First, thank you for being so patient with me last week. Between tech issues, travel, and running the London Marathon, things got a little chaotic over here. And by a little chaotic, I mean my brain was giving “37 tabs open, one of them is playing music, and I cannot find it.”

I have so much I want to catch you up on. So much damn content to post. So many thoughts from London. So many things I meant to send you last week. I was originally going to make this the week where I gave you the recipes I owed you, but then I remembered it’s Mother’s Day week, baby, and I don’t want you cooking a damn thing. But let’s be so for real: you’re going to.

Maybe not on Mother’s Day itself, if your people have any sense, shame, or OpenTable access. But this week? Somebody is going to ask what’s for dinner. Somebody is going to need lunch. Somebody is going to stand in front of a full pantry and claim there is “nothing to eat” while making direct eye contact with a box of crackers. So no, I’m not going to pretend motherhood magically stops requiring labor because the calendar says we should be celebrated. But I do want this week to feel lighter.

The recipes will be simple. The plan will be low-lift. And the spirit of the week is this: feed them, yes, but do not martyr yourself in the process.

This week, I want to talk about something else that feeds us, something I have been thinking about since I got back from London: the importance of being loved by women.

And if your Mother’s Day wish list includes “please stop making me decide what everyone eats,” that is literally why I made The Motherload. Every week, I give you the plan, the grocery list, and the recipes so dinner stops being one more thing clawing at your ankles at 5 p.m.

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A few months before the marathon, Shep bought my ticket to London. He told me about the dates after he purchased it, which is both slightly unhinged and deeply romantic because it meant there was no room for me to spiral, overthink, or talk myself out of going. I was gone from the evening of April 21st to April 29th. Eight whole days of freedom.

Eight days where I was not the default parent. Eight days where I was not responsible for finding the missing shoe, packing the snack, remembering the sunscreen, answering “what’s for dinner,” or holding the entire emotional infrastructure of the house together with a half-dead iPhone battery and vibes.

And the thing is, I was not alone.

I think I’ve told you before that my best friend in the entire world lives in London. I call her Dani, but her name is Danielle, which is only confusing because I also have another Danielle in my life, who I met in Atlanta and have written about a lot. For clarity, and because I refuse to make this sound like a police report, London Danielle is Dani. Atlanta Danielle is Danielle. Everyone good? Great.

A few days before I landed, Dani moved into the flat she purchased all on her own and some how fully unpacked before I walked into the door. I was (am!) so proud I kept telling random strangers (and now you) everywhere we went that she’d just bought a flat. Lowkey like I was her mother, publicist, and hype man rolled into one. “She bought this flat by herself,” I found a way to announce to every bartender, waiter, and unsuspecting person within earshot.

Because how could I not? There is something holy about watching a woman you love build a life for herself.

Anyway, back to this race. So there I was, in London, trying to carb load enough to convince my body to run 26.2 miles, while also being surrounded by women I love deeply. Dani, my best friend. Danielle, my Atlanta life partner, who flew in to see me run. Alex, who ran the marathon with me. Nicki, my oldest friend, who also lives in London. Even Shep’s friends Graham and Elizabeth were there to root me on.

I felt surrounded, but not in the way mothers are often surrounded, which is to say needed, touched, asked for, climbed on, cried at, interrupted, and somehow still expected to know where everyone’s water bottle is. I mean surrounded in the way every mother deserves to be surrounded: held, seen, cheered for, loved as a whole person.

I will never forget getting to mile 21, exhausted in a way I do not have language for, and seeing Dani, Danielle, and Elizabeth screaming for me as I rounded the corner. Danielle started running alongside me, yelling at the top of her lungs, and I swear to God it pushed me through the next five miles. Not because my legs suddenly felt better. My legs were filing a formal complaint. But because something in me remembered: I am not doing this alone.

As Mother’s Day approaches, I keep thinking about that feeling. So much of motherhood is about loving other people well. Loving your children through tantrums and fevers and school transitions and weird dinner refusals. Loving your partner through busy seasons and exhaustion and all the tiny negotiations of building a life together. Loving your family enough to think ahead, plan ahead, soften the landing, make the meal, keep the rhythm, do the invisible work no one notices unless it doesn’t get done.

But who loves the mother?

Not in theory. Not with a candle once a year and a card that says “relax today,” while somehow there are still dishes in the sink. I mean who sees the woman inside the mother? Who remembers what makes her laugh? Who asks about her dreams? Who celebrates her wins like they are their own? Who reminds her that she is still sexy and brilliant and funny and ambitious and allowed to want things that have nothing to do with being useful?

That is what female friendship has done for me. It has kept me tethered to the parts of myself motherhood could have swallowed whole. The women in my life have loved me through my becoming. They knew me before babies, before marriage, before breast cancer, before the version of me who now travels with snacks and wipes and a backup plan for the backup plan. They have witnessed every version of me and still somehow make room for the next one.

They do not only love me as a mother. They love me as Ryan.

And God, what a gift that is.

This is the whole reason I care so much about making dinner easier. Because yes, our families need to eat. But mothers need to be cared for too. Sometimes care looks like a friend screaming for you at mile 21. Sometimes it looks like opening your inbox on Friday and realizing dinner is already figured out.

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So this week, for Mother’s Day, I hope you are loved by women who bring you back to yourself. I hope someone sees past the lunches packed, the appointments scheduled, the laundry folded, the bills paid, the groceries ordered, the bedtime routine survived. I hope someone looks at you and remembers the girl, the woman, the friend, the dreamer, the person with an appetite for her own life.

And if you are lucky enough to have women like that, text them. Call them. Send the voice note. Tell them the thing. Because sometimes the most mothering thing we receive has nothing to do with our own mothers at all.

Sometimes it is your best friend buying a flat and letting you be obnoxiously proud of her. Sometimes it is women screaming your name at mile 21. Sometimes it is someone running beside you when your body is tired, yelling, “You’ve got this,” until you believe her.

And sometimes, that love is what carries you the rest of the way home.

So this week, I hope you are loved well. By your people, by your friends, by the women who remember who you are underneath all the doing. And if nobody has told you lately: you deserve support that does not require you to earn it first.

That’s what I’m trying to build here.

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What’s for dinner this week

This is Mother’s Day week, which means I do not want you cooking a damn thing.

But let’s be so for real: you’re going to.

So this week, dinner is fast, bright, and built around ingredients that actually carry their weight. Coconut milk, ginger, garlic, green onions, cilantro, lime, fish sauce, rice, vegetables, and chicken show up more than once, but not in a way that makes the week feel like one long leftover pretending to be dinner.

We’re starting with coconut milk braised mahi mahi over white rice with stir-fried vegetables. The fish gets a quick sear, then finishes in a silky coconut gravy with ginger, garlic, scallions, fish sauce, lime, and cilantro. It is comforting, a little tropical, and exactly the kind of dinner that feels special without asking you to make a whole production out of it.

Then we’re making a tom kha-inspired coconut chicken soup: creamy, gingery, limey, and soothing in the way only a coconut broth can be. It has the spirit of tom kha gai without requiring a special grocery run, and you’ll pull out some of the cooked chicken before serving so Friday’s dinner is already halfway handled.

Finally, we’re turning leftover rice, leftover stir-fried vegetables, and that reserved chicken into ginger chicken fried rice. It’s fast, flexible, and topped with more green onions, cilantro, and lime so it still feels fresh instead of like you’re eating your fridge’s group project.

Every dinner this week is under 45 minutes, with one landing closer to 30.

Because Mother’s Day week is not the time for a dinner project. It’s the time for food that tastes like you had a plan, even if the plan was mostly “please do not make me think too hard.”

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Here’s What We’re Cooking

***Grocery List***

You can grab the full list here.

Weekly Prep: Make Extra of The Little Things

This week isn’t about doing the most. It’s about making dinner feel easier, especially during a week when Mom should not be expected to produce magic from a fridge full of vibes.

Cook extra rice on the mahi mahi night. Make more stir-fried vegetables than you need. And when you make the coconut chicken soup, set aside some of that cooked chicken before everyone gets to it.

That’s the prep that carries the week.

By the time you get to the fried rice, you’re not starting from zero. You already have the rice, the vegetables, and the chicken ready to go. All you need is a hot pan, ginger, garlic, green onions, and maybe a couple of eggs if you want to bulk it up.

You’re not cooking three totally separate dinners. You’re letting the first two help you finish the third.

Coconut Milk Braised Mahi Mahi with White Rice & Stir-Fried Vegetables

This is the kind of dinner that feels calm, bright, and a little bit vacation-y without requiring you to pack a bag or develop a new personality. The fish gets a quick sear, then finishes gently in a coconut milk gravy with ginger, garlic, scallions, fish sauce, lime, and herbs. Serve it over rice with stir-fried vegetables and let the sauce do what sauce was born to do.

Active time: 20 minutes  Cook time: 20 minutes  Total time: 40 minutes
Serves: 4

Ingredients
For the fish
4 mahi mahi fillets, about 5 to 6 ounces each
1 medium yellow onion, thinly sliced
1 bunch green onions, white and green parts separated
1 lime, cut into wedges
1 small bunch cilantro, roughly chopped
1 13.5-ounce can full-fat coconut milk
2 tablespoons neutral oil
2 tablespoons fish sauce
3 garlic cloves, finely chopped
1 tablespoon fresh ginger, thinly sliced
1 teaspoon kosher salt, divided
½ teaspoon black pepper

For the rice and vegetables
3 cups cooked white rice
4 cups stir-fry vegetables, such as green beans, snap peas, broccoli, bell peppers, cabbage, or a frozen stir-fry blend
1 tablespoon neutral oil
A good sprinkle kosher salt
Black pepper
Juice of ½ lime, optional

Instructions

1. Pat the mahi mahi dry and season both sides with about ½ teaspoon kosher salt and the black pepper.

2. Heat neutral oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat.

3. Add the fish and sear for about 2 minutes per side, until lightly golden. It does not need to be cooked through yet.

4. Transfer the fish to a plate.

5. Lower the heat to medium. Add the onion and ginger to the same skillet and cook for 3 to 4 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the onion starts to soften.

6. Add the garlic and the white parts of the green onions, sliced into ½-inch pieces. Cook for about 1 minute, just until fragrant.

7. Pour in the coconut milk and stir, scraping up any browned bits from the bottom of the pan.

8. Add the fish sauce and bring the sauce to a gentle simmer.

9. Return the fish to the skillet and nestle it into the coconut gravy. Spoon some sauce over the top.

10. Cook gently for 8 to 10 minutes, depending on the thickness of the fillets, until the fish flakes easily and is cooked through.

11. While the fish cooks, heat 1 tablespoon neutral oil in another skillet over medium-high heat.

12. Add the vegetables and stir-fry until crisp-tender. Season with salt, black pepper, and lime juice if using.

13. Finish the fish with chopped cilantro, the green parts of the green onions, and a generous squeeze of lime juice.

14. Serve the fish over white rice with plenty of coconut gravy spooned over the top and stir-fried vegetables on the side.

Make it easier: Use frozen stir-fry vegetables and microwave rice if that is the difference between making dinner and staring into the fridge like it owes you an apology.

Leftover remix: Save the extra rice and stir-fried vegetables for ginger chicken fried rice later in the week. Cold rice is exactly what you want here, so technically this is not leftovers. This is strategy.

Tom Kha-Inspired Coconut Chicken Soup

This is a weeknight, pantry-friendly take on tom kha gai: creamy coconut broth, tender chicken, ginger, garlic, fish sauce, lime, herbs, and just enough vegetables to make it feel like dinner. It’s soothing and bright without requiring a special grocery run or a personality built around sourcing makrut lime leaves.

Active time: 15 minutes  Cook time: 20 minutes  Total time: 35 minutes
Serves: 4

Ingredients
For the soup
1½ pounds boneless, skinless chicken thighs or chicken breasts, thinly sliced
1 medium yellow onion, thinly sliced
1 lime, plus more for serving
1 bunch green onions, white and green parts separated
1 small bunch cilantro, roughly chopped
4 cups chicken broth
1 13.5-ounce can full-fat coconut milk
2 cups sliced mushrooms, optional
2 cups baby spinach, napa cabbage, or leftover stir-fried vegetables
2 tablespoons fish sauce, plus more to taste
3 garlic cloves, finely chopped
1 tablespoon fresh ginger, thinly sliced or finely chopped
1 teaspoon sugar, honey, or maple syrup, optional
½ teaspoon kosher salt, plus more to taste

Optional, but lovely
1 stalk lemongrass, smashed and cut into 3-inch pieces
1 to 2 teaspoons chili crisp, sambal, or Thai chili paste
Cooked white rice or rice noodles, for serving

Instructions

1. In a medium pot or Dutch oven, combine chicken broth, coconut milk, onion, ginger, garlic, the white parts of the green onions, fish sauce, salt, and lemongrass if using.

2. Bring to a simmer over medium heat.

3. Add the chicken and mushrooms, if using.

4. Simmer gently for 10 to 12 minutes, until the chicken is cooked through and tender.

5. Use tongs or a slotted spoon to remove about 2 cups of cooked chicken and transfer it to a container for the fried rice later in the week.

6. Add spinach, napa cabbage, or leftover stir-fried vegetables to the soup.

7. Cook for another 2 to 3 minutes, just until the greens are wilted or the vegetables are warmed through.

8. Stir in the juice of 1 lime.

9. Taste and adjust with more fish sauce, salt, lime juice, or a tiny bit of sugar if the broth needs rounding out.

10. Remove the lemongrass, if using.

11. Ladle into bowls and top with the green parts of the green onions, chopped cilantro, and chili crisp or sambal if you want heat.

12. Serve as-is, over cooked white rice, or with rice noodles.

Make it easier: Use rotisserie chicken and add it near the end with the vegetables. If you do that, this becomes a 20-minute soup, which is the kind of math we support around here.

Leftover remix: Save about 2 cups of chicken for ginger fried rice later in the week. If you have extra soup, add rice noodles the next day and call it lunch with your whole chest.

Ginger Chicken Fried Rice with Leftover Vegetables

This is the dinner that makes the rest of the week make sense. Cold rice, leftover stir-fried vegetables, reserved chicken, ginger, garlic, green onions, cilantro, and optional eggs come together fast in a hot skillet. It’s clean-out-the-fridge food that still feels like you had a plan.

