What Nightbitch Reminded Me
It's a movie, you guys, not a confrontational nightmare hallucination.
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When my friend sent me a link to the trailer for the movie Nightbitch and asked if I had heard of it, I was like, I haven’t heard of anything. It wasn’t dissimilar to my teenager giving me frequent “relevance checks” during her month at home over college break: “Did you see this? Did you watch Jimmy Carter’s funeral? Do you know that prisoners are helping with the wildfires?” My answers? No, no, no.
I’m not sure if my lack of awareness of anything pertaining to non-major news, cultural trends, or nearly anything in the entertainment world renders me irrelevant, clueless, irresponsible, or just a single mom who mostly does nothing but work and try to keep the house habitable and the kids fed. Either way, I digress. A few weeks after my friend texted me (it took me nearly that long to finally watch the trailer—ADHD women texting one another is truly a wonder to behold.), I started seeing people posting about the movie on social media. Generally, the conversations went something like this, “OMG, Nightbitch.”
My FOMO won the day and my friend and I watched it together over Thai food and sparkling rose—I *highly* recommend that all mothers watch it, FYI, but if you can watch with a mom friend, even better. When I did a cursory search on the movie before we watched it, I deduced that it stars Amy Adams (win!) and was described as a horror/comedy. Gotta be honest with you guys—while that genre is currently quite popular, being the obsolete ostrich (obstritch?) that I am, it’s admittedly not my favorite.
After watching the movie, I’m not saying I disagree with the “horror” or “comedy” classifications, but both genres—singularly or together—are incredibly reductive when it comes to capturing this powerful film. The movie, by the way, is based on a book by Rachel Yoder (2021), who incidentally, is from Iowa!! Between her and Lyz Lenz, I say, never underestimate women writers from Eastern Iowa (Iowa friends—Iowa City and Cedar Rapids are eastern, right? Another for the “not to be underestimated” category: my woefully abysmal geography skills).
It’s a magnificent film, you guys.
I’m not going to give away spoilers. I won’t even discuss the plotline. But I will say this: My God, I would have given anything to watch this when my children were small. I started writing again after becoming a mother, basically to express what had been suppressed—my ambivalence, my overwhelm, my confusion as to whether what I was experiencing was normal or made me a bad mom—and to try to turn my struggles into the type of art that would bring women together.
That was the golden age of the “Mommy Blogging” era (Speaking of reductive—I positively loathed that diminutive terminology), and it was finally acceptable for mothers to realistically, humorously, honestly illuminate the challenges of parenting. Some of us waded into slightly more emotional and existential waters (I coined the term “mommui” when my youngest was an infant and I was drowning in the tedium and minutiae of days at home with a nursing baby) while others were more like, “Oh my god, poopy diapers, amiright?” but either way, we were skirting the territory of “Motherhood is quite a fraught endeavor, yes?”
I devoured any art form—books, movies, visual art, TV shows—that illuminated the darker aspects of motherhood: the forced and falsely exalted selflessness, the obliteration of identity, the simultaneous euphoria and well, mommui of it all. How were we to reconcile this fierce new love, these powerful instincts, with the dissolution of so much of the Before Times?
But Nightbitch, oh my. While it was indeed horrifying at times and also humorous, I wept unabashedly at the end. Because lately, all I can think about is this call for home that seems to eclipse all else. And spoiler alert, that “home” is me. And you. It’s a return to the essence of ourselves that it seems to be the primary task of existence to continuously forget, remember, and forget again, until, if we are lucky, we are delivered at the doorstep of midlife feeling fully awake to the wonder of the person that we’ve always been at the center of the spiral, the person we may have forgotten.
The great identity crisis of motherhood
Motherhood presents a specific lens of amnesia that can rattle even the strongest, most successful and creative of women. I don’t know any moms who weren’t thrown off their game to varying degrees of severity. Full disclosure, I tend to spend time with very honest, open, “Let’s dive into the deepest waters and let our souls dance under the full moon together” types of women (few of whom seem to be neurotypical, just sayin’). But amongst my mom friends, most of us struggled with some type of identity crisis or other. I feel like I’ve read the phrase “forged in the fires of motherhood” with regularity, and with good reason: This shit will burn you to the ground, build you back up again, break you down, wring you out, and utterly transform you along the way.
I’ve been feeling fairly transformed these days.
In last week’s column I confessed that I don’t hate January anymore (I mean, who even am I?), and I’ve actually been DOING my daily Morning Pages, having started The Artist’s Way for the first time ever. (Short parenthetical on Morning Pages: You write three pages first thing in the morning and it’s this beautiful cosmic cleanse where you do a brain dump that makes your creative pipes all shiny and new and purges you of the crap that’s been making them sluggish.)
