Thoughts on My Birthday

And other fleeting ramblings that will live on the internet forever

Good morning! I’m 38 today, and contrary to how society tells me I should feel, this actually makes me happy. I’m inching closer towards the decade that truth-telling women tell me is where life really begins. (Apparently your 40s is the place where the giving a fuck well runs dry, which is a place I have been desperately seeking lately.)

In case you haven’t noticed (dear reader: you have, I can tell by the many, ‘How are you, really?’ messages I’ve gotten), I’ve been dealing with a bit of burnout lately. Since I started doing this work in May of 2022, I’ve never really stopped. Like not even for a couple of days. Here in Wisconsin, there is always another make-or-break election right around the corner and I think jumping right into the next problem to solve after a big loss was a coping mechanism that worked pretty well, until it didn’t.

After we helped elect Susan Crawford to the Wisconsin Supreme Court in April, I should have stopped to take a moment and let that sink in. We beat ELON money. By DOUBLE DIGITS. Many of you helped amplify the stakes of the election, talk to friends, volunteer, and just generally, turn out votes. The content I created on Motherhood for Good around the election generated over 5 million views and had an engagement rate more than triple what is considered a success. It validated my hypothesis that if you take time to build trust and actually educate communities over time, it will pay off where last minute talking points and fear-mongering messages cannot. The Social Strategy Society candidate cohort I created and ran resulted in every participant winning their school board race, including several who flipped seats held by WisRed-backed incumbents.

Instead of sitting back to look at that and maybe bask in gratitude for a second, I dove back into the shark tank to try to—yet again—get the powers (funders) that be to see how important this work is to invest in. Some day I will tell you more about this process but for now I will just say: Alexa, play You're on Your Own, Kid.

But here’s the thing about birthdays. I think they are a great time to reflect on the past year and think about what made you feel good, what didn’t, and what kind of things you can bring into the next year to get to more of the good. Here’s what’s making me feel good:

• Conversations that skip over small talk

• Friendships without expectations

• Investing in and showing up for other women

• Being silly and doing simple things with my family

• Decluttering so I can do more thrifting

• Disassociating in my garden (there is a direct correlation between my distress levels and the state of my garden and goddamnit guys, my garden is looking GOOD)

I started this advocacy work in the first place not just to be something I did, but to make it a part of who I am. To inspire moms, women and anyone who would listen that we have so much power, but we are leaving so much of it out on the table. We are the heart and soul of our homes and communities and so we are going to put our blood, sweat, and tears back into them come hell or high water. If we have the right information, the right tools, and support from each other, we can turn this damn car around.

So this next year I’m going to make sure I’m staying close to home, true to all of those things I just talked about. I’m going to continue to talk about what we need to be paying attention to, who needs to be held accountable, and what the hell we can do about it. But also showing up to show off real moments of joy, community, struggle, and even burnout. I’d love to offer you a more defined structure of what that looks like but to be honest, it means that I’ll talk when I have something to say, and get quiet when I don’t. I do think I will become more regular on Substack because Instagram is making my eyes twitch.

You do not have to be good. (Mary Oliver)
You already are. (Me)

Thanks for being here,
Kate

---

Some announcements:

• Dads!! Have you considered grabbing that advocacy baton from mom for a hot minute? Join other dads at the Capitol next week to help tell our legislators that funding childcare is a non-negotiable piece of a functioning economy in our state.

  • Dads Care for Child Care | Wednesday, June 11, 12 - 2pm | Wisconsin State Capitol Rotunda

  • Register here

• For Milwaukee-area friends, I’ll be popping up soon for our first-ever IRL merch shop through a residency at The Little Village! Working on some new exclusive designs for that so stay tuned for more info.

• If you’d like to help fund my work, please consider becoming a paid subscriber to this Substack, purchasing some merch, or making a one time or monthly contribution on the site.

• If you are a candidate, organization, or impact-driven company and would like to work with me, please get in touch here (just a heads up, I don’t have any openings until the fall and things will book up quickly leading up to Nov. 2026)