Forty-Five Minutes
Motherhood, female friendship, and learning how to receive care again
Maternal Caress, Mary Cassatt
Earlier this week, for the first time since I gave birth, I left Louis with my mom for forty-five minutes so I could go see Nancy at Topanga Acupuncture.
Forty-five minutes.
Not a trip away, not some dramatic escape from motherhood, not even enough time to fully disconnect mentally from whether he was hungry or sleeping or needing me. Just enough time to sit inside a quiet room while another woman tended to my body for a moment.
Nancy actually cared for me throughout my pregnancy, so it felt absolutely fitting that she would also be the first person I returned to when I needed to be cared for again myself. And somehow, even that felt enormous.
What struck me most wasn’t the discomfort of leaving him, though there was some of that too. It was how unfamiliar receiving care and human touch had started to feel, and how hungry I actually was for it.
Since becoming a mother, my body has existed primarily in service of my son. My breasts nourish him, on demand. My nervous system tracks his needs constantly, even in sleep. Before Louis was born, I used to joke, somewhat proudly, that I could sleep through anything. I was the kind of person who could probably sleep through an earthquake, and honestly, part of me worried about that while I was pregnant. What if some instinct everyone else seemed to possess somehow skipped over me?
But the moment he arrived, something ancient and immediate awakened inside me. Since his arrival, I wake to the slightest movement, the smallest sound, sometimes before he even fully wakes himself. It feels less like conscious attentiveness and more like my body itself has been rewired around his existence and safety.
My attention, my time, my physicality, my emotional bandwidth, all of it extends outward toward caregiving almost automatically now. And while I feel deeply honored by motherhood and by the closeness Louis and I share, I also see how easily mothers can disappear inside the endlessness of tending to everyone else.
I don’t know if any of you can relate, but is there something about postpartum that makes receiving harder?
Maybe it’s because biologically and emotionally, you become so deeply attuned to your child that separating from them, even briefly, can feel unnatural at first. How could it not? Your body spent months growing them, feeding them, responding to them. For so long, there quite literally was no separation between where you ended, and they began. And then suddenly, postpartum asks you to somehow become both completely devoted and fully independent again overnight.
No one really talks honestly about that part. There’s such a strange tension in early motherhood, this pull between total closeness and the pressure to remain entirely yourself within it.
Motherhood is often framed through extremes. Either you lose yourself completely in sacrifice, or you’re encouraged to immediately “reclaim” yourself, bounce back, maintain your identity, and protect your independence. But I think most women are actually living somewhere in the much messier middle, trying to understand how to care deeply for another human being without completely disappearing in the process.
Back to Nancy, the needles… and me attempting to remember I’m also a human who needs care, that my body is still my own.
As I lay there, pinned to the table like a slightly anxious human pincushion, I realized how long it had been since I had fully exhaled. Not a performative “self-care” exhale. Not the kind where you’re technically relaxing but also mentally calculating how long it’s been since the baby last ate or how much longer you have till the laundry machine is done so you can fold the endless amount of laundry that comes with your expanding family, but I mean a real exhale. The kind where your body softens before your mind even catches up to it.
And it’s not because Louis is a burden; he is the greatest joy of my life. But motherhood, especially modern motherhood, asks women to become endless generators of emotional, physical, and psychological labor while somehow continuing to function like fully charged iPhones (the latest upgraded NEW version at that!) with no time plugged into the wall.
We celebrate maternal devotion constantly while quietly normalizing maternal depletion. Women are expected to nourish everyone around them emotionally, physically, spiritually, often while surviving on interrupted sleep, cold coffee, imbalanced hormones, and MAYBE some water. (Which, as I write this, I’m realizing I still haven’t had enough of today.)
And underneath all of it is a kind of isolation I don’t think we talk about honestly enough.
There’s also a particular and peculiar loneliness to the version of motherhood I’m experiencing, one that doesn’t fit neatly into the boxes people tend to understand. I am a single mother, but not entirely in the traditional sense. Louis’ father is loving, involved, and very much part of our daily life. And yet there are still many moments where the emotional reality of motherhood lands squarely on my body, my home, my nervous system, and nights spent alone. Just me and my son.
What I’m also starting to realize is that practical support and emotional and sensual caretaking are not always the same thing. Someone can love you deeply and still not fully understand what it means to mother inside a female body every minute of every hour of every day. And honestly, I’ve started to wonder how many women inside seemingly “traditional” partnerships feel this isolation and loneliness, too? How many mothers are technically supported but still emotionally starving for tenderness, softness, and care themselves?
Interior. Familia de clase media. Años 20/30.
I think that’s part of why sisterhood feels so essential to me now.
There is a language women speak with one another that often requires very little translation. A glance across the room from another mother. Someone instinctively handing you water while you’re breastfeeding. Someone affirming you before you even fully explain yourself.
Not performance. Not advice. Recognition.
The deeper I move into motherhood, the more I understand that women were never meant to do this alone. Since giving birth, I’ve craved female friendship and female presence with an intensity that has surprised me. Not socially, not performatively, not in the polished “girls’ brunch” way modern culture often packages womanhood, but in a more ancient sense.
Women who understand what it means to exist inside transformation.
Women who can sit beside one another without pretending to have it all figured out.