(Lengthier Parenthetical Sidenote: It’s magical and transformative and synchronicities abound. If you’ve been feeling stuck and you’re craving flow and getting in touch with the more spiritual aspects of creativity, I highly recommend The Artist’s Way. You don’t have to be a writer OR an artist. Look it up, buy the book, and then, if you want to make sure you don’t abandon the practice, join me for a 13-week online Artist’s Way community. Here are the details.)
I transformed my basement into a writing workshop studio, and actually had my first workshop this weekend! It was so special, you guys. I can’t wait to have more. Back to underestimating? Do not underestimate the alchemy of women gathering together to connect, create, and witness. More where that came from, please.
I feel like I’m finally finding my flow (yes, I’m knocking on wood). I feel like I actually did step into my power after declaring “sovereignty” my 2024 word of the year. In case you’re wondering, this year’s is “transmutation,” even before I discovered 2025 is the year of the snake. Snake medicine is all about transmuting poison into power, pain into beauty. Creative compost, if you will. . . From this vantage point, and watching Amy Adams’ masterful portrayal of an artist drowning in motherhood, I remembered something that I had forgotten.
Back to the point: What did Nightbitch remind me?
I am not there anymore. I am not in that drowning space, that identity crisis. My girls are teenagers and I am me. I remember myself. More importantly, I remember my joy. Nightbitch reminded me that I have arrived at a stage of life when I am more in touch with my joy than I have ever been before. I’m going to share my very favorite quotes about joy from Nightbitch. I think these lines convey the essence without spoiling the movie for you.
“How many generations of women had delayed their greatness only to have time extinguish it completely? How many women had run out of time while the men didn’t know what to do with theirs? And what a mean trick to call such things holy or selfless. How evil to praise women for giving up each and every dream.”
This theme of women sacrificing their joy or art at the altar of motherhood preoccupied me for years and years as I wrestled with my own feelings of resentment (always mixed in with the love and gratitude! always with the disclaimers!). When I heard Adams deliver this next line, I gasped aloud and tears began to flow. Imagine if we gave this gift to ourselves as though we were our own clairvoyant, benevolent children, loving us unconditionally.
“Look at you! she would say. You're amazing! You're my mother! . . . Insist on your joy. Time is short, and you must make great haste.”
Insist on your joy.
Just take that in. And as for the meaning of joy, here is one final quote. I’m honestly not sure if it was in the movie or just the book, but oh! It’s just stunning. And it sums up what I’ve been fumbling towards for a while now—that necessary surrender of striving in order to truly receive. It’s that metaphorical moment when you stop swimming against the current, turn onto your back, and merely float with your face to the sun.
“Joy was a small and tender thing, something that arrived unbidden, like the sun breaking through clouds. It wasn’t something to be sought or grabbed at—it was something to be allowed, something to be received.”
What a revolutionary act: to stop searching and fighting, to stop forgetting ourselves or sacrificing our happiness. What a revolutionary act, to insist upon our joy.
XOXO,
Steph
P.S. Please read on to see how we can creatively connect this winter!
Creating in community = Joy
STARTS TODAY! The first ever HerStories Project Incubator: a 30-day intensive for writers who want to commit to new projects and goals—large and small—in 2025. This month-long experience includes 9 dynamic presenters, an online forum with lessons and discussion, co-working sessions, and more—get details here.
First Reclamation of 2025! Join us February 1st at Junkyard Social Club in Boulder for an evening of unapologetic storytelling + stand-up comedy. Tickets here.
Pam and I are offering a 13-week Artist’s Way online community for ANY type of creative person (that’s all of us, you guys.) to find a deeper, even spiritual, practice to reawaken our connection to our own creativity and sense of beauty and joy. It’s going to be GOOD. (Make sure you’re following our Word To Your Mother Substack—paid subscribers save 20% on ALL offerings, including the in-person workshop and individual work!
I am starting weekly women’s writing circles in my studio next month! Sign up for this no-commitment interest list to be the first to register (groups will be kept small and intimate!) , and receive $25 off! Interest list for Writing Womanhood here. We’ll have one weeknight evening circle and one weekday lunchtime circle.
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Keep fighting for your joy.
XOXO,
Steph
My siblings all have littles (age 1, 3, 5 - all of them!), and I watched this as a mom of an 11 and 13 year old and had similar revelations as you. I remember those days, but i'm not IN those days anymore. A powerful film.
Rachel Yoder is a gem, gem, gem... she rolls in it like a joyous dog. I still need to watch the film, but the book, ghaaaagh :)