Active time: 10 minutes  Cook time: 15 minutes  Total time: 25 minutes
Serves: 4

Ingredients
For the fried rice
2 cups cooked chicken, shredded or chopped
4 cups cooked white rice, preferably cold
2 cups leftover stir-fried vegetables
1 bunch green onions, white and green parts separated
1 lime, cut into wedges
1 small bunch cilantro, roughly chopped
3 tablespoons neutral oil, divided
2 tablespoons soy sauce
1 tablespoon fish sauce
3 garlic cloves, finely chopped
1 tablespoon fresh ginger, finely chopped or grated
1 teaspoon toasted sesame oil, optional
½ teaspoon kosher salt, plus more to taste
½ teaspoon black pepper

Optional for more protein
2 to 4 large eggs

Instructions

1. Heat 1 tablespoon neutral oil in a large skillet or wok over medium-high heat.

2. If using eggs, beat them in a small bowl, add them to the skillet, and scramble until just set.

3. Transfer the eggs to a plate.

4. Add another tablespoon of oil to the skillet.

5. Add the white parts of the green onions, garlic, and ginger.

6. Cook for 30 seconds to 1 minute, stirring constantly, until fragrant.

7. Add the chicken and leftover vegetables.

8. Cook for 2 to 3 minutes, until warmed through.

9. Add the remaining tablespoon of oil, then add the rice.

10. Break the rice up with a spoon or spatula and let it sit for 1 to 2 minutes so it can crisp in spots.

11. Add the soy sauce, fish sauce, and sesame oil if using.

12. Stir everything together until the rice is hot, glossy, and evenly seasoned.

13. Fold the eggs back in, if using.

14. Taste and adjust with more soy sauce, fish sauce, salt, black pepper, or lime juice as needed.

15. Finish with the green parts of the green onions, chopped cilantro, and lime wedges on the side.

Make it easier: Make extra rice on the mahi mahi night and spread it into a shallow container before refrigerating. Cold, slightly dried-out rice fries beautifully. Fresh rice turns into sadness with steam.

Leftover remix: Top leftovers with a fried egg and chili crisp (if you have any leftover homemade chili crisp use it!), or tuck the fried rice into lettuce cups with extra herbs and lime for a very chaotic but deeply useful lunch.

Pro Tip of the Week: Let Them Feed You, Too

This is Mother’s Day week, which means someone in your house should be helping you cook.

Not because dinner needs to become a precious family activity where everyone is smiling and flour is floating through the air like a Nancy Meyers movie. Please. We live in reality. Someone will complain. Someone will spill something. Someone will suddenly need to tell you a 14-minute story about a bug.

But feeding a family should not only be something your family receives from you.

This week’s menu is a good one for letting people step in. Your spouse can cook the rice, slice the onions, wash the herbs, or handle the stir-fried vegetables while you make the fish. Your kids can tear cilantro, squeeze limes, scatter green onions, stir the soup, or crack eggs for the fried rice. Older kids can help chop vegetables or scramble the eggs. Little kids can dump things into bowls and feel wildly important, which honestly is half the point.

And yes, it may be slower. It may be messier. It may require you to resist the urge to snatch the spoon back like a woman fighting for her life.

But it matters.

Because when your kids see dinner being made, they learn that food doesn’t just appear. When your spouse helps, they are not “helping you.” They are participating in the care of the home they also live in. Revolutionary. Alert the press.

So this week, pick one place to hand something off. The rice. The vegetables. The herbs. The lime wedges. The eggs for the fried rice.

You don’t have to turn dinner into a production.

You just have to stop being the only person on stage.

Happy Mother’s Day my loves. I hope you feel rested, appreciated and supported. Thank you so much for being a part of my village ❤️

Until next week.

Love,
Ryan

Not in a romantic, “look at me making magic out of nothing” kind of way, but in a very real, I’m not going back to the store and we’re still eating something good tonight kind of way.

And if I’m being honest, I don’t think I learned that in culinary school. Culinary school taught me technique. It taught me how to build flavor, how to season properly, how to make almost anything taste good.

But scrappy came way earlier than that.

If you’re tired of figuring out dinner over and over again, I’ve got you. I map out the week, give you the grocery list, and show you how to use what you bought in more than one way so it actually goes somewhere.

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Scrappy came from being a Black woman in America.

When I was a kid, my great-grandmother had a house in Compton we all lovingly called The Ranch. It wasn’t fancy—three bedrooms, two bathrooms, a butter yellow kitchen that always felt warm—but it sat on a few acres of land, back when that stretch of Los Angeles was still agricultural.

My great-grandparents bought it either just before or just after World War II, and by the time I came along, it had already become this place where everything seemed to gather.

People, mostly.

Every week it felt like our entire family was there. I’m talking 60, 70 people deep at any given time—barbecues, fish fries, random drop-ins that somehow turned into full plates.

But what I remember just as clearly is the food.

That house was always full of it. Canned goods stacked high, pickled okra, jars of jam, succotash, things that had been put up and saved and stretched.

And somehow, no matter how many people showed up, there was always enough.

Not barely enough.

Enough enough.

My mom’s house is the same way.

Her pantry is honestly ridiculous, and I mean that with love. Seasonings, marinades, potatoes, pasta, snacks tucked into every available corner, three freezers that stay full.

We’ve joked for years that in the event of a zombie apocalypse we’re all going to her house because she could feed us for a solid year without leaving.

I used to tease her about it, call her a hoarder, like why do you need this much stuff?

And now, standing in the grocery store looking at prices, I’m like…wait.

Was she just ahead of her time?

Because you turn on the news and there’s another war.

You go to the store and the same gallon of milk that was $3 is suddenly pushing $5. Beef is up. Juice is up. Chicken is creeping.

And it’s not random.

Prices have been climbing for years—supply chain issues, the war in Ukraine, companies raising prices because they can—and now with everything happening in Iran, even things like oil and transportation are getting more expensive, which touches everything from how food is grown to how it gets to the shelf.

So even if you’re not following it closely, you feel it.

Right there at checkout.

And what’s been sitting with me is that the women I come from didn’t wait for things to get expensive to start cooking this way.

They just always did.

They stocked what they could when they could. They preserved what wouldn’t last. They cooked in a way that assumed people might show up.

They knew how to stretch, how to repurpose, how to make something feel like a real meal even when it started as what do we have.

Somewhere along the way, a lot of us moved away from that.

We started cooking one recipe at a time, shopping one meal at a time, relying on the store always being there, always being stocked, always being affordable.

And now that system feels a little shaky.

So for me, this isn’t about panic buying or turning your house into a bunker.

It’s about returning to something that actually works.

Keeping a pantry that can hold you—not perfectly or aesthetically, just reliably—has made the biggest difference for me.

I’m talking about the basics that show up again and again: canned beans, rice (a lot of rice), pasta, canned tomatoes, frozen vegetables, oils, vinegars, spices—things that don’t ask much of you but give a lot back when you need them to.

It’s also changed how I shop.

I pay more attention to where my money is actually going and let the cheaper stores do the heavy lifting, places like Lidl, which is essentially a no-frills discount grocery store, or international markets like Buford Highway Farmers Market and H Mart, where things like rice, herbs, and meat are often significantly less expensive if you know what you’re looking for.

Then I layer in the rest where I need it—my regular grocery store, Trader Joe’s, the farmer’s market when I want something a little nicer.

It’s not a strict system, just a way of shopping and stocking my kitchen that makes my life feel a little less fragile at 5pm.

If you want a much more in-depth look at what’s happening with grocery prices and how to think about preparing for it, my friend wrote a really thoughtful piece on it. It’s the kind of thing you read and then quietly start looking at your kitchen a little differently.

But for me, the more immediate question is always the same.

What do I have, and how do I make it feel like enough?

And I think that’s really what I’m trying to do here with this newsletter.

Not just give you recipes, but show you how to cook in a way that stretches. A few ingredients, used different ways across the week so you’re not buying something once and watching it go bad in the back of your fridge. So your palate stays interested, but your grocery bill doesn’t keep climbing with it.

Because the goal isn’t just to make dinner.

It’s to make what you already bought feel like enough.

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What’s for dinner this week

You’ll start with a chili crisp meatloaf that feels a little more put-together than your average Tuesday dinner. It’s deeply savory, layered with garlic and just enough heat, and it comes with a proper gravy and something green on the side so the whole thing doesn’t tip into heavy.

It’s the kind of meal that makes you feel like you cooked—even if you were answering emails and breaking up fights while it was in the oven.

From there, we stop overthinking it.

One night it’s buttery garlic noodles with crispy mushrooms—glossy, deeply savory, and exactly what you want when you’re tired but still want something good.

Another night, those extra noodles turn into a brown butter shrimp lo mein with whatever’s left in the fridge. Fast, flexible, and somehow still feels intentional.

And running quietly in the background of all of it is a garlicky chili crisp you make once and use all week—not in an aggressive way, just enough to make everything taste finished.

Big flavor, low lift, and built for the kind of week where your brain is already booked and dinner needs to meet you where you are.

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A few months ago, on my birthday, I had lunch with two of my good friends.

They’re both, objectively, stunning. The kind of women who don’t just enter a room, they shift it. I’ve been the lucky one sitting at a table waiting for them, watching heads turn before they’ve even taken off their coats. They’re in their late thirties and early forties, deeply themselves, with full lives that they’ve built with intention.

They’re also both single. Never married.

We spent the first part of lunch the way ladies do…talking over each other, debating what to order, deciding whether we were in a martini mood (I was) or something lighter. It was easy, familiar, the kind of conversation that exists when no one is trying to impress anyone else.

Eventually, as it often does, the conversation turned to dating.

And…it was not good.

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What they described wasn’t just disappointing, it felt…bleak af. Not just bad dates or the usual mismatched expectations, but this creeping realization that the kind of partnership they want might not exist the way they thought it would. That the life they always pictured—marriage, a real partner, maybe kids—was starting to feel less inevitable and more like a big question mark.

It wasn’t even that they wanted a relationship—it was how clear they were about wanting a partner. A husband. A marriage. Not perfection. Just someone who meets them where they are, adds to their life, and can build something real with them. And yes…someone they actually want to sleep with.

I caught myself saying the thing I tend to say in these types of moments, that a lot of what they’re describing already exists in their friendships. The closeness, the support, the way they show up for each other…it’s already there.

But, now looking back, I think I was a bit dismissive.

Not because what I said was untrue, but because it missed the point. There’s a big difference between having a full life and being told you shouldn’t want more. And those things don’t cancel each other out.

And there was also, if I’m honest, a positional gap that neither of us could ignore.

I was sitting across from them as a married woman with two children. It is very easy, from that vantage point, to say that marriage is not what it is made out to be. To downplay it. To gesture vaguely at its challenges.

But the truth is, I would not choose to be single again.

And I think that’s where the tension lives.

Because I do believe that many married women, myself included, participate in a kind of double-speak. We romanticize marriage when we are outside of it, and then we minimize it when speaking to those who are not. We say it is everything, and then we say it is nothing. We present it as both the goal and an illusion.

It can’t be both.

So what is it, actually?

Marriage, as I have experienced it, is not an answer. It’s long-form exposure therapy.

It does not resolve the questions you have about yourself; it brings them into sharper focus. It does not complete you; it places you in close, sustained proximity to another person in a way that makes it difficult to avoid yourself.

There is a particular kind of intimacy in being known over time that is both comforting and confronting. The longer you are with someone, the less you are able to curate which parts of yourself are visible. The impatience you thought you had under control. The defensiveness. The need to be right. The quiet ways you keep score. The moments when you withdraw instead of engage.

Marriage does not create these things, but it does illuminate them.

And then, without any coddling, it asks you to decide what to do with that information.

It demands you take responsibility not only for your own behavior, but for the impact it has on someone you have chosen to build a life with. It asks for a level of consistency, of self-awareness, of repair that is ongoing and, often, exhausting.

It is meaningful work. It is also unavoidable work.

None of this negates the fact that marriage can be deeply stabilizing and joyful. There is a particular kind of comfort in having a partner in your daily life, in sharing the logistics and the weight of it. There is intimacy, humor, history, a sense of being “in it” with another person.

But I don’t think we serve anyone—least of all the women we love—by pretending that marriage is some sort of solution to the fundamental experience of being human.

It is not a cure for loneliness. It does not guarantee safety. It does not prevent disappointment. If anything, it raises the stakes of all of those things.

So when I think back to that lunch, to my friends sitting across from me and speaking honestly about what they want, I don’t see absence. I see clarity.

And I find myself wondering what it would look like if we, as married women, were more precise in how we talk about this.

If we could say: yes, marriage can be beautiful, and yes, it can add something meaningful to your life.

And also: your life, as it exists now, is not a placeholder.

It is not a prelude to something more legitimate.

It is not waiting to begin.

At the same time, wanting to be married is not a failure of imagination or independence. It is a desire for connection, for collaboration, for being witnessed in a particular way.

Both of these truths can exist without diminishing each other.

And perhaps the work, for all of us, regardless of relationship status, is to build lives that feel supportive and expansive as they are, rather than contingent on who may or may not enter them.

That idea, more than anything, is what sits underneath what I share in The Motherload.

On the surface, it is a dinner plan. A way to remove one decision from the end of your day.

But at its core, it is about something else entirely: reducing the friction of daily life so that you have more capacity for the parts of living that actually matter to you.

Whether that life includes a partner, children, both, or neither.

Ease should not be something you access only once your life looks a certain way. It should be something you can build, deliberately, right now.

👉🏽 If having dinner handled would make your life feel even 10% easier, you can join The Motherload here. From now until April 15th, all of my annual subscriptions are on sale.

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What’s for dinner this week

You’ll start with a citrusy, garlicky pork shoulder that marinates while you ignore it, then cooks low and slow until it’s fall-apart tender. You crisp it up at the end (non-negotiable), and suddenly you have a dish that slips into your regular rotation without asking permission.

Not to be cocky, but…this is a good fucking recipe.

One you make when people are coming over, and you want to impress. Also, the one you make on a random Tuesday when you just want to eat something that’s actually fucking good.

From there, we stop thinking.

One night it’s a crunchy, limey cabbage salad that feels fresh and alive. Another night, it’s crispy quesadillas with melty cheese and pickled jalapeños, ready in 15 minutes flat.

Big flavor, low lift, and built for the kind of week where your brain is already booked, and dinner needs to figure itself out.

👉🏽 Want dinner already figured out every Friday?
Join The Motherload for $6/month or $55/year (for now) and get the full weekly dinner plan, grocery list, and recipes—so when 5 p.m. hits, you already know what’s for dinner.

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Read more

I accidentally went viral last week.

Not for a recipe. Not for a dinner tip. Not even for one of my usual “this is how I’m surviving motherhood” moments.

For saying this: Back when I was dating, I could have never imagined life could feel this good. Marry the nerd.

That was it. That was the whole thing.

And somehow, that was enough to send a very specific group of men into what can only be described as a full emotional tailspin. Over the past week I’ve been called a whore, a gold digger, a woman who “settled,” and my personal favorite, someone whose husband is either an unsuspecting dupe or a cuck, which is especially funny considering I am married to a pediatrician and not a hedge fund manager, so if this is a long con it is deeply underwhelming financially.

This man is out here checking ears and writing prescriptions, not secretly funding some shadow life I forgot to mention.

