HAMILTON READS
In Honest Motherhood: On Losing My Mind and Finding Myself, Hamilton writer Libby Ward has delivered an unflinching and disarmingly funny memoir about the exhaustion that comes from pursuing perfection as a parent.
Honest Motherhood: On Losing My Mind and Finding Myself wasn’t supposed to be a memoir. When author Libby Ward first sat down to write it two years ago, she intended to combine research, some elements of her story, and the stories of mothers around the world.
Instead, what emerged was something far more personal — an unflinchingly honest and disarmingly funny memoir from an exhausted mom who broke under the pressure to do it all, finding herself on a journey to unlearn a myth.
“The ‘ideal mother’ is this idyllic version of motherhood that we’re constantly fed conflicting messages about — and it’s impossible to actually achieve,” says Ward, a writer, speaker, and advocate who has earned 700,000 followers on Instagram and 1.1 million on TikTok.
“The ideal mom doesn’t complain, feel resentment or fall apart. She holds it all together and this is required to prove to the world she loves her children.”
Ward says unlearning took reaching her breaking point, realizing she was trying to live up to the “shoulds” of the world, making motherhood more difficult than it already was. This led to chronic stress, burnout, depression, rage, and a need for change.
“I had to become radically honest about what my needs were, what my capacity was, what my support was and what my priorities were. If I wanted to be the loving, patient mom I wanted to be, I had to let go of the expectation to be perfect, so that I could have the capacity for what mattered most.”
Both memoir and manifesto, Honest Motherhood is a rallying cry, while also revealing truths many moms don’t feel safe to talk about, including guilt, overstimulation, gender roles, and feeling invisible.
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“So many mothers are quietly drowning under the weight of trying to be this ideal mom and feel stuck. It’s hard to know how to make it better when there is just too much to do,” says Ward, who has two children, and worked as an educational assistant.
In 2020, she began to share her difficult motherhood journey online. “I was shocked by just how many moms felt the same as I did. The conversations we were having about motherhood showed me I was not alone and that, in fact, there was a really big problem if so many of us felt this way.”
Ward says Honest Motherhood wouldn’t exist without her online community that reminds her every day “of how important it is to be honest about the hard parts of motherhood because it connects us, stifles shame, helps us to feel less alone and helps us to learn from one another.”
Writing the book felt cathartic, empowering, and vulnerable. “Putting words to so many of my experiences and feelings reminded me of just how much I’d been through and how far I’d come. It gave me even more compassion for the moms in the thick of it and for past versions of me, too.”
Her hope is that people will see pieces of themselves in the book. “You start to realize that the struggles you thought were personal failures are actually just evidence that the load is too heavy — not that you are weak.”
When it comes to living and writing in Hamilton, Ward says she does most of her work at home, her happy place, though you might spot her at the Starbucks in the Ancaster Indigo or Mulberry Coffeehouse.
“Hamilton is made of grit, love and creativity. It’s a city unlike any other, in the best way, I’m proud to call it home and to support the city that shaped who I became.”
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