Mutha Magazine Articles By Allison Or Alison May 2026

Her follow-up, “The Gratitude Journal That Tried to Kill Me,” is a brilliant short-form satire, written as a series of increasingly unhinged entries in a mandated “blessings” diary. It begins earnestly ( “Grateful for tiny handprints on the glass” ) and devolves into ( “Grateful I didn’t scream ‘I hate you all’ at the family craft time, only whispered it into the laundry hamper.” )

In a media landscape that often demands mothers perform a specific kind of cheerful resilience, Mutha provides a confessional booth, and writers like Allison/Alison are the raw, witty, and unflinching confessors. To read their work is to feel a tight chest loosen, to hear someone say: “Yes, this is hard. It’s supposed to be. Now let’s laugh before we cry.” mutha magazine articles by allison or alison

While Mutha features multiple writers with similar first names, two distinct strains of “Allison/Alison” emerge from its archives: one who leans into the ferocious vulnerability of early motherhood and another who dissects the social performance of being a “good mom.” Both, however, share a refusal to sugarcoat. Her follow-up, “The Gratitude Journal That Tried to

These articles avoid the “warrior mom” trope. Instead, Allison focuses on the ambivalence of early motherhood—the love so huge it’s violent, coupled with the grief for a former self who could sleep in and drink hot coffee. Her Mutha pieces are often cited in comments sections as “the thing I read at 3 AM while nursing that made me feel less alone.” She has a knack for naming the unnameable: the rage, the boredom, the strange erotic dislocation of one’s body becoming public property. It’s supposed to be