We're diagnosing ourselves. We're psychoanalyzing toddlers.

It's been a week.

I can’t stop thinking about…

Kate: Reserves.

Danny and I went to the Langham for one night, which I now think is the ideal distance for a parents’ getaway. Fifteen minutes from home. No 405. Just Pasadena, a pool, dinner, a hotel bed, and the strange luxury of not hearing the Nanit.

We had Alba spend the night. Louis, deep in a Mommy era, did not ask for me once. This was both a relief and a small insult. Apparently if I am out of sight, I am also out of mind. If I am in the house, even behind a closed door, he will find me.

The night was great. Steak. Drinks. Pool Diet Cokes. But the best part was having an uninterrupted conversation. Eating slowly. Flirting. Being a couple for a minute instead of constantly being on call for someone else. We both left saying we need to do this more often.

The weekend also confirmed something I’d been trying to ignore: I’m having hot flashes. Yes, already. And not just at night. Maybe the indulgence fanned the flames, but they’ve been happening at home too.

I used to sleep with an electric blanket. I liked being hot. I wanted to be buried under covers. Now I’m peeling off layers at 1am, naked on top of the bed, wondering how I got here. The daytime ones are stranger. A hot flash on Zoom is not elegant.

There’s been a nationwide shortage of estrogen patches, so I had to switch to the gel. I’m talking to my doctor on Tuesday because I think we probably need to increase my estrogen. Maybe I’m just not absorbing the gel as well. Every morning I rub it into my inner thigh and stand around for a minute, trying not to get dressed too quickly or accidentally transfer hormones to my toddler.

The patch was easy. A sticker. A thing you put on and forgot about. Bless. Even if it occasionally peeked out above my bikini bottom. Fuck it, I was cruising.

The gel feels more mysterious. A little PTSD from IVF meds, to be honest. Every morning I’m wondering: Did I rub it in enough? Am I absorbing it? Absorption, man.

Which brings me to iron.

The reason I even had my ferritin checked was that my energy had become almost comically low. By 3pm most days, I feel like I’m walking through wet cement.

I am writing this from Cedars Sinai with iron dextran dripping into my arm. Three hours in a medical recliner. Free unlimited Famous Amos cookies on the same day I told myself I’d cut down on sugar.

Last we checked, my ferritin was eight, which means my iron stores were very low. I’d tried supplements. They helped a little, but not much, and my stomach wasn’t exactly thrilled about them. My doctor flagged it but there wasn’t much of a plan until my friend Kacie said, “Wait, an iron infusion changed my life.”

So I asked for a hematology consult. Three weeks later, insurance approved it, and here we are.

I’m told I may feel something in a few days, or a few weeks, or maybe not fully for a month or two. Less brain fog. More stamina. Fewer restless legs.

That’s the thing about feeling off. Eventually it all starts to sound normal. The toddler. The work. The hormones. Sleep. Stress. The general depletion.

And then sometimes there’s a number in your chart waiting for someone to connect the dots. Or for you to.

You still have to ask. Follow up. Make the appointment. Wait for insurance. Become, once again, the administrator of your own body.

Maybe the infusion will help. Hopefully getting my estrogen dialed back in will too. I almost definitely need to drink less wine and more water. Spindrift is better than nothing, but I know.

After years of vomiting through periods, powering through, and assuming discomfort was part of the deal, I’m trying to stop normalizing feeling bad. I don’t want to get complacent about feeling like shit ever again. Even if I’m tired of advocating for myself.

Also, I promise to write about something else next week.

Emma: Perceptions and projections.

A few weeks ago a friend reached out about a toddler ballet class in Atwater. Her daughter loved the teacher and she thought Jules might enjoy it. Charmed by the idea of seeing Jules’ tiny feet in ballet shoes, I signed him up immediately.

I’ve always been conscious about raising my kid to be whoever they want to be. Part of why I liked the name Julian was because it felt gender-neutral, and I liked the nickname “Jules” for the same reason. As a baby, I dressed him in polka dot leggings and bright pink jackets without flinching when strangers remarked “what a beautiful baby girl.”

I’ve been consistent about modeling that he can like anything: hot wheels and cheetah print, hair clips and dinosaurs, dolls and trash trucks.

Except I realize now I’ve been modeling something else too… a subtle pressure. That by putting him in ballet, by choosing pink over blue or subverting “toddler boy” expectations, I’m somehow raising a better version of a boy. A more evolved one. One who won’t perpetuate tired gender scripts. Which is just another kind of performance.

At our first dance class, Jules clung to me, overwhelmed by the new environment and the cool older girls in matching pink leotards. Home he kept repeating as I held him close and we watched from the sidelines. The kids were making “pizza.” Pretending to knead dough, spread sauce, sprinkle cheese. They were all shouting out toppings to the teacher. Olives, Jules whispered, getting braver. He wriggled free, grabbed my hand, pulled me toward the group. By the end of class he was spinning and jumping and pretending to be a cat with everyone else. “Do you want to come back?” I asked in the car as we drove home. YES!!!

This week he arrived in his ballet shoes, ready and excited. First to jump up for activities, first to raise his hand. Smiling at everyone as he leapt across the room, making shapes with his body.

Halfway through class, he was gone. He’d made a mad dash across the room to where one of his classmates’ older brother was playing with monster trucks. He sat down, pulled off his ballet shoes, and was immediately absorbed in a game of “vroom vroom.”

I tried to herd him back, but there was no contest.

I had to sit with my own disappointment for a minute. Not because he wasn’t enjoying ballet (he clearly had been). But because I’d made it mean something. Because I’d constructed this whole narrative about what kind of parent I was, what kind of kid I was raising. And he just wanted to play with trucks. Because he’s a toddler! And trucks are objectively very fun.

It was a reminder that I can’t control what he chooses or construct some progressive parenting narrative for him. Jules will be whatever he wants to be. His narrative, not mine.

And even though the pressure to raise a “good person” is real, the best thing I can do is get out of the way and let him figure out who that is.

Even if it means watching him choose trucks every single time.

About

We’re Kate Parfet and Emma Joss, two creative working mothers with decent taste and zero appetite for martyrdom. We love our kids, and our husbands most days, but we also want to complain, do work that matters, and remain the gravitational center of our families.

The Wiggle Room is where we talk about motherhood without letting it take over the whole conversation: bodies, hormones, friendship, work, desire, taste, ambition, and the small negotiations that keep us feeling like ourselves.

We also run a creative marketing agency. Say hi: hello@wearewiggleroom.com

Subscribe now

This week, we’re thinking about intimacy.

The intimacy of being needed. The intimacy of living in a body. The intimacy of realizing neither stays exactly the same.

I can’t stop thinking about…

Emma: Daddy Mommy.

Recently, my son has taken to calling me Daddy Mommy. Something switched in his two-year-old brain a couple of months ago, and he’s been on an unbearable daddy kick ever since.

He calls for my husband when he tears through the house before bedtime and collides with the dog. “Ouchie, daddy,” he says, arms outstretched. When I try to intercept—offering myself as a perfectly reasonable source of comfort—he is clear. He doesn’t want Daddy Mommy.

The first person he asks for when he wakes up is daddy. Bath time is daddy’s. Books are daddy’s. I have essentially become the understudy.

At first, this was a welcome development. As most moms can relate to, we’re usually the default parent. The 24/7 vending machine dispensing veggie straws every hour on the hour, the human tissue (which probably explains my perpetual cough). So when Jules started reaching for James, started choosing him over me, I leaned into it. Oh no, how terrible, I can’t do bath time tonight, I’d half-heartedly protest, already pouring a glass of wine. But after two months of being relegated to Daddy Mommy, I’m ready to take my MVP title back.

A friend told me that Jules’s preference for my husband is actually a sign of secure attachment with me. That he feels safe enough to venture toward James because he knows I’m not going anywhere. I understand this is coming from a place of logic and good intentions. Unfortunately, my response to this information is to want to grab my barely sentient toddler by the shoulders and say: I made you. I grew you inside my body and then I fed you from my body. You are literally required to need me. Imagine putting this on a kid still actively eating dirt…

His newfound preference for James has also done something unhinged to my hormones, which have apparently decided that the solution to one child who doesn’t need me is a second child who would. I know, rationally, that this is insane. I have been very adamantly one and done. I hated being pregnant and had a traumatic birth. I am not someone who romanticizes any of that. I once saw a meme that said something like one child is an accessory, two or more is a lifestyle and while it made me cackle, it also held some truths for me. That it opens up more space in both James and my lives for autonomy, for travel, for our hobbies and friends. For more of a life that is still recognizably ours.

But the last few months as Daddy Mommy showed me that even when I have more time to myself, even when the child who was my shadow for two solid years starts to pull away from me, I miss the weight of it. Miss his small hot breath on my neck when he’d fall asleep on my chest. Miss being the specific, irreplaceable person.

I’m not saying I want another baby, because for the time being, I don’t. But Daddy Mommy does need to be needed. Which is, as it turns out, excellent timing, because as I write this, Jules is calling for me from the other room. He wants to read the pig book. He likes the way I do the voices. He’ll climb into my lap and point at every illustration asking “what’s that?” on a loop until we’ve read it four times. He’ll call me “Mommy.”

At least until my husband gets home.

Kate: Vaginal serum.

Not because I’ve suddenly become an expert in vaginal serum. Quite the opposite.

In the days leading up to a lunch Zoe Kuipers and I hosted for Kelly Strömmer and the launch of Eau de Nuit, I found myself explaining the product to friends.

“A vaginal serum?”

“Oh wow.”

“A serum?”

The reactions were understandable.

Partly because a vaginal serum still sounds faintly surprising. Which is strange when you consider that most of us can identify hyaluronic acid, niacinamide, and retinol on sight. Aging, texture, elasticity, pigmentation. The visible parts of being human rarely feel off limits.

Women my age were raised in a very specific cultural moment.

I don’t remember anyone explicitly telling me to be embarrassed about my vagina.

And yet.

We hid tampons up our sleeves on the way to the bathroom. We sat through Summer’s Eve commercials that suggested our private parts should smell like tropical fruit. A cruel rumor about Lauren Conrad’s anatomy became national conversation.

We knew every calorie in a Frappuccino. We knew how to contour our faces. We knew how to make ourselves smaller, prettier, more desirable.

We did not know much about our pelvic floors. Or our hormones. Or what might happen to our bodies after childbirth, during perimenopause, or simply with age.

I mentioned the event to my twenty-something strength trainer expecting at least a flicker of discomfort.

Nothing.

Before we’d even started the workout, we were discussing hormones, menopause, and the microbiome.

That surprised me.

So did Kelly. An aerospace engineer from a family of scientists, she has spent years working in stem cell, brain, and bacterial research. The fact that she ended up in vaginal health felt like part of a larger shift.

It turns out a vaginal serum is an excellent way to get a table talking. What started as curiosity quickly became a conversation about aging, postpartum recovery, and all the ways our bodies change over time. Women shared stories. Compared notes. Asked questions.

A few years ago, this might have been the sort of product you bought discreetly online.

Last week, it was the lunch conversation. Which feels like progress.

About

We’re Kate Parfet and Emma Joss, two creative working mothers with decent taste and zero appetite for martyrdom. We love our kids (and our husbands, most days), but we also want to complain, do work that matters, and still remain the gravitational center of our families.

The Wiggle Room is for the in-between: not new moms, not veterans. Culture, motherhood, friendship, our bodies, desire, and all the things we try to make space for so we still feel like ourselves.

We also run a creative marketing agency. Say hi: hello@wearewiggleroom.com

Subscribe now

We're trying something new this week: less deep dive, more snapshot of what's been holding our attention. Analog obsessions and meditations on mortality. Different registers, same format.

I can’t stop thinking about…

Kate: How fragile things can feel at the exact moment they appear most lush.

The Dark Wizard

When my friend Jen used to take conference calls from a climb, for a while I didn’t realize she meant clipped into the side of a granite wall somewhere in Yosemite, talking through plans hundreds of feet in the air. At first I thought she meant, like, hiking.

At the time I mostly knew Dean and Whisper through videos Jen would show me. Whisper in her little goggles. The videos of them BASE jumping together. It all felt surreal and oddly tender. I don’t think I fully understood then that Dean wasn’t just adventurous, he was genuinely changing climbing and BASE jumping. People spoke about him like this larger-than-life figure, but Jen never did. She was always so grounded and smart and funny about it all, while also having a whole career and identity of her own.

We reconnected after both experiencing loss within a year of each other. I think there was an unspoken understanding there about what happens after someone dies relatively young and somewhat publicly. How they can become even bigger afterward through projection and mythology, and how disorienting that can feel.

So when Danny and I started watching The Dark Wizard, I felt cracked open a little. It’s about obsession, mortality, love. The strange tension between freedom and consequence. The way brilliance and self-destruction can sit alarmingly close together. Even if you’re not into climbing, watch this documentary. It’s really about people, and the impossible task of loving someone who lives that close to the edge.

The Archaeology of Grief

While we’re on the subject, my friend Scarlett wrote something this week that I haven’t stopped thinking about. It’s about grief, obviously, but also inheritance, family mythology, the body, memory, the strange way loss reshapes your identity over time. The essay moves through death and addiction and girlhood and survival in a way that feels completely unguarded and alive.

One line in particular got me: what we don’t grieve doesn’t disappear.

Thankful she wrote about grief as it actually is: deranged, spiritual, embarrassing, funny, ugly, transformative, lonely, communal, deeply uncool. And for making something this sharp from the wreckage.

There’s also something comforting about another woman openly admitting grief made her a little feral.

F-ing Hormones

Anyway, while contemplating mortality and the underworld and all the other extremely relaxing topics I’ve been focused on lately, I also discovered there’s apparently a nationwide estradiol shortage.

Nothing makes you feel stable quite like texting six pharmacies trying to track down estrogen patches. Broadly great for women that we’re finally being prescribed hormones more openly, but personally, right now, yikes.

