She had not died; she had simply been buried, under the yoga pants and the sleep deprivation and the relentless demands of two infant bodies, buried so gradually and so completely that I had stopped being able to feel her there at all.

When I looked in the mirror, in those six months, I did not see a formidable negotiator, a woman who had run rooms full of powerful people, a person of authority and competence and command.

I saw only a tired mother, depleted and diminished, defined entirely by her function, and I had come to believe that this was simply who I now was, that motherhood had replaced my old self with this smaller, sadder one, permanently.

That is one of the quiet dangers of the way we ask women to mother, especially in the early months: it can convince a woman that her whole prior self was a temporary phase, now concluded, and that this depleted creature is her true and final form.