None of that is really about me, though. It’s about what I represent to them.

A woman who had a full life before her husband.
A woman who made her own choices.
A woman who is now openly, unapologetically happy in the life she built.

That combination seems to short-circuit something in a certain type of man, because it doesn’t fit into the narrative they’ve been taught, which is that a woman’s value is something fragile and finite, something that can be used up, diminished, or disqualified based on her past.

What unsettles them isn’t what I said, it’s what my life contradicts.

What caught me off guard wasn’t even the comments themselves, because if you’ve been on the internet for more than five minutes you already know how this goes, but how quickly my mind went to my daughters. It felt immediate and very clear that they are growing up in a world where this thinking still exists, where it’s loud, where it’s repeated often enough to sound like truth if you’re not paying attention, and where it will, at some point, be directed at them or around them in ways they’ll have to make sense of.

And really, this isn’t just about a handful of men in my comments.

Misogyny and slut shaming aren’t just things you run into online. They’re part of the backdrop a lot of us grew up in.

They show up in culture, in religion, in media, and often in the quiet things we were taught—sometimes by women who loved us and thought they were protecting us.

That realization shifted something for me. Not in a dramatic, overnight way, but in a quiet, steady way that made me think more intentionally about what I am and am not passing down to them.

I know there are women who value waiting, who made that choice intentionally, and I respect that.

What I’m not doing is tying my daughters’ worth to whether they did or didn’t.

I’m not raising my daughters to believe their worth lives in their “virginity,” or that they can somehow “lose” something that was never meant to be a commodity in the first place.

That language alone tells you everything.

That something can be taken.
That something can be lost.
That something once gone makes you less.

Fuck that.

I’m also not raising them to internalize words like “whore” as anything other than tools that have historically been used to control, shame, and shrink women into something more manageable.

I’m not interested in teaching them that their bodies are a reputation management strategy, or that their value is something that can be negotiated, debated, or revoked based on who they’ve been or what they’ve done.

That framing has always required women to contort themselves into something acceptable.

I have no desire to pass that down as wisdom.

What I want for them instead is a sense of ownership over their own lives that feels grounded and internal, not something that can be granted or taken away by someone else’s opinion.

I want them to understand that they are not here to be chosen.

They are here to choose.

And there is a very real difference between those two things.

Choice, to me, isn’t doing whatever you want without thinking. It’s knowing yourself well enough to understand what you’re ready for, what aligns with your values, and what you’ll feel at peace with the next day.

The questions I want them asking are not “am I good enough for him” but “is he kind, is he steady, does he make my life feel better or more complicated, does he respect me even when I am not performing at my best?”

Those are the questions that actually determine the quality of your life.

I’m still unlearning parts of this myself, if I’m being honest. It’s quieter now, but it’s there.

In the way certain ideas surface before I can even question them. In the way I catch myself translating worth into something external before pulling it back.

The anger I saw wasn’t really about morality or values or even relationships. It was about control.

It was about the discomfort of seeing a woman who lived a full life before her partner and still built something soft, stable, and joyful.

That breaks something for people who have been told that women only get that outcome if they play by a very specific set of rules.

And instead of questioning the rules, it’s easier to question the woman.

What I hope my daughters see, eventually, is that happiness is not something you earn by being untouched or agreeable enough or by proving your worth to the right person.

It’s something you build.

Slowly. Imperfectly. Intentionally.

Through the choices you make, the boundaries you hold, and the people you allow into your life.

It requires you to trust yourself more than you trust the noise around you.

And if one day they sit in their own backyard, in a life that feels good to them, and say something simple and true about it without feeling like they have to defend it to anyone, I’ll know I did something right.

Anyway, dinner still has to happen, even if the internet is having a collective meltdown.

This week’s plan is built for the nights when you don’t feel like thinking, deciding, or negotiating with anyone about what’s for dinner, because that question will come whether you’re in the mood for it or not.

Three meals. Smart leftovers. Minimal thinking required.

If having dinner already figured out every week feels like the kind of support you didn’t realize you needed until right now, you can join The Motherload. I send it every Friday so when 5 p.m. hits, you’re not standing in the kitchen wondering what to make, you already know.

What’s for dinner this week

This is one of those weeks where you make one really good thing…and it keeps showing up for you in different ways.

You’ll start with a big, lemony, herby bean salad—something you can scoop straight from the fridge, pile onto warm couscous, or bulk up with whatever protein you have on hand—and suddenly dinner feels a lot less like a daily emergency and more like something you already handled.

From there, everything builds. Lamb meatballs that are deeply savory but still feel light with that garlicky yogurt. Salmon that roasts in minutes but tastes like you actually planned ahead. A warm couscous situation that somehow turns leftovers into a full meal without much effort.

It’s low-lift, high-reward, and designed to meet you where you are this week.

👉🏽 Want dinner already figured out every Friday?
Join The Motherload for $6/month or $65/year and get the full weekly dinner plan, grocery list, and recipes — so when 5 p.m. hits, you already know what’s for dinner.

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My husband is a pediatrician.

Which sounds like a dream, right? A built-in kid doctor. A man who can diagnose a cough from across the room and casually prescribe amoxicillin between bites of dinner. And to be fair, yes, it is helpful.

Here’s the thing…

Living with a pediatrician also means living with a steady drip of what the experts are saying now—what we should be doing, what we shouldn’t be doing, what causes harm, what builds resilience, what damages attachment, what fosters emotional intelligence. It’s like having a walking, talking parenting podcast in your kitchen at 7:42 p.m. while you’re scraping dried yogurt off the counter.

The other night, we were sitting in the living room, doing that end-of-day debrief, and he started telling me about the latest guidance on how to respond when your child isn’t listening…you know, when they’re just being a kid.

As he talked, I had this very specific, very humbling realization: I had done the exact opposite of everything he was saying earlier that same day.

Stevie is two right now, which means she is equal parts delightful and completely unhinged. She’s not listening, she’s testing every boundary like it’s her full-time job, and she has recently discovered that hitting and biting her sister gets a reaction, which, unfortunately, is all the incentive she needs. That afternoon, after what felt like the fiftieth calm redirection, I snapped and told her that if she hit her sister again, I was going to tell her sister to hit her back.

She went quiet immediately, and so did Nola.

Nola looked at me and asked, very seriously, “I can hit her back if she hits me?”

And I said, “If someone puts their hands on you in a way you don’t like, you’re allowed to protect yourself.”

Was that a perfectly regulated, expert-approved response? No. Not even a little bit.

Later that same day, they were fighting over a toy, both escalating, both refusing to share, and I told them that if they couldn’t figure it out, I was throwing it away. Again, not my finest moment, but also not exactly a rare one.

So I stopped him mid-explanation and asked, “Do you ever think all this pressure to respond perfectly is actually harming parents?”

He looked at me like that hadn’t occurred to him, which honestly felt a little wild given that I am standing right here as a case study.

Once I said it out loud, I couldn’t unsee it.

We are living in a time where there is more parenting information available than ever before. There are scripts for everything, frameworks for everything, entire philosophies built around how to respond to every possible emotional scenario your child might present. Somehow, instead of feeling more supported, a lot of us just feel more aware of every moment we didn’t handle something “right.”

All of this information is being handed to us, but nothing else is being taken off our plate.

Groceries cost what rent used to cost. The house still needs to be run. The kids still need to be fed, bathed, loved, and somehow taught how to be decent human beings. Most of us are working in some capacity, whether that’s inside the home, outside the home, or both, and we are expected to do all of it while staying calm, regulated, emotionally attuned, and developmentally appropriate at all times.

The advice itself isn’t the problem. Most of it is thoughtful, well-intentioned, and rooted in real research.

The problem is the expectation that we can execute it perfectly, in real time, every single day.

And I don’t think we talk enough about how heavily that lands on mothers.

A lot of this guidance quietly carries a second message: if you don’t do this, you are actively screwing up your kid. That’s an insane fear to carry when you are already carrying everything else.

So I asked him, “Do you ever think we should be centering the mental health of mothers as much as we’re centering the outcomes for kids?”

He paused, then asked if I ever feel like he’s judging me when he comes home with all this information.

And the honest answer was yes. Not always, not intentionally, but sometimes, yes.

When you’re the one in it all day, making a thousand tiny decisions, managing big emotions in small bodies, trying to keep everyone fed and relatively clean and mostly okay, the last thing you need is the sense that there is a “right” way to do all of this and you are somehow missing it.

There is a difference between having tools and being buried under expectations.

The tools are helpful. I want them. I use them. I care deeply about my kids and how they experience the world.

But the expectation that we can apply every single one of those tools flawlessly, while also being human beings with limits and stress and moments where we just don’t have anything left to give, is where this whole thing starts to break down.

Kids are not raised in perfect responses.

They are raised in patterns. In rhythms. In homes where, yes, sometimes their mom says something she wouldn’t put on a parenting Instagram account, but she also comes back, repairs, and keeps showing up.

They are raised by someone who is allowed to be human.

The occasional imperfect moment is not what shapes them the most. It’s the consistency of being loved, the safety of knowing that even when things get messy, they are still held.

If the cost of raising perfectly adjusted children is completely unraveling the women raising them, that doesn’t feel like a system that’s actually working.

So maybe the goal isn’t to never mess them up.

Maybe the goal is to raise them in a home where mistakes happen, where repair is normal, and where their mother is not performing perfection but living, breathing, trying.

That feels a lot more sustainable.

And honestly, it feels a lot more human.

In that same vein, I want to say something about this space, too.

The last thing I want is for this newsletter to become just another place where you feel like you’re falling short. Another thing you’re not doing “right.” Another reminder that you meant to cook all week and instead ordered takeout every single night and now you’re side-eyeing yourself about it.

I’m not interested in being that voice in your life.

Dinner is not a moral achievement. Cooking five nights in a row does not make you a better mother. Ordering takeout because you were tired, overwhelmed, or just didn’t have it in you that day is not a failure, it’s a decision.

If you’re new here, this is what I do every week inside The Motherload—I take dinner off your plate so you don’t have to carry it alone.

So this week, we’re doing things a little differently.

All the recipes are free. No paywall, no friction. Just three unfussy, all-time favorites that I come back to again and again, meals that work and don’t ask too much of you.

Consider it my way of taking one thing off your plate, even if it’s just for a week.

If this feels like a relief, that’s kind of the point. The paid version gives you this every single Friday—a full dinner plan, grocery list, and recipes that actually work in real life.

And if you’ve been reading along but haven’t jumped into the paid version yet, I’m running a discount this weekend for you and a mom friend. If there’s anything I believe in more than a solid dinner plan, it’s not doing this whole thing alone.

Text this to a friend and do it together—you’ll both save and neither of you has to figure out dinner alone.

This Week’s Plan: Cook Once, Let It Carry You

This week is built a little differently.

We’re not chasing a cuisine or a theme. We’re just trying to make dinner make sense.

A little extra chicken turns into another meal. The same herbs show up more than once. A few quiet ingredients — fish sauce, lemon, Dijon — do the heavy lifting so nothing tastes flat.

Nothing here is complicated. Nothing requires a special trip. And if you only cook one of these and order takeout the rest of the week, you still did this week right.

👉🏽 Want dinner already figured out every Friday?
Join The Motherload for $6/month or $65/year and get the full weekly dinner plan, grocery list, and recipes — so when 5 p.m. hits, you already know what’s for dinner.

Subscribe now

Here’s What We’re Cooking

***Grocery List***

You can grab the full list here.

Sticky Coconut Pork Banh Mi Bowls with Herbs & Quick Pan Sauce

This is the bright, punchy one. The one that makes you feel like you have your life together at 6:12pm.

Use the herbs generously, and don’t put them away when you’re done. You’ll see them again.

Active time: 20 minutes  Cook time: 15 minutes  Total time: 35 minutes (plus marinating)
Serves: 4

Ingredients
For the pork and marinade
1½ pounds pork shoulder or tenderloin, thinly sliced
4 garlic cloves, minced
Zest and juice of 2 limes
¼ cup brown sugar
¼ cup fish sauce
2 to 4 small red chilis, thinly sliced (optional), divided
2 tablespoons lemongrass paste (or equal parts lemon zest + grated fresh ginger), divided
Freshly ground black pepper

For the bowls
4 cups cooked coconut rice
1 cup coleslaw mix
1 small bunch fresh cilantro, leaves picked
1 small bunch fresh basil, leaves picked
1 small bunch fresh mint, leaves picked
Fried shallots, for serving (optional)

Instructions

1. In a bowl, whisk together garlic, lime zest and juice, brown sugar, fish sauce, half the chilis, and half the lemongrass.

2. Transfer half to a small saucepan and set aside. Add pork to the remaining marinade and toss to coat. Let sit at least 30 minutes or up to 8 hours.

3. Heat a large skillet over medium-high heat. Cook pork in batches until browned and caramelized, about 3 to 4 minutes per side.

4. Bring the reserved marinade to a boil and simmer 1 to 2 minutes until slightly thickened.

5. Divide rice into bowls. Top with pork, coleslaw, and a heavy handful of herbs. Spoon over sauce and finish with fried shallots and remaining chilis.

Make it easier: Use microwave jasmine rice and stir in a splash of coconut milk and a pinch of salt.

Roast Lemon Chicken with Couscous & Parmesan Arugula

This is the anchor meal. Classic, reliable, and exactly what you want when you don’t feel like thinking.

If you have the capacity, roast an extra thigh or two. You’ll use it later this week and feel like a genius for about five minutes.

Active time: 15 minutes  Cook time: 40 minutes  Total time: 45 minutes
Serves: 4

Ingredients
For the chicken
4 bone-in, skin-on chicken thighs
Zest and juice of 1 lemon
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 garlic clove, grated
Kosher salt and black pepper

For the couscous and greens
1½ cups pearled couscous
3 cups chicken stock
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 big handfuls arugula
¼ cup grated Parmesan
Kosher salt and black pepper

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 425°F.

2. Rub chicken with lemon zest, garlic, salt, pepper, and olive oil. Roast skin-side up for 25 to 30 minutes until golden and crisp.

3. Toast couscous in a drizzle of olive oil for 1 to 2 minutes. Add stock, bring to a boil, then cover and simmer until tender, about 10 minutes.

4. Toss arugula with olive oil, lemon juice, Parmesan, salt, and pepper. If you still have herbs from earlier in the week, chop them and throw them in here too.

5. Serve chicken over couscous with the greens piled on top.

Make it easier: Use rotisserie chicken and pre-cooked couscous or orzo.

Creamy Broccoli Cheddar Bake (Tuna or Chicken, Your Call)

I know. A casserole.

But this is the kind of dinner that shows up when you’re tired and still manages to deliver. Creamy, cheesy, a little sharp from Dijon and lemon — it’s doing a lot without asking much from you.

If you made extra chicken earlier in the week, this is where it shows up.