Women who understand that motherhood is both beautiful and disorienting, ecstatic and lonely, sacred and deeply physical.
It makes complete sense to me now why women historically gathered together throughout pregnancy, birth, postpartum, and childrearing. Why meals were prepared communally. Why women sat together feeding babies while stories unfolded around them.
Somewhere along the way, we lost much of that. Or maybe more accurately and tragically, we were taught to devalue it.
Founding mothers of La Leche League
Female closeness became something unserious in the cultural imagination. Something mocked as dramatic, codependent, frivolous, “cringe.” Because sadly, we now live inside a culture that praises independence while quietly starving people of meaningful connection.
And yet postpartum has shown me how biologically intelligent female community actually is. There is something profoundly regulating about being witnessed honestly by other women during seasons of transformation. About hearing another mother admit she is overwhelmed, or touched out, or lonely. About hearing another woman speak honestly about sex, desire, partnership, and how motherhood doesn’t erase the part of us that still longs to feel wanted and alive inside our bodies. About feeding your baby beside someone else feeding theirs. About existing in spaces where your changing body is not something to hide, fix, or apologize for, but simply something being lived inside together.
There’s so much comfort in realizing how many of our private thoughts are actually deeply shared. The grief of not fully recognizing yourself after birth. The strange disorientation of inhabiting a body that feels both powerful and unfamiliar. The longing to feel desirable again, not just as a mother, but as a woman. I think so much healing begins there, not necessarily in solutions, but in the relief of being seen honestly by someone who understands the terrain firsthand.
I think this is part of what Boobs Out! is truly about.
Not branding. Not strategy. Not a Substack or just a breastfeeding circle or community, but a real response to a real ache.
I want this to be a place where breastfeeding and postpartum and identity shifts and loneliness and joy can all coexist without needing to be polished into something more digestible. Somewhere, women can arrive exactly as they are.
Because mothers do not simply need information.
We need care.
We need friendship.
We need reminders that we are still people inside motherhood and not merely extensions of caregiving itself.
And perhaps one of the things that matters most to me in all of this is the example I want to set for Louis. I want my son to grow up seeing that care is reciprocal. That women are worthy of receiving support, tenderness, rest, and attention too. I do not want him to grow up believing that being a woman means self-erasure and selflessness disguised as virtue.
Today, on the eve of the New Moon in Taurus, we’ll gather for our Boobs Out! mama circle here in my little nest in Topanga, and honestly, the symbolism of that timing feels almost too perfect.
Taurus reminds us to return to the body. To nourishment. To slowness. To softness. To the radical act of allowing ourselves to receive instead of only give.
And maybe that’s what I’m really trying to create here.
Not just a newsletter. Not just a motherhood “community.” But a place where women can show up honestly.
For those who can’t make the Mama Circle in person, I’m also opening a private Friday chat on the app for paid subscribers so we can continue these conversations more intimately, about motherhood, relationships, identity, loneliness, healing, the body, feeding our babies, feeding ourselves, and all the things that often go unsaid in between.
Truthfully, your paid subscriptions won’t just support this newsletter. They’ll help support the growth of Boobs Out! itself, allowing me to bring in practitioners and healers, and other women whose perspectives can deepen these gatherings over time. And transparently, they’ll also support me: a mother building something from the inside of motherhood itself, trying to create a life and community that can sustain both my son and me while hopefully offering something meaningful to other women, too.
Perhaps that’s part of healing, as well: allowing care to move in multiple directions and women remembering how to care for one another again.
I hope you’ll join us, and if inspired, become a paid subscriber today!
What’s Feeding Me: Objects, Observations & Inspirations
I recently took my mom into Kinship Station at Pinetree Circle and immediately felt calmer and inspired. It’s long been a favorite of mine, but once again I was reminded of how Hedi, the owner, has the kind of eye that makes you remember curation itself is an art form. Her jewelry selection feels soulful and lived-in, pieces that feel discovered rather than purchased. Kinship is a treasure chest filled with the kind of objects for your body and home that quietly become part of your identity over time. Soulful vs curated to impress.
I’ve got my eye on this moonstone and opal ring by Pascal Monvoisin that I must find a way to make mine! It screams heirloom/legacy piece to hand down and pure magic.
I’ve also been completely enchanted by Cord, a brand I only recently discovered and immediately fell in love with.
The work of Neha Singh & Pranav Guglani feels whimsical in a way fashion rarely allows itself to be anymore. There’s also something absolutely cinematic about the latest collection, which makes me want to get dressed for no reason, to romanticize my life a little harder, and to disappear into imagination for an afternoon or forever.
I currently want the ENTIRE collection, essentially.
And this piece about Marianne North from The Quiet Botanist completely undid me. It made me want to paint, travel, wander, observe more carefully, and remember that creativity often begins with paying closer attention to the world around us. The entire thing feels like a permission slip to remain porous to beauty.
That’s all for this week. I hope to see some of you in person at the Mama Circle, and the rest of you in the subscriber chat as well!
And if this piece moved you, resonated with you, or made you think of another woman in your life, I’d be so grateful if you shared it, commented, or subscribed. As much as I wish we existed outside the strange little machine of algorithms and engagement, this is also how independent writers and communities like this grow and survive.
Thank you for being here, truly.
With love and gratitude,
Laksmi