I'm a bad "Mommy Blogger"
Thoughts on niching down, the duality of being a parent who writes (but not always being a parent who writes about parenting), and what that costs me.
“Julie Laufer is #23 Rising in Parenting,” my Substack notifications chimed one day. They’ve also shown #15, #67, #3, #98, #34, and at the time of writing, #79.
Anyone who has been on these ‘rising’ charts knows how fleeting and fickle they can be. In this case, I got three paid subscribers in a day. In others, it’s one. In one case, it was a trial that never converted.
So I know not to read too deeply into it — that at this point, it just doesn’t take much.
But even so, each time I make it onto the ‘rising’ charts, a few things always happen.
First, I glance at the word Rising. I get a little dopamine boost (and we all know how much I love my dopamine). It feels good. I’m being rewarded for my efforts, and I like that. Finally. I think. After three years, maybe now I’ll break the seal on [insert arbitrary number of subscribers I’m chasing today].
Then, my eyes shift to the word Parenting. It’s a self-selected category, but I think, “am I a major fraud? Parenting?? Is that what this Substack is truly about?”.
In many ways, yes, and in many ways, no.
I started my Substack three years ago when I was laid off from a job at 23 weeks pregnant. I’d been gearing up for this profound identity shift (becoming a parent for the first time) and found myself in a situation that I can only describe as unfortunate, stressful, and distracting.
Being unemployed at a time when I craved certainty and wanted to reject the unknown was tough. I needed to channel that energy into something (anything!) while I navigated that space.
And that something was Substack.
At first, it was a place where I navigated pregnancy and job loss. Then, I ended up getting hired while I was 28 weeks pregnant. That job flew me out to LA, and between new employment and getting ready to give birth, I found myself with limited time to write. I laugh at that statement now, because I now understand that I had so much time, but the way I viewed free time before becoming a parent and the way I view it now has shifted so profoundly that I truly believe that if I had the time now that I had then, I could take over the world.
That is the cruel beauty of hindsight (and perhaps something we can dig into more another day).
I told myself that when the baby came, I’d use my free time to write. I figured I’d have so much to say, and a lot of time to write it. Babies nap, after all. And my new job came with eighteen weeks of parental leave!
L-O-fucking-L.
I gave birth in July of 2023, wrote a little bit in September, and then abandoned this newsletter for the better part of 2024.
Time was a factor, but I also found writing while in the thick of it to be impossible. I had so much to say, and yet I couldn’t find the words to actually say it. And as I did slowly but surely come back to writing, I found myself writing more broadly about myself. I guess I assumed writing about myself would also mean writing about motherhood, but as time went on it just wasn’t happening.
Because parenting is the lens through which I see the entire world. Every action I take is clouded by the identity of being a mom. But that doesn’t mean everything is about being a mom.
It’s taken me a long time to be able to even scratch the surface on articulating this feeling. That my identity has shifted in a way that has impacted every fiber of my being: I am ‘Mom,’ but I am also deeply still me. My identity can’t be separated from being a parent, and yet my identity is not being a parent.
In many ways, motherhood has deepened my sense of self, has made me understand parts about me I didn’t know existed, has forced me to look at my life microscopically.
Being a parent has impacted my way of moving through the world. It is not a ‘topic’ to talk about. It’s not a hobby, it’s not a subject matter, but it is deeply ingrained in who I am without being who I am. The more I write about it, the more clarity I gain. But also, the more I confuse myself.
And this makes me feel like a bad Mommy Blogger. Not worthy of the parenting charts. But where else would I go?
When I’m in spaces with other parents — both digital and in person — I see two distinct viewpoints that like to say they are at odds with one another.
On one side, I see the groups who shout from the rooftops that they are MOM and MOM is them. Parenting here is an identity, sometimes the identity. Yes. This is true. I agree.
On the other side, I see the groups who stand firm in the fact that parenthood hasn’t changed them, and will never be their identity. That we are people and parenting is just something to do. And I agree with this, too.
So how is it possible to stand here, admitting that being a parent is both very much my identity but very much not? I love nuance, but even I’ve struggled with this one (so much so, that I’ve been writing this particular essay for over a year).
Being a parent touches everything I do, every word that moves through me. It informs how I show up in my work, how I schedule my time, how I engage in hobbies, how I take care of myself. It is deeply ingrained in me, which makes it something always present but not something I always feel I need to talk about. Because it’s always there, always a truth.
My Podcast has nothing to do with being a parent. But what pushed me to start was my desire to do the things I’ve always wanted to do. And what’s made that so important to me is that I want my child to know that they shouldn’t make themselves smaller because they’re afraid of what someone might think, and the only way I could think to do that is to finally practice what I preach and face this head-on.
I can talk about sitting in a coffee shop or missing my life in San Francisco, and my perspective is being colored by being a parent now. Because it’s impossible for me to sit somewhere or reminisce about a past life without motherhood being in the background.
And sometimes there’s an experience that is actually directly linked to my experience as a parent, like when I talk about breastfeeding or how getting four colds a winter is my new normal.
It’s impossible for me to do anything, think anything, write anything without motherhood being in the background.
The longer I’ve had this Substack, the more it has become clear that I am not a ‘Mommy blogger’. I am not writing about the ins and outs of parenting regularly. I am not posting product roundups of the top ten bath toys. If you’re not paying close enough attention, you might miss the fact that I’m even a mom.
I probably could do that, but it’s not what feels natural. It isn’t my truth, and I’m happy to leave the niche to those who feel that way — in many ways, I envy them.
I think that if I were just able to stick to this ‘niche’, to write throughout my maternity leave and my return to work, to focus on the ups and downs of each stage, that this would all be easier. I see folks who’ve done that, who’ve been on this platform for 1/3rd or 1/6th of the time that I have, who’ve seen exponential growth because of that.
If I could just be a damn Mommy Blogger, maybe I’d see that too. Because sometimes it feels like I’ve alienated myself and carved out a place that no one really wants to be a part of. I don’t talk about parenting enough to take off with the other parents, but I also talk about it just enough to alienate those who don’t have children, who don’t want this content.
Where does that even leave me?
When I examine these thoughts, I know they’re not totally true. I believe that sticking to our true, authentic paths will help us find our “people”. I also believe we can create our own niches; it might just take more time.
So yeah, I’m a bad Mommy Blogger, and sometimes I’m not sure I deserve to be “Rising in Parenting”.
But then I remember parenting looks different on all of us, and I know there are others juggling the profound shift that takes over, with the acknowledgment that, under all of that, we’re still people.
Our perspectives may have shifted, our priorities may have changed one way or another, but I believe this is informed by who we were and who we are. As humans, we are always evolving, and for me, motherhood has accelerated that evolution in a way I didn’t know was possible.
I can’t separate motherhood from who I am because it’s not an entity in itself. It’s not a part of my being that I can extract and analyze under a microscope. It’s not just a part of who I am. It’s not my entire identity. It’s something that lives between and amongst those two paradigms. A consistent thread. A low hum.
Maybe that makes me a bad Mommy Blogger.
I think I’m okay with that.