Active time: 20 minutes  Cook time: 25 minutes  Total time: 45 minutes
Serves: 4

Ingredients
2 cups elbow macaroni
1 head broccoli, cut into small florets
2 cups shredded cooked chicken or 2 (5-ounce) cans tuna, drained
2 cups whole milk
1½ cups shredded sharp cheddar cheese
½ cup shredded Gruyère or fontina
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons Dijon mustard
1 teaspoon chicken bouillon powder
½ teaspoon garlic powder
½ teaspoon onion powder
½ teaspoon lemon zest
½ teaspoon hot sauce (optional)
Kosher salt and black pepper

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 375°F. Grease a baking dish.

2. Cook pasta in salted water until 2 minutes shy of done. Add broccoli in the last 2 minutes, then drain.

3. In the same pot, melt butter over medium heat. Whisk in flour and cook 1 to 2 minutes. Slowly whisk in milk and cook until thickened.

4. Stir in Dijon, bouillon, garlic powder, onion powder, lemon zest, and hot sauce. Season with salt and pepper. Remove from heat and stir in cheeses until melted.

5. Fold in pasta, broccoli, and tuna or leftover chicken. Add a splash of milk if needed to loosen.

6. Transfer to a baking dish and bake 20 to 25 minutes until bubbly and golden.

7. If you have leftover herbs, scatter them over the top before serving to wake everything up.

Make it easier: Use frozen broccoli and rotisserie chicken or good-quality tuna in olive oil.

Pro Tip: Flavor That Carries

This week isn’t about big, flashy techniques. It’s about small things that make everything taste better.

Fish sauce. Lemon. Dijon. A little bouillon.

These are the ingredients that quietly do the work so your food doesn’t taste flat — even when you’re moving fast and not measuring perfectly.

If you want this already figured out for you every week—the plan, the grocery list, the “what am I making tonight” part—that’s exactly what The Motherload does.

Subscribe now

Love,
Ryan

What if you do like one of your kids more?

I had that thought recently, and it stopped me in my tracks. Not because I believed it was true—but because I was scared it might be.

It slipped out on a phone call with my best friend Dani.

“I’m afraid I might like Stevie more than Nola.”

Even typing that makes me feel like I should be kicked out of my own newsletter and publicly shamed.

But the truth is more complicated than that.

Because the irony is that when I was pregnant with Stevie, I was terrified of the exact opposite.

When I found out I was having another girl, I cried. Not because I didn’t want her, but because I couldn’t imagine loving anyone the way I loved Nola. At the time Nola was my whole universe. My shadow. My first baby. The girl who made me a mother.

I remember crying to my therapist about it. I told her I was scared I wouldn’t bond with the baby growing inside of me the same way I had with Nola. And if the love wasn’t identical, didn’t that automatically mean it was less? I didn’t want a child who got a smaller version of me.

Then, because apparently God loves a monkey wrench, a few weeks after my morning sickness finally disappeared around fifteen weeks pregnant, I was diagnosed with breast cancer.

Suddenly the baby I had been afraid I wouldn’t love enough became the thing that kept me standing. Through two surgeries, through recovery, through the kind of fear that can crack your brain open if you stare at it too long.

She was there through all of it.

So now, almost three years later, the idea that I could love Stevie less than Nola feels almost laughable. But recently, I’ve started to notice this sharpness creeping in me.

I lose my patience with Nola more quickly than I do with Stevie.

Nola is sugar sweet and affectionate and deeply earnest in a way that feels almost Disney princess-ish. She’s the kind of child who will crawl into my lap, press her cheek against my arm, and say, “I just want to be close to you,” like it’s the most important thing in the world.

And sometimes, if I’m being honest, that kind of love feels like more than I know what to do with.

Stevie, on the other hand, is exactly the feisty little fighter you might expect from a baby who grew during the most stressful chapter of my life. She’s curious, mischievous, strong-willed, and surprisingly independent for someone who still fits comfortably on my hip. She’s discerning in who she lets close to her (read: not the most affectionate lol), but once she decides you belong to her, the love she gives is pure gold.

Both of my daughters are mama’s girls. If I sit down on the couch with an empty cushion on either side of me, they will both absolutely climb onto me and treat me like there was no other reasonable place to sit.

And I love it.

But Nola asks more of me. More closeness. More reassurance. More presence. And somewhere along the way, I noticed my patience runs thinner with her than it does with Stevie.

When Dani asked why I thought I might like Stevie more, I told her the truth. Stevie’s independence is easier for my personality. Nola’s softness scares me.

I worry about how much she wants to be loved. I worry the world might bruise that softness. I worry she’ll spend too much of her life trying to be good enough for people.

There was a long pause on the phone after I said that.

Then Dani asked me something that has been sitting with me ever since.

“Is it possible that Nola is the version of you you never got to be?” she said. “The version of you who might have existed if someone had been slaying the dragons for you. A girl who got to stay soft because someone else was doing the fighting.”

Ugh.

What is it about best friends, man? The way they can see you so clearly and say something devastatingly honest, and somehow it still feels soft.

Because she is right. Stevie reminds me of the fighter I had to become. But Nola might be the girl I’m fighting for — the one who gets to grow up knowing someone is standing between her and the world with a sword.

The more I’ve sat with that conversation, the more I’ve realized something else too. Different children are easier for us at different times. Not because we love them more, but because we are human beings with our own personalities, histories, and limits. Different children pull different things out of us.

Nola’s tenderness asks me to slow down and soften and sit with feelings that arrive in big waves. Stevie’s independence asks me to laugh more, negotiate more, and respect the tiny stubborn force of nature she is becoming.

Neither one is easier all the time. They’re just different.

And if you’re reading this wondering if something is wrong with you because one of your kids feels easier to parent right now, I want to say something out loud that more mothers should admit:

That doesn’t make you a bad mom. It makes you human.

Children have different temperaments and different needs, and those needs change over time. Some seasons one child will feel easier. Another season, it might flip.

The truth (the one my dad told me years ago that I’m only now beginning to understand), is that I don’t love my daughters differently in size. I love them differently in practice.

Their needs pull different versions of me to the surface.

And maybe motherhood isn’t about being the exact same mother to every child.

It’s just learning how to meet each of them where they are, and finding a little grace for yourself in the process.

What’s for dinner this week

At some point this week, you’re going to pull a tray of roasted cauliflower out of the oven — deeply golden, a little crispy at the edges — and spoon it over warm Israeli couscous. Then you’ll drizzle a nutty tahini sauce over the top and scatter a bright, lemony herb gremolata across everything. And then you’ll think damnnn, I can cook.

It’s the kind of dinner that makes you remember that veggies for dinner isn’t a punishment and how freaking easy it was to pull off.

That’s the general mood of this week’s menu.

We’re leaning into bright herbs, roasted vegetables, and a couple sauces that quietly carry the entire meal.

Paid subscribers get the full recipes and step-by-step breakdowns, but here’s where we’re headed:

• Roasted Cauliflower Couscous Bowls with Tahini & Herb Gremolata
  crispy, herby, and the kind of vegetarian dinner that actually feels satisfying

• Lemon-Garlic Shrimp with Israeli Couscous & Creamy Tahini Sauce
  fast, bright, and just a little briny in the best way

• Pressure Cooker Beef & White Bean Stew with Bright Herb Gremolata
  cozy, hearty, and built for the night you need dinner to cook itself

There’s also some intentional overlap this week. Extra couscous, extra herb gremolata, extra sauce so one small bit of effort stretches across multiple dinners.

Future you will be very grateful.

Full recipes and prep details are waiting for paid subscribers below.

👉🏽 Want dinner already figured out every Friday?
Join The Motherload for $6/month or $65/year and get the full weekly dinner plan, grocery list, and recipes — so when 5 p.m. hits, you already know what’s for dinner.

Subscribe now

Read more

When I had my first daughter, I was delusional.

Nola was only a few months old, and I was working full-time as a reporter, trying to get my blog and social media off the ground (which, five years later, still feels very…on the ground), and somehow also decided that now was a good time to get my MFA.

Whew, chilleee.

I was also a full-time nursing mom. Nola wasn’t in daycare. We didn’t have a babysitter, let alone a nanny. We had two dogs, a tiny baby, and approximately a billion responsibilities that I was trying to juggle every single day.

And when Shep got home from work, I would still put dinner on the table. Not because he asked me to (he wouldn’t dare), but because it felt like one of those things a good mother and wife was supposed to do. So every night, no matter how chaotic the day had been, I cooked.

In short, I was doing theeeeeeee absolute most.

At the time I genuinely believed this was what motherhood required. I assumed everyone else was doing some version of the same thing — managing careers, raising babies, running households — and that if I was struggling it just meant I hadn’t figured it out yet.

Then one day everything blew up in my face.

I had a deadline for class and Nola just would not nap. She wouldn’t stop nursing, she wouldn’t stop fussing, and every time I thought she might drift off she would pop back awake like she had an internal alarm clock specifically designed to fuck-up mess up my day.

Eventually, I decided we both needed air. I packed her into the car thinking a quick drive might calm her down.

Instead I found myself stuck in Atlanta traffic with a screaming eight-month-old in the back seat and a rising sense that I might actually be losing my mind.

I pulled into the parking lot of a random restaurant, I genuinely don’t remember deciding to go there, I just drove in, and somehow ended up getting a seat. By pure chance, a woman I used to work with years earlier when I was a general manager was working that day. She had had a baby of her own a few years before.

She took one look at me, looked at Nola, and without saying a word took her and started walking around the restaurant. I sat down at the table and called my mom crying.

“Mom,” I said, “I’m losing it. I can’t do this anymore.”

That’s when she said something that, at the time, felt almost offensive.

“Ryan, I think it’s time you start looking into hiring someone to help you.”

I immediately felt like a failure. In my mind every other woman seemed to be handling motherhood just fine. Why couldn’t I? Surely I just needed to push through.

“But you did it, Mom,” I said back, a little incredulous. “You managed.”

I’ll never forget what she said next because it completely reframed how I understood my own childhood.

“No I didn’t, Ryan. Where did you get that idea? I had tons of help.”

I was stunned.

Because that’s not how I remembered it at all.

I remembered always being with my mom. I remembered a calm house (mostly 👀). I remembered her being happy and present and never particularly overwhelmed. Meanwhile I was over here barely able to survive a single infant.

“Ryan,” she said, “I had your grandparents and they took you for days and weekends all the time. Your aunts came over and hung out with you so I could have time to myself. And I wasn’t in grad school, working full time, and we didn’t have dogs.”

And suddenly something clicked.

The version of motherhood I had been measuring myself against didn’t actually exist.

I had created a story in my head about what my mom’s life looked like — calm, capable, effortlessly handling everything — but what I hadn’t seen was the infrastructure underneath it. The grandparents. The aunts. The built-in village that allowed her to breathe.

That was the moment the lightbulb went on.

Maybe I didn’t have to do it all, and maybe no one else was either.

The Myth of Doing It All

Five years into motherhood, which, in the grand scheme of things, is still very early, I’ve started to notice something I wish someone had told me sooner.

The women who seem like they’re thriving almost always have one of two things: a strong support network, or a very clear way their household runs, and they stick to it.

Sometimes that support looks like grandparents who take the kids for a weekend. Sometimes it looks like paid childcare. Sometimes it looks like a partner who carries half the load or a job flexible enough that the whole house doesn’t collapse when a child gets sick.

But almost always there is something behind the scenes making the whole machine run.

And here’s the part we don’t talk about enough: when women pretend they’re doing everything alone, it quietly convinces every other mother that she’s the one who can’t keep up.

Except that’s not actually what’s happening in most homes.

People have help. Or money. Or flexible jobs. Or grandparents nearby. Or routines that remove half the daily chaos.

And most families have some combination of those things.

For example, there are things in my life that only work because we have support. My parents help Shep and me shoulder the cost of sending the girls to Montessori school, and Shep’s parents helped us financially when we bought our first home. Without that help, some of the things that look normal about our life simply wouldn’t exist.

And that’s true for far more families than anyone likes to admit out loud.

Over the past few years I’ve realized that when mothers feel like they’re drowning, it’s often not because they’re incapable. It’s because they’re trying to do the work of five people without the infrastructure that used to exist when extended families lived closer together.

Which brings me to the other thing that helps women survive motherhood: having a clear way their household runs.

If support networks are the village, then structure is the scaffolding that keeps daily life from collapsing.

For me, one of the biggest sanity-saving shifts has been removing the nightly what are we eating tonight spiral. By the time 5 p.m. rolls around most mothers have already been the CEO, therapist, referee, calendar manager, snack distributor, and logistics coordinator for the entire household. Expecting yourself to also invent dinner from scratch every night is simply too many decisions for one brain.

Which, honestly, is a big part of why this newsletter exists.

It’s one of the structures I rely on.

Every week I sit down and map out a few dinners that feel good to cook and good to eat without turning the kitchen into a second shift. This week we’re leaning cozy but still bright — a pork chop dinner with mushrooms and something crispy on the side, a creamy lemony pasta that comes together quickly on a busy night, and a buttery fish dinner that tastes restaurant-level but doesn’t actually require much effort.

In other words, dinners that feel a little special without demanding a ton more from you at the end of a long day.

If you’re staring down another week of dinner decisions, the full menu with recipes and the shopping list is below for paid subscribers.

Because if motherhood has taught me anything, it’s this: the women who look like they have everything together probably aren’t doing it all.

They just have help, structure, or both.

And if you need those things too, that doesn’t make you weak.

It just makes you human and a damn good mom.

👉🏽 Want dinner already figured out every Friday?
Join The Motherload for $6/month or $65/year and get the full weekly dinner plan, grocery list, and recipes — so when 5 p.m. hits, you already know what’s for dinner.

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I may have discovered one of the greatest hacks of my life as a mother.

I hired a house manager.

A few weeks ago I was sitting on my couch surrounded by piles of clean but very unfolded laundry, staring at a to-do list that seemed to regenerate every time I crossed something off. Somewhere between the toddler pajamas and a rogue stack of dish towels, TikTok served me a video that I can only describe as either divine intervention or my algorithm achieving frightening levels of psychological insight.

In one video, this (seemingly) well-rested, nervous-system-regulated, happily married woman talked completely unapologetically about how much help she employs as a stay-at-home mom to live her best life. A full-time nanny. A house manager. A husband who works full-time but also sends her away for overnight hotel stays just to keep her happy.

What sorcery she’s employing in that marriage, I’ll have to investigate later. I’m a fan. But for now…the house manager is what got me.

I had never heard the term before. Nannies, sure. Babysitters, obviously. But a house manager? A family assistant? Someone whose job is basically to keep the logistics of a household from quietly collapsing?

That sounded like a lifeline. So I did what any rational person would do and immediately fell down a research rabbit hole.