Somewhere in the middle of this I also added testosterone into the mix and briefly became Willem Dafoe in The Lighthouse. Acne. Rage. A deeply irrational level of confidence.

If you see me staring into space at Gelson’s looking slightly haunted, mind your business.

Emma: Things that take up space.

Women in Clothes

Sometimes my love of clothes feels embarrassingly indulgent. Like, why do I care this much about a pair of vintage trousers I found on eBay at 2am? Especially when I’m trying to justify said purchase to my husband, a man who owns the same t-shirt, same jeans, and same shoes in three different colors and considers that a complete wardrobe.

When I spiral about whether this makes me shallow, I return to Women in Clothes—the 2014 collection edited by Sheila Heti, Heidi Julavits, and Leanne Shapton. Over 600 women (Cindy Sherman, Kim Gordon, Roxane Gay, Miranda July) answering questions about what they wear and why.

It never fails to remind me that clothes are never just clothes. That getting dressed is philosophical, political, and emotional. Sometimes all at once. A form of self-authorship, whether you’re reaching for vintage Margiela or UGGs.

Going to the Mall With Friends

I don’t know if it’s teenage nostalgia or a yearning for simpler times, but I’ve been spending an inordinate amount of time at the mall lately.

Lunch with friends? Revolving sushi at the Galleria. Free afternoon? Mall movie followed by aimless wandering. (Yes, I tried on jeans at Abercrombie. No, I didn’t buy them. The trauma of 2006 remains.)

I love the free parking, the dopamine hit of a little treat, the blissful anonymity of mall air conditioning. As Alexandra Lange argues, the mall is one of our last true “third places.” Somewhere you can exist without agenda or purchase obligation.

In a world that’s hyper-optimized and algorithmically curated, I feel a small rebellion in wandering a deeply uncool time capsule, eating a corndog, and trying on things I’ll never buy.

Cookbook Club

My closest friends and I have been meeting for monthly cookbook club for two years. What started as an excuse to drink wine has become one of my most sacred nights.

We rotate who picks the book and who hosts, but one rule is ironclad: no men allowed. The husbands stay home while we demolish whole fish, handmade dumplings, elaborate desserts. If they’re lucky, they get leftovers. If we’re lucky, we discover a new favorite recipe or just get three hours to gossip and eat.

Pregnancies have been announced over these meals. Grief processed, milestones celebrated, kitchen disasters eaten anyway.

There’s something grounding about gathering around food you each made alone but brought to share. Tactile, embodied, impossible to replicate through a screen.

Recent highlights: I Sleep in My Kitchen, The Cook You Want to Be, First Generation, The Art of Simple Food, Start Here

About

We’re Kate Parfet and Emma Joss, two creative working mothers with decent taste and zero appetite for martyrdom. We love our kids (and our husbands, most days), but we also want to complain, do work that matters, and still remain the gravitational center of our families.

The Wiggle Room is for the in-between: not new moms, not veterans. Culture, motherhood, friendship, our bodies, desire, and all the things we try to make space for so we still feel like ourselves.

We also run a creative marketing agency. Say hi: hello@wearewiggleroom.com

Subscribe now

Wiggle Room is built on community. That’s our whole premise.

Sometimes it clicks instantly with other parents, a welcome shorthand. But we’d be lying if we said we’re good at every social situation that comes with motherhood.

This week we’re getting honest about our social limitations.

I can’t stop thinking about…

Emma: Being talked out.

Everyone talks about being “touched out” as a parent, that specific depletion that comes from being physically needed constantly. Your body becomes public property. Every surface of you is claimed by someone else.

But no one talks about being talked out.

I’ve always considered myself hyper-verbal. Talking to strangers comes easily, and anyone who knows me will confirm I usually don’t shut up. Left to my own devices, I’ll have full conversations with myself (or the dog, who’s a surprisingly good listener). Jules once stood in the middle of toddler music class pretending to talk on the phone while everyone else shook maracas. I have no idea where he picked this up. I am never on the phone around my child.

But lately I’ve found myself completely lost for words with other adults. I dread being approached by the chatty dads at my local playground (Cleland regulars, you know exactly who I’m talking about). I stumble through simple questions or worse, overshare wildly personal information that no one, let alone a virtual stranger, needs or wants to know.

Is this just part of parenthood? That you spend so much of your verbal energy negotiating with a toddler, narrating every mundane activity (“now we’re washing hands, now we’re putting on shoes”), and answering the same question forty-seven times in a row that by the time you encounter another adult, you’ve got nothing left?

On a recent neighborhood walk, a dad I vaguely knew struck up a conversation. “Are you from Michigan?” he asked. “Um, no. Why would you think that?” I said, somehow sounding deeply offended (even though I know nothing about Michigan and have no strong feelings about it whatsoever). Turns out I was wearing a Michigan Fishing t-shirt. He hasn’t approached me since.

It’s hard to tell where normal social fatigue ends and something deeper begins.

Kids aside, we’re living in an age obsessed with small talk, partially compounded by being chronically online. When everyone has something to say about everything, it makes me wonder if I have anything of value to add. When we’re conditioned to fill every silence with remarks on the weather, product recommendations, and lackluster compliments (do you really like my shoes or are you just killing time?), it’s hard to find words for anything substantial.

I’m not saying every conversation needs to be deep and meaningful. I think I’m saying the opposite. Maybe I’m trying to be more mindful about the silences. About letting things linger instead of fumbling for words and filling pauses with absolute nonsense that makes me go home and wonder if I was being weird.

So yes, I’m talked out. But I’m leaning into it.

KATE: One very specific version of my childhood.

There was always the same group of families. The kids were all roughly the same age. We moved between houses constantly. You’d go over after school and just stay. Dinner happened wherever you were.

The parents were close. They sat around a lot, usually with a drink, and conversations went on forever. We drifted in and out, half listening, half doing something else, but always nearby.

Someone would mention swim lessons and suddenly everyone was enrolled. Same with tennis camp. Summers repeated themselves. Same places, same people, slightly older each time.

I think I assumed it would happen again.

When Louis started preschool, I had the thought, okay, this is where it starts. I remember scanning the room. Not everyone, just a few. Three or four women, their husbands, kids the same age. We’d start seeing each other outside of school. It would become a thing.

I see the same people every day. A lot of smiling, a lot of hi. Crouching down to zip tiny jackets while trying to hold a conversation that doesn’t really go anywhere. Everyone seems perfectly nice. It just hasn’t clicked.

It makes me feel slightly fraudulent, if I’m honest. A large part of my work is built around community. I talk about it all the time. I help other people build it. Just not here, apparently. Not yet.

We do have close friends all over the city. People we love, people we see, even if it takes planning and traffic and actually committing to it.

I once picked up Emma in a baby food aisle and now we run a business together. That felt easy.

This does not feel easy. Preschool, of all places, has me a little stalled.

I mentioned this while walking the reservoir with a friend who has older kids. She laughed and said just wait. Soon enough you’ll be dodging people asking for playdates.

A few days later I picked Louis up early because we were driving to Palm Springs. The parking lot was empty except for one car on the opposite side.

That car reversed straight into me.

Not a gentle tap. She had to reverse several car lengths to even get there. I honked for so long it woke napping kids inside the school.

We were fine. My car is less fine.

What stayed with me wasn’t the crash, it was what I thought would happen after.

The driver had been picking up a child from the school, and I assumed there would be some kind of follow up. That the mother would reach out. That there’d be a moment of, are you okay?

She didn’t, so I called her.

She cut me off almost immediately. The driver wasn’t her current nanny. She was between people. This woman was a former employee. It wasn’t her responsibility.

For a second I wondered if she thought I was trying to sue her. I wasn’t. I just wanted her to know. I would want to know.

And then, a few minutes in, what do you want from me?

I thought, sorry, what?

Nothing, I said. Because suddenly I didn’t want anything.

We hung up and I just sat there, a little stunned.

I’d been expecting that because our kids go to the same place, it meant something. That we were, I don’t know, a little bit on the same team.

I wasn’t asking for a shared vacation. Just that we’re not sending rogue drivers around a preschool parking lot.

A friend of my husband’s met some of her nearest and dearest at this preschool before the kids moved up to grade school. So I know it’s possible. It’s not a myth.

For me, it’s been more awkward than I expected. More stop start. Not bad, just nothing really catching. A series of almosts.

And then a few days later, at drop off—

I saw a woman I hadn’t seen in years. We met once in New York, briefly, on a double date with our now exes. We’ve kept in touch a little on Instagram, so I knew she had recently moved to LA, but still.

Her son is in Louis’ class.

We ended up walking to get coffee after drop off. Then we did it again the next day.

It was really nice. Disarmingly so.

Something for the road…

About

We’re Kate Parfet and Emma Joss, two creative working mothers with decent taste and zero appetite for martyrdom. We love our kids (and our husbands, most days), but we also want to complain, do work that matters, and still remain the gravitational center of our families.

The Wiggle Room is for the in-between: not new moms, not veterans. Culture, motherhood, friendship, our bodies, desire, and all the things we try to make space for so we still feel like ourselves.

We also run a creative marketing agency. Say hi: hello@wearewiggleroom.com

Subscribe now

We’ve been thinking about what happens to a voice once it’s out in the world.

How quickly it can shift. In a moment. Over time.

Sometimes it's small. You say something and it lands wrong, and you're already replaying it before the conversation's even over. And sometimes it's bigger. You stop saying it altogether.

I can’t stop thinking about…

KATE: The ice cream shop.

Louis threw his cone on the ground.
Not dropped. Threw. A clean kind of release. Almost satisfying.

Before I could even decide what to do, the girl behind the counter — who I first clocked as twenty-something but was probably seventeen — said, “If you replace it, he’s going to think that behavior is okay.”

And instead of just taking it in, or ignoring it, or even pausing for a second, I went straight to:

“Are you really telling me how to parent?”

It was too much. I knew it as I said it.

She backed up quickly. “You’re right, that was out of line.”

Which was generous.

It could have ended there. It should have.

But then I added, “That kind of hurt my feelings.”

To a seventeen-year-old.

Instinctive. Also insane.

Even as I said it, I could feel it wasn’t quite true. I reached for the most semi-acceptable version of what I was feeling.

From behind me, another woman said, “My son didn’t have a cone until he was seven.”

Lovely.

In the car I cried a little.

It wasn’t really about what they said.

It was the feeling of being caught mid-moment.
Before I’d decided what to do. Or who I was going to be in it.

Like I’d been moving along privately and then suddenly there was an audience.
With opinions.

And underneath that, more irritating,
the sense that they weren’t completely wrong.

Lately I’ve noticed I end things with right?

“Good sharing, right?”
“That’s nice, right?”
“We don’t throw things, right?”

It shows up at the end, almost automatically.

I hear it as I’m saying it. There’s a small gap where I could just stop.

But I add it anyway.

It’s not really a question.

I used to grind my teeth at night. Hard enough that my jaw ached in the morning. It felt contained then. Like whatever was tight had somewhere to go.

Now it’s less clear.

Some of it is in that “right.”

Some of it is in the quick scan after something happens. Not even fully conscious. Just enough to register: how did that land. Where am I in it.

It’s fast. Almost feels useful.

I think I thought motherhood might interrupt that.
Replace it with something steadier. More internal.

It hasn’t.

If anything there’s just more room for it. More small moments that tip into being seen. More chances to get something slightly off, in front of someone.

Sometimes the feedback comes from people I trust. Or from myself, later.

And sometimes it’s a teenager at an ice cream shop.

And you’re holding a second cone you didn’t fully decide to buy, your neck hurts in a way that feels unrelated but probably isn’t, your child has already moved on,

and you can feel yourself about to say “right”

and you do.

EMMA: Finding my voice.

This week, I, like 75% of the other women I know, finished Belle Burden’s Strangers. The memoir is terrifying—an amalgamation of all my worst fears as a wife, mother, and someone financially dependent on her husband. But my main takeaway (other than fuck her ex-husband!) was watching Belle find her voice. She was told she wasn’t a writer. Told she was nothing beyond a mother and a wife. And she, like so many of us pressured to abandon careers and creative pursuits for caregiving, listened. Internalized it for years. Doubted her capacity for creative and professional growth, for trusting her own gut. Silenced herself.

Spoiler: at the end, Belle reflects on publishing the book you just read. When I reached that moment, the triumph after the tumultuous road, I sobbed. “SHE DID IT!” I screamed to my husband in the next room. He did not share in my enthusiasm, mostly because he had no idea what I was screaming about.

I haven’t stopped thinking about Belle’s journey all week. Maybe it’s Mother’s Day approaching, or my son turning two next week, or me simply being in my luteal phase (hello, tears), but this week I was inspired by the women around me. By the rush of conversation and creativity. So much so that I sat my ass down at my desk every single night this week, after my son was asleep, after dinner was made and the dishes were done (the laundry sat unfolded in the dryer for days, don’t worry) to write.

I spent most of my teen years thinking I’d be a writer. My twenties working in publishing to learn how the sausage was made. I’ve hosted and attended writing groups for over a decade. At one point, pre-pandemic, I tried (and failed) to go to grad school for my MFA. I used to be excited to share my work with others.

And then, somewhere along the way, I lost my voice. Stopped believing I had something to say, something to contribute. There were years when I stopped writing entirely (five, to be exact). Months when I wrote in secret, too afraid my perspective didn’t matter. Then motherhood hit (arguably one of the most creative acts on earth!), and my voice quieted yet again.

But somewhere on the journey from birth to my son’s second birthday, I’ve started finding it again. Slowly, bit by bit. I’ve tried to quiet the doubt. I’ve tried to stop needing something to “become something” for it to matter, because sometimes just getting the words down is enough.

I’ve spent the last two years working on a series of personal essays about motherhood. About bodies, breasts, feeding, and being fed. At times, I’ve felt buoyed by my progress, excited at what I’ve created. Other times, silenced by critique or my own inability to make meaningful edits. I’ve asked myself over and over: does this story even matter?

This week, inspired by Belle, I took the leap. Made the edits I’ve been sitting on for a year. Submitted one of the essays to a few different lit mags. Put some of my most intense, personal feelings out in the world to be judged by strangers. And I’ve never felt better about what I have to say.

Am I jinxing myself by writing this before I hear back? Probably. Do I care? Ask me in a few months when the rejections start rolling in. But even if the work isn’t the right fit, even if it never sees the light of day, I still did the thing. Put it down on paper and pressed send.

Let’s All Take a Page From Our Kids…

About

We’re Kate Parfet and Emma Joss, two creative working mothers with decent taste and zero appetite for martyrdom. We love our kids (and our husbands, most days), but we also want to complain, do work that matters, and still remain the gravitational center of our families.

The Wiggle Room is for the in-between: not new moms, not veterans. Culture, motherhood, friendship, our bodies, desire, and all the things we try to make space for so we still feel like ourselves.

We also run a creative marketing agency. Say hi: hello@wearewiggleroom.com

Subscribe now

Last weekend we gathered an intimate group of LA moms from our community with Dr. Sara Bloom and our friends at Celisse for manicures, wine, and the ceremonial first outing of the sandals that have been sitting in their boxes since Thanksgiving.

What surprised us wasn’t the turnout or the buzz of conversation or even the alarming quantity of butter consumed. It was how many women couldn’t remember the last time they’d gotten their nails done.

During pregnancy?
Before the baby?
One friend looked genuinely distressed trying to place it in time.

The pattern became clear pretty quickly: most of us are not making time for ourselves. And when we do, it arrives wrapped in a very specific kind of guilt—the feeling that any hour spent on something unrelated to work or children is somehow indulgent, suspicious, or slightly criminal.

Between cuticle oil applications and passing around Chloe’s beautiful baby (the newborn smell is essentially narcotic), the conversation drifted into that familiar territory: the strange physics of this stage of life.

How it can feel expansive and claustrophobic at the same time.
How much we love our kids.
How tired we are.
How easy it is to slowly disappear into the managerial version of ourselves—the logistics coordinator, the scheduler, the person who knows where everyone’s socks are.

To stay even vaguely recognizable to ourselves requires small acts of selfishness. The kind that gets cut first: haircuts, dinners with friends on a Tuesday, pedicures, an hour alone without anyone asking for a snack.

The afternoon felt less like an event and more like a temporary suspension of guilt.

Permission, basically.

Subscribe now

Phone a friend

This week, we called Dr. Sara Bloom to talk about mom guilt, burnout, and something called the allostatic load (which sounds made up but is very, very real—more below).

Sara is a maternal wellness doctor and mother of three. When she became a new mom she was struck by how quickly conventional medicine loses interest in mothers once the baby arrives. Postpartum gets a brief check-in, and then women are largely left to fend for themselves through the long middle stretch between birth and perimenopause—a decade or two where many mothers are running on cortisol while managing work, children, households, aging parents, and the low-grade expectation that they should be grateful the whole time.

Sara has spent her career working inside that gap through her medical practice and through Mavie, her new maternal wellness platform launching this Mother’s Day.

We crowdsourced questions for her from mothers in our orbit—the things people are actually Googling at 2am about hormones, sleep, burnout, and why their bodies feel like someone else’s.

What is the allostatic load, and why should mothers care about it?

Allostatic load is the cumulative wear and tear on your body from chronic stress.

Your body has systems designed for acute stress—handle the threat, then recover. But motherhood keeps those systems activated constantly. You’re never fully “off.” Even when resting, part of your brain is listening. Even when sleeping, it’s fragmented.

Over time, this chronic activation affects everything: cardiovascular health, metabolism, immunity, cognition, even cellular aging. Research shows mothers carry significantly higher allostatic load than non-mothers—and it compounds over time.

What you’re experiencing isn’t “just mom life.” It’s measurable, physiological, and has real health consequences. Naming it is the first step toward addressing it.

Is “mom guilt” cultural, biological, or something we’ve collectively invented?

All of the above.

When you become a mother, your brain rewires—increased empathy, heightened threat detection. Brilliant for baby, but it also makes you hyper-aware of every perceived failure. Biology primes you to feel like everything is on you.

But culture weaponizes it: intensive parenting expectations, social media, zero structural support, the “good mother” myth. Sociologist Caitlyn Collins calls it “moral responsibility without structural support.”

Then we collectively reinforce the story that guilt proves you’re a good mom. We’ve romanticized maternal martyrdom so much that guilt became a badge of honor.

Feeling guilty doesn’t make you a better mother. It just makes you exhausted.

Why do so many mothers feel like the “default parent,” even in very equal partnerships?

Because the “default parent” isn’t about who does more laundry—it’s about who holds the entire operation in their head. Who remembers the dentist appointment, notices the kid needs new shoes, knows which birthday party is this weekend, manages the household like an unpaid executive assistant.

This labor is invisible. Research shows even when couples split visible tasks 50/50, mothers still carry the cognitive and emotional labor.

Society also defaults to mothers: daycare calls mom, doctors ask mom, everyone assumes mom knows. We internalize that.

The default parent also emerges because one person has lower tolerance for things falling apart. And who’s been socialized to notice every detail and feel responsible? Mothers.

What helps: make invisible labor visible, let go of perfectionism, have explicit conversations about ownership (not just tasks, but the thinking around them), and accept that equality is constant renegotiation.

The default parent dynamic isn’t inevitable—but dismantling it takes work from both people.

What symptoms do women report that get dismissed as “just part of motherhood”?

This list makes my blood boil.

“I’m exhausted all the time” gets “well, you have kids” when it might be thyroid dysfunction, anemia, vitamin D deficiency, or depression.

“I can’t remember anything” gets dismissed as cute “mom brain” when it could be B12 deficiency, thyroid issues, early perimenopause, or untreated ADHD, anxiety or depression.

“I’m anxious all the time” gets “motherhood is stressful” when it might be postpartum anxiety (which can show up YEARS later), hormone imbalance, or unprocessed birth trauma.

“I have zero sex drive” gets “you’re just tired” when it could be low estrogen, thyroid issues, or being so touched-out you’d rather sleep in separate zip codes.

“I rage over small things” gets “you’re hormonal” when it might be depression, PMDD, perimenopause, or severe depletion.

“I don’t feel like myself” gets the infuriating “welcome to motherhood” when it might be all of the above plus the fact that no one is actually listening.

Every single symptom deserves investigation. Not dismissal. Not "it's just part of being a mom." Your body is trying to tell you something. You deserve a doctor who actually listens.

Why are so many mothers exhausted even when their kids are finally sleeping through the night?

Because sleep is only one piece. Research shows mothers maintain partial vigilance during sleep—your brain never stops listening. You get less restorative deep sleep. One study found mothers’ sleep quality doesn’t return to pre-pregnancy levels until their child is SIX YEARS OLD.

Even with better sleep, you’re still carrying the mental load, emotional load, physical demands. Your hormones are recalibrating for years. And sometimes exhaustion masks underlying issues: thyroid problems, anemia, vitamin deficiencies, depression.

If your kids are sleeping and you’re STILL exhausted, that’s your body waving a flag.

If you only have 15 minutes a day, what should mothers prioritize?

Nervous system regulation. When your nervous system is shot, everything feels harder. When it’s even slightly regulated, you have more capacity.

My prescription: 5 minutes breathwork, 5 minutes movement, 5 minutes something nourishing.

Not revolutionary. But actually restorative. And do it without guilt—15 minutes isn’t fixing your life. It’s survival care. And that’s essential.

Made it through this week? Treat yourself…

About

We’re Kate Parfet and Emma Joss, two creative working mothers with decent taste and zero appetite for martyrdom. We love our kids (and our husbands, most days), but we also want to complain, do work that matters, and still remain the gravitational center of our families.

The Wiggle Room is for the in-between: not new moms, not veterans. Culture, motherhood, friendship, our bodies, desire, and all the things we try to make space for so we still feel like ourselves.

We also run a creative marketing agency. Say hi: hello@wearewiggleroom.com

Subscribe now

We’re underwater.

Like most people we know, we’ve been moving through the usual rotation: bad weather, low-grade illness that never fully leaves, work deadlines, and the particular chaos of parenting in late winter. Most spare moments are spent with our families or quietly on our phones, pretending to be elsewhere.

The only “thing we can’t stop thinking about” this week is how tired we are. Which is both deeply relatable and not especially interesting. So instead of forcing a grand thesis on exhaustion or pretending we’ve transcended it, we’re showing up as we are: two tired women staying afloat thanks to a rotating cast of objects, books, films, and minor obsessions.

Night Owl

Despite jam-gate, I’m a huge fan of this cult LA classic and can’t wait to have a glass of chilled red sans child once the sun goes down. Our friend Mads posted a photo of asparagus from opening night and I immediately proposed a dinner date. She’s eager for round two and I’m still processing the fact that a plate of asparagus can look so sexy. — Emma

Beast

Everyone is (rightfully) losing their minds over Jessie Buckley in Hamnet, but I revisited her in Beast this week and can’t stop thinking about it. She plays a woman whose loneliness makes her susceptible to risk. You’re never sure if she’s naïve or knowingly stepping toward danger.

Johnny Flynn is also phenomenal. He plays menace and vulnerability so convincingly you start to question your own instincts. Set against the stark isolation of the Channel Islands, the film blurs a line between refuge and trap. Ultimately, is he the monster, or is she? — Kate

Lost Lambs

I’m on a reading kick and Madeline Cash’s debut novel is exactly the levity I need right now. Haven’t finished it yet (blame the Tell Me Lies finale), but I’ve been laughing out loud regularly. It’s dark, tender, satirical, and I hate how much I see myself in these deeply dysfunctional characters.

“Late capitalism did its job of convincing Catherine that she was insufficient, an empty void, and thus needed to slowly fill that void with products that made her face smell like parsley or coconuts.”

Too real. Too seen. Consider me a lost lamb. — Emma

Microdose

The last time I took mushrooms was Coachella, 2008. A security guard turned a blind eye and let me and a girlfriend sit beneath the mainstage as Beth Gibbons appeared through a trap door. We reached up and briefly touched her ankles while she sang “Glory Box,” which remains one of the more surreal moments of my life.

By midnight, the magic had worn off and I was freezing in a sandstorm in a crop top, trying to find a ride. I wrote mushrooms off entirely.

So when my sister suggested microdosing for sleep, I was skeptical. But motherhood has a way of revising your positions. I tried these and slept straight through the night. — Kate

Toddler Pouffe

Jules is about to turn two and suddenly our house is overrun with toy cars. So many that I need actual storage solutions, which means I have a choice: generic plastic bin from Target or this whimsical one. Anyone who’s been to my house knows I’m deeply committed to color, so this fits right in (claws and all). Plus, I get to hear Jules say “rawwwr” every time he opens it. Sold. — Emma

A Few Good Men

John from The Eastside Rag is hosting an east side singles gathering and predictably, the women are accounted for. (I submitted one of my best friends last week.) The men, less so.

So if you know someone competent, emotionally functional, and capable of asking a follow-up question, now is the time. Submissions are open. — Kate

Britcore

Our friend Alexa once showed up to a rainy day lunch in her mom’s vintage Chanel rain boots and I’ve never recovered. Turns out rain boots can be genuinely chic, and I’ve been stalking designer pairs on The RealReal ever since. Bonus points that these are British. As one of many women in LA inexplicably married to a British man, I’m a committed anglophile. Already fantasizing about wearing these on the moors bundled in a Barbour while my husband’s family laughs as they get coated in mud. — Emma

Anti-Frieze

There’s something very LA about an old 99 cent store becoming an art space.

99CENT, organized by The Hole and Barry McGee, opens tonight in the former discount store on Wilshire, a neighborhood fixture for over forty years. McGee has taken over the space with work from his personal collection alongside pieces by more than 100 friends, turning it into something closer to an artist flea market than anything happening inside a tent right now.

There’s programming throughout the run. A zine fair, performances. A reminder that art is still, at its core, social. — Kate

About

We’re Kate Parfet and Emma Joss, two creative working mothers with decent taste and zero appetite for martyrdom. We love our kids (and our husbands, most days), but we also want to complain, do work that matters, and still remain the gravitational center of our families.

The Wiggle Room is for the in-between: not new moms, not veterans. Culture, motherhood, friendship, our bodies, desire, and all the things we try to make space for so we still feel like ourselves.

We also run a creative marketing agency. Say hi: hello@wearewiggleroom.com

Subscribe now

We’ve been comparing notes on our bodies this week.

What they’re leaking, catching, resisting, or flat-out refusing to do. It's all very personal yet somehow communal. Especially when it’s happening to everyone we know at the same time.

I can’t stop thinking about…

KATE: The Lag.

It didn’t occur to me right away that it was gone.

I assumed it was late. Then I briefly wondered if I was pregnant. Then another month passed. And then another. At some point, I realized I hadn’t had a period in five months.

I wasn’t clocking bathrooms. I wasn’t doing mental math about traffic or dinner or how long I could sit somewhere without needing an exit strategy. My calendar stopped orbiting my uterus. The relief surprised me.

I didn’t miss it.
At least not at first.

I have endometriosis. Pain tolerance stopped being admirable a long time ago. It just became the baseline. A constant internal negotiation. Do I leave now, or do I push it and see what happens?

What’s the sweet spot for an ultra tampon?
Forty minutes is pushing it.

So when it didn’t show up, I assumed I’d earned the break. After years of fertility treatments, tracking cycles, waiting for signs, peeing on sticks, the absence felt deserved.

What I didn’t expect was the lag.

I didn’t realize how much of my identity was tied to that monthly proof of life until it vanished. Not because I liked it, obviously, but because it had always been there. Painful. Demanding. Familiar. Like a relationship you complain about constantly—until it ends and you keep checking your phone even though you know nothing’s coming.

