The cover story that issue was called "The Sacred Mess." It was about how the pressure to be a perfect mother is a form of patriarchal control. Martha read it while sipping her morning coffee. She snorted at the Lego comic. She cried at the essay about post-partum rage. She had felt that rage forty years ago, alone, with no name for it.
The name was stamped in bruised-plum ink on the recycled cardstock cover. Below it, in smaller type: A Magazine for the Rest of Us. mutha magazine alison mutha magazine
Within a year, "Mutha Magazine" had a circulation of 10,000. Within three years, it was a glossy (but still slightly smudged) national publication. Alison never fired Martha; she made her the "Mutha Emeritus," the magazine’s conscience. The cover story that issue was called "The Sacred Mess
You are not alone. Mutha sees you.
Alison had poured her last $400 into printing 200 copies. She had written half the content under a pseudonym because she was terrified her own mother, a former debutante from Charleston, would see it. "Mutha," after all, was a family name she was reclaiming from the suffocating politeness of her upbringing. She cried at the essay about post-partum rage
And the name Alison Mutha ? It stopped being just a name. It became a verb.
She laughed. It was a wet, cracked, real laugh.