“I talked to Mom and Dad yesterday.”

If someone wanted to drop a bombshell on me, invoking my parents was the way to do it. The gin and tonic, which had moments ago felt refreshing on my tongue, now turned bitter at the mention of them.

The third Friday of the month meant my sister, Sarah, ventured out of her suburban utopia in Jersey and met me in the city for drinks. We’d started the tradition when I moved, and kept it up ever since. Life had been a bit of a whirlwind lately with all of the job stuff, not to mention Martha, who was absolutely flourishing online, but the past week had been relatively drama-free, and I was looking forward to getting back into my old routine.

I found Sarah sitting at a table for two on the back patio of a cute cocktail bar. Vines crept along the brick, and small vases held delicate sprigs of lavender. Sarah’s long, blonde hair curled perfectly, not a strand out of place. I’d grown up worshipping her. She was everything I tried—and failed—to be. She was always patient. She never lost her cool with me or any of our other siblings, and I’d never seen her lose her cool with her own kids. What more could you want in a big sister?

“Excuse me?” I slid into the seat across from her and signaled the waiter for a drink. “Did you just say you talked to Mom and Dad? Our mom and dad?”

“Yeah,” she said. “Our mom and dad. They asked about you.”

“Wait.” I sat back. “What did you tell them?”

In case it wasn’t obvious, my family was a sore subject. And when you knew why, everything I’ve let you in on up until now will make more sense.

Because the reason I’d devoted so much time, energy, and effort into my trad wife stories was simple: I was raised to become one.

That’s right, I was born and raised in a Quiverfull family. If you’re not familiar, it’s a pretty easy concept to grasp. It comes from a Bible verse, Psalms 127: 3-5: Behold, children are a gift of the LORD, The fruit of the womb is a reward. Like arrows in the hand of a warrior, So are the children of one’s youth. How blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them; They will not be ashamed When they speak with their enemies in the gate.

People in the Quiverfull movement take this verse very literally, so they reject any kind of birth control and make it their goal to have as many children as possible, in order to populate the world with believers. This is how I ended up with twelve brothers and sisters, with me being the youngest.

Of course, when you have that many kids, it can be difficult to manage all of them, but don’t worry, that’s a feature, not a bug. It’s the responsibility of the older children to care for and rear the younger ones when the parents aren’t around, or don’t have time, which was often. Sarah was older than me, right in the middle, and she was often charged with my care from the time I was a small baby. It was also supposed to help her prepare for being a mother herself, which, in this case, it did, so it worked out in that way.

It sounds weird to say I didn’t know my parents very well, but it was true. When there were fifteen people around all the time, plus extended family who stopped by often, their schedule didn’t exactly lend itself to one-on-one time with us individually.

We lived on a farm outside of a small town in rural Wisconsin. It was nothing as glamorous or trendy as the houses that pop up on Instagram. It was a small, ramshackle farmhouse, passed down to my father from his father. There wasn’t a lot of space for so many kids, and I shared a room with five other girls for almost my entire childhood, utilitarian bunk beds getting the job done.

My siblings and I spent every day together, whether that meant being homeschooled, helping with farm chores, or at our small church, spending at least three nights a week there, not including Sundays. That church community was the only socialization we got. Until I left, I’d never been away from my siblings for more than a couple of hours at a time.

Our family was very countercultural in the most literal sense of the word. We were isolated, living in rural Wisconsin, and my parents weren’t looking for friends outside of our small church because that might influence our thoughts, our values, our ideals. We weren’t allowed to drink. We weren’t allowed to wear pants. We weren’t allowed to dance or play cards. There were so many rules, and there was hell to pay if we broke them.

My parents’ main focus was preserving their mission of having lots of kids. Being patient or gentle was not something they thought about. It wasn’t uncommon to get a backhand to the cheek if my mother thought I was mouthing off or if I’d taken too long to complete a task. It wasn’t until I left that I realized how harsh the way I’d been raised was.

Combing through my childhood when I compared it to someone like Jordan’s made me feel like I’d missed out on not only the pivotal experiences of growing up—participating in a spelling bee, getting a driver’s license, sneaking around underage drinking—but on having what I considered loving parents. My parents never asked how my day had been because they’d been there for all of it. They never indulged my intense interest in writing because they deemed it frivolous. When I asked if we could get a television and watch The Lion King, which I’d seen on a TV at Walmart we drove 45 minutes to shop at, they berated me for even asking. My parents made it clear we were to be in the world, not of it.

I spent a lot of my time outside, swinging in the orchard, staying out of everyone’s way. I’d daydream about the day I’d be able to leave Wisconsin and never look back. When my mother wasn’t looking, I sneaked travel magazines home from the rare doctor or dentist visit. I pored over them after my sisters fell asleep, dreaming of being able to see the Nile or Machu Picchu or even just the Rocky Mountains. But that’s all it was: dreaming.

Until Sarah left. I would have never left if Sarah hadn’t left first. Of all of my siblings, no one would have suspected sweet Sarah of defecting from our lifestyle. Maybe Lydia, the “wild child,” but not Sarah. She was the example for all of the families in our church.

“Why don’t you act more like Sarah?” was a common refrain not only in our house but at church. She was always offering to help set up food for fellowship time, always offering to take an unruly toddler out of the service to keep them entertained, always the first to speak up in Sunday school. And I tried to be like Sarah. I tried so hard. But how could I compare to someone who woke up before chores to read her Bible? Who assisted our mom with preparing and cooking every meal? Who juggled a baby on one hip while helping a younger child learn their letters, all while looking like the most beautiful example of a godly Christian woman.