I’ve started noticing the same pattern elsewhere. Middle age, more or less. The male gaze softens. It doesn’t disappear. It just loses urgency. Less hunger. More peripheral.

This morning, I was waiting at the valet when a black SUV pulled up. A musician stepped out, instantly recognizable. Then a young woman followed. There was a lightness to her. I clocked that particular kind of newness. The excitement that hasn’t learned to brace yet.

Phones came out. Heads turned.

I watched for a moment and felt two timelines overlap.

Once, that attention felt expansive, almost playful. Now it arrives already folded, aware of its own shelf life.

Minutes later, my period came back.
Of course.

Possibly the patron saint of Sunset Tower took pity on me and intervened.

I detoured to CVS.

While waiting in line, my phone lit up with a photo of my son in his new New Balances. Tiny platforms. Very serious face.

I smiled.

I’d also bled through my pants.

EMMA: The great germ reckoning.

The last few months have been a non-stop carousel of disease. Sinus infections, ear infections, upper respiratory infections that morph from dry coughs to wet coughs to mysterious rashes that make our pediatrician squint and say “huh.” As I write this, Jules is home from school with double pink eye and a 101-degree fever (thank you, Bluey, for ten minutes of reprieve).

Having a kid has completely rewired my relationship to getting sick. I’m now extremely comfortable with Jules trying to stick his entire hand in my mouth, even when it’s coated in multiple layers of his own spit. I don’t flinch when he coughs directly into my face while I rock him to sleep at 2am, delirious and burning up. It’s a parental rite of passage: bringing home every daycare plague known to modern medicine.

And there’s a strange solidarity in this. I’ve taken Zoom calls where founders are literally holding their sick, sleeping child on camera. I’ve stayed up late trying to finish work before my NyQuil kicks in. I’ve shown up to coffee dates armed with various tinctures and herbal wellness potions, desperately trying to ward off the throat tickle I woke up with.

I did not used to be this way.

Pre-kid, I would eagerly call out sick with the slightest headache. I’d spend generous sick days stretched out in bed binge-watching Real Housewives (Beverly Hills, Salt Lake City, or bust). I’d nibble saltines for dinner and chug Gatorade without once thinking about how I’d feed a toddler who inexplicably only wanted “bok bok” that week. After a few days of reality TV and DoorDashed soup, I’d emerge feeling reborn.

These days, I wake up wondering if I’ll ever feel “good” again. My husband and I have been passing every goopy, sniffly illness back and forth since December. It’s starting to feel permanent. My childless friends have been actively avoiding us, terrified of what my sister calls “kid crud.” I’m not writing this to complain. I’m writing it because the shift is so stark it feels worth naming.

On our neighborhood walk last night, I passed my neighbors with their two young boys. We swapped notes (from a safe distance) about what illnesses had decimated our households that week and how we were coping. We extended offers of dropped-off groceries, meals, check-ins. At lunch last week, my friend Bree recounted her entire family getting a stomach bug from “manmade snow.” “It’s basically a germ-infested water park with no filtration,” she said. The rest of us laughed, because we had to. Because there’s a recognition that we’re not alone in this.

Child-borne illness is the great equalizer. It doesn’t discriminate based on income, job title, or how well you meal-prep. And as parents, we understand that getting sick doesn’t mean a few cozy days off followed by a triumphant return. It means mental (and sometimes physical) gymnastics with your partner to figure out who can work from home while simultaneously parenting a feverish toddler who is consistently asking you to perform a half–time show. It means checking in on your friends with sick kids to see if they’re holding up, because you know they’re probably not.

What strikes me most is how illness used to be intensely personal, something I experienced alone, in my own body, on my own time. Now it’s communal. Shared. A rotating cast of viruses that bind us together in ways I never anticipated. My body isn’t just mine anymore. It’s a vector. A conduit. A battleground for whatever Jules brings home from school.

I’m not sure if I’ll ever get used to this. The constant low-grade sickness, the perpetual fear of the next wave, the way my immune system has apparently just given up. But there’s something weirdly comforting in knowing that when I show up to a meeting looking half-dead, someone else will nod knowingly and say, “Daycare plague?” And I’ll say yes, and we’ll both laugh.

Turns out parenting doesn’t just change your relationship to sleep, career, identity. It changes your relationship to your own body. You stop being the protagonist of your own health story and become part of a larger, much germier ecosystem.

I’m still not sure how I feel about it. But I do know that the next time I see a parent at pickup with a wad of tissues exploding from their coat pockets, I’ll nod. They’ll nod back. And we’ll both understand exactly what that means.

What we’re consuming this week once the kids are asleep

About

We’re Kate Parfet and Emma Joss, two creative working mothers with decent taste and zero appetite for martyrdom. We love our kids (and our husbands, most days), but we also want to complain, do work that matters, and still remain the gravitational center of our families.

The Wiggle Room is for the in-between: not new moms, not veterans. Culture, motherhood, friendship, our bodies, desire, and all the things we try to make space for so we still feel like ourselves.

We also run a creative marketing agency. Say hi: hello@wearewiggleroom.com

Subscribe now

A year ago, we started a business together. This was, by most standards, a terrible idea. We barely knew each other and were both newly postpartum, which feels relevant (and, in hindsight, a little ill-advised).

People warned us. Don’t do it. Get to know each other first. Talk about money. Values. What happens when one of you inevitably loses it. We listened, nodded, said “totally,” and then did it anyway.

We met in a Northeast LA Target, in the baby food aisle. Two new mothers reaching for the same pouch of puréed vegetables, both running on fumes. One of us looked vaguely pulled together. The other was wearing camo Crocs, which felt like an important detail at the time.

Coffee followed. Then more coffee. Eventually weekly. We talked about our former lives in marketing, about New York and LA, about ambition curdling into exhaustion. About how new-parent marketing assumes you’re both desperate and a little overwhelmed (and will gladly sell you seventeen versions of the same solution).

Somewhere in there, we hosted a small gathering together. No agenda. No outcome in mind. It felt easy. People stayed. The next one felt easier still.

A few coffees later, one of us said, “We could do something with this.”
The other said yes.

At that point, we’d known each other for maybe two months. There was no pitch deck. No long-term plan. Just a shared frustration with how transactional everything felt, and a belief, unproven, but persistent, that there was room for something more human.

In retrospect, this was naïve. We didn’t know each other’s work styles. We hadn’t disagreed yet. We hadn’t seen each other tired, defensive, or wrong. We were operating mostly on instinct and sleep deprivation, which is not traditionally recommended as a business strategy, or even a season of life.

What surprised us wasn’t the work. It was how quickly everything else folded in. Kids, dinners, texts, living rooms. The separation between work and life disappeared almost immediately.

This is where most advice gets loud. Maintain boundaries. Keep it professional. Don’t mix friendship and business.

Here’s one thing we’ve learned instead: boundaries don’t protect you from discomfort. They just determine where you’ll feel it. When you work this closely, things surface faster. Resentments, insecurities, mismatched expectations. You don’t get to outsource those conversations to process or time. You either have them, or the whole thing unravels.

Another thing: starting this way eliminates the performance early. There’s no “best self” phase. No polished version of who you are at work. If you’re overwhelmed, it’s visible. If something isn’t working, it shows up quickly. That can be destabilizing. It can also be grounding.

A year in, we’ve learned that starting something with someone you don’t know well tends to go one of two ways. It either implodes, or it becomes unexpectedly meaningful. There isn’t much middle ground.

We didn’t plan to merge our lives. It just happened. Our families overlap now. Our friends overlap. The line between “work dinner” and “just dinner” no longer exists.

We’re not holding this up as a model. We’re not offering advice. We’re still figuring it out in real time.

Somewhere along the way, the business decisions started sharing space with everything else. Voice notes sent from playgrounds. Kids interrupting calls and no one apologizing for it.

A year later, the business is growing. The friendship is too.

Some days it feels like work. Other days it feels like something we’d be doing anyway.

Most days, it’s both.

About

We’re Kate Parfet and Emma Joss, two creative working mothers with decent taste and zero appetite for martyrdom. We love our kids (and our husbands, most days), but we also want to complain, do work that matters, and still remain the gravitational center of our families.

The Wiggle Room is for the in-between: not new moms, not veterans. Culture, motherhood, friendship, our bodies, desire, and all the things we try to make space for so we still feel like ourselves.

We also run a creative marketing agency. Say hi: hello@wearewiggleroom.com

Share

We’re not here to optimize your 2026 or tell you how to become your best self (honestly, we’re still trying to locate ourselves most days). But we are thinking about endings and beginnings. Not because it’s January, but because our bodies decided it was time.

Perimenopause doesn’t wait for a vision board, and neither does watching everyone else start over while you’re contentedly, confusingly done.

I can’t stop thinking about…

EMMA: Closing the chapter on postpartum.

The thing I’ve heard most often since having a baby (other than the dreaded “sleep when the baby sleeps”) is that my hormones will start to level out around year two. The brain fog will start to lift, my memory will slowly return (somewhat) and I’ll finally start to feel like “myself” again (whoever that is!)

Well, Jules is 21 months, his second birthday is basically tomorrow, and the chorus was mostly right. I am starting to feel like a person again. And while I’m busy reassembling myself in new configurations, I’m watching my peers move on to baby number two. Pregnancy announcements flood my feed. My closest friends are all starting to try for their first. Suddenly dinner party conversations revolve around tracking ovulation and comparing mat leave policies. My inner circle is determined to sync up their pregnancies, thrilled at the prospect of experiencing it all together.

Meanwhile, Jules is about to start preschool.

I’m genuinely happy to be in the position to share hard-won wisdom as my friends enter this phase (and finally clear out all the newborn gear rotting in my garage). But I’m also really sad. Not because I want to be pregnant again. I am firmly, unequivocally one and done. But because I went through pregnancy and postpartum mostly alone. I was the first of my friends to get pregnant, the first to experience birth complications, the first with a NICU stay, with postpartum depression, with a career implosion during new motherhood. I was the first to learn how to change a diaper, to catch every daycare plague, to spiral at 3am Googling school districts.

I’m grateful I can guide them through what’s coming. But I’m also mourning the fact that I won’t be going through it with them.

Over the holidays, we flew to England to visit my father-in-law in New Forest. His wife’s daughter joined us from Bristol with her three-month-old twins, and I was genuinely excited to hold a baby again. To inhale that intoxicating newborn smell, to marvel at their scrunched-up faces. But as I cradled one of the twins in the crook of my arm, all I could think about was how excited I was to hand him back.

I looked across the room at James, who was holding the other twin like she might detonate at any moment, struggling to support her floppy head. He looked like he’d never held a baby before. We, who considered ourselves seasoned parents at this point, had completely forgotten how.

That night, curled up in bed by the radiator, James and I whispered about how happy we are with our little family. How fun it is watching Jules become a full person with opinions and a whole personality that, spoiler alert, turns out to be enormous. No part of us felt parental pings in the face of new life. No biological clock ticking louder.

I’m not sure what I expected closing this chapter to feel like. Maybe more triumphant? More resolved? Turns out there’s a little grief. A little relief. It’s forgetting how to hold a baby and realizing you don’t mind.

KATE: Our Christmas trip to Mammoth, and how for the first thirty minutes, it was perfect.

Fresh snow, still falling. Louis in a snowsuit so puffy he couldn’t lift his arms. We dragged him around like a malfunctioning suitcase while he laughed and immediately toppled over. I took photos. Thought, Yes. This is cute. We’re nailing it.

Then it didn’t stop snowing.

By noon, the roads were closing. Inside became mandatory. Fine unless your toddler runs in constant motion. Louis does not do cozy. He does laps.

A few weeks earlier, back home, I’d gone to the doctor. I’d recently swapped my bougie Bev Hills OB for a Silver Lake alternative. Peri-curious, I went in hoping to rule a few things out. Ideally to be told I was tired, stressed, maybe anemic, and sent on my way.

But I also hadn’t had a period in four months. I’d been calling it a fluke. I’m in my very early forties. Too soon, right?

I asked if my period was ever coming back.

She said likely yes. Soon. Vague.

As she talked, my mind went elsewhere. A few years earlier, in the thick of IVF, my AMH was 0.08. My ovarian reserve had always been low—sometimes only one follicle per cycle. It wasn’t new information. It was just suddenly relevant again.

Three months earlier, my labs were fine. A month later, they weren’t. High FSH on top of erratic sleep, mood shifts. One cycle doesn’t tell the whole story, which is maddening if you’ve ever done fertility math.

My doctor suggested HRT—a phrase that sounds dramatic, like a last resort, when really I’m told it’s just giving your body back what it’s quietly stopped making. Still I hesitated. Not because I doubted her, but because I didn’t want to need it yet.

Then she mentioned bone density.

I thought of my grandmother, my namesake, describing her brittle bones. I said yes.

We started conservatively. Estrogen patch only. One week. I felt fine.

Then we went to Mammoth.

Zonked, we went to bed hopeful. Around 11pm, I woke up nauseous—the hot, underwater kind that makes you jolt upright. Almost immediately, I heard Louis crying. Not screaming, just confused. Then clunk. Clunk. Clunk.

He’d knocked into the crib walls. Louis, who has slept through the night since forever, had woken himself up.

We moved him into bed with us. Me on one side, Louis in the middle, Danny on the other. I stayed half-awake all night calculating optimal angles for bodies and edges. Around 2:30am he tapped my cheek and whispered, “Mama, you awake?”

Right before bed I’d added progesterone, the missing half of the equation.

Between waves of nausea, I messaged my doctor through the portal. Progesterone. Vomiting. Altitude? Send.

The next morning, advice arrived quickly from all directions. My matriarchal in-laws—loving and decisive—said, “Rip the patch off.” The internet said: Do not rip off the patch. Pause the progesterone until you’re home. Also, no wine.

