I write these blogs, right? The ones about gentle parenting, about finding your calm amidst the chaos, about having the PATIENCE of a goddamn saint. My readers love them. They comment things like, "You inspire me to be a better mother," or "How do you do it all?" And I read them, usually around midnight when the house is finally quiet, and I just want to throw my phone across the room because the irony is so thick I could choke on it. Because today, for example. Today I spent an hour trying to explain to my three-year-old that no, we cannot eat dirt, and yes, we need to wear pants outside. An hour. The whole time I’m thinking, *smile, breathe, use your gentle voice,* while inside my head I’m screaming, a banshee wail, because I just want five minutes to myself. Five minutes to stare at a wall without someone asking for a snack or needing their butt wiped or deciding that now is the perfect time to draw on the dog with permanent marker. And then the baby starts crying because the dog is upset, and the older one is tattling, and I just—I lost it. Not like, a big blow-up, but that quiet, simmering kind of rage where I just gripped the counter until my knuckles were white and mumbled something about "Mommy needs a moment" through gritted teeth. Then I went into the bathroom, locked the door, and just… stood there. Stood there, staring at my own reflection, wondering how this person who writes about inner peace can feel so utterly consumed by fury every single day. And then I had to pivot, right? Because the afternoon chaos bled into dinner chaos, which bled into bedtime chaos, and somewhere in there I had to bang out a 1500-word piece on the "joy of embracing imperfection" for a client by midnight. I'm laughing now, a little bit, because what else can you do? It’s either laugh or smash something. So I’m hunched over my laptop, the house finally silent, editing a paragraph about how children are our greatest teachers, while my fingers still ache from clenching them so hard. My entire income, this whole gig economy life, relies on me pretending to be this serene, perfectly balanced person who has all the answers, when in reality, I'm just… furious. Most of the time. And absolutely exhausted. I probably should sleep. But I have three more pitches to send out before 6 AM. The hustle never stops. Neither does the rage.