Julie Owens, who bravely tugged on a tankini in mid-January in order to chaperone her twins to an indoor water park. After nearly swallowing a wet Band-Aid in the wave pool, Owens—in a show of tremendous valor—merely dry heaved thrice.
Hannah Robertson, who not only took her eleven-year-old to Sephora but also bought the pubescent child a sixty-five-dollar jade roller and twenty-five-dollar toner, all without once rolling her eyes or mentioning the patriarchy.
Elizabeth McGrackle, who prepared for a dinner party by buying groceries, planning the menu, cleaning the house, and then setting the table after retrieving ten plates, two bowls, four drinking glasses, and a moldy piece of her wedding china from under her teenage son’s bed.
Carrie Roberts, who stoically drank lukewarm Barefoot Moscato at a trampoline park that was blasting the Trolls 2 soundtrack, so that her daughter might attend Rayleigh from cheer camp’s birthday party.
April Peterson, who went through twenty hours of labor and an emergency C-section while her husband sat in a recliner and loudly sighed about the vending machine’s lack of Funyuns.
Nicole Williams, who, after seeing LET’S CELEBRATE MOM’S and A SPECIAL DAY FOR MOM’S! and GIFTS FOR MOTHERS’S DAY on local signage, calmly bought a giant red Sharpie and circled the punctuation errors with admirably restrained hostility.
Amanda Hill, who took her rage at trying to reenter the workplace as an older mom and being told they “just aren’t hiring women in your stage of life right now” and funneled it into a brightly colored, expletive-laden cross-stitch project.
Melanie Zooker, who, after texting her husband to make their nine-year-old a dental appointment, had her husband reply with: “What’s the dentist’s name again?” The heroic Zooker did not put her fist through some nearby drywall or drive to her husband’s place of business and forcibly push him out a third-story window; she just told him the name.
Alice Chamber, who, after three vaginal births, can no longer hiccup without wetting her pants, and who will be honored for her sacrifice with eggs benedict and a necklace made from rigatoni.
Jasmine Jackson, who silently suffered a frozen shoulder from menopause yet still took her son on multiple and terrifying driver’s permit practice trips around the block without a single Advil or THC gummy.
Hilary Bueller, who valiantly spent her son’s entire soccer practice listening to another mother praise the “common-sense policies” of RFK Jr., and who did not once karate chop her right in her spray-tanned throat, and instead chose to stealthily move the woman’s Stanley cup near a fire ant mound.
Maria Garcia, who bought Christmas gifts for everyone in her extended family, including her mother-in-law, who collects clown figurines that are only available at certain Alabama TJ Maxxes on Black Friday.
Alison Tompkins, who, while suffering both a UTI and menstrual cramps, still drove the children to volleyball practice and piano, all while her husband took a nap in the middle of the living-room floor because he felt “a bug coming on.”
Erin Hortenson, who, when her child pointed to a photo of Prince and sincerely asked if he was a famous lesbian figure skater, did not shout: “What the fuck is wrong with you?!?” but calmly cued up “Raspberry Beret” on Spotify.
Lis Rodriguez, who spent a solid thirty minutes on a PTA Zoom listening to a woman wearing a BUT FIRST COFFEE sweatshirt ask long-winded questions about school carnival volunteers that had already been answered multiple times by multiple people.
Julia Slotkin, who read an article wherein the United States government seriously pondered, after essentially stripping women of all rights, what they could maybe “do” to encourage them to have more children, including giving women medals if they have more than six. Slotkin, to her immense credit, did not fall into an open grave while laughing maniacally and clawing dirt onto her own face. Rather, she simply put down her phone and continued making a sheet-pan dinner.