So there we were: three generations of women improvising, each certain we knew best, because why wouldn’t we? Oh right. We were never taught how to navigate this. Or this. Or any of it.

By the time the storm broke, we were cooked. Shaun the Sheep on loop. My husband dug out the car and drove us down the mountain in conditions that felt sketchy but unavoidable. We made it home tired but intact.

Since we’ve been home, I’ve tried progesterone again. A few strange side effects—a racing heart, a brief UTI scare—then it settled. My sleep is deeper now. Real sleep.

What surprised me most is this: relief exists. Support exists. Options exist.

Which feels radical, considering how little we’re taught about this phase—how to recognize it, let alone treat it—until we’re already white-knuckling a snowstorm with a toddler who’s outgrown his travel crib.

What we’re carrying into 2026 (literally and metaphorically)

About

We’re Kate Parfet and Emma Joss, two creative working mothers with decent taste and zero appetite for martyrdom. We love our kids (and our husbands, most days), but we also want to complain, do work that matters, and still remain the gravitational center of our families.

The Wiggle Room is for the in-between: not new moms, not veterans. Culture, motherhood, friendship, our bodies, desire, and all the things we try to make space for so we still feel like ourselves.

We also run a creative marketing agency. Say hi: hello@wearewiggleroom.com

Subscribe now

Some might call us procrastinators (we prefer “strategically avoidant”) but we have yet to buy holiday gifts for our second halves.

Black Friday came and went and our shopping carts remained empty. Not for lack of trying! We both happen to be married to aesthetic-minded British men with impossibly specific tastes. Danny falls into the rare vintage furniture, obscure large-format books, and niche ceramics bucket. James leans towards vintage watches, arcane car paraphernalia, and extreme outdoor activities that make us slightly nervous.

In the spirit of leaving wiggle room (and removing tasks from our lives rather than adding them), we went straight to the source and asked our husbands what they actually want.

The following lists are both funny and absurd, while somehow still being enviably cool? We don’t know how they do it…

We hope this offers a spark of inspiration for fellow gift procrastinators (or at least a little holiday levity).

Phone a friend

KATE: Danny’s birthday and Christmas are a week apart, which means I’ve had to evolve a strategy: one big, meaningful gift—and then padding it with a book or two. When in doubt, I really believe in the book supplement. It buys you both time and taste.

A few favorites: Arcana for the esoteric and out-of-print; Hennessey + Ingalls when you want to look like you understand architecture (or can at least bluff it); Alias Books East for the design gems tucked in the back; Mast Books in New York, refined without being uptight. And for anyone not in LA or NY, Better World Books is a great online rabbit hole—used, rare, thoughtful, and often cheaper than you’d expect.

Books are the great equalizer of gifting: unimpeachable, portable, and never the wrong size.

Here’s Danny’s list. Discerning, deranged, and deeply on-brand.

Danny Duncombe (Kate’s husband and devoted collector):

1. Blunk Butter Knife: Absolute perfection. Even makes the butter taste better.

2. Paul Maxwell Lithograph: No notes.

3. Lemaire Jumper: Cosy af.

4. Gerrit Thomas Rietveld Armchair: The ultimate De Stijl classic in the Wicher Zeilmaker color variation. Not cosy but cool af.

5. Japanese Wooden Noh Mask: If only to wake the baby up with…

6. Los Angeles Modernism Revisited: Quintessential LA modernism; Richard Neutra, RM Schindler, Gregory Ains.

7. Literally anything from Serpentine Gallery - purveyors of the rarest and finest in plants and planters.

8. Carl Auböck Foot Sculpture XL: Outrageously expensive and equally as beautiful. Here’s a nice starter foot.

James Whitehead (Emma’s husband and expensive hobby enthusiast ):

1. New running glasses: I’ve had a pair of these for almost 10 years that I’ve worn for everything from stroller runs with Jules to ultramarathons. Let’s just say they have been well-loved… (aka Emma is worried for my safety because you can’t see anything other than blurry shapes through the beat up lenses).

2. Porsche Outlaws Book: An old driving buddy of mine is featured in this great photo book about hot-rod Porsches and their owners, and somehow I have yet to get myself a copy. If you like your cars old, loud, no A/C and smelling of oil and petrol at all times this is for you.

3. Audi Quattro Rally Car manual: This is deep level car nerd stuff, Haynes typically makes very technical maintenance manuals for cars, but these enthusiast ones are more of a historical overview along with some incredible hand-drawn technical illustrations.

4. AIARE avalanche course: If you love being out in the mountains yet are intimidated by the complex winter conditions we get in California, a level one avalanche course is a must. It’s been almost 10 years since I did one so I could use a refresher, and you always meet great folks, plus it’s an excuse to spend a weekend in the mountains.

5. Vintage Omega Seamaster Watch: I’m always scouring ebay for old watches, typically I limit myself to under $200 budget, and I love old Seiko watches for that world. But if you’re looking to get a special old watch an Omega Seamaster is always a fun luxury option. I have never seen one like this before with the turquoise logo on the dial. Maybe it’s a mod, but it’s very cool and unique none the less.

Already finished your holiday shopping?

Redirect that discipline toward your own wishlist. Might we suggest a perfect pre-loved bag under $400…

This week has been all about scrapping the blueprint. A real masterclass in letting go—of families (temporarily), of traditions (some of them, anyway). A reminder of how easily our plans and identities can shift.

I can’t stop thinking about…

KATE: The happiest place on earth.

We packed sandwiches to be healthy, a change of clothes, SPF. The morning went surprisingly well. We followed the stroller-nap route ChatGPT prescribed: Rivers of America, walk alongside the Mark Twain riverboat, stay in the shade. Louis, who at home needs a pitch-black room and a Hatch sound machine set to industrial turbine, fell asleep instantly. For a fleeting moment, I thought, gold star me.

The plan, as I understood it, was simple: Louis would wake up and we’d all go to Winnie the Pooh together. I only stepped three paces ahead to ask the woman at the popcorn cart where it was. I turned back.

Gone.

Husband gone. Sister-in-law gone. Sleeping toddler gone. The whole area had dissolved into a churn of strollers and sunhats and churro glitter, moving like a tide that had swept them away in one pass.

So there I was: alone with four diapers, a pack of wipes, and the sudden realization that my phone, wallet, and sunscreen were tucked under the stroller, now somewhere in the crowd. Also, I’d been trying out a new hydrocortisone cream, which turned out to be extremely light-sensitive. Symbolism everywhere.

Twenty minutes passed, during which my brain cycled through every possible way this was my fault—because it loves a self-flagellation loop. Eventually, I speed-walked to Critter Country and asked the operator at Winnie the Pooh if he had seen a blonde toddler, a man, a woman. Basically anyone who might look like my life.

He had not.

I asked, hopefully and somewhat pathetically, if they had a protocol. Facial recognition? Magic Band triangulation? He said they did have a protocol, but it was for missing children, not missing adults.

He took note of their clothes and said he would tell his team to keep an eye out. Two Brits in white. A blonde toddler in a matching shade. Among thousands dressed the same. My optimism wilted.

I asked four different moms if I could borrow their phones. All four said no, which felt a tad un-sisterly. Most were rushing to the next ride. One suspected a scam, which is how I ended up opening my diaper bag and presenting wipes like proof—see, real diapers. This only made me seem more suspicious. The judgment radiating from them was palpable. What kind of mother loses her family at Disney?

Finally, Michelle, a sweet grandmother, took pity and let me call my sister, the one number I know by heart. She didn’t pick up. I emailed Emma and my mom with the subject line: Kate is at Winnie the Pooh. Those emails went straight to junk.

Around the ninety-minute mark, I debated the long walk back to the car, but I couldn’t remember if we parked in 3H or 6H (I had it in my notes app somewhere). Would I be wandering the tram loop forever? Then, in the distance:

“Pop!” Short for Poppet.

I burst into tears so fast it startled me.

Then Daniel appeared, an emissary from the Disney organism itself, gently steering me to the side so my emotions wouldn’t ripple outward. At the happiest place on earth, only happiness is allowed; anything else reads as public panic. I was exactly like Carol in Pluribus, gently told: “We’re sorry you are distressed, but your distress is disrupting the broader experience.” The tone was the same—kind, contained, efficient. He offered a skip-the-line pass, which helped, just a little.

Mostly, though, I couldn’t stop thinking about how fragile adult competence is. I used to navigate New York in my twenties, two in the morning with nothing but chapstick. Now a missing phone under a pile of snacks is enough for my sense of capability to evaporate. I become instantly porous, as if the world could leak right through me.

And then there was the quieter feeling, the one that lingered: how quickly I adjusted myself so as not to disturb the hive. Even in that spike of panic, I kept my distress discreet, moving with rather than against the crowd. Motherhood does this too. Calm, gratitude, competence—these are the currencies. You stop being the protagonist and become a vital node in the family machinery, responsible for everything yet half-invisible within it.

EMMA: Bucking tradition.

This past weekend, two of my nearest and dearest got married—both radio producers, theater nerds, certified weirdos in the best possible way. My friend Lina famously did not want a wedding. Her now-husband Eric absolutely did. The compromise? They turned the whole thing into a one-night-only theatrical production complete with playbills, spotlights, and a stage crew. It was something they could both get behind: producing and hosting a show.

Yes, there was a white dress. Yes, there was a first dance. But there was also a kissing booth, a cotton candy machine, and the entire event unfolded in an old theater-in-the-round in Glendale that felt more Cabaret than country club. And despite the chorus of well-meaning feedback throughout the planning process—that won’t work, people will be confused, you need a proper ceremony—they forged ahead and invented an entirely new category of celebration that was undeniably, unapologetically them. Was it a carnival? Not quite. A play? Sort of. Tender and funny and enviably unique? Absolutely.

The whole experience, combined with Thanksgiving, has had me reflecting on tradition. How we inherit these rituals, absorb everyone’s opinions about how holidays should look, and either submit to the cultural programming or blow it up entirely and build something new.

James and I aren’t from California. My family is scattered across Atlanta and North Carolina; his between England and Connecticut. Different traditions (Christmas vs. Hanukkah), different everything. We haven’t spent a single major holiday with our families since moving here six years ago (partly logistics, partly choice). Instead, we’ve cobbled together our own chaotic holiday canon with our chosen LA family.

Some years, friends have welcomed us into their homes where we’ve absorbed their traditions (Olivia’s herb oil mashed potatoes deserve their own religion). One year: Korean BBQ instead of turkey with Sophie’s family. Greek Easters. Brisket and latkes on Christmas. Salmon on Thanksgiving.

Watching Jules, who’s basically a tiny person now, no longer a blob, become part of these new traditions has been unexpectedly profound. Last year he experienced the aforementioned mashed potatoes for the first time and achieved such transcendent bliss, holding court at the table between flickering tapers and crystal stemware, that he was christened “Lord Turkey” on the spot.

This year? We did something radical: Just the three of us. At home. I outsourced the entire meal to Kismet Rotisserie because my gold-star-girl era is officially over. No frantic cooking montage, no kitchen debates about nuts in the stuffing.

Just us (sans mountain of dishes). Building our own thing. Making it up as we go.

Let’s hear it for those leftovers…

With the holidays looming (never the season for emotional restraint), we’ve been thinking about the “cool girl” trope, and how deeply uncool it is to keep pretending we don’t care.

I can’t stop thinking about…

EMMA: The feminine urge to appear “effortless.”

Shortly after I had my son, I found myself at a Fourth of July party in a friend’s backyard in Burbank. It was 96 degrees and I was seeking solace in the shade with a three-month-old Jules flush against my chest, both of us fighting to stay cool. James and I kept playing pass-the-parcel, taking turns dipping inside with the baby for a hit of AC, pressing cold towels on J’s cheeks while the soft whir of my portable breast pump thrummed beneath my shirt like some sort of dystopian accessory. It was at this party that someone told me, for the first time, how “effortless” I made motherhood look.

I know it was meant as a compliment. But it landed like a sucker punch to my already simmering postpartum depression. Effortless? I wanted to scream. I’m literally lactating through my shirt! Why did no one notice I was struggling? And more to the point… why did I feel like it was my job to make sure they didn’t?

I’ve always been extremely high-functioning. The kind of person who collects mental health crises like merit badges but never lets the resume slip. Gold stars all the way down, baby. Unfortunately, this extended into parenthood—a chapter where control should arguably take a huuuuge back seat. Where getting through each sleepless night, each blowout, each daycare plague, each passive-aggressive fight over who did laundry last should be taken day by day. Sometimes hour by hour. Sometimes “please just let me pee alone” by “please just let me pee alone.” Instead, I attempted to do it all. I tried to hold the facade of “having it all together” in place through sheer force of will and a frankly unhinged amount of shame at letting anything slip.

The last two years have been enormous: building a business, growing and raising a human, trying to find myself postpartum, in my relationship, in my friendships, in my own body that I barely recognized. I’m exhausted just writing this. But instead of sitting in that discomfort, instead of acknowledging I was stretched thinner than the logic behind saying “sleep when the baby sleeps,” I doubled down on the performance. I had to prove I could plan and cook meals for my family. Work out consistently to get back to my “pre-baby body” (whatever that means!). Prove to my childless friends I could still hang (yes, even at 9 PM… no I’m not tired!) Prove to my friends with kids I was an easy, breezy, beautiful, effortless mom with a bag full of homemade snacks who never allowed screen time and definitely didn’t Google “is it normal to feel nothing” at 3 AM.

But something has shifted in recent months. Call it the Wiggle Room Effect, call it survival, call it finally running out of fucks to give, but I’m leaning into the messy middle. We’re eating a lot more takeout. I’m embracing pre-cooked meals (rotisserie chicken, my beloved!). The stuff that gets dinner on the table without requiring me to perform domestic goddess. When I don’t want to go to the gym, I don’t go (revolutionary, I know). When I want to eat cheese and wine for dinner and tell my husband to fend for himself, I do it. When I’m overstimulated at the end of a long day and my toddler is throwing pasta on our freshly groomed dog, I laugh. And he laughs. And we laugh together and it’s the best sound in the whole world, even if the dog is now half marina sauce. I’m letting the house fill up with plastic toys (somewhat… I still have aesthetic limits). I’m asking my partner for help when I need it instead of white-knuckling through everything alone while silently building a resentment pyramid.

