At my MIL’s anniversary dinner, everyone got prime rib and mashed potatoes. She set four plain broccoli florets in front of me and announced it was so I’d “look my best” in the family photos. Twenty people went silent. I picked up my plate—and made her perfect picture cost far more than she expected.
My husband, Liam, and I have been married for four years, and eight months ago we had our first baby, Noah.
I love being a mom more than I knew I could love anything, but the last eight months have also been exhausting in ways I wasn’t prepared for.
My body still doesn’t feel completely familiar to me.
I love being a mom
I have softer places now. My old jeans don’t fit.
Some days I care, and some days I’m too busy trying to keep a tiny human alive to think about it.
I had been working on giving myself some grace.
My mother-in-law, Barbara, apparently had other plans.
Barbara has always cared about appearances. Not in a normal “I like a clean house and nice clothes” way.
My mother-in-law, Barbara, apparently had other plans.
Appearances seem to be the lens through which she understands the world.
She once asked Liam’s sister, Rachel, to change dresses before a birthday dinner because the shade of green “photographed badly.”
When Liam and I got engaged, her first comment was that I needed to get my nails done before we announced it.
The difficult thing about Barbara is that she can be generous and thoughtful—right up until she says something cutting in such a pleasant voice that you wonder if you’re unreasonable for being hurt.
What happened next changed everything… FULL STORY on the next page.
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