What I realized pretty quickly is that what my family actually needed wasn’t more childcare. What we needed was help with the quiet avalanche of domestic tasks that pile up every week. Laundry. Resetting the kitchen. Cleaning out the fridge. Resetting the playroom. All the little things that technically only take ten minutes but somehow multiply until your house looks like a thrift store exploded.

So I did what every millennial mother does when she needs something: I went to my neighborhood Facebook group. I asked for recommendations, got a few names, called a few people, and eventually landed on a candidate.

Last Friday, she showed up at my house and within a few hours had laundry washed, folded, and put away. The fridge was cleaned out. The playroom reset. Counters wiped. Dishes handled.

Then she quietly left.

Later that evening she sent her invoice: $108. Three and a half hours of work and an immeasurable amount of my sanity returned.

I had two immediate thoughts. First: Is this what husbands feel like? Second: Is the real secret to enjoying motherhood…money?

Before anyone misunderstands me, I want to clarify something. In no way am I suggesting that moms without money don’t love their children. I’m also not saying wealth magically makes parenting easy. Toddlers will still scream because their banana broke in half.

But I am starting to suspect that women with resources are having a fundamentally different experience of motherhood than the rest of us — and we almost never say that part out loud.

Instead, we get sold a different explanation.

If you’re overwhelmed by the demands of motherhood, it must be something about you. Maybe you need better routines. Maybe a better planner. Maybe a gratitude practice, a morning meditation, or one of those elaborate productivity systems that promise to give you your life back if you just wake up at 5 a.m. and color-code your calendar.

Maybe you’re just disorganized. Maybe you need therapy. Maybe you should just try harder.

And yeah, maybe.

But also…maybe you’re just under-supported.

I think we all know (or at least by now suspect) that motherhood was never designed to be one woman quietly managing an entire household alone. Children were raised in groups. There were multiple adults around. Someone cooking. Someone watching the kids. Someone doing laundry. The labor of daily life didn’t sit squarely on one person’s shoulders.

The village.

We love to talk about the village like it’s something you’re supposed to magically stumble into once you have kids. But the reality is that most of us don’t actually have one anymore.

Families live far apart. Grandparents aren’t nearby. Communities are more fragmented than they used to be. Childcare, if you can even find it, costs more than a mortgage in some cities.

So when people say “you need a village,” what they often mean in 2026 is that you need to hire one. And in this economy…that’s not exactly accessible advice.

But staring at that $108 invoice, I realized something important.

Sometimes the difference between feeling like Mother of the Year and seriously considering checking yourself into a mental institution (kidding…mostly) is just a few hours of help.

Not a full-time nanny. Not some extravagant lifestyle. Just someone helping carry the load.

When she left, the house was calmer — laundry folded, kitchen reset, the kind of quiet order that usually takes me half a day to claw my way back to. But the bigger change wasn’t the house.

It was my brain.

That night I sat on the couch with Shep like a person who had actually finished her day instead of someone perpetually trying to catch up with it. And that’s when the realization hit me: maybe the secret to enjoying motherhood isn’t killing yourself to be the perfect mom.

Maybe it’s becoming a less exhausted one.

Because when you’re rested, you’re patient. When you’re supported, you’re present. When the invisible labor of running a household isn’t sitting on your chest like your 30 pound toddler, you actually have the bandwidth to enjoy the moments everyone keeps telling you to savor.

Motherhood doesn’t just require love. It requires infrastructure. And right now in America, infrastructure mostly costs money.

So if you’re reading this while staring at a sink full of dishes and a laundry basket that seems to have reproduced overnight, I want you to hear something clearly:

You are not failing at motherhood. You’re probably just doing the job of five people by yourself.

If this sounds like your life, you’re exactly who I write this newsletter for.

Every Friday I send The Motherload — a dinner plan designed for busy moms who are tired of figuring out what’s for dinner every night.

Subscribe to The Motherload

And if there’s even a little room in your budget, it might be worth thinking about money a little differently. Not everything has to go toward bigger houses, nicer cars, or elaborate vacations. Sometimes the most life-changing thing you can buy is help.

A house manager for a few hours a month. A teenager down the street who folds laundry while wearing headphones. Grocery delivery so you don’t have to wander Publix with two kids and a dissolving sense of self. A babysitter so you and your partner can go out to dinner and remember you actually like each other.

Your village might not live down the street anymore, but you can still build one. And when you do, something interesting happens: you become a better version of yourself inside motherhood — more patient, more present, and far less likely to spend your evening rage-folding toddler pajamas while wondering how it’s only Tuesday.

Which brings me to dinner.

Because feeding a family every single night is one of those quiet pieces of household infrastructure that keeps the whole operation running. It’s also one of those decisions that shows up every evening, whether your brain is functioning or not.

And if there’s one thing I can do for you each week, it’s make sure that particular decision has already been made.

If you’re a paid subscriber, your dinner plan is below.

👉🏽 Want dinner already figured out every Friday?
Join The Motherload for $6/month or $65/year and get the full weekly dinner plan, grocery list, and recipes — so when 5 p.m. hits, you already know what’s for dinner.

Subscribe now

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Someone cue Usher because baby, these are my confessions.

After months of trying different organizational systems, tweaking routines, adjusting naps and snacks, and adding in heroic after-school playground stops, I’ve come to a conclusion that feels both freeing and mildly scandalous: it’s not me. It’s my kids.

By 5 p.m., no matter how much space I’ve had from them during the day (they’re usually at school from 8 to 3), no matter how much I’ve prepped dinner in advance, folded their clothes, or reset the playroom like a woman preparing for a home tour, something shifts. The clock hits five, and I can physically feel my tolerance thinning. I’m overstimulated, touched out, and wondering if I could casually walk out the front door and just… keep going.

A few days ago, I was hiding from Stevie in my bathroom — not dramatically, just sitting on the edge of the tub for a moment of quiet — and it hit me.

I don’t think I like my kids at these ages.

Now, before anyone freaks out, let me be clear: I love them more than oxygen. They are absurdly adorable. They are funny and smart and deeply themselves. But genuinely enjoying parenting them at 2 and 5? That is not where I’m thriving.

I don’t think I’m a toddler mom.

That doesn’t mean I’m bad at it. In fact, there are two things I am the least modest about in this life: very few people can outcook me, and I am a damn good mom. My kids are loved, safe, and deeply known.

But mothering them at this stage feels less about their behavior and more about what it costs me.

I am someone who thrives on relative predictability. I like calm. I like quiet. I like a certain level of order and emotional steadiness. The toddler-to-five-year-old stretch is the opposite of that. It is loud and irrational and repetitive in a way that presses on my nervous system all at once.

I didn’t realize how much more of myself this phase would require. The constant boundary testing. The debates that make no logical sense but still must be had. The same question asked eighty-five times as if I’ve never answered it before. The emotional whiplash of “I love you, Mama” followed by a meltdown because the shoes I said were too big — the shoes they insisted on wearing — made them fall, which is somehow also my fault.

At first I was ashamed of this realization. I worried that if I didn’t enjoy this stage, it meant something was fundamentally wrong with me. I wondered if secretly not loving the day-to-day of 2 and 5 meant I was going to damage them despite actively trying to do the exact opposite.

One night after we put the kids to bed, I finally asked Shep, “Is it normal to not like every stage of parenting?”

He’s a pediatrician, so I figured he might have something useful to say.

He didn’t hesitate. “Yes. I hated the newborn phase with both girls. I’m low-key just starting to like Stevie.”

We both started laughing, but I felt immediate relief.

For me, give me the newborn stage all day long. The cuddles, the cries, the mustard-colored blowouts. I know that sounds unhinged, but I have almost limitless patience for that phase. It’s simple. The need is clear. They cry, you respond. There’s no cross-examination.

Around eighteen months to two is when things shift for me. The tantrums ramp up. The rebellion begins. The insistence on independence without the skills to support it. By five, they’ve developed strong opinions and an unshakable belief that they are correct at all times. Add in the physical clinginess and the need to narrate every thought in their head, and it can feel like my nervous system is being gently but persistently poked all evening.

It isn’t that they’re bad. It’s that their brains are under construction, and I’m managing a job site that never closes.

The part I’m still learning to say out loud is this: not liking a stage does not mean you don’t love your children. It means your temperament intersects with their development in complicated ways. It means some phases of motherhood will feel natural, and others will stretch you thin.

Wanting babies isn’t the same as not wanting to raise children. I want the whole arc of who they’re becoming. I just find this particular stretch harder than I expected.

The qualities that exhaust me right now — the strong will, the refusal to back down, the need to be heard — are likely the same qualities that will protect them later. Remembering that helps me zoom out when I’m knee-deep in a debate about the blue cup.

I don’t have to romanticize every stage to be a good mother. I just have to keep showing up, even when five o’clock feels like a personal attack.

And the truth is, tomorrow morning they’ll climb into my bed, warm and sleepy and impossibly small, and I’ll feel that familiar surge of love that makes the previous evening fade a little.

Almost.

Now, let’s talk about dinner. Because whether I like this stage or not, these tiny chaos agents still expect to be fed.

This week’s dinners are doing that thing I love where they feel layered and interesting without actually wrecking your evening. We’re searing pork hard and finishing it with a glossy orange pan sauce that tastes far fancier than 45 minutes allows. We’re building smoky sweet potato and black bean bowls that absolutely stand on their own but quietly welcome leftover pork like it was always part of the plan. And we’re cooking chile-rubbed shrimp in brown butter (stay with me) and topping it with a crisp green apple lime salsa that cuts through the richness and makes the whole thing feel bright and fresh instead of heavy.

In other words: bold flavors, weeknight timing, and built-in leftover strategy so you’re not reinventing dinner every single night. The full step-by-step details, chef notes, and make-it-easier shortcuts are for paid subscribers, but just know this week is warm spices, citrus, a little heat, and the kind of meals that make 5 p.m. feel slightly less personal.

If you’re a paid subscriber, your full menu is below. 👉🏽 Want the full dinner plan every Friday? Join The Motherload for $6/month or $65/year — real dinners for real families.

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I just got off the phone with my best friend.

And when I say just, I mean like…30 minutes ago. Which is convenient because I had absolutely no idea what I was going to write about this week. That makes two weeks in a row. Thriving.

She’s in New Delhi for a work conference, being fabulous and jet-lagged and brilliant. We were doing what girls do — catching up, dissecting life, laughing at men. She’s recently gone through a breakup (all for the best, truly), so we started there. The grief, the clarity, the relief. The whole messy cocktail.

And then she pivoted.

“So…how are you?” she asked in her signature way, which is always an invitation to tell her as much or as little as I want.

“I’m good,” I said. “Nola’s birthday party was great. Stevie is a tiny tyrant, but I adore her. Shep and I aren’t actively on fire, so…you know. Good.”

Clearly, that wasn't the version she wanted because she said, "Yeah, well, I've been watching your Instagram stories lately, and I figured I should just check in."

What a shady heifa lol.

“Oh, those?” I offered back. “Yeah. I’m not mad at anyone. I’m just…sitting with the myriad of ways therapy is making me confront things I guess I didn’t want to.”

“Ah,” she responded. I could practically hear her pulling the hotel sheets over her shoulders, pouring another glass of red wine (don’t you dare judge her…it was like 10 p.m. her time), and settling in. “Wanna unpack that?”

We ended up on the phone for two hours.

At some point, I brought up a quote from Maya Angelou that has been stuck in my brain for years now:

“I am convinced that most people do not grow up…We marry and dare to have children and call that growing up…I think what we do is mostly grow old…”

I told her I feel like I’m smack in the middle of that realization—that growing older and actually growing up are two very different things, and therapy has made that painfully obvious.

I feel like I’m at the part of healing nobody glamorizes. The part that feels like when you’re in a suspiciously productive mood and decide that today is the day you’re finally going to organize your closet (or desk drawer or make up…whatever you get the point). You pull everything out—the jeans you haven’t worn since 2009, the shoes you forgot you owned, the random hangers, the emotional support blazers—and you dump it all in one chaotic pile on the floor.

And about 30 minutes in, when the dopamine/caffeine wears off, you look at the mess and think, "Whyyyyy did I do this? I’ve fucked up. I’m in way over my head.” Now everything is out in the open, and the only way forward is through. One piece at a time. Sorting. Deciding. Letting go. Keeping what still fits.

That’s where I am.

The truth is, a lot of us are just tall children with good skincare, bad knees, and fried nervous systems. Big kids with credit cards and unresolved wounds. Expected to make adult decisions while quietly carrying versions of ourselves that never fully felt safe, seen, or protected. Therapy has this deeply inconvenient habit of introducing you to those versions. It’s not dramatic. There are no violins swelling in the background. It’s just this slow, uncomfortable realization that the way you react, the things that sting, the patterns you repeat…they didn’t start yesterday. They started somewhere small. Somewhere younger.

And now, as an adult, you’re responsible for them. That’s the part that doesn’t feel fair. At least to me. I struggle with it.

Because if someone broke your leg, no one would say, “Okay, well, better drive to the hospital and set it yourself.” But adulthood often feels like that — being handed responsibility for wounds you didn’t create and being expected to function anyway.

When I was little, I thought being an adult would be pure freedom. No bedtime. Ice cream for dinner. Buying whatever I wanted. Sleepovers forever. And yes, technically, you can eat ice cream for dinner. But real growing up, the kind that actually counts, is taking ownership of everything that happened to you, the beautiful parts and the brutal parts, and deciding what gets to continue and what stops with you.

It’s examining the fractures no one set properly. It’s acknowledging where you were hurt and refusing to pass that hurt down like a family heirloom. That doesn’t feel fair. It isn’t fair. Nowhere else in life would we call that a reasonable expectation. And yet here we are. But it might also be the most powerful thing we ever do.

What would it look like if we raised our little humans knowing this from the beginning? Not just telling them “don’t rush to grow up” in that vague, nostalgic way adults do, but actually explaining why. Telling them that getting older is automatic, but growing up is a choice.

That your childhood may explain you, but it does not excuse you. That part of being a grown ass woman (or man) is learning how to care for your own heart so that the people around you don’t have to carry what you refuse to look at.

Growing up isn’t glamorous or aesthetic or something you announce on your birthday. It’s quiet, uncomfortable, and deeply personal. It’s noticing where you were wounded and deciding, deliberately, that the wound doesn’t get to define the next generation. That’s what this season of therapy is for me — not polishing myself into someone shinier or easier to love, but doing the steady, honest work of becoming accountable, becoming regulated, and becoming the kind of adult my younger self would have felt safe with.

Okay, enough emotional excavation. Let’s talk about dinner—the one thing that refuses to wait while you’re having breakthroughs.

This week, there’s a sweet-smoky salmon situation that feels vaguely impressive but is, in reality, extremely low effort. There’s a garlicky, sausage-y, spinach-y pasta moment that Nola called “pretty good,” which is essentially two Michelin stars and a write-up in Bon Appétit if you’re a kindergartener. And there’s a slow-braised, herb-piled main that makes your kitchen smell like you know exactly what you’re doing.