Am I suddenly a reformed Gold Star Girl overnight? Absolutely not. I’m still a Type A freak who color-codes her closet and has opinions about how best to organize an email inbox. But I’m trying. And that feels pretty effortless to me.

KATE: I can’t stop thinking about the Cool Girl Hangover.

I recently flew to Dallas for my SMU homecoming. No husband, no baby, just me and the ghost of my collegiate self. Yes, me, a California liberal, formerly Recording Secretary of Kappa Alpha Theta. I once slept in the same sorority bunk as Laura Bush, her initials carved into the wood above where I cried about boys who now send holiday cards in matching pajamas.

I used to think I’d shed that girl entirely… the one who loved mixers, arranged throw pillows, and owned too many cocktail dresses. But standing in front of my suitcase last week, I was her again, stumped. I, a self-proclaimed expert packer, couldn’t figure out what to bring. I wanted to look like the woman they (hopefully) thought I’d become: vaguely important, possibly European, messy enough to seem creative. Instead, I packed a few tees, a skirt and shoes that refused to go together, a Hermès scarf, a micro-bangs hairpiece (??), and an entire pouch of stress gummies.

By dinner, my eyes were on fire. Allergies? Maybe. Or a delayed reaction to the eye cream I’d tried in a panic before the flight, layered with Botox that peaked mid-meal. I laughed it off, which only made things worse. You can’t look effortlessly chill when your face won’t move.

Still, God, I loved it. Seeing everyone again. The girls I used to run late to chapter with, the ones I hadn’t spoken to since senior year, now raising kids, running companies, or just genuinely content. People joke that you go to SMU for your MRS degree, but that’s reductive. These women are running the show.

Another girl posts daily QAnon theories. Someone mentioned her push present was a hunting rifle. I nearly choked on my amuse-bouche. We all have our kinks, I guess. And yet, the energy felt absurd and charming.

Maybe that’s what hit me: it wasn’t them that made me wobble. It was me, trying to perform a version of myself that could pass unnoticed while still thinking like a Californian. The Cool Girl act: matured, relocated, but not extinct.

We talked about motherhood and marriage, work and life, all overlapping and contradictory. The conversations were honest, unfiltered. Occasionally ridiculous, in the best way.

Somewhere in the hugs and laughter that only happens between women who once shared a bathroom, I felt it: that loosening. The armor, the irony, the performance.

Not the LA version. Not the college one either. Just me. Puffy-eyed and oddly dressed.

The Cool Girl isn’t gone. She’s just in recovery.

We’ll leave you with this ode to the well-rested cool girl…

We’ll be the first to admit that we like nice things. We want the good sofa, the ceramic lamp, the books with edges that look thumbed, not mauled. We can live with water rings on the coffee table (proof of life!) but footprints on the upholstery? A line must be drawn.

We recently collaborated with cool-kid New York furniture brand House of RoRo on an LA “open studio,” which really meant opening Kate’s house to a rotating cast of toddlers and design obsessives. It was part exhibition, part stress test, and ultimately a reminder that good design isn’t a museum piece. It’s lived in, climbed on, occasionally licked. It evolves with us through partnership, parenthood, and the domestic absurdity of real life.

We’ve waxed poetic about design before (see: Valentine Schlegel, Enzo Mari, and our semi-rant on children’s rooms), but what we keep circling back to is this: how do you create a space that’s both intentional and forgiving? One that can hold dinner parties and pillow forts, spilled wine and sticky hands, without losing its shape (or our sanity)?

Phone a friend

We called up a few of our favorite design minds to ask: what does living beautifully actually look like when life refuses to stay curated?

Chelsea Mak, CHELSEA MAK Owner/Designer:

What’s one ugly but essential object you’ve made peace with?

“My ‘bbhugme’ pregnancy pillow that I used throughout my first pregnancy—and haven’t stopped using since. I cringe when my cleaning lady makes the bed and places it as if it were a decorative throw pillow, but I can’t be bothered to correct her.”

Which object in your house has survived the most chaos and somehow come out prettier?

“My Milo Baughman burlwood dining table is my most treasured piece of furniture in the house. We tried to protect it with a tablecloth when Nico was a baby, but it felt like such a shame for such a beautiful table not to be seen. We try to keep it clean, but I’ve embraced that it’s often covered with food-smeared fingerprints, children’s books, and the occasional random toy. It’s symbolic of the pre-baby me I love to see every day.”

What’s your design ick—something that makes you irrationally angry when it appears in your own home (or the homes of others)?

“Bean bags, I will never allow it. Sorry if you have one!”

Anne-Sophie Rosseel, House of RoRo Founder:

Which object in your house has survived the most chaos and somehow come out prettier?

“(Ply)wood furniture. Patina, patina, patina.

Birch plywood turns this soft golden hue over time — it develops warmth and character. I love how it shows life and is not pristine or precious.

Some materials, like fabric or rugs, age poorly — they can look tired. But wood ages like good wine. It needs care, but it rewards you with personality. Same goes for leather. I have a few old leather travel bags that have really earned their beauty.”

Has parenthood changed your relationship with your stuff, or just made you more territorial?

“Definitely changed. Even before becoming a parent, I noticed how quickly homes could turn into indoor playgrounds. I swore I’d resist that — and it’s become a guiding principle for House of RoRo: to design small furniture that doesn’t feel like “stuff,” and whenever possible, helps hide stuff.

Take the Box Table — using its legs as storage just made sense to me. Parenthood is a masterclass in filtering: the endless list of “nursery needs,” the avalanche of gifts, the invasion of loud plastic toys. In reality, the only things you truly need at first are a breast pump, maybe that infamous diaper pail. The rest are “must-haves” only according to someone trying to sell them to you.

Then come the gifts, the hand-me-downs, the “just because” toys. And before you know it, your child starts bringing home party favors, stickers, tiny plastic creatures that somehow multiply overnight. You start off with ideals, and then reality arrives — in glitter, beads, and flashing lights. And good luck getting rid of them; kids get deeply attached to what most adults would call trash.”

What’s your design ick—something that makes you irrationally angry when it appears in your own home (or the homes of others)?

“Clutter. And plastic — the unnecessary, uninvited kind. The toys that break before they make it home. Also, temporary or ugly furniture and appliances. If the coffee machine isn’t pretty, hide it.

I’d rather live with less than fill space with things I dislike. I prefer moving pieces around, rotating them, or storing them away for a while instead of buying new. I’ve always had a soft spot for old things — they carry a kind of soul that new things rarely do.”

Pat Bernatz, Bernatz Studio Founder:

What’s one ugly but essential object you’ve made peace with?

“A microwave! Never had one before children, and man are they practical, helpful, atomic era magic! They just need to be hidden away behind a cabinet.”

Which object in your house has survived the most chaos and somehow come out prettier?

“All of our rugs from out travels. They’ve literally seen and have physically been through it all. We love them more now than ever and get asked about them often.”

Has parenthood changed your relationship with your stuff, or just made you more territorial?

“My wife and I love collecting, but we are not overly sensitive about the protection of our stuff! Things get scuffed, dirty, etc. It’s a way healthier mindset to accept so much of it is out of our control.”

One final statement piece…

October is the one month we should be wearing masks—preferably the kind with fake blood and questionable amounts of glitter. But the truth is, most of us wear them all year. They’re just not as fun.

There are the socially acceptable masks made of retinol and under-eye concealer and the performance of being Low-Maintenance (she says, casually mentioning her $90 Russian pedicure). And then there are the ones we don’t talk about, the bathroom mirror spirals, the compulsions we’ve convinced ourselves are just “quirks,” the small ways we try to control something, anything, when the rest of life refuses to cooperate.

So in the spirit of All Hallows Eve, we’re taking ours off. Read on (if you dare).

I can’t stop thinking about…

KATE: Last weekend, I went to my younger sister’s wedding in Kansas City. It was a perfect, joyfully chaotic, open-bar kind of affair. Despite an ambulance being called to the rehearsal dinner and my son, the ring bearer, abandoning his duties halfway down the aisle to build a train track under a guest’s heel, it was a success.

It was a big weekend for her, of course, but quietly, for me too. It was my first time back in the city since her college graduation, and in hindsight, that visit seems like a marker of my twenty-something self beginning to unravel.

Back then, I almost missed the ceremony. I’d locked myself in the bathroom, overwhelmed, picking at the skin on my face while people outside asked if everything was okay. Tiny streams of blood ran down my chin as I scrambled to stop the flow with bits of toilet paper, panicked at what I’d done. I didn’t know what this was or why it was happening; I just knew it felt powerful. And it continued. I assumed it was a bad habit, a nervous tic, something I’d outgrow.

I became cautious about how I moved through the world. Once, too embarrassed to go into a grocery store for fear of being judged, I calculated a Wendy’s drive-thru, so the server at the window could only see one side of my face. Shame with a side of fries.

It wasn’t self-destruction; it was control. My parents’ marriage was falling apart, and my face became one small territory I could manage. Unable to accept that neither chaos nor calm could heal what was broken, I kept at it—picking until I went too far, then covering it up before anyone noticed. Every mark I made trying to fix it only took me further from repair, like my attempts to mend my parents’ relationship.

In the years that followed the divorce, I still picked, just not as aggressively. I learned how to live with it: avoiding swimming in case my makeup came off, timing conversations around lighting, methodically reapplying concealer. My Bobbi Brown stick lived in every bag, every pocket, every car cupholder, its creamy tip worn down to the nub. Rituals disguised as care.

Eventually, I found a name for it: dermatillomania. Hearing it was both a relief and a weight—a creature, finally named but not tamed. Was I possessed by mania, or simply by habit?

Over time, I found someone who understood enough to help, and gradually, I found balance through therapy, writing poetry, and family.

I still have faint scars along my jaw. Sometimes I worry they’ll be the first thing you notice, and I won’t know how to explain. But they’re now part of my story, no longer a secret. The dermatologist says there’s no way to restore the pigment, so I stay out of the sun and reflect on how far I’ve come.

Skin picking lives in a gray area—not dangerous in the medical sense, but quietly harmful, and visible in a way that suggests something has gone wrong. People often mistake it for vanity, but it’s really a desperate attempt to self-soothe.

The impulse to set things right never really leaves; it simply changes shape. I slip up occasionally, but it doesn’t define me. Over time, I’ve learned it’s about trying to pause, giving the hurt a rest, allowing things to settle. When I feel anxious, or when something needs fixing, I try to do smaller, gentler things: refolding clothes, organizing drawers that nobody opens. My son doesn’t allow for stillness—a fact I’ve come to appreciate—and it might just be the thing that helps me most.

At the wedding, I watched my long-divorced parents and their new partners talk, eat, dance—civil, even affectionate. It felt surreal but comforting. I wasn’t hiding. I was holding my son, laughing with my sister, showing up.

Between speeches, nicely toasted, I realized this is what safety feels like. Not a perfect face, or a perfect life, but a full one.

EMMA: This week I’ve been scouring the depths of my fall and winter wardrobe for new wares as the weather finally turns and brainstorming elaborate (or, if you’re married to my Halloween-hating husband, aggressively minimalist) costumes for neighborhood trick-or-treating and the inevitable adults-only party where someone always shows up as a “sexy” version of something that should never be sexy (looking at you, Sexy Air Bud).

But all this talk of costumes and physical masks has me thinking about the more insidious masks we wear daily. Once you become a mom, or honestly, just a woman over 30, there’s this unspoken expectation to stay frozen in time. Or better yet, to actively reverse it with an ever-expanding arsenal of lotions and potions, not to mention the lasers, peels, injections, and in some cases, full surgical interventions we’re supposed to pretend we haven’t had. We’re encouraged to mask our age, to cosplay as our younger selves year-round. It’s Halloween every day, except instead of fake blood, I’m lathered in things like “salmon DNA” and “snail mucin.”

The irony, of course, is that once kids enter the picture, there’s less time than ever for any of this. Self-care contracts to its most basic definition: running a comb through my hair, remembering to lint-roll the dog hair off my black pants before leaving the house, maybe, if I’m really on top of things, drinking water that isn’t from my kid’s abandoned water bottle (if I close my eyes I can’t see the backwash).

But here’s where it gets complicated. Just because there’s no time doesn’t mean I don’t still want these things. A massage where no one asks me for a snack. A manicure where I’m not simultaneously making mental grocery lists. A few uninterrupted hours at the salon getting highlights without planning next week’s meal prep on my phone or negotiating custody of the Goldfish crackers.

Which begs the question: Am I selfish if these aesthetic luxuries still matter to me? If I want to look good, not because I’m trying to trick anyone into thinking I’m 25, but because it feels good to feel put-together? If I care about the surface while also knowing it’s all surface?

I don’t think so. In fact, I think the real mask is pretending I don’t care at all.

So consider this my Halloween confessional. I’m taking off the mask—not the skincare kind (let’s not get crazy), but the one that says I have to have it all figured out, that aging gracefully means aging invisibly, that wanting things for myself makes me superficial or selfish. I’m letting in some of the ghouls and goblins: the version of myself who misses her pre-kid body, the one who spent $200 on face cream and didn’t feel guilty about it, the one who blamed my botox bruises on my toddler, and the one who might get filler or might not but refuses to apologize either way.

Because maybe the scariest thing isn’t showing my age. Maybe it’s showing that I care about it at all.

One final treat…

Last weekend, we had the pleasure of hosting a fermented-food free-for-all for Good Bacteria and on our journey to turn our Wiggle Room HQ into a biodiverse, bacteria-rich buffet, we got to talking about our own health journeys and the health journeys of the women we know and love.

