I’m the writer I want to be because I’ve been tenderized and shot through with white hot love. And I’m the mom I want to be because I make meaning of the slow motion days that race into years. What’s the goal if not to be in awe of what’s in front of you?”

I don’t think there is a topic under the sun that is not worthy of writing about as long as the writer brings that exact take to it: tenderized, in awe, and trying to make meaning for the readers.

Expand full comment
Isabel Cowles Murphy's avatar

Wow, what a comment!! I almost ended the piece with "Motherhood is as serious as we take it--like anything, really." But I decided to thank my readers instead. I am going to race right now to find the interview. I didn't realize until I woke up to comments this morning what I wanted from this piece, or from the declaration that this is a mom blog and HOW PROUD I am of that. But I think you nailed it: it's just about being part of the chorus that takes this work and gives it the utmost credit. If I'd been reading rich, thick texts about the deep work of parenthood, maybe I wouldn't have spent so many years feeling like it was "less serious" than any of the other potentials available to me. I hardly mean we have to drop everything and be parents only. But those dark, early mornings, those long Sunday afternoons... what if those were all as 'impressive' as the other efforts we make in the world? Certainly, they can be just as difficult, and just as rewarding.

Expand full comment
Kaitlyn Elizabeth's avatar

Wow wow wow. Thank you for sharing that bit from Anne Powers. I’ve screenshotted it so I never lose it.

Expand full comment
Isabel Cowles Murphy's avatar

Me, too!

Expand full comment
Helene Van Manen's avatar

I love what she said at the end and ditto your sentiments on it.

Expand full comment
Erin Shetron's avatar

even though I helped you with this piece, I've read it twice today. each time, I get that pressure in my throat, the kind that if I let it could rise and become tears. I love how I feel myself healing right alongside you.

Expand full comment
Isabel Cowles Murphy's avatar

I'm so excited to dig in on all the work these ideas generate. So much of mothering is re-mothering; and just finding the ways we can plough care back into the world. You've got me thinking about nurture as a radical, cultural act that go way outside the bounds of child-rearing. That feminine economy, in practice.

Expand full comment
Erin Shetron's avatar

👏🏻

Expand full comment
Phoebe Polk's avatar

so so so good.

"the slow motion days that race into years" -gulp- and -yep- and SOB!

You consistently make me cry every week and the lines that get me are never about the bar exam. Thank you for pouring your heart out, it is more valuable than you could ever imagine. Thank you!!!

Expand full comment
Isabel Cowles Murphy's avatar

Oh Lordy how I would've missed having you in my life if I'd been a lawyer 80 hours a week. Phew for dodging that bullet!

Expand full comment
Dia Lupo's avatar

This rocked me into another dimension. What the fuck

Expand full comment
Isabel Cowles Murphy's avatar

Ahh but was it only my doing? 🌀

Expand full comment
Caroline's avatar

This is incredible. And beautiful. You should be so proud. Turns out a mom blog is exactly what we all needed.

Expand full comment
Diana van Eyk's avatar

You're a fabulous writer, Isabel!

I wish motherhood, and parenthood generally, was treated with more respect in our society.

Expand full comment
Isabel Cowles Murphy's avatar

Thank you, Diana! I just wrote to Jenovia that it confuses me how we've minimized this part of the human experience. Imagine if across our society we regarded parenting as serious, meaningful work and not something that just... happens invisibly, or sort of by accident? I don't mean parents have to drop everything and ogle their kids all day. But I think it would be really healing for a lot of people if the effort were more valued and revered. It's only the future of humanity after all.

Expand full comment
Diana van Eyk's avatar

Exactly, Isabel. And I'd further that to all acts of caring, which is often done by women: gifting, cleaning, organizing, etc.

This work is made invisible, but it's so important.

I think often after a breakup, men desperately seek this invisible support right away, where as women will recuperate from having to have done all that unacknowledged work, and will take more time to get into another relationship.

I recently had a conversation with a friend who shared with me that a small group of women talked about how exhausted they were when in a relationship, and that's often been my experience too.

Sorry to digress, but I think it's often the space that women occupy that is diminished, yet counted on.

Keep up the great writing!

Expand full comment
Helene Van Manen's avatar

We have to elevate it. Make it so. I do.

Expand full comment
Isabel Cowles Murphy's avatar

You certainly have for me. Bruce's birth would not have pushed me into a new dimension if I hadn't had your support, confidence and encouragement.

Expand full comment
Helene Van Manen's avatar

" we live with the rub. " So much here. This and more and more I could repost. Thank you. Keep writing. Keep speaking YOUR Truth. We all need to hear it.

Expand full comment
appleton king's avatar

one gets the feeling here the definition of "trad-wife" is about to get an extreme make-over here and soon and who better to do it than a mother in full possession of her "power" (and mole-skins!)

Expand full comment
Isabel Cowles Murphy's avatar

I am belly laughing.

Expand full comment
Sodak's avatar

Wow… just wow..

Expand full comment
Isabel Cowles Murphy's avatar

❤️❤️❤️

Expand full comment
Debbie Weil's avatar

Isabel, LOOOVE this. You nail it! Also, I love Madeline Donahue’s paintings. A good friend of ours, Nina Johnson, represents her! https://ninajohnson.com/

Expand full comment
Isabel Cowles Murphy's avatar

She is extraordinary. I stare at everything she does with my jaw on the floor. I love how she's able to capture the humor and the horror of motherhood. Thank you for passing along Nina's website. I'm hoping my plot to win the Powerball pans out so I can cover our walls with her artists. So much talent in one place!!!

Expand full comment
Bonnie West's avatar

I love that you have baby Bruce. My 6 year old grandson is Bruce. I love the name !

Expand full comment
Isabel Cowles Murphy's avatar

Amazing!! There aren't too many others, although everybody I know seems to have an Uncle Bruce. I joke that I've never met a bad one. Springsteen, Willis, Wayne, Lee. Can't go wrong.

Expand full comment
Valerie Monroe's avatar

Of course I thought of your Bruce when Isabel named her last son...❤️

Expand full comment
Owl Green's avatar

Dude. My bio: environmental lawyer turned SAHM + homeschool teacher. Might I too be a trad wife?? I’ll be waiting on your next piece with bated breath.

Expand full comment
Isabel Cowles Murphy's avatar

Oooowieee we need to talk!

Expand full comment
davyne verstandig's avatar

Written with the compassion for yourself and all women, biological mothers or not, since all women mother the world. Writing and mothering are essentially about being vulnerable. Thank you again for being out front with the complexity of motherhood and writing.

Expand full comment
Isabel Cowles Murphy's avatar

YES YES YES, I can only come at this from my own, personal experience but I know that so many people pour their nurture and care into other human beings--large and small, in so many private and transformative ways. That's all it's about. Digging in and being transformed.

Expand full comment
David Roberts's avatar

Isabel,

Living a life in balance between family and career is a rare gift to your children. And writing is that rare career at this unusual moment on this terrific platform that I believe adds tot he role of mother.

However you define your blog, I know this: it's valuable and a gift to your readers.

Expand full comment
Isabel Cowles Murphy's avatar

I feel so lucky on all of these fronts. Both that these roles have fused themselves together and that there's a space where they can be so generously received. And I diminished it in jest, but the newsletter format feels much more enfranchising than blogs ever did :)

Expand full comment
Laura McKowen's avatar

This is gorgeous.

Expand full comment
Isabel Cowles Murphy's avatar

Thank you so much for reading. I’m humbled. 🧡

Expand full comment