The full play-by-play, grocery list, and leftover plan are for paid subscribers, but if you’re tired of standing in front of the fridge hoping dinner assembles itself, I’ve already handled it.

If you’re a paid subscriber, your full menu is below. 👉🏽 Want the full dinner plan every Friday? Join The Motherload for $6/month or $65/year — real dinners for real families.

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My oldest, Nola Rey Shepard, is five years old today (2/13).

Five.

And because life loves symbolism (imo), we brought her home from the hospital on Valentine’s Day. So this weekend is no longer just about candy hearts or red dresses or who gets the biggest bouquet. February 14th became the day I walked through our front door carrying her tiny self against my body, still swollen, still a little scared, realizing love was about to rearrange me in ways I didn’t fully understand.

My God, lol. I remember peeing on a stick in May 2020 and seeing that bold little “YES+” and thinking, wait… you simply MUST be joking. The world was shut down. Everything felt uncertain. I just stood there staring at that pregnancy test. And now I’m staring at a very cute, very bossy five-year-old who negotiates bedtime like she’s presenting a case before the Supreme Court.

To know Nola is to love her. She is cuddly in a way that makes you soften instantly. She loves being loved. She leans in. She scans rooms for connection. There’s an openness to her that feels almost holy, like she hasn’t yet learned to brace herself.

And sometimes that openness makes my chest ache.

Because I watch her at the playground or at school pickup, and I feel this question rise up in me: how do I protect this part of her? The part that hasn’t had her feelings really hurt yet. The part that still assumes people mean what they say. The part that walks up to strangers and says, “Hi, I’m Nola…do you want to be my friend?” like of course the answer will be yes.

I see so much of my younger self in her, and I ache for all the things that might be ahead of her, too.

Not because I think her life will be tragic, mine sure as hell isn’t. But because I remember how gradual it was. The way you don’t wake up suddenly aware of the rules — you absorb them. You start adjusting without realizing you’re adjusting.

I remember being expressive and certain and a little loud. I remember the first time I understood that those traits didn’t land the same way on me as they did on boys. That being confident could become “bossy.” That having boundaries could be read as “difficult.” That emotions were fine — just not too many of them.

And being a Black girl added some extra razzle dazzle. A second awareness humming in the background. The understanding that your tone might be interpreted before your words are heard. That your presence might be filtered through assumptions you didn’t create.

It’s not one big dramatic moment. It’s an accumulation. It’s the slow education that happens when you’re a girl. And a Black one at that.

We moved from the West End in Atlanta — very, very Black — to a predominantly white neighborhood, and I’d be lying if I said I don’t feel a low hum of vigilance now that I didn’t feel before. I’ve never loved playgrounds, but lately I find myself scanning them differently, aware that one day something won’t just be toddler chaos.

A few weeks ago, a little (white) girl kept screaming “mine” in Stevie’s face over a toy while her mom sat tuned out on a bench. I stepped closer, set a timer, and kept my voice steady. It was nothing. Normal toddler stuff.

But it reminded me how quickly I move into protector mode. How instinctively I position myself between my daughters and whatever might escalate. And I know there will come a day when what needs protecting won’t be a plastic dolphin.

Which brings me back to Valentine’s Day.

We treat this holiday like it’s about romance or being chosen. But the most important love in a girl’s life isn’t romantic. It’s the love that teaches her who she is before anyone else tries to tell her.

Bringing Nola home on Valentine’s Day changed what this weekend means to me. It stopped being about roses and started being about responsibility. About raising a girl who knows that being expressive isn’t being too much. That being assertive isn’t the same as being difficult. That her skin isn’t a liability. That her openness isn’t naïve. That her worth doesn’t rise and fall based on how comfortable she makes other people.

Self-love — the real kind — isn’t curated. It’s rooted. It’s knowing who you are before someone questions it.

I can’t control every playground interaction. I can’t intercept every comment. I can’t soften every sharp edge of this country. But I can make sure that before anyone ever tries to define them, they already know themselves. I can make sure the loudest voice in their heads sounds like home.

So yes, this weekend there will be cake and red dresses and too much sugar. I will probably cry in the kitchen because that’s what I do. But underneath all of it, what I’m really celebrating is five years of loving a child so fiercely that it has forced me to examine what love actually means.

And the greatest love I can give her is raising a girl who never doubts she is worthy of love — especially her own.

In that spirit, I created a dinner menu that feels like love both in how damn easy the recipes are to pull of and…not to toot my own horn…how damn delicious they are too. Rosemary lemon chicken with pearled couscous and French green beans that tastes like you cooked for hours (you didn’t). Pan-seared halibut with garlic–herb butter and a sharp arugula lemon salad that somehow managed to become a kid favorite — they kept calling it “yummy fish chicken,” which I’m choosing to take as the highest form of culinary praise. And a ratatouille-style roasted vegetable lasagna that feels romantic enough for Valentine’s week but sturdy enough for a random Wednesday when no one can find their other shoe.

The full recipes, shortcuts, and grocery list are for my paid subscribers, but the vibe this week is simple: food that feels like love without requiring a personality change.

If you’re a paid subscriber, your full menu is below. 👉🏽 Want the full dinner plan every Friday? Join The Motherload for $6/month or $65/year — real dinners for real families.

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We’ve decided to start gearing up to try for another baby.

I know, I know…I. KNOW. Lol

Despite all sane evidence pointing toward “girl, have you lost your damn mind? You can barely hold it together most days, you just started liking your husband consistently again, you don’t have a nanny, and what about this career you keep starting and stopping?” I’ve landed on a very clear and deeply unhinged conclusion: fuck it.

I’m going for what I want in my heart, even while my head is screaming common sense at full volume. Good idea? Bad idea? shrugs into the abyss. I genuinely don’t know. I guess we’ll find out.

And yes, before anyone asks, I’m very aware that this is objectively insane timing. In this economy. In this country. Especially after what I wrote last week about how America has never exactly been a soft place for Black folks to land. There is a part of me that feels selfish even thinking about pulling a perfectly good soul out of heaven and dropping them into…gestures broadly at everything.

I don’t have a clean answer for why I’m still opening this door anyway. Other than the fact that I want to. And right now, that feels like reason enough.

But between us girls, I’m also nervous. Here’s a little secret: technically, Shep and I have never actually tried to get pregnant. I know how that sounds, but it’s true. I’ve only ever gotten pregnant by accident.

With Nola, we had a Charleston trip planned (Father’s Day weekend 2020, ironically), complete with oyster bars and cocktails. I remember very clearly telling Shep, “Let’s start trying when we get back. I want to enjoy this trip.” Girl, I was pregnant two weeks later.

I spent that entire trip nauseous, constipated beyond belief, watching every Fast & Furious movie ever made while surviving on saltines and ginger ale. Shep and I had been married six months when he had to give me a literal enema on the bathroom floor of the very nice hotel we picked. A true bonding experience. Moving on.

With Stevie, I did the whole ovulation-tracking thing one time. Apps. Clearblue strips. Charts. According to all of it, I was well outside my fertile window when we had our moment. Days outside. So imagine my surprise when, a few weeks into the new year, I walked into our bedroom and was immediately hit with the smell of Shep’s deodorant from the door. Oh shit, I thought. Here we go again.

Nine months (and a whole lot of bullshit later), there was Stevie.

So yeah. This is new territory for me.

I even texted one of my cousins who just had her third baby, asking, very sincerely, how one even prepares to try for a baby. Of course, I know the basics…I should probably get on a good prenatal and stop drinking martinis (ugh), but beyond that, I was at a loss. She immediately sent me a list of old wives’ tales, all of which I am excited to file away for later and will report back on when the time comes.

I don’t know how long this phase will last or what it will look like — just that even the anticipation of it all has already started taking up more brain space than I expected. Even just thinking ahead, the counting. The mental math. The quiet little hope you try not to say out loud because you don’t want to jinx it before anything has even officially begun. For the next few cycles, I’m planning to enjoy relative peace of mind. We’ll kick things into high gear after my marathon (April 26th!).

Anyway. That’s where I’m at. I’ll keep you posted.

Now let’s talk dinner.

This week’s menu is cozy but not boring (because duh, I developed the recipes). We’ve got spiced lamb pitas with garlicky hummus and herbs (very satisfying, very eat-with-your-hands), sticky chile-lime pork with coconut rice (fun fact: I made this for Shep and he ate all of it so the girls had Cinnamon Toast Crunch for dinner because he’s a greedy shit), and a white bean soup with charred leeks and Parmesan that makes you think, who tf knew I loved beans so much?

If you’re a paid subscriber, your full menu is below. 👉🏽 Want the full dinner plan every Friday? Join The Motherload for $6/month or $65/year — real dinners for real families.

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Note: This newsletter is a day late. Stevie was sick and stayed home on Thursday (and had to be picked up early on Wednesday), and I didn’t feel comfortable sending this without testing the last recipe. So here we are. I hope you enjoy this week’s meals — I’m a big fan, especially the stew.

I hope my East Coast subscribers made it through last week’s storm relatively unscathed.

In Atlanta, school was canceled on Monday, so I wrote the first draft of this at the kitchen table while listening out for Nola and Stevie playing upstairs. You know how it goes — everything is fine until it gets too quiet, and then someone is crying. Now that I have kids, I realize a lot of parenting is just staying in a constant state of hypervigilance and pretending it’s normal lol.

So let’s get straight to it, because it’s not really my style to hold back (and I hope that’s part of why you’re here). It’s a pretty shitty time to be a parent in America. Watching the killing of Keith Porter, an unarmed Black father shot by an ICE agent, alongside federal officers killing Americans in Minnesota while ICE also sends five- and two-year-old children to detention centers — all while you’re still expected to pack lunches, answer emails, and keep life “normal” for your kids is fucking wild.

There’s a specific kind of cruelty in being told to carry on as if the ground isn’t shifting under our feet, as if bedtime stories exist separately from state violence, as if parents aren’t absorbing all of this in real time and then turning around to convince our children the world is safe. Cause…are we safe?

And for Black Americans, it’s never been great. That part isn’t new. What is new is who it’s happening to, and how loud the outrage gets once the violence reaches white bodies. There’s a particular rage that comes with watching a country suddenly recognize state violence only when it can see itself in the victims, when the shock isn’t the brutality but the proximity.

I’m part of the 92% of Black women who didn’t want this, didn’t vote for this, didn’t consent to raising children under a system I already knew was broken. For a moment, during the Obama years, many of us allowed ourselves to believe we were on a real trajectory toward something better. A more perfect union, if you will. I see now that belief bought us time. Hope dulled the sharp edges of a country built to cut.

Now we’re all bleeding.

This country didn’t change overnight. It stopped pretending. As mothers, the expectation is that we keep things light, keep things moving, keep childhood magical while the ground underneath us shifts, even as it becomes clearer by the day that this administration has no interest in distancing itself from fascism, and that far too many Americans are energized by violence, not horrified by it.

A friend of mine, Danielle, published a piece in The Cut after Renée Good was murdered by ICE agents in Minneapolis. She reflected on how becoming a parent changed the way she processes the news — how suddenly every person became someone’s baby, every child’s cry familiar, how this stopped being just the world she lived in and became the world she was supposed to raise her children in.

That sentiment has stayed with me. Motherhood ended abstraction for me. Nothing stays theoretical anymore. Everything goes straight to the body.

That’s why the murders in Minneapolis have been sitting so heavy with me. Alex Pretti, an ICU nurse, was killed by ICE agents on January 24th. I keep thinking about his mother…about the way grief like that has nowhere to land, especially when it’s compounded by watching your child’s death be explained away, justified, sanitized by the same government that killed him. Accountability is always the first thing to disappear.

The night Pretti was killed, I finished cooking dinner. Red beans and rice. Shep and I bathed the girls, read books, tucked them in. Stevie couldn’t fall asleep, and Nola asked if she could sleep in her bed. Later, I peeked in and saw them curled up together, safe and warm, and thought about how much of parenting is just low-level terror braided with love. The certainty of what you’d do to keep them safe, and the quieter knowledge of how little control you actually have.

Every good parent imagines the big sacrifices. The oceans we’d cross. The danger we’d step into. Lately, I’ve been thinking more about the smaller, harder ones. Would we protest for them? Would we have the conversations that fracture families? Would we put our bodies where our values are?

Because this isn’t a country I can hand to my children and pretend it’s fine. It was built on stolen land, worked by stolen people, and sustained by a refusal to ever truly reckon with that. We told ourselves progress was inevitable, that voting would save us. What I’m watching now is a system working as intended, and the rest of us being asked, once again, to absorb the fallout quietly.

So I keep circling the same question. How do you parent inside a system you want dismantled? How do you raise children to believe in care and dignity when you don’t believe the structure around them was ever meant to offer either?

I don’t have an answer. I just know pretending this isn’t happening isn’t one.

And still, (*gestures wildly*) dinner needs to get made. Kids need to be fed. This week’s meals are simple and grounding. Juicy shrimp roasted on a single sheet pan with herbs and rice for the nights when energy is low and cleanup needs to be fast; a cozy, meatless midweek dinner built around baked vegetables and a deeply savory tomato situation; and something slow and Haitian-inspired to end the week, simmered with epis, potatoes, and green beans, meant to be made ahead and eaten again when you don’t feel like starting from scratch.

Paid subscribers will find the full menu and recipes below.

If you’re a paid subscriber, your full menu is below. 👉🏽 Want the full dinner plan every Friday? Join The Motherload for $6/month or $65/year — real dinners for real families.

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It’s officially been one week since I somehow pulled off a pretty spectacular surprise 40th birthday weekend for Shep in New Orleans, and I’m still a little emotionally hungover from it in the best way. You know that feeling when something you’ve been holding in your head for months (years, honestly) actually happens and goes right, and then real life rushes back in and you’re like… wait, was that real? That’s where I’m at. Back to school drop-offs and dinner planning and emails, but still replaying moments from that weekend and realizing what it meant beyond just celebrating a birthday.

He turned 40 on January 9, which feels big. Not scary, just very oh wow, we’re grown. Like you’re no longer becoming who you are, you’re maintaining it. Your marriage. Your friendships. Your health. Your mental health. The way you show up for the people you love. All of it takes actual intention now, not just vibes.

If you’ve been here for a while, you know our marriage was on the struggle bus. Last year was hard. Not dramatic hard, not something that fits neatly into a caption, just the kind of hard that comes from living a full life with kids and work and childhood wounds and a lot of responsibility and not always enough rest. The kind of hard where things don’t fall apart, but they also don’t feel great for a while.

Still, I didn’t want that season to hijack this moment. Not because everything was suddenly perfect, but because we’ve been doing the work. On ourselves. On each other. And that matters.