Why is seemingly everyone dealing with “leaky guts” in particular? Is it GMOs, seed oils, microplastics, childhood trauma we’ve stored in our cores? Is it corn syrup, highly processed foods, environmental pollutants? COFFEE? We asked some of the most “well” people we know to share their thoughts on one of the internet’s most trending topics.

Subscribe now

Phone a friend

Kyna Payawal, Padma Earth Founder:

“I’m no expert, but after a lot of personal trials in healthy eating, somatic workshops, and mindfulness practice, I’ve learned our guts don’t just digest food — they digest life.

Sometimes, a stomachache is just food not sitting well. But often it’s also stress, unprocessed feelings, or even boundary issues showing up in the body. Basically, our bellies are little truth-tellers: ‘Hey, something’s off. Slow down!’

My go-to? Simple rituals of slowing down. Eating without rushing makes it way easier to notice what truly nourishes us (and what doesn’t) — whether that’s food, work, relationships, or life experiences.

And I try not to villainize food. Ice cream? Gives me cramps. Do I still eat it? Of course. It’s ice cream. I’ve learned that one scoop hits the spot. Anything more, my belly stages a protest.

In the end, I’ve learned the secret sauce isn’t always more superfoods — it’s slowing down enough to truly digest food, feelings, and life.”

Anabel González, Good Bacteria Founder:

“Our food system has been compromised in ways we often don’t even notice. We’ve traded whole, diverse, colorful foods for diets dominated by processed ingredients, seed oils, and chemicals our bodies were never designed to handle. Add in modern stress and environmental toxins, and our guts — which thrive on variety and balance — are left struggling. We feel it as bloating, fatigue, irregularity, or simply that sense of not being well.

For women who are new to wellness, I’d say: start small. Add more real, colorful foods to your meals. Notice how you feel after certain foods. Take a walk after dinner instead of scrolling. Swap one processed snack for something closer to its natural form. These small shifts add up more than we realize.

Eating a diverse, wide range of fibers, nutrients, and microbes works in rhythm with your body and is how to support your microbiome, the foundation of your health.”

Dr. Natazia zu Stolberg, DACM, L.Ac and DOCTOR STOLBERG Founder:

“All the new wellness trends being presented to us daily are hard to digest, literally. At my core I believe less is more, and that simple habits done consistently are what create the biggest changes.

When it comes to digestion, the concept I find most important for my patients to understand is that our metabolism is the body’s internal fire. When that fire is strong, we can easily cook the food we eat and digest it, but stress, cold foods, and irregular eating habits often weaken this flame.

If you are struggling with your digestion I encourage you to do these three simple things for 30 days. You will be shocked how big of a difference it can make!

First, start and end your day with a warm beverage. Begin the morning with hot coffee, tea, or bone broth to gently wake up your system, and end the evening with something soothing like DOCTOR STOLBERG Rest + Digest tea to strengthen digestion and reduce bloating.

Second, choose warm cooked foods over raw. Soups, stews, roasted vegetables, and gently cooked grains are much easier for your body to digest than raw vegetables or cold salads.

Third, eat at regular times. Aim for three meals per day around the same time. Your body loves routine, and consistent eating patterns help keep your digestive fire strong.”

I can’t stop thinking about…

EMMA: After I got married in 2022, I spent the summer roadtripping through Italy with my new husband, eating pasta and gelato like it was going out of style, spooning mouthfuls of creamy soft burrata onto crusty bread and washing it down with large quantities of Aperol, Amaro, and wine (in that order, obviously). When we returned to LA, I started to notice a persistent bloat, an overwhelming fullness that didn’t seem to correspond with anything I ate.

I thought it was gluten, then dairy, so I cut those out of my diet cold turkey, joining the ranks of women who say things like “I’m so sensitive” at dinner parties. Still, the uncomfortable bloating and stomach cramping continued. I tried cutting out seed oils (thanks, TikTok), then alliums, then nightshades. I stopped eating out entirely, obsessive over what I consumed, living in fear I’d be painfully distended and stuck in public without the comfort of soft pants and my heating pad.

After a year of trying low FODMAP, L-Glutamine, L-Theanine, and every anti-bloat supplement Instagram’s algorithm could throw my way—each one promising to be the one that would fix me—I was finally diagnosed with SIBO (small intestinal bacterial overgrowth) and prescribed a strong antibiotic to kill off the excess harmful bacteria. The day I went to pick up my prescription, I found out I was pregnant.

Needless to say, the antibiotics went unused. My doctor told me we could “treat the SIBO after pregnancy if needed,” delivering this information with the casual confidence of someone who has never had their stomach feel like a balloon about to pop. What he didn’t mention, probably because he didn’t know, or didn’t think it mattered, is that pregnancy would change my gut microbiome entirely. Pregnancy essentially hits the reset button on your entire gut ecosystem, as elevated hormones slow down digestion to allow for greater nutrient absorption. Ironically, the body does exactly what I’d been trying to do with $400 worth of supplements from the wellness aisle at Erewhon…

My takeaway isn’t that you should get pregnant to cure your gastrointestinal issues. Rather, it’s a reflection on how we’ve been taught to treat our bodies like problems to be solved. So many cases of SIBO stem from disordered eating, and I was definitely guilty of that pre-pregnancy, caught in the exhausting loop of elimination diets that promised control but delivered chaos.

Society has always been clear about what foods are “good” and what foods are “bad,” just as it tells us which bodies are acceptable and which aren’t. This pressure to eat clean, look clean, be clean, to optimize and hack and biohack ourselves into some impossible ideal, directly impacts women’s bodies, our hormones, our guts. We’ve internalized the message that smaller is better, that restriction equals virtue. But pregnancy is the absolute antithesis of that: the purposeful, unapologetic expansion of our bodies to create new ones. It’s the ultimate act of taking up space, of refusing to shrink.

And honestly… after a year of trying to make myself smaller—my meals, my body, my appetite—it was kind of revolutionary to just... not.

KATE: Seven years ago, I sat in my GP’s office rattling off what I now know were textbook endo symptoms. He called it IBS and sent me to a gastro. That doctor listened while I explained cramps so bad I couldn’t stand upright, and bleeding through my pants twice a month. He told me to wear darker clothing. I nodded, like that counted as medical advice. Later, in the car, it hit me: I’d just been prescribed the color black.

Obviously, I wasn’t the only one. Everyone I talked to had their own version—endo belly dismissed as “just gas,” fertility worries shrugged away. The illness was one thing. The real performance was being the “reasonable patient” while your body was basically on fire.

Eventually, I wrote about it. Not because I had answers, but because it felt less absurd to put it on paper than to keep typing why does my body hate me into Google.

A poem from my book, Milking a Duck:

Now, two years into motherhood, my body is still unreliable, but I move differently through the medical world. I only stay with doctors I trust. I’ve learned my insurance plan like it’s a second language. I ask my network for referrals when I hit a wall. I know which questions to push, which red flags to clock, when it’s time to walk away. Part strategy, part stubborn self-preservation.

The women I know talk about endo, bloating, gut flare-ups, fertility, all the messy in-between. Can you imagine how our grandmothers handled it? Quietly, without anyone to compare notes with, doing the best they could. We’re lucky we don’t have to. We sit at dinner swapping stories about cramps, bowel movements, and everything else our bodies throw at us. It’s not polite. It’s necessary.

We recommend one final indulgence…

Subscribe now

We've been thinking about our Substack this week. The place where we can talk about the messy middle no-man’s land between postpartum and perimenopause.

We want to make it real. IVF and new motherhood, building brands, the weird, wonderful, sometimes brutal reality of female friendships later in life, marriage, sex after baby, health and wellness (in any and all forms be it hot yoga or fridge cigarettes... or both). And the people we can’t stop thinking about - voices that make us laugh, make us think, maybe even make us a little jealous.

Here’s where you come in: what actually matters to you? Advice? Stories? Rants? Joy? Chaos? Brand strategy? Confessions? Something in between?

We’ve built a studio that helps brands figure out who they are. But this - this is where we get personal, messy. The opposite of my well curated IG grid that gives off influencer meets lobotomy. Maybe you learn something? Maybe you just feel less alone?

So tell us: what should we be talking about? The Wiggle Room is ours, but it’s really yours too.

This week we’re spiraling over FILM. So much great stuff is coming out this fall/winter and we’ve got the scoop on what to watch.

Phone a friend

As film-obsessives we were jealous of everyone we knew at The Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) last week. To try to get a piece of the action, we called Kate’s friend Hope Watson––agent to international filmmakers at United Talent Agency, professional cinephile, and very cool mom of a 2-year-old––for her full TIFF debrief including standing ovations, breakout stars, and what to watch.

Who got the longest standing ovation and did it actually feel deserved?
Everyone jokes about the timed standing ovation situation…llike, who's actually counting?! But it does feel incredibly emotional when a warm audience embraces a film and all the artists are there. You can't help but feel proud of them even if you don't know them. This year THE VOICE OF HIND RAJAB (release date TBD) won with 23 minutes at Venice.

Who was the breakout star everyone's suddenly obsessed with?
Havana Rose Liu. She's already on the map, but her role in TUNER is a big step up. She plays a virtuoso pianist who falls in love with Leo Woodall's character—they have such tender chemistry and she absolutely shines.

Whose red-carpet look had people buzzing?
Michaela Coel! She's in Stephen Soderbergh's THE CHRISTOPHERS (release date TBD) and looked exquisite while spotlighting a Sudanese designer who'd never had that kind of platform. You can see her Vogue diary here.

Did you catch any “festival couple sightings” (real or rumored)?
Leo Woodall and Meghann Fahy were there together and looked very loved up!

What to keep on your radar:

Awards Watch: SENTIMENTAL VALUE (Neon/Nov 7th)—directed by Joachim Trier of WORST PERSON IN THE WORLD fame)—starring Renate Reinsve is likely getting Best Picture buzz, plus a nom for Renate. HAMNET (Focus/Nov 27th) starring Jessie Buckley and directed by Chloé Zhao is getting similar double-nomination love.

Family Viewing: TUNER (release date TBD)—a thriller with a beautiful love story. Dustin for the older crowd, Leo and Havana for Gen Z. Perfect multigenerational watch.

Comedy: MADDIE'S SECRET (release date TBD)—for alt-comedy lovers. It's essentially a bulimia comedy, which sounds twisted, but John Early (who stars and directs) pulls off this completely unique tone. Also featuring Kate Berlant, Connor O’Malley, and Vanessa Bayer (a comedic dream).

Horror: For the horror nuts, OBSESSION (release date TBD) directed by Curry Barker was the film everyone was talking about. It sold to Focus for $18M! It's an interesting example of someone from the influencer/creators space successfully crossing over to longform storytelling.

Thriller: SACRIFICE (release date TBD) directed by Romain Gavras was full of pulpy fun! Any music video or beauty campaign aficionados will know Romain's visually propulsive work. This one stars Anya Taylor-Joy and Chris Evans.

Streaming Pick: SWIPED (Hulu/Sept 19th)—the Whitney Wolfe Herd/Bumble origin story. I expected it to be boring but left feeling genuinely inspired. Made me want to quit my job and start a tech company... I just need a good idea first.

We’ll leave you with this from one of our readers…

“I get my uber this morning and just auto-populated the location and look at the ‘Meet at the pickup point’ section in pic below.... whattttt.”

If you live in LA, you too have been living through this insane heat wave. Sweaty backs permanently stuck to café chairs (damn you, Los Angeles, for being such an outdoor city!), chugging iced Americanos like they're life support, and sneaking bites of our kid's beach-day PB&Js. We're trapped in that strange seasonal purgatory where school drop-off is back in full swing, but a bathing suit still feels like reasonable grocery store attire. Socks feel like a distant concept and dinner is a popsicle and half a peach eaten over the sink while our AC unit works overtime and our electricity bill reaches truly offensive heights.

Forget The Winter of Our Discontent, this is The Summer of Just Enough™ - i.e. the summer of parenting just enough, of showing up for our partners, our friends, our family just enough. Of slogging through the thick outside air so we can get just enough sunlight, just enough steps in. Of staying up late under linen sheets so we can read just enough of a book before surrendering to the heat-induced stupor.

This week we’re spiraling gently over soft soles, taking accountability, and looking a clotheshorse in the mouth.

Subscribe now

10 tabs after 10pm

EMMA’S OPEN TABS: Summer Skin Savior, Kid-Proof Manicure, Fall Fantasy, Goodbye Flyaways, Instant Classic

KATE’S OPEN TABS: Goes With Everything, Décolletage, Olive Satin, Thinking With Your Hands, Let Me Sleep

What’s happening in the group chat?

EMMA: I recently got my color touched up by the inimitable Ksenja at Mero Mero and settled in for what's always the best part of my visit (aside from the espresso with sweet cream and our inevitable Love Island recap)—her beauty intel. She's the oracle who directed me to the best oxygen facial in Alhambra and the lash extension spot that costs half what other LA studios charge without sacrificing quality. This visit was no exception as she regaled me with tales of her recent pedicure pilgrimage to a Russian nail studio in the valley.

Russian pedicures are nothing like the leisurely foot soaks and calf massages we're used to. They're completely waterless affairs involving tiny power tools that meticulously clean and shape heels, soles, and even the tiniest corners around your toenails. The sentence that finally sold me: "My feet were so soft I almost slipped in the shower."

Naturally, I texted the group chat asking who was brave enough to join me at MaJolie in Studio City. Bless my friend Sophie for not even flinching at the mention of power tools or when multiple friends chimed in with warnings: "I heard it permanently damages your cuticles!" "It can really mess up your natural nail bed!" We love to prove the haters wrong…

Sophie and I met in the valley on a particularly steamy day and committed to the full gel Russian pedicure experience (not exactly budget-friendly at $90, but sometimes you have to invest in perfection). We gossiped while two impossibly skilled women sanded away our summer calluses and painted the smallest of toenails with delicate brushes. Our feet have never looked or felt better, and we're already planning our return trip (hopefully with more of the group chat as converts).

