"I am too intelligent, too demanding, and too resourceful for anyone to be able to take charge of me entirely. No one knows me or loves me completely. I have only myself." —Simone de Beauvoir

I went everywhere with Luke. Returning to work meant I handed him over to the women who ran the crèche, and after two hours of teaching, I would return, and they would suggest I go have a cup of tea so they could cuddle him some more. Unlike other babies, Luke did not pitch a fit when I gave them that extra time. Lying in their arms he had the swagger of a human that understands he is beloved. He would twinkle and wave me off, so I would creep to a nearby café and attempt to write. This was torture. Just as I was unable to sustain a writing practice in active alcoholism, in sober motherhood, I found the same obstacles. The path by which I had disappeared into the story, especially in my first novel, Parting Is All We Know of Heaven, was now littered with thoughts of my baby, his dimple, his knees, his face, his perfectly round, bald head.

Before living in splendid isolation in New York City, grieving the death of my sister, unemployed and barely managing, writing was a survival mechanism, a scream in the dark silence of my life. Now, married, mothered, surrounded by life in London with its small joys of other mothers, old friends who tolerated my besotted attention to this child, a routine that meant I was rarely alone, I lost the ability to disappear, to submerge myself into the life of a character. Each time I went into that place, there would be a reason to turn back to bend over his crib, to cook a meal for my husband, who appeared at dinnertime, professional and interesting, while I, desperate to establish my existence as still meaningful, babbled away about our walks, his loving a terrifying British children's show called Mr. Blobby, how we had gone swimming, the minutia of our lives together.

After a few minutes, he would disappear with our son to lie with him and get his fill of baby before bedtime while I stood alone in our kitchen trying to remember the definition of “metaphor.” I sent an email to my wonderful New York agent bewailing the lack of ability to write anything and she, also a mother, answered with the advice to let things go and accept my new all-consuming role as Luke's mother. We had returned for a post-birth conversation with my obstetrician, Faith Hadid, who had walked into the birthing room after my seventy-two hours of back labor, at the moment of birth, wearing a Chanel suit and said, "Oh well, done, Molly!" I believe I snarled, "Fuck you," before handing Luke to Kevin. During the post-game chat about whether a cesarean might have been a prudent option, my husband said, "I thought she was going to die. I thought she and the baby were going to die."

This was a shock. I remembered how many things I had survived and wondered why he had not told someone to make sure I didn't die. Part of me was angry, but another part, the part that was the neglected child, the injured child, the teenage alcoholic, accepted that basically, I was alone, except now I was the mother. I would never let anything hurt my son. Maybe I knew this from the start. The skinny, competitive, cool girl my husband had fallen in love with was gone. I no longer checked my reflection in any surface available or felt like I needed to make men fall in love with me or at least want to fuck me. I understood something about myself that had never been clear. I did not need to be called beautiful, I needed to make sure the world was safe for my child and to survive, unlike my sister, to help him grow up.

I accepted the obliteration of motherhood, and when my husband told me he had been promoted, I reacted like a good wife. I did not refuse to move to Dallas, Texas, where he would take over the Bureau, assign reporters to jobs, and have his own stories. Alone in London, I thought it was finally time to let go of my independence and become helpful. Never mind how many novels I had read by Doris Lessing, Virginia Woolf, and Kate Chopin, how many poems I had read by Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath, how often these devoted mothers/wives attempted suicide or foretold the loss of their marriage. I would follow him to the land of everything I disliked: football, cars, Republicans, manicures, and boosterism. I would sublimate, crush, and deny my own personality because I was a wife and a mother, and this seemed the only path to peace.

If I was unhappy, this was the final proof of what so many men had told me. I was uncontrollable and chronically discontent. While they briefly admired my spirit, everything was transactional, based on my weight, worth, and ability to spin straw into gold. The prince had freed me from the bondage of ego.

— Molly Moynahan, author and writing coach

FOLLOW AND READ MORE: