The Women Who Held It All Together · The MAGDALENE Network

The Women Who Held It All Together

A Mother’s Day love letter to the women who lost themselves while keeping everyone else alive

May 10, 2026

Today, I’m thinking about all the women in their fifties and sixties who are being celebrated on Mother’s Day, but deep down, still don’t feel worthy of the flowers, brunches, cards, mimosas, or “you’re the best mom ever” declarations.

Not because they didn’t do enough.

Because they did too much.

They did so much that somewhere along the way, they disappeared inside the doing.

We were born into a time when certain expectations were already laid out for us before we even had a chance to ask ourselves what we wanted. Our mothers and grandmothers were told that success meant finishing school, getting married, having children, putting dinner on the table, keeping the house somewhat presentable, and making sure everyone had clean socks, brushed hair, and something vaguely edible in a lunchbox.

And honestly? The bar was different then.

You could put some saltine-cracker-covered chicken breasts in an onion soup casserole situation, call it dinner, and everyone lived to tell the tale. You could slap together peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, toss them into paper bags, send the family off, and then sit on the couch with your coffee, watch your soaps, clean during commercials, maybe fold some laundry, maybe not, maybe eat a sleeve of Nilla Wafers and call it lunch.

There might be a Tupperware party. Maybe a casserole swap. Maybe a Avon lady at the door.

Work was for men. Play was for kids. Housewives were expected to hold it all together, but at least the world didn’t pretend they also had to become CEOs, nutritionists, therapists, room moms, activists, interior designers, fitness influencers, and emotionally regulated goddesses with perfect countertops.

Some women loved the old arrangement. Some women were quietly suffocating inside it. Some women were fighting like hell to get out.

Then something changed.

The late eighties and early nineties brought a new kind of promise, but also a new kind of trap.

Women began stepping more fully into the workforce, and men, society, and the culture at large basically said, “You want to work? Go right ahead.”

So we did.

And at first, for many women, it felt like freedom. It felt like fresh air. It felt like finally having a piece of the world that belonged to us. We had paychecks. Conversations. Work clothes. Office friends. A reason to leave the house that wasn’t attached to a grocery list or someone else’s schedule.

But here’s the part nobody really warned us about.

We were allowed to take on more.

We were not allowed to put anything down.

So the responsibilities piled up. The house still had to be clean. The groceries still had to be bought. The laundry still had to be folded. The appointments still had to be made. The school forms still had to be signed. The birthday gifts still had to be remembered. The class parties still needed cupcakes, and suddenly they had to be nut-free, gluten-free, dye-free, joy-free, and shaped like woodland animals from a Pinterest board created by a woman who clearly had help.

We had to know what was happening in politics. We had to be informed about world events. We had to manage staff, manage households, manage children’s emotions, manage husbands’ moods, manage aging parents, manage our weight, manage our skin, manage our careers, manage our friendships, and manage the fact that Tommy’s mom made homemade stuffing and never used Stove Top, so now apparently we were failing Thanksgiving too.

Before we knew it, we were working full time, raising children, keeping homes, remembering everyone’s allergies, volunteering for the PTA, decorating for every season, trying to stay attractive, trying not to lose our minds, and humming along to that old Enjoli commercial like some kind of deranged prophecy.

I can bring home the bacon.

Fry it up in a pan.

And also schedule the dentist, clean the bathroom, pack the lunches, answer the emails, remember spirit week, buy the teacher gift, pick up the prescription, plan the vacation, host the holiday, make the appointment, send the thank-you note, lose ten pounds, moisturize, meditate, and please, for the love of God, don’t forget the permission slip.

We became overwhelmed.

And because no one had language for it yet, we thought it was personal failure.

So we went to therapy and whispered our guilt into beige rooms with tissue boxes on side tables, thinking we were the only ones who couldn’t keep up. Some women stayed in their jobs and felt like they were failing at home. Some women left their jobs to stay home and felt like they were failing at life. Some women wanted both. Some women wanted neither. Some women didn’t know what they wanted because they had never been given enough silence to ask.

There was no winning.

There was only judgment wearing different outfits.

If you worked, someone thought your children were being neglected.

If you stayed home, someone thought you had wasted your potential.

If your house was clean, you were uptight.

If your house was messy, you were lazy.

If you cooked, you were expected to cook better.

If you ordered pizza, you were poisoning your family.

If you were involved at school, you were overbearing.

If you weren’t, you were selfish.

And somehow, through all of this, women kept showing up.

They showed up tired.

They showed up sick.

They showed up underpaid, unseen, touched-out, emotionally fried, and still somehow remembering that someone needed poster board for a project due tomorrow morning.

Those are the women I want to honor today.

Not the fantasy mother.

Not the soft-focus commercial mother in a white linen dress smiling over a tray of croissants while her children hand her watercolor cards and nobody spills orange juice.

I want to honor the women who held it all together when it was way too much to hold.

The women who tried to be there for their husbands, their children, their parents, their coworkers, their communities, their churches, their schools, their neighbors, and their friends, while skipping themselves over and over again like they were an optional appointment.

The women who spent twenty or thirty years feeding everyone else and wondering why they were starving.

