Authors Trisha (left) and Amy (right).
“We put so much pressure on ourselves in this generation to be perfect at everything, as a mom, wife, friend, daughter-in-law,” Amy said. “We were told we could, and should, ‘do it all.’”
Conveying to mothers that no one actually “does it all” or flawlessly navigates the trials of child-rearing form the crux of Amy and Trisha’s books, I Was a Really Good Mom Before I Had Kids: Reimagining Modern Motherhood and Dirty Little Secrets from Otherwise Perfect Moms.
These collections have assured mothers throughout the US that they’re not the only ones challenged by motherhood, a consolation the writing partners themselves sought as young moms only recently. The pair met 15 years ago in New York, where their careers overlapped and they quickly became friends. Not long afterward, however, Amy and Trisha found themselves rooted in a new, very different setting, adjusting to lives outside the workplace.
“Within five years, we were both in the Bay Area and having kids, and realized that this whole motherhood experience was a bit harder than we’d imagined,” Trisha said. “We’d call each other at 9 p.m., laughing or crying, asking questions like, ‘Are we crazy? How come other moms are all smiling and happy? Why do we feel guilty all the time for the choices we’ve made?’”
Having a close friend helped immensely, but Amy and Trisha wondered if other mothers shared their feelings and uncertainties. Did these women had someone or something to lean on when they faced parenting doubts?
“We went on a mission… interviewing moms across the country to see if there was a bigger generational trend going on,” Trisha said. “We quickly realized that this was much, much bigger than us, and that there wasn’t a voice out there that resonated, especially in a book. So we went to work!”
Amy and Trisha contacted friends—as well as friends of friends—with kids, engaging in face-to-face interviews, focus groups, and email questions. It wasn’t until they started anonymous phone interviews, however, that they began uncovering what mothers really thought.
“It took on average 22 minutes for moms to spill the beans… first we got ‘Oh, life is great, I love my kids, I am so lucky…’. And once we asked the critical question of ‘are you happy?’, we got their true feelings,” Amy said. “Then we heard ‘Uh, well, I haven’t showered in four days. I haven’t had sex in four weeks, and well, I’m not quite sure why I had kids in the first place because I don’t feel like I’m doing a good enough job as a mom.’ ”
After hundreds of interviews, Amy said, “We realized we were not alone, and that we needed to realign our expectations with reality if we were going to learn to love motherhood as much as we loved our kids.”
As they set out to write their first book, Amy and Trisha had one simple ambition in mind.
“Our goal was always to reach just one mom — to make her feel better about the job she was doing and to help her readjust her insane expectations of what it means to be a ‘good mom,’” Amy said.
Finding the time to achieve finish the project proved more complicated, as Amy and Trisha had to balance family life with their literary effort, but they worked effectively as a team with the writing and interviews, offering one another support when fears they were spending too much time on a personal endeavor crept up.
“Of course we felt loads of guilt at certain times, but we pushed through it, with the hope that the outcome would help moms out there get a grip on the trials and tribulations of modern motherhood,” Trisha said.
Researching and analyzing modern motherhood has been an informative process not just for their readers, but for Amy and Trisha as well, helping them appreciate the challenges, but also the joys of motherhood.
“One of the chapters we have in [I Was a Really Good Mom…] is all about learning to live in the moment. We truly believe that we need to release the pressure we put on ourselves, put aside the housework and other stuff, even for 10 minutes a day, and breathe our children in,” Amy said. “Life is so short… Our kids won’t remember that we home-baked the perfect cupcakes for their dance recitals. What they will remember are the messy peanut butter and jelly sandwiches we shared after school, or the silly dance parties we had on a Saturday afternoon. Internalizing these messages are important — we all need to stop and just be for a little while, every day.”
Since their first book came out in 2007, Amy and Trisha continued to collect mothers’ stories, including “dirty little secrets,” which they compiled into a second book. Picking a favorite among these amusing confidences would be impossible, Trisha said, “From ‘I have sex with myself more than my husband’ to ‘I forgot to pick up my son from Kindergarten because I was watching a VH1 Rockumentary—[these secrets] unite us in the truth!”
The duo’s third book, I’d Trade My Husband for a House Keeper, was published last year. Currently Amy and Trisha run a blog, and they’re working to transform two of their books into TV shows. They’d say more, but Amy says, like certain other things in a mother’s life, “[The new projects] are a bit top secret.”