The only thing we'd do differently? Factor in time for post-appointment margaritas at Casa Vega down the street. Because really, what's a valley adventure without one…

I can’t stop thinking about…

KATE: I can’t stop thinking about how much I need to get healthy. Not in the “new year, new me” sense (please), but in the “let’s build some actual endurance so I can make it through the next forty years without disintegrating” sense. The body I live in.

I’m not a young mom. I’d like to be at Louis’s wedding someday (if he wants one), maybe even stick around long enough to meet whoever comes after him. During most of IVF I was a drill sergeant. Every sip of water tracked, every supplement cross-checked, every move scrutinized. But I should also say, in the week of my transfer I had a glass of wine and some M&Ms, and it was glorious. For me, it was proof that I didn’t have to live like a monk for things to work. A few months into pregnancy, as a celebration of graduating past daily progesterone shots in the ass, I loosened the reins.

The truth is, I wasn’t that healthy before IVF, so there’s nothing really to “return” to. This isn’t a comeback. It’s more of a new construction.

For context: the last structured workout I did was Cardio Barre on Lincoln Avenue during a brief westside stint (201?). Fast forward to today - I ran out of LMNT electrolytes (seven podcasts can’t be wrong), panic-chugged a coconut water, rewarded myself with a Diet Coke and vending-machine pretzels at Travel Town, and capped the night with family fries and a Grüner at Blair’s.

Emma keeps trying to drag me to Body Dada, which apparently is some kind of fitness awakening. I believe her. I also haven’t gone yet. Meanwhile, my seventy-something mother is out here playing pickleball five times a week, while I’m gasping through “hop little bunny” circuits with a toddler. Which, by the way, absolutely counts as interval training.

And yes, my back hurts. Constantly.

So maybe this is the beginning. Not a health manifesto, not a dramatic before-and-after. Just me writing it down, out loud, in public.

EMMA: If my weekly tabs (and my poetic waxing on ugly shoes) aren't telling enough, fashion has been on the brain lately, specifically, the existential crisis that is postpartum dressing.

Jules is technically seventeen months now, which means I no longer fit cleanly into the baby mom category, but I don't quite feel like a seasoned toddler mom either. I've graduated from the early postpartum uniform of adjustable jeans, drawstring pants and other soft clothing, but I'm also completely lost on how to present to the world as a functioning professional, mother, and general woman about town (and by "town" I mean my holy trinity of coffee shop, barre studio, and playground).

We're both stuck in this weird liminal space. Jules gets bulldozed by bigger kids on the jungle gym but considers soft play "for babies." Similarly, the short skirts, rigid jeans, dry-clean-only blouses, and cropped tees of my former life feel like artifacts from someone else's closet. They don't exactly mesh with the newer, softer (and infinitely messier) parts of myself.

It's like undergoing a second adolescence, except instead of battling acne and an aggressive side part, I'm contending with perpetual food stains, awkward postpartum hair regrowth, and boobs that seem to have dropped a few octaves since I stopped breastfeeding.

I'm fumbling toward rediscovering myself in this body, in this phase where pants must be forgiving enough to accommodate constant crouching as my child insistently chants “up up up,” but polished enough for coffee meetings and post-daycare drinks.

Despite my change in circumstances, I still crave beautiful things, still want my closet to spark actual joy rather than resignation. The compromise has become a bit like Wiggle Room itself––the perfect high-low mix. Worn-in single-stitch tees (usually reserved for bedtime) paired with white cotton midi-skirts. Flip-flops with loose tailored trousers and unfussy linen shirts. Bags spacious enough for emergency diapers but chic enough for client meetings.

It's not the wardrobe I had before. But it's honest, it's functional, and it keeps evolving…. much like my parenting style.

Some food for thought:

Sunday was supposed to be simple: wine, adult conversation, and zero tiny humans using us as jungle gyms. Instead, our afternoon with Perelel and intimacy coach Michaela d’Artois turned into this wild, funny, brutally honest conversation about sex, desire, and figuring out who the hell you are after having a kid.

It was hot (96 degrees, to be exact). The convo was even hotter. Nobody wanted to leave as the goodbyes stretched into exchanges of contact info and pleas for monthly repeats.

We covered everything: dry spells that feel eternal, the pros and cons of opening marriages, what feels good now versus what used to, and yes, even pegging. Birth stories got traded like currency. Veteran moms shared while expecting mothers took mental notes. It was messy, hilarious, and surprisingly cathartic.

Here’s the thing: these conversations are happening anyway. Usually in fragments, whispered between errands or squeezed into text threads. But there’s something about being in a room where you can just say it all out loud. Where everyone’s nodding instead of judging, where “I haven’t felt like myself in months” is met with knowing looks instead of awkward silence.

And yes, we’re already planning the next one.

This week we’re spiraling gently over art as pleasure, All Fours–inspired self-care, and a deep dive into your burning questions about bodies, desire, and everything in between.

Subscribe now

10 tabs after 10pm

KATE’S OPEN TABS: Hand Blown Sex Toy, It Smells Like Girl, Brancusi Piccino, My Sexual Awakening, Legs

EMMA’S OPEN TABS: Pleasure For Her, The Best Cotton Underthings, Sensuous Soap, Butter-Soft Boxers, Vintage-Inspired Sleepwear

Phone a friend

This week, we called the aforementioned sex expert (and Kate’s dear friend) Michaela d’Artois. Sunday’s event left us with a brimming box of questions from the Wiggle Room community begging to be answered. Lucky for us, Michaela was up for the task.

Will masturbating often desensitize me with my partner?
This is common purity folklore that gets the best of us, but no! You will not desensitize yourself with frequent masturbation, and even further, there’s no science that says that self-pleasure using a vibrator will desensitize you either. There is, however, science that boasts about all the benefits (to our skin, anti-aging, mental health, hormone health) that consistent masturbation can offer!

In fact, I live by the rules of the late great sex educator, Betty Martin, who taught that everyone has two sex lives: The one you have with yourself and the one you have with another. I’m a big believer that tending to your own desires is not only self-care but also nurtures your shared sex life with your partner!

My husband doesn’t like having sex with me while pregnant. What can I do?
This is a more common occurrence than you might think, or that any of us wish for, but I hypothesize that more often than not, it stems less from disregard for you or your desirability, and more from gaps in understanding around female physiology. As a society, we’re not given comprehensive education about the realities of reproductive health — especially where sex and pregnancy intersect — so we’re rarely set up to succeed in these moments of change.

Fears about hurting you or the baby, confusion about the changes in your hormones and body, all of this can leave non-birthing partners a little dumbfounded. It’s important to be transparent about how this makes you feel, and why, and task him to do a little deep dive into his own hesitations, fears, and feelings, and maybe a little research too! Explain that his curiosity and interest in your changing body and desires is an act of love!

He also might like to know that pregnancy shifts everything into a concentrated area, making your most erotic bits feel more accessible and responsive. Increased blood flow to the pelvis can heighten sensitivity, which can translate into more intense orgasms and a richer range of sensations. For him, it can mean penetration feels snugger and more stimulating. See what he says to that.

I feel like my vagina is a bit bigger after childbirth… is that what’s happening here?
I hear you. Your body just underwent an incredible physical (and mental) feat, and that does come with its changes in sensation, shape, and tone after childbirth. But the vagina is made up of incredibly elastic muscle tissue that is designed to expand and recover in miraculous ways (even if it doesn't feel or look exactly as it was before). What you might be sensing is the impact birth can have on the tone of your pelvic muscles.

If you’d like to feel more supported in this area (which might give you that sensation of tightness and tone), daily pelvic floor exercises or finding a pelvic floor therapist can be a game-changer! But know that the concept of getting “stretched out” is another unhelpful misconception we’ve been left to untangle.

My partner had difficulty having sex while we were trying because it was “so much pressure.” Now that we have a child, I’m a little resentful that they want to have sex A LOT.
Your feelings here are valid! When sex felt charged with the stress of conceiving — especially when so often we feel the pressure for our conception story to be one of bliss and love — you absorbed that disappointment and maybe feelings of rejection along with it. Now that the dynamic has shifted, and there’s no longer that pressure attached, I can understand why this would feel like a fresh wound.

Here’s the thing: sex is so context-driven, it's possible that for your partner, putting sex under the microscope of conception amounted to performance anxiety, whereas now it's returned to a state of play. We obviously can’t change what’s happened, but we can find ways to move forward. My suggestion is to first make space for the grief you feel around your experience and allow yourself to take the time you need with that. Next, name your feelings to your partner with honesty and vulnerability but without blame. Finally, so much of repair happens in building something new together, let this be an invitation to learn more about each other's contexts and needs that will make you both feel supported and desired!

We’ll leave you with this…

Wiggle Room took a mini vacation this week as I (Emma) escaped to the East Coast with my son Jules and husband James. We braved our first toddler red-eye and lived to tell the tale, thanks to a hot tip about using a foldable car seat dolly (the internet is good for some things) that let us wheel Jules through the airport like a tiny prince. I'm already a nervous flyer, so I was less than thrilled when our captain announced over the intercom that his preferred name was "Coconut” …

I've spent the week on Squam Lake with family, reading, hiking, and religiously applying SPF 70 underneath my sun shirt every hour like clockwork. As my husband says of my supernaturally pale complexion: "keep it hidden, keep it safe!" Highlights from my week away include leaving my phone in my room for the entire day, only wearing lake attire (i.e. bathing suits, no pants), eating ice cream for breakfast lunch and dinner, and introducing my father-in-law to his first-ever Aperol spritz (which he kept calling "apple spritzes" with the kind of confidence that makes you question everything).

This week we’re spiraling gently over dupion silk, little moons, and playful design.

Subscribe now

10 tabs after 10pm

EMMA’S OPEN TABS: A Perfect Party Dress, Internet Snacks, Summer Soundtrack, iPhone Art, Dreamy Trousers

KATE’S OPEN TABS: Butter Skirt Set, Skirt Set Steal, No More Botox Bruising, Omelette Pan, Kids’ Mosquito Wipes,

What’s happening in the group chat?

The group chat this week was buzzing with news of Café Tondo’s opening. We're still mourning the loss of Oriel, but Café Tondo is already showing great promise as a new Chinatown hotspot (in good company with wine bar darling Café Triste and coffee-obsessive’s haven Endorffeine).

Tondo bills itself as a "Mexico City-influenced cafe and bar," which translates to morning conchas and coffee giving way to evening spritzes, housemade empanadas, and “shroom al pastor” tortas. Plus, Tuesday Bolero Nights from 7:30-10pm, because apparently they're committed to making us fall completely in love with this place.

The space is deceptively relaxed. Aunt Studio somehow makes it feel effortless and lived-in, even though you can tell every detail has been considered.

We plan to spend an irresponsible amount of time here…

I can’t stop thinking about…

KATE: I can’t stop thinking about how my son is in full-on mommy mode right now.

Like, I’m crouched in the bathroom with my laptop, hiding, while he prowls the hallway like a tiny bloodhound. (Don’t worry, he’s with my husband or our nanny. I’m not just abandoning him to go feral in the living room.)

Sometimes I sneak out before he wakes up from his nap, because if he sees me, game over. Nobody else will do. It’s sweet and primal. And also exhausting. I’m basically his entire universe right now. Sun, moon, snack station.

And it’s got me thinking about how we orbit the people we love. How sometimes we cling so tight it feels almost ridiculous, then push away, then circle back around wearing different faces each time.

I recently went on a bit of a bender with Season 3 of The Bear, and it’s been stuck in my head ever since. Especially the episode called “Tonnato.” Carmy and his mom, Donna. Two people who love each other but don’t know how to make that work without making a mess.

She’s not yelling or flipping tables this time. She’s just sitting there. And you realize… she’s not the villain. She’s the wound.

The way they circle each other: him trying to make it okay with food, her trying to fix it with memories. It’s uncomfortable in that way that feels weirdly familiar. Maybe to anyone who’s had a mother.

It makes me wonder when the mommy phase ends. When he starts asking for his dad, or something else. If we’ll break apart, or just figure out how to keep going without losing too much.

Maybe it’s not about control at all. Just getting better at pretending we ever had any.

EMMA: Kids are on the brain this week, specifically, the seismic shift from baby to toddler and all the existential baggage (physical and mental) that comes with it.

I've already mourned and packed away the lapped baby tees, impossibly soft onesies, and swaddles, but I'm still procrastinating on the big room transformation: turning Jules's carefully curated nursery into a space for a hyper-mobile, intensely curious (and devastatingly opinionated) toddler.

A big part of my reluctance stems from my deep aversion to anything typically "toddler boy"— the holy trinity of trains, planes, and automobiles that apparently define masculine childhood. I don't want dinosaur sheets or blue car mobiles cluttering up a space I've worked so hard to curate. I do, however, want to create something that mirrors the rest of our house and reflects James's and my obsessions with colorful yet minimal design.

The goal is maintaining that sense of childlike wonder without drowning in plastic that won't survive six months of toddler destruction. Instead, I'm coveting things with actual staying power: a charming oak coat rack, animal risograph prints, Dutch wool rugs that could outlive us all, and soft wall art. I'm finally ready to bid farewell to the nursing chair (that monument to sleepless nights) and embrace something more fitting: a chic bean bag, a design-forward toddler chair, or even a DIY table set we could paint together as a family.

I'm glad we've entered an era of children's design that champions small brands creating pieces both kids and parents can love. Because isn't childhood really about mastering that delicate balance between letting kids be wonderfully, chaotically themselves while teaching them the joy in art and beauty? The room is just a microcosm of that bigger project: creating a world that honors both their wonder (and our aesthetic sanity).

We’ll leave you with this:

High Summer street style. Louis, age 20 months.