The women who looked around one day and realized, “I have done everything I was supposed to do, so why do I still feel like I don’t know who I am?”

Because that is the part we don’t talk about enough.

So many women are entering this phase of life exhausted, not because they failed, but because they succeeded inside a system that required their self-abandonment.

They did what they were told made a good woman.

They sacrificed.

They accommodated.

They anticipated everyone’s needs.

They became the emotional weather system of the home.

They knew who was upset before anyone said a word.

They learned how to soften themselves, swallow their anger, make things easier, make things prettier, make things quieter, make everyone else more comfortable.

And now they are waking up.

That is what I see everywhere.

Women in their fifties and sixties waking up and realizing they have lived inside a false story. Not because they didn’t love their families. Not because they regret their children. Not because motherhood wasn’t sacred.

But because somewhere along the way, motherhood became entangled with martyrdom.

And martyrdom is not love.

It is a slow spiritual erosion dressed up as virtue.

So now these women are asking questions that should have been allowed decades ago.

Who am I when no one needs me?

What do I want?

What lights me up?

What did I love before I became useful?

What did I bury because there was no time?

What did I silence because it made other people uncomfortable?

Where did my fire go?

Where did my body go?

Where did my voice go?

Where did my soul go?

This is my tribe.

The women coming home to themselves.

The women trying to remember who they were before the marriage, before the babies, before the bills, before the casseroles, before the office politics, before the school calendars, before the emotional labor, before the endless invisible lists running through their minds while everyone else slept peacefully.

Maybe you’re finding yourself now through travel, standing in some foreign city eating something you can’t pronounce and realizing there is still a world inside you that has not been touched by duty.

Maybe you’re finding yourself through art, music, books, friendship, gardens, oceans, movement, silence, or finally taking yourself seriously.

Maybe you are looking in the mirror and seeing not an aging woman, but a woman who has survived an entire architecture designed to keep her from knowing her own power.

For me, I found myself through Mary Magdalene.

The woman they called whore.

The woman they turned into a warning.

The woman they buried beneath centuries of shame, distortion, and religious control.

The holy woman with the answers.

And I cannot help but wonder how different my life might have been if I had stumbled upon the Gospel of Mary thirty years ago. What would I have understood sooner if someone had handed me a teaching that said the path was not outside of me? What would have happened if I had known that the kingdom was not a place I had to earn through obedience, but a truth I had to remember within my own body?

I might have understood earlier that the meaning of life was never about how well I performed womanhood.

It was not about how clean the house was.

It was not about whether the dinner was homemade.

It was not about whether I could be everything to everyone and still smile while doing it.

It was about what expanded my heart.

It was about what touched me so deeply that I was different after experiencing it.

It was about what I cultivated.

What I nurtured.

What I allowed myself to feel.

What I had the courage to face.

What I let move through my body instead of burying it in my nervous system for thirty years and calling it “being fine.”

If I had known what Mary teaches, I might have lived more. I might have risked more. I might have loved more. I might have trusted the intelligence of my own body sooner. I might have stopped mistaking fear for responsibility. I might have stopped calling self-abandonment love.

Because Mary’s gospel does not ask us to become smaller.

It asks us to rise.

It asks us to move through the powers that keep us bound: ignorance, fear, craving, domination, rage, foolish wisdom, and the illusion that we are separate from the divine.

It asks us to come back into union with the soul.

And that is the Mother’s Day message I want to offer.

Not another sentimental tribute to women who sacrificed everything.

We have had enough of that.

I want to offer a blessing for the women who are done disappearing.

For the mothers who love their children and are still allowed to want a life of their own.

For the women who are proud of what they built, but honest about what it cost them.

For the women who are tired of being praised for endurance when what they really need is freedom.

For the women who are beginning to understand that the next phase of life is not an ending.

It is a return.

Your soul is not gone.

It has been waiting underneath the noise.

Under the grocery lists.

Under the resentment.

Under the guilt.

Under the unpaid labor.

Under the years of making sure everyone else was okay.

Your soul has been waiting for you to turn toward it again and say, “I’m ready.”

Ready to remember.

Ready to listen.

Ready to feel.

Ready to stop living in fear, disappointment, and overwhelm.

Ready to come into union with the part of you that was never broken, never lost, never sinful, never too much, never not enough.

The next phase of your life is not asking you to become someone new.

It is asking you to become whole.

So today, I honor the women who mothered through impossible expectations.

I honor the women who worked and still came home to a second shift.

I honor the women who stayed home and felt invisible.

I honor the women who were judged no matter what they chose.

I honor the women who lost themselves inside love, duty, survival, and expectation.

And I honor the women who are now brave enough to ask, “What about me?”

That question is not selfish.

It is sacred.

It may be the first honest prayer you have spoken in years.

And if this resonates, maybe begin there.

Ask yourself what expands in your heart.

Ask your body what it has been trying to tell you.

Ask your soul what it needs you to know.

And if you feel called, pick up the Gospel of Mary. Let her words meet you where you are. Let them remind you that the path was never about becoming worthy.

You already are.

The path is about remembering.

Happy Mother’s Day to the women who held it all together.

And happy becoming to the women who are finally ready to come home to themselves.

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