So I surprised Shep with a trip to New Orleans. And then I invited his closest friends to fly in, the ones who really know him, who’ve seen different versions of him over the years. I wanted him surrounded by people who could show up for him, celebrate him, and remind him that he’s loved and supported in ways that don’t all fall on one person. Marriage matters, yes. But community matters too.

There’s also just something about that city for us. The food, the air, the rhythm of it. It gives us space to exhale and remember who we are outside of routines and logistics and tiny people who do not respect sleep, privacy, or personal space. It’s cliché. It’s also true. Our marriage always does better when we remember that the choice is still us, even when life gets loud.

And here’s the thing I keep coming back to now that we’re home and the adrenaline has worn off. In the day-to-day of schedules and work and mental load and keeping everything running, it’s easy to forget that marriage is often the glue holding all of it together. Not in a romantic, movie-montage way. In a very real, day-to-day way. And when that relationship is neglected, everything else starts to feel heavier than it needs to be.

I wonder how many of us forget that until something starts to feel off.

Kids don’t need perfect parents or a flawless marriage. They don’t need us pretending everything is fine when it’s not. What they need is to see two people who are willing to work at it, to repair, to grow, to choose each other again even when it would be easier not to. They need to see that love is something you practice, something you tend to, not something you luck into or take for granted.

What are our kids learning about love just by watching how we show up for each other?

Life is busy. Kids are a lottttt. And if Shep and I don’t tend to this part of our life, none of the other parts really work the way we want them to. Not the home. Not the parenting. Not the example we’re trying to set. Choosing each other, over and over, is part of choosing our family. And sometimes remembering what it costs when we don’t do that work is the thing that brings us back to it.

What would it look like to make one small choice this week that supports the part of your life that supports everything else?

This week’s dinner plan feels especially thoughtful, the kind of lineup that meets you where you are and still makes you feel like you did something nice for yourself and your people. There’s a bright, crunchy fish dinner that comes together fast but actually eats like a real meal, not a sad salad situation. It’s fresh and citrusy and just spicy enough to keep things interesting.

There’s also a rich, creamy pasta that leans unapologetically cozy, layered with smoky depth and warmth, and it’s my small way of bringing a little piece of my favorite city home with me and sharing it with you. New Orleans energy, but weeknight-friendly and balanced, the kind of dinner that feels like a reward at the end of a long day.

And then there’s the chicken pot pie. Classic, savory, deeply comforting, topped with flaky puff pastry and melty cheese, the kind of dinner that makes the house smell good and everyone feel a little calmer. It’s familiar in the best way and makes excellent leftovers, which matters.

If you’re a paid subscriber, you’ve got the full playbook below. If you’re not, just know this is a good food week.

One quick, very practical note before you scroll. Since this is hitting your inbox Friday morning and there’s a big ice storm headed for the East Coast this weekend, please do Future You a favor and get to the grocery store today or place a delivery order before things get chaotic. Especially because that chicken pot pie is basically built for being snowed or iced in. Cozy, hearty, very “we’re staying inside and leaning into it.” If you end up stuck at home, I’d absolutely pull that one forward and make it early.

Alright. Let’s eat.

If you’re a paid subscriber, your full menu is below. 👉🏽 Want the full dinner plan every Friday? Join The Motherload for $6/month or $65/year — real dinners for real families.

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Over Christmas break, something popped off that didn’t feel dramatic so much as inevitable. I don’t want to get too messy or hand over every detail of my family’s business, because the specifics aren’t actually the point. What matters is what it cost…and what it clarified.

Shep and I had clear boundaries in place around our home and the relationships within it. Boundaries that were explicitly communicated to both Tyler and Navi. Those boundaries existed for a reason, and when they were crossed, it put me in an impossible position: as a sister, as an employer, and as a mother trying to keep her kids safe. When we realized those boundaries had been violated, then lied about, minimized, and reframed as me being unreasonable, we decided Navi could no longer live with us. My sister and I no longer have a relationship.

The biggest losers in all of this are my kids. Nola and Stevie have only known life with these two women in it. My sister was waiting at the house when I brought Nola home from the hospital. She met Stevie when she was barely a day old. She never missed a birthday. Navi had been with us since Nola was ten months old and with Stevie since she was six weeks. These weren’t casual presences in their lives. They were fixtures.

This past Saturday morning, on the way to ballet, Nola noticed that Navi’s car, always parked right in front of our house, was gone. She asked who took it, and I told her Navi’s cousin. She paused, then asked why Navi had moved out. If she didn’t love her anymore. If she had forgotten about us.

That question fucked me up in a way I’m still sitting with. There was guilt—because I chose to hold my boundary, knowing the fallout would be real, knowing people my children loved would disappear from their daily lives. And there was rage because I had explicitly named this exact scenario to both Tyler and Navi and asked them not to put my children or me in this position. They chose their own desires anyway. They dismissed my concerns. And they swore they loved my kids while making decisions that would inevitably hurt them.

But the moment everything became irreversible wasn’t the moment the boundary was crossed. It was what I recognized underneath it.

Growing up, every time my father and I fought, my mother chose him. Even when he was abusive. Even when I was the one being harmed. That alignment was the backdrop of my childhood, and I learned early what it meant to be labeled difficult simply for naming what was happening. My sister, as the baby of the family and my dad’s favorite, never had to stand up to him in the same way. For most of our lives, I absorbed that conflict on her behalf—ran interference, took the heat, shielded her.

So watching her now slide into a familiar role, using the same tools I grew up under: triangulation, manipulation, gaslighting, the insistence on her own victimhood…it cracked straight through old wounds I had worked very hard to live around. What made repair impossible wasn’t anger. It was recognition. My body knew exactly what was being asked of me again: to make myself smaller so someone else wouldn’t have to look at themselves.

In the aftermath, my mom gathered us together and told us how disappointed she was that things had escalated, that it had gotten physical, that someone “who wasn’t family” had come between us. And then she said something that lodged itself in my chest:

“You know, Ryan, ever since you had cancer, you’ve been so sensitive.”

I don’t appreciate the implication that cancer made me unstable or dramatic. But I do think she accidentally told the truth. Since getting that life-altering news, I am different. I am sensitive in the sense that my body will no longer let me pretend. Sensitive to patterns. Sensitive to misalignment. Sensitive to the cost of keeping the peace at my own expense.

What I heard underneath her words was this: my insistence on accountability had become inconvenient to a family system that survives by not naming harm. That my version of events is always suspect if it disrupts the structure. That I have always been too much, and now I’m no longer interested in shrinking.

Before, I would have taken responsibility for other people’s emotions. I would have owned parts of blowups that weren’t mine. I would have forgotten on purpose. I would have smoothed things over and called it maturity. Sensitivity now gives me faster access to the truth. Stronger instincts. Less tolerance for bullshit. More grief? Yes, but also more integrity.

Keeping the peace cost me self-trust. It taught me to doubt my own perception and accept that love was something earned through endurance. I know exactly who benefits when I do that. It isn’t me. And it isn’t my children.

What I am no longer willing to teach my daughters through my silence is that setting yourself on fire for others will eventually make them choose you. It won’t. All it teaches people is that there is no limit to how much you will hurt yourself, so they don’t have to look at their own demons. You come into this world deserving of care and respect, without having to earn it through suffering.

I keep thinking about what it would have cost my girls to watch me survive this moment the way I survived my childhood—swallowing my rage, absorbing harm, staying connected at any price. I don’t want them to learn that proximity matters more than self-trust, or that women are responsible for managing everyone else’s comfort. I want them to know that standing alone can be a form of love. The strongest one, actually.

I told my therapist recently that I don’t know if it’s the EMDR or the shrooms or both, but it feels like, instead of bracing, I’m blossoming against my will. I’m expanding, and in the process shedding versions of myself that were built to survive—the automatic protector, the fighter, the strong one, the woman who learned that pain should be swallowed proudly. Like it doesn’t hurt.

Becoming myself inside of motherhood threatens the structure of my family of origin. And I’m making peace with that. The woman I’m becoming demands accountability for harm caused and changed behavior if there’s going to be a relationship.

This story is about choosing rupture over self-abandonment, and living with the cost of that choice. It’s about being the black sheep who finally stops trying to earn her way back into the fold. It’s about trusting that what I’m modeling for my daughters matters more than maintaining access to people who need me to be smaller.

Respect, as Lauryn Hill said, is just the minimum. And I’m done negotiating for less.

Before I go, I want to leave you with something practical, not because food fixes everything, but because feeding ourselves and our kids is often the only part of the day that feels remotely steady when everything else is trash.

This week, I’m leaning on a pot of turkey chili with cornbread. The kind of dinner that asks very little of you and gives a lot back. I’m also keeping chicken and spinach quesadillas in rotation, because some nights need to be fast and familiar, and because not every meal has to prove a point. There’s comfort in that.

If you’re craving something lighter, a simple sheet-pan fish with citrus, broccoli, and scallions has been grounding for me lately—bright, unfussy, and done before the evening fully unravels. Nothing complicated. Just food that shows up when you need it to.

That’s all I’ll share here. The full plan is waiting for paid subscribers, but I wanted to offer this much as a reminder that nourishment can be quiet, repetitive in a good way, and still meaningful. Sometimes the most radical thing we do in the middle of hard seasons is make dinner, sit down with the ones we love (even if that’s just us!), and eat it.

If you’re in a season of choosing yourself, or holding boundaries that don’t feel comfortable yet, I’m really glad you’re here. And I hope one of these meals makes tonight feel a little easier.

If you’re a paid subscriber, your full menu is below. 👉🏽 Want the full dinner plan every Friday? Join The Motherload for $6/month or $65/year — real dinners for real families.

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There is so much I want and need to tell you, but it’s going to have to wait until next week because I already had this planned, and I truly don’t have the bandwidth to rewrite my own life in real time right now. And if I’m being honest, this year came in loud. Immediately testing me, my patience, my boundaries, my nervous system…all of it.

I’m going to be so for real with you, I had theeeee shittiest holiday. And if you follow me on TikTok, you probably saw me go a bit viral by accident after I talked about what happened. It came out in a fit of rage, which I don’t love but also…was real. Now that I’m back home and the dust is settling, I’m looking at this year and the lessons from 2025 with clearer eyes and a little more distance.

Of course, I’m asking the normal questions. What do I want out of this year? What do I want to build? Where do I push and where do I stop forcing things that clearly don’t want to be forced? But the deeper questions are the ones I can’t unhear now. What can’t I carry anymore? What was never mine to hold? How much of myself am I willing to sacrifice before I’m just running on fumes and calling it strength? What does my nervous system actually need, not in theory, but in practice?

And the biggest one for me as a mother: what am I modeling for my children when I constantly put myself last?

A few years ago, inspired by Alex Hill (who has a great newsletter if you’re looking for another thoughtful read), I started choosing a word to guide how I wanted to show up each year. For 2026, my word is audacious, which is funny because it’s also Alex’s word and my girlfriend Tarina’s, so clearly we’re all being called out at once. But this year, I went a step further and chose a phrase too: me first.

As the eldest daughter who was parentified early, who has been called on to be the adult in the room for as long as I’ve been aware of myself, and who is now also a wife and a mother, putting myself first has always felt wrong. Selfish. Like something other people were allowed to do but not me. And what I’m realizing now is that I never actually saw women in my life model what it looks like to put yourself at the top of your own to-do list without apologizing for it.So here I am, building the proverbial plane while it’s in the air.

Something in me broke last year. I couldn’t keep serving endlessly and then being quietly resentful that I rarely felt prioritized, planned for, and protected the way I did for those I love. That martyrdom? I assigned it to myself. And I quitttt.

For me, ‘audacious’ and ‘me first’ means going after what I want—the career, the marriage, the third baby 👀—and trusting that it’s allowed to work out in my favor. It means making decisions that prioritize my capacity, my mental health, and my nervous system, even if that makes other people uncomfortable.

So I’m curious…what about you? What’s your word for 2026? What phrase are you going to use to remind yourself how you want to show up this year? I’d love to hear.

And that’s where this week’s menu comes in. This isn’t a reset in the punish-yourself-with-sad-salads way. It’s a reset that says we take care of ourselves by feeding ourselves well, simply, and without creating more work than necessary.

The roast chicken with root vegetables is one of those meals that does a lot of heavy lifting without asking much of you. It’s grounding, it feeds everyone, and it gives you leftovers so you’re not starting from scratch again tomorrow. It’s the kind of dinner that quietly says, I’ve got you.

The ground beef Mediterranean bowl is fast, flexible, and forgiving. It’s there for the nights when you’re depleted but still want something warm and satisfying, and it works with what you already have instead of turning another grocery run into your problem.

And the BBQ pulled-pork quesadillas are exactly why I believe in cooking once and eating twice. That pork from the freezer is past-you taking care of present-you, which honestly feels very on theme this week. Minimal effort, maximal payoff, no martyrdom required.

None of these meals are about starting over or being perfect. They’re about choosing ease, choosing nourishment, and choosing yourself in small, very real ways. And sometimes, that looks like dinner that doesn’t ask you to prove anything to anyone.

If you’re a paid subscriber, your full menu is below. 👉🏽 Want the full dinner plan every Friday? Join The Motherload for $6/month or $65/year — real dinners for real families.

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For almost twenty years, I’ve sat in therapists’ chairs talking about my wounds. What did or didn’t happen in my childhood. The men I dated. Friendships that ended badly. In-law drama. Pregnancy anxiety. Marriage strain. Cancer. I’ve held up my scars like a kid holding a snow globe, turning them over, watching the snow fall, trying to understand every last detail.

Intellectually, I understand myself. I know why I am the way that I am. But for a long time, I didn’t realize that all this self-awareness wasn’t actually making life—or motherhood—feel any easier. Because while my mind understands the story, my body still lives like danger is right around the corner.

My nervous system is always on alert. Scanning. Bracing. Waiting for the next shoe to drop.

A couple of months after my mastectomy, I said something to my mom that surprised even me: “I think my mental health is the great cancer of my life, and if I don’t get a handle on it, it will kill me.” I wasn’t being dramatic. I was naming something I’d been afraid to look at directly.

In November, I had a surveillance MRI. The results came back perfectly normal. Statistically, the odds of cancer quietly lurking in my body at this point are close to zero. In 2023, this was all I wanted…to know the fight was over. Instead of relief, the news just passed through me.

That numbness scared me more than the cancer ever did. Because it made something painfully clear: this isn’t about cancer anymore.

I’ve tried to explain what’s happening to me through every lens available—trauma, OCD, depression, ADHD (honestly…maybe), perimenopause. And some or all of that might be true. But none of it feels like the root cause. Those are labels. What I’m dealing with feels more like the cumulative cost of how I’ve shown up in the world for a very long time.

My word for this year was alignment, and ironically, it’s been one of the most volatile years of my life. I’ve had deep, relationship-shifting fights with almost everyone important to me—my mom, my dad, my sister, my husband. At the time, it felt like everything was falling apart. What I see now is that alignment doesn’t always look like peace. It looks like uncomfortable conversations. It looks like friction. It looks like no longer betraying yourself to keep other people comfortable.

Those fights and spirals weren’t signs of failure. They were part of the process of getting back into alignment with myself. Who was I before the world decided who I needed to be? Who do I want to be now? How do I want to show up—for myself and for the people I love? What do I need?

A lot of my anxiety this year has been driven by one specific fear: that if I leaned fully into myself—if I fought for her—I’d lose the relationships that matter most. That if I stopped showing up in ways that don’t serve me or my nervous system, people would be disappointed, angry, or gone.

Because I’ve been the one in control. The one in charge. The one with the answers, or at least the backbone to demand them. The one who names what’s wrong. The one who carries the emotional weight. And I am mf tired, y’all. I don’t want control anymore. I want ease. My nervous system is screaming for it, because I can’t keep functioning like this.

Lately, I’ve been short-tempered with my kids. Snappy. Moody. Loud. Overstimulated. I ask for space. I ask for quiet. I ask them to stop touching me. And while there are real reasons for that, I also know this isn’t who I am—it’s who I am when I’m depleted.

Here’s the distinction that’s changed everything: I am willing—happily—to be the mother, protector, planner, nurturer, regulator, and emotional shock absorber for my children. I am no longer willing to play those roles for grown-ass adults.

That work ends neowwww.

Instead of seeing “I can’t do it all” as failure, I’m choosing to see it as success. The success of meeting the end of myself, honoring my limits, and allowing the people who’ve benefited from my labor to step up and do their own work. This is what it looks like in practice:

• I’m getting evaluated for ADHD in the new year—not because I need another diagnosis, but because clarity feels regulating.

• I’m getting back to running consistently. London Marathon training starts January 4th, and movement is one of the few things that reliably brings my body back online.

• I’m taking my supplements. I notice a real difference in my capacity when I skip them, and I’m done pretending otherwise.

• I’m allowing people to experience the consequences of their actions without stepping in to fix, soften, or save them. Instead of yelling or demanding, I’m reclaiming my power and letting people have their own experiences.

• I’m feeding myself. Breakfast and lunch included. I cook for everyone else while quietly putting myself last, and I’m done doing that.

• And I’m resting on purpose. I’ve realized how deeply rest is tied to “earned exhaustion” for me. No more. I’m sitting because I want to. I don’t have to earn shit.

I’m not broken. I’m recalibrating. And this time, my nervous system gets a vote.

What about you? Have you noticed how fried your nervous system feels lately? And what are you doing—really doing—to protect it?

When you feel like you’re on the brink, dinner has to work with you—not against you. This week’s meals are intentionally simple, grounding, and low-drama. Sheet-pan cooking so you’re not juggling three burners. A fast, forgiving fried rice that welcomes shortcuts (like Trader Joe’s vegetable fried rice). A cozy pasta that feels like care without requiring extra effort. Nothing fancy. Nothing performative. Just real food that feeds your people—and leaves a little energy for yourself.

If you’re a paid subscriber, your full menu is below. 👉🏽 Want the full dinner plan every Friday? Join The Motherload for $6/month or $65/year — real dinners for real families.

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I’m writing to you from the comfort of my girlfriend’s guest bed in Washington, D.C. The heat is pumping, the linens are immaculate, and it is quiet. No screaming kids, no meowing cats, no barking dogs — well, except her dog Cupcake, but she's a sweetheart and not my responsibility, so it’s all good. I’m happy. I’m content. I’m getting the break my nervous system has been begging for.

Earlier today, I called my girlfriend Danielle while I was sitting in a coffee shop, watching a city I used to know move around me like an old movie. I lived here from 2010–2014, and so many of my old haunts are still standing. The streets haven’t changed, but somehow…I have. I told her D.C. feels like that first great love from your twenties, the one you used to know inside and out, and then, one day, you run into them, and they’re familiar but also foreign. The shape is the same, but the details are different. That’s D.C. for me. Recognizable, but no longer mine.

I think that’s part of why being here feels so special. This city holds the version of me who belonged to no one, carried fewer responsibilities, and poured herself into friendships that have carried me through some of the hardest years of my life. My girlfriends and I all lived here at the same time, tangled up in each other’s days in the effortless, all-consuming way you can only pull off in your twenties. Now we’re scattered — two of us in Atlanta, one in London, one in Montclair, and Ashley still holding it down in D.C., but the love is still the same, maybe deeper.

When I walked into Ashley’s home yesterday, she had towels and a robe laid out, snacks she knew I’d love, an assortment of drinks waiting for me like she’d been expecting me for days. And sitting across from her in a dimly lit bar later that night, I told her how lucky I feel to know what it is to be loved by women. We don’t celebrate that enough. Everyone tells women to find their husbands, like romantic love is the only kind that counts. Meanwhile, the type of love so many of us are desperate for — the kind that knows you, steadies you, sees you, delights in you — it’s often already there in our friendships.

I joked on TikTok once that a woman with great friends and no man is labeled a failure, but a woman with a man and no real friends? I’m side-eyeing a little. IDC IDC IDC. Because your man can’t be your whole identity. Your friends can’t either. But they do hold a part of you that no one else does—especially the ones who knew you before your life got big and full and loud.

And being here, in a place that remembers a version of me I sometimes forget, I’m reminded that my favorite self might always be Ryan the friend. She laughs more. She leads less. She’s lighter, sillier, and somehow more herself. I miss her. I’m glad I found her again.

But here’s what I keep circling back to: motherhood, marriage, the mental load…they can swallow the parts of us that used to feel effortless. Friendships take intention now. Nurturing them feels like one more thing on the list some weeks. And yet, when we make space for them, when we answer the phone or take the trip or show up at the dinner table (even tired, even stretched thin), something inside us exhales.

So I’m curious, truly: Where do your friendships fit in your life right now? Are they a lifeline? A luxury? Something you’re craving more of? Something you’re mourning the loss of?

Because if no one’s told you lately, you deserve relationships that remind you who you are outside the roles you fill. You deserve women who show up for you the way you show up for everyone else. And if that feels impossible in this season? That’s okay too. Sometimes the first step is just remembering that you miss yourself.

And maybe that’s the real theme of my week…remembering the parts of myself I don’t always have access to at home, and then figuring out how to take care of that woman, too. Not with a grand gesture, not with a vacation every time life gets loud, but with tiny, doable things that make the day feel a little lighter.

For me, that usually starts with dinner. Not a perfect dinner, not an aspirational dinner—just food that tastes good and doesn’t add to the overwhelm. So for this week’s menu, I kept things simple and joyful: a sheet-pan maple–mustard salmon with brussels that basically cooks itself, a Thai basil ground chicken bowl that comes together fast but tastes like you worked harder than you did, and a roasted veggie couscous that feels bright and fresh on the days you need a reset.

A calm kitchen, a good meal, a moment to breathe, sometimes that’s enough to bring a little bit of you back to the surface.

If you’re a paid subscriber, your full menu is below. 👉🏽 Want the full dinner plan every Friday? Join The Motherload for $6/month or $65/year — real dinners for real families.

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Case in point, the week of Thanksgiving, the four of us were in my kitchen. Our couple friends…let’s call them the Smiths (I love and respect them IRL and want to make sure that while I’m sharing a real conversation, I’m also protecting their business) stopped by for a quick drink before they headed out of town for the holiday. While I stood around the kitchen island chopping (anyone else find they rarely have a conversation where they aren’t also multitasking in some way?), we drifted into that classic holiday landmine: who gets Christmas?

Because we’re comfortable with each other, the husbands got honest fast. They were saying (half joking, half dead ass serious), that it feels like a given that Christmas ends up with our (the wives’) side of the family. There was some real irritation there. A feeling on their part that somehow, by assuming that our families are the ones that get Christmas, we’re saying their families are…maybe not “less than,” but certainly not up to our standards.

At one point, my girl’s husband said something along the lines of, “You think it’s easy for me to look around on Christmas and not see my family? I have traditions too and things we like to do, and I feel like that gets completely dismissed when you say it’s a given we’re only ever going to spend Christmas with your family.”

Oof, I felt that. Doesn’t change anything lol…but points we’re made.

As we all kept talking (arguing lowkey lol), something clicked for me. It was the same thought I have whenever someone asks if we’re going to “try for a boy” (which…ewww, please stop asking people that). Because even if we did? Boys grow up, fall in love, and spend Christmas with their spouses’ family. That’s the pattern. That’s the culture. That’s the joke everyone seems to be in on.

And the reason that happens is simple: women are the magic-makers.

When you’re not the one creating the holiday magic — when you’ve only ever benefitted from it — you assume it can exist anywhere. You assume Christmas is portable, that the vibe will follow you no matter whose house you’re in. You presume Christmas magic just is… that it isn’t an experience carefully curated by someone.

But that’s only true if you’re the one receiving the magic, not the person quietly breaking your back to produce it.

Women carry the invisible work.

The lists. The traditions. The running tabs of toys (that need fucking batteries, my God). The matching Christmas morning pajamas ordered in October. The end-of-year teacher gifts. The last-minute grocery runs. The mental notes about who needs new coats or gloves or tights. The reminder to pack the travel snacks. The emotional temperature checks on everyone else.

For me, it feels like my brain is one massive computer with a bajillion open tabs — constantly planning, budgeting, arranging, communicating. Of course it’s all worth it when I see the smiles on my babies’ faces… I think most moms would say that. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t cost us a lot to pull off.

And that’s why I like to go home for the holidays.

Because when I’m with my family, I get to experience the magic. I get to see my childhood stockings hung by the fireplace and the same tiny Christmas tree in my room (my mom is actually crazy and has put little trees in my siblings’ and my rooms since we were little… but tell me why I now do the same for Nola and Stevie, so really, who’s crazy?) I get to see my aunties and laugh with my cousins. My grandfather still gives me coins in those damn purple Crown Royal bags (anyone else ever get their Christmas or birthday presents in those? lol).

I get to be someone’s child again. I get to relax into a system where the emotional labor is shared, not dumped entirely on me. I get to be mothered while I mother.
I get a fucking break.

When we’re with my husband’s family, all that invisible work shifts onto my shoulders — every detail, every tradition, every bit of emotional heavy lifting. And with where things currently stand with my in-laws (God, I want to tell y’all the whole saga so badly), I have nothing left to give. Highkey, I’m in a good amount of mourning over that, because I know I’m not the only woman grieving the family dynamic she wishes existed.

I refuse to be the emotional Atlas (the Greek god not the map lol) of a second household when I’m barely surviving the one I’m responsible for, especially not when my boundaries keep getting crossed (anyone else?)

So yea, this Christmas and probably every Christmas after, I’ll be packing up the kids, grabbing the iPad chargers, and flying to Los Angeles. Because there, I don’t have to generate the magic from scratch.

I get to feel it too.

So if you’re reading this and feeling the weight of your own invisible labor…the stockings, the snacks, the schedules, the seventeen open tabs in your brain…consider this your gentle nudge to make something easy this week. Something low-lift. Something that tastes like comfort without asking you to perform for it.

Because even though we’re the ones who make the magic, we also deserve dinners that don’t drain whatever magic we have left.

This week inside The Motherload, paid subscribers are getting three dinners that do exactly that: meals that come together fast, taste like you put in effort, and give you back a little breathing room. Think slow cooker BBQ pulled pork (freeze half for later for another recipe we’ll be making soon), a roasted red pepper Alfredo you can make while yelling “pick up all these goddamnmmm toys,” and a garlic-soy ground turkey situation that stretches beautifully over white rice.

If you’re a paid subscriber, your full menu is below. If you’re not, here’s your reminder that you don’t have to do everything alone — not the holidays, not motherhood, and definitely not dinner.

👉🏽 Want the full dinner plan every Friday? Join The Motherload for $6/month or $65/year — real dinners for real families.

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Thanksgiving is over (we made it), and yes — this newsletter is late. Between the kids being home all week, a kitchen that refused to clean itself, and cooking for a small village, I literally did not have a spare minute to sit down and write. So if you’re reading this with tired feet and a fridge packed with Tupperware, just know…same.

And truthfully? I wouldn’t trade it. Thanksgiving has become this sacred little corner of my life, and I didn’t even notice it happening until recently. When I was a kid, my mom hosted every year. A few days before the holiday, my great-grandmother, my grandmother, and my aunt would start trickling in with their overnight bags and their loud laughs and their stories, and suddenly the whole house felt warm and safe and full. I lived for that feeling — being surrounded by the women who raised me.

Somehow, without ever planning it, I built the same thing in my own home, just in a different shape. With my whole family still in L.A. and Christmas happening there every year, Thanksgiving has quietly become our Atlanta Friendsgiving. It’s now one of my favorite parts of my life. For the past four years, I’ve spent the morning in the kitchen with one of my dearest girlfriends, Chef Tarina Hodges (yep, the genius behind Pepper’s Hot Dogs, my full-blown obsession). We have a whole ritual now: breakfast first (usually chorizo tacos), then we “taste” our way through two very good bottles of champagne (don’t ask who drinks more, it’s me), and we cook. We laugh. We talk shit. And somehow, without fail, dinner hits the table at 4:30 (not gonna lie, we were late this year lol).

What started as a tiny, mismatched dinner for the friends who couldn’t get time off (restaurant folks, medical residents, all the stragglers who became family), has grown into a table of sixteen. Sixteen people who choose to be here every single year. It blows my mind in the softest, sweetest way. And by the time you’re reading this, the turkey has been picked clean, someone absolutely stole the last roll, and you’re probably eating pie straight from the tin. Perfect. That’s exactly how I’m writing this.

In my house, the weekend after Thanksgiving has its own tradition too: gumbo on Sunday. Same folks who sat around my table on Thursday come back, we pile in the kitchen, laugh, and eat until we’re sleepy all over again. I’m not ready to share my gumbo recipe yet — not because it’s secret, but because I haven’t written it in a way where I feel confident y’all can recreate it. Maybe next year.

But this week’s recipes? They’re all the leftover remixes I actually make at home — plus a few things my mom and grandmother always did. Leftover turkey gets a whole new personality, the ham bone turns into something soul-warming, and mashed potatoes become shockingly elegant.

Zero extra work, maximum comfort. Let’s make the fridge work for you.

As always, paid subscribers will find three full recipes, make-ahead tips, and a leftover remix that turns one meal into another win later in the week.

Black Friday Treat

I’m offering 25% off the annual plan from today through Monday. If you’ve been thinking about joining The Motherload as a paid subscriber, this is the moment — weekly dinner plans, leftover remixes, and sanity-saving cooking support straight to your inbox all year long.

Subscribe now

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