Mutha Magazine Allison -

To read Allison in Mutha is to encounter the concept of the vulnus —the wound that does not close. Unlike the traditional narrative arc of motherhood, which moves from pregnancy to delivery to a “new normal,” Allison’s work rejects resolution. In pieces like “The Leak” (Issue #4) and “On Not Sleeping,” she refuses to frame postpartum depression, marital strain, or identity loss as temporary hurdles. Instead, she presents them as permanent landscapes. Her prose is unflinching; she writes about the smell of sour milk on a shirt she has worn for three days, the secret calculus of resentment toward a co-sleeping toddler, and the bizarre grief for a former self who could read a novel in a single afternoon.

My son is black. I am white.

This honesty serves a crucial political function. By refusing to aestheticize suffering into “wisdom,” Allison dismantles the concept of the . The Good Mother, as perpetuated by patriarchal capitalism, is patient, grateful, and self-effacing. Allison’s narrator is impatient, furious, and fiercely aware of her own ego. In one memorable Mutha essay, she describes locking herself in the bathroom not to cry, but to scroll through Instagram photos of her childless friends at a wine bar. “I didn’t want to be her,” she writes of her daughter, “I wanted to be me before her.” This admission—of mourning a life one chose to leave—is taboo. Yet, by voicing it, Allison gives permission to thousands of readers who feel monstrous for the same thoughts. mutha magazine allison