Am I Getting My Pink Back?
On mom guilt, mom friends, and mom content — and writing more of it.
Hello there, friends. Happy Thursday.
I’m checking in today with a bit of a diversion from my usual Substack fare and instead with something of a status report.
I’ve now been writing this newsletter for two-ish months. Two-ish months of hyping up new internet friends in their comment sections; of agonizing over analytics; of carefully calculating, then erasing entire months’ worth of editorial calendars. And after these two-ish months of throwing entire catering trays worth of proverbial spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks, I’m not sure I’m left with any more clarity than what I started out with back in January. And I think that’s okay. It’s only been two months. Ish.
What I have found, though, is that my often stream-of-conscious Mom Content™ performs well above anything else I publish — certainly more than my reported-out features or exclusive interviews. And between us, I don’t know that I had initially set out to write about motherhood in the way I have here. In rereading my recent posts, I find that, indeed: I discuss it all the time, in the same breath as fashion and business and style and everything else I cover on this platform.
To a degree, I imagine this has been a subliminal choice. I think about my actual, physical children all the time. They are a swarm of cicadas in late August, buzzing at a low hum in the back of my cerebral cortex. But I also think about what their life requires of me and what they deserve: my time, my attention, my patience, my wisdom, my health, my happiness, my joy, my emotional availability, my personal fulfillment, my interest, my love. Even the most selfish choices I make expressly for myself are in turn choices I make for them. And I know I felt a lot of confusion, and certainly a lot of guilt, about that for a long — that I now can’t seem to exist as myself without them.
Other posts you might like:
This only became intensified in January. For reasons I don’t need to recap on the internet, it was a excruciatingly difficult start to the year, and by the second week of 2025, I was depleted as much physically as I was emotionally. I need to get my mojo back, I obsessively repeated to my husband every night until I fell asleep with the words dangling out of my mouth. On TikTok, they call this “getting your pink back.” The phrase was popularized by content creator Lindsey Gurk, inspired by the idea that flamingos lose their pink color while raising their young, but regain it over time.
In pushing through gunk of the New Year, I made a conscious, almost devout decision to mother myself as I do my children. Moms, like their children, need love as much as they do rest, nutrition, and loving touch. I became religious about making decisions in my own best interest, under the guise that what is best for me is best for my entire family. Do I have my mojo back? Am I pink again? I don’t fucking know! But I look outside the window from my standing desk and into our backyard where I once saw only snow and ice and now see the same sprouts that bloomed last summer. I’m discovering a newness in me that I find beautiful and that I know is informed by my children.
I do feel better now that I’m doing all the boring things: lifting heavier weights, drinking more water, prioritizing better sleep, and taking longer walks. But what I think has actually become most impactful for me have been other moms.
Now, this is where I should say: You should not rely on other people to lift you up or to bring you out of negative emotions. I do know this. Why would you rely on other people to feel better when people are not always going to be there for you?
But lately, this has not been my experience. The job of a mother feels a lot for one person because it was never meant for one person. Yet here we are, our most primal pain and pleasure pushed to the recesses of contemporary society. And I think after I had my first child I prescribed to that mindset a little bit, that we’re meant to figure it out on our own and wade back into the mix whenever we get there. Maybe you’re a mom who tried that, too, and remember that, no: That didn’t work.
What has worked, though, is the opposite. Because once I started feeling better physically, I started feeling better about being more open with the Cool Moms™ at my daughter’s preschool. I started checking in more earnestly with my friends many states away who just had a baby. I also, I guess, started posting about it more here, and that has filled my cup so much more than an eight-pack of Pilates classes.
I guess what I’m trying to say is this: Our bags of flesh and bones need community, period, but — to paraphrase a TikTok I saw recently, but now cannot find for the life of me — we also need strong communities based on shared experiences, ones that can turn routine tasks into special moments, ones that can provide emotional support. If that means writing more about mom stuff without my own resistance, then perhaps I shall do that. And if you too consider yourself a mojo-less mom: You should find your own version of mom content, in your own small way.
In the meantime: I’ll be here, grappling with this vulnerability hangover for the foreseeable future. Is there anything (else) you’d like to see me doing more of here? Let me know, and thank you, as always, for reading.
xx,
Maura
Here for ALL your content, but can so relate to this. Working on getting my pink back too!! 🫶
This, all of it! ❤️