That’s why it was a shock when she left. I was fifteen and Sarah was twenty. My parents were getting concerned she hadn’t settled down yet, and were starting to fret more openly. She was nearing old maid territory. There was a boy who we’d grown up with who everyone assumed Sarah would be matched with—it wasn’t uncommon for there to be semi-arranged marriages in our community. But one Saturday, Sarah came home with someone who was most certainly not the boy from our church. What’s more, she came home and said she was already married to him. Our house turned into complete chaos, and I’d never heard my parents yell as much as they did that day. I was a teenager, but I hid under my bed, afraid of the fallout, and afraid of my one ally leaving me.

Sarah held her ground, though. She had met my now-brother-in-law, Connor, when she went to town to mail something for our mom. He’s been assigned to our town on a summer internship, something about working with financial institutions in rural areas, and started talking to her in line. From there, they began an illicit relationship, with Sarah sneaking off to see him whenever she could. I hadn’t had a clue.

None of us had. Sarah and Connor calmly told our parents they were married and that Sarah was moving to New York because Connor was going to go to graduate school there. Our parents were incensed and said she was dead to them. My heart broke watching her walk out of the house, and I’d never felt more alone. But despite being sad she was abandoning me, she planted in me the seed that it was possible to leave the place that made me feel so small. She showed me that sometimes you have to risk everything to find out who you really are.

The funny thing is, many of my progressive friends in New York would have considered Sarah in her current iteration some kind of trad wife. She was a stay-at-home-mom, and had more kids than the average New Yorker, three sweet girls who I loved with all of my heart. They were the only family I was still in contact with.

She took a lot of stuff from our childhood, like baking from scratch, tending to a small garden in her backyard, and making adorable dresses for the girls when she had time. But for those who knew her background, what Sarah did was radical, and I would forever look up to her for it.

So, that’s the big reveal. The reason why I’m so invested in looking into the cultural impact and relevance of the trad wife. Why I couldn’t escape it, especially since trad wives were having a moment. I hadn’t talked to my parents since the day I got on a bus to the city and never looked back. To hear that Sarah was in contact with them shook me to my core.

“I told them the truth,” she said. “I told them you’re good.”

“How did they even get your number? I thought you were no contact.”

She leaned back. “I was. And you know, I was committed to cutting them off completely. But having the kids changed something in me. I realized that even if we don’t agree on much—”

“That’s an understatement,” I snorted.

She ignored me. “Even if we don’t agree on much, they’re still the kid’s grandparents, and my kids deserve to know they exist. It’s early days. I’m not sure I want Mom and Dad to meet the kids. But I want to explore the option.”

I let out a sigh. “You’re such a bigger person than me.”

“I’m not.” She shook her head. “I’m really not. You need to stop idolizing me so much.”

“Never,” I said with a grin.

“Oh,” she said, snapping her fingers. “I wanted to tell you in person. We’re pregnant again.”

“Sarah!” I said. “You didn’t want to lead with that?”

“Fourth kid,” she shrugged. “Honestly, sometimes I forget.”

I shook my head. “Not on my watch. Youngest child solidarity over here. But congrats. I bet the girls are really excited.”

“You’re a good aunt,” she said. “They’re hoping for a little brother this time around.”

I smiled. “Did you tell Mom and Dad about the baby? What else is new out on the farm? I’m sure there have been a lot of marriages and grandkids running around.”

“I did tell them about it. They’re thrilled,” she said. “But there was something else they wanted me to know.”

The hair on the back of my neck stood up. “What?”

“It’s Mom,” she said. “She’s sick.”

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chapter 8

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How hard could it be to find a sourdough starter in Brooklyn? Apparently, a lot harder than I expected. It was no longer Spring 2020, and people were no longer naming their starters things like Doughvid-19 and Frodough Baggins. Maybe they weren’t into it anymore?

I had been buzzing after my meeting with Danny. Not only was he fully supportive of what I was doing, but he also wanted me to go even deeper into investigating the trad wife corner of the internet. Not only that, but I got to go on a work trip with my best friend.

My mood was so high, practically manic, so I decided that it was time for me to really commit to the bit that was Martha, you know, bring some of her practices into my own home. When I looked into making my own starter, the process was more time-consuming than I expected, and I didn’t want to wait for it to mature. Thus, it was time to acquire a “ready-to-bake” sourdough starter.

My first attempt was a complete bust. I hung a notice in the lobby of my building, asking if anyone had a starter to spare. All I got for my efforts were a couple of creepy texts and exactly zero sourdough starters.

Next up: asking my neighborhood listserve. I had higher hopes for this plan because people were always asking and receiving the most random things. Used sex toy? At least five people would try to claim it. A box of screws and cables? Also a high value claim. Pre-worn underwear? Didn’t last long. But me asking for a sourdough starter? Nothing. Not one reply. As far as I could tell, humanity had left them in 2020 with dalgona coffee and Zoom happy hours.

It wasn’t imperative that I got my hands on a starter, but for some reason, it felt like it would legitimize me as Martha if I could take my own photos of something that couldn’t be traced back to anywhere else on the internet.

It was time to call in the big guns. It was time to call in Jordan. Jordan, a native-born New Yorker who had the sixth sense that those of us from outside the city could only dream of: she knew where and how to get absolutely anything at absolutely any time. She had the kind of childhood I was deeply envious of, one where she walked to school every day since kindergarten, where she got to play sports after school, and where she got to go to school dances with members of the opposite sex. She had her driver’s license, but she never used her car because she had the subway at her fingertips. She had friends who were musicians, she had friends who were experimental artists, she had friends who were teachers. She grew up in a city that lived and breathed the opposite of homogeny. She’d grown up with everything I didn’t, and there were times I couldn’t believe she’d chosen me as a friend.

What did I have to offer her? It was a question I asked myself every day. I was socially awkward, closed off, and knew nothing about how the world worked when I’d moved to the city. