The Mamas Quotes

“What I realized eventually is that the fantasy that fueled my twenties? I’d needed that. We all do. I needed to feel like the invincible heroine in a silk headscarf fighting off evil questions about why I hadn’t found a man. As the years stacked up, I had dreamt up another fantasy to pull me through the next decade. This one filled with babies and momming so hard. And now that picture needed some serious retouching, somehow reconciling it with the old ones. To really confront who I was as a mother, a Black mother, I’d have to give birth yet again. The emotional labor pains were the worst but my authentic self was in there somewhere.”
― Helena Andrews-Dyer, The Mamas: What I Learned About Kids, Class, and Race from Moms Not Like Me