There is no going back.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what a creative life looks like after becoming a parent. How do we keep making, leading, designing—while also being completely undone? This isn’t a how-to. It’s more like a dispatch from the middle. One I wrote down on the road, in between weddings and work calls, when the memory landed heavy and clear.

“You’re in the hardest part.”

I’m staring out of a tinted ballroom window, watching two gals on my team laugh and carry buckets of flowers across a courtyard. It’s absurdly hot—for both humans and purple asters—and yet.

The only outlet in the ballroom runs along the baseboard, right by the side exit. I try to find some privacy by wedging myself between two giant AV bins. I’m folded in half, discreetly pumping under my t-shirt, but my sweaty, crumpled-up body is doing nothing to help the situation. If anything, the folds of belly and boob are pushing the flanges away, breaking the pump’s seal. I only realize it when I stand up: two slow streams stain my shirt, the wet outline of my pumping bra blooming through the fabric.

My son never took a bottle. And before you start with me, please know: my mom guilt is already here and would like to give you the full report. We tried every bottle, every nipple, every feeding position. My husband tried feeding him while I left the room, then the apartment, then the building—just in case the baby could smell me. We found out my high lipase levels made the milk taste metallic and sour, so we learned to scald every drop on the stove. When he rejected that too, we turned the milk into freezer pops. We tried formula—when we could find it. It was 2022, and there was a national shortage.

To date, there is still no word in the English language for the act of pumping milk, then walking out a side door at a five-star resort to quietly pour it into the landscaping.

The planner—herself a mom—had seen me hunched over, pretending everything was fine. Her kids were older then, college-bound. She had a reputation for being one of the toughest in the industry, so her softness surprised me. She offered a weak smile, head tilted just so, and said gently:

“It’s not easy, what you’re doing. You’re in the hardest part.”

I want to say that day—103°F in Healdsburg, milk evaporating on my shirt, my body exhausted, dehydrated, and humiliated—was the low point. But dear reader, if you’re a mom, you know: it was just another Saturday.

(Just wait until your hair starts falling out.)

If you follow the trail of sour breast milk, long black hairs, baby-led broccoli, magna-tiles, and dried snot—you’ll find me here. Not trying to get back to anything, but slowly rebuilding a creative life after becoming a mother. And as the title reminds, there is no going back. So the question is: where to now?

I used to think creative leadership meant holding the vision. Now I think it’s also about holding the mess. The milk leaks, the missed naps, the days when you’re someone’s boss and someone’s mother and you’re leaking through your shirt while trying to be both. This isn’t the tidy part of building a life in flowers, or a business, or anything really. But it is the real part.

And maybe that’s what Mondine After Dark is for—unpolished thoughts from the quieter hours, when the baby’s asleep, the inbox is quiet, and there’s finally room to remember what the hell just happened.

Thanks for being here.

Yours,
Amanda