In a media landscape that often demands mothers perform a specific kind of cheerful resilience, Mutha provides a confessional booth, and writers like Allison/Alison are the raw, witty, and unflinching confessors. To read their work is to feel a tight chest loosen, to hear someone say: “Yes, this is hard. It’s supposed to be. Now let’s laugh before we cry.”
While Mutha features multiple writers with similar first names, two distinct strains of “Allison/Alison” emerge from its archives: one who leans into the ferocious vulnerability of early motherhood and another who dissects the social performance of being a “good mom.” Both, however, share a refusal to sugarcoat. mutha magazine articles by allison or alison
Her follow-up, “The Gratitude Journal That Tried to Kill Me,” is a brilliant short-form satire, written as a series of increasingly unhinged entries in a mandated “blessings” diary. It begins earnestly ( “Grateful for tiny handprints on the glass” ) and devolves into ( “Grateful I didn’t scream ‘I hate you all’ at the family craft time, only whispered it into the laundry hamper.” ) In a media landscape that often demands mothers