They spilled out of me, raw and unfiltered

I Can’t Be Both? A Reaction

I recently heard someone say, “I can’t be a wife and mother. I can only manage one at a time.”

Anonymous, said plainly, said with clarity — not careless, not cruel. Just a woman who has reached a truth faster than I did. A truth it took me twenty‑eight years to understand.

Her words didn’t float or drift. They struck. They hit something deep in me and pulled up the memory of the art words I typed years ago — typed from a broken place, keys clacking, ink barely printing, the woman behind them held together by threads. The words didn’t form neatly. They spilled out of me, raw and unfiltered, because I had no other way to speak them.

That sentence landed hard. It made me look back at the years where I didn’t get to choose one role. I became all of them, all at once, from eighteen onwards — and if I’m honest, even earlier. From eight years old I was a sister, not a mother, but I was mothering anyway. Big when I should have been small. Carrying a shelf‑load of responsibility when I should have had none at all.

Young me: mother, wife, partner, friend.

Chief cleaner, nurse, doctor, teacher. Lover. Homemaker. Travel agent. Logistics expert. Values‑giver. Religion explainer. Fable maker. Bread maker. Cake baker for every birthday. Ice‑cream provider. Groomer of small hands and small nails. Tears wiped, hair clipper.

My son sat in the barber’s chair every month from three or four until fourteen. I worked it out once — around 144 haircuts. I took him, waited, listened, talked. When he was fourteen or fifteen, he started going alone, but the years before that were mine.

Shoes measured — how many times? Into the shop, onto the metal plate, waiting for the number that meant these shoes will carry you through another season. Shoes that fit, shoes that last, shoes that don’t hurt. I did that. Every time.

Contraception teacher. Family‑planning explainer. Birds‑and‑bees translator. Launderette specialist because not everything can just be thrown in the machine. Fashion advisor, personal shopper, because everyone needs someone to help them choose. Principles teacher — or rules of life, or balance, whatever you call the invisible scaffolding that keeps a child upright.

I mothered from eighteen until my daughter was twenty‑one. She was born in 1997, raised through years that changed faster than any manual could keep up. And while the children grew, my husband stayed a child in his own ways — needy, all the freedom he required emotional labor provided by me.

So where was I in all of that? How did I remain? What happened to me?

I became the structure. The quiet force that kept everyone upright. And when someone says they can only manage one role, I understand. Some people get to choose. I didn’t. I became all of them. And somehow, I survived it — until it broke me.

I didn’t want to let go. When I wrote those art words in 2022 — “I want to be queen of my own castle” — I didn’t even realise what I meant. In one sentence, this woman has already realised what took me twenty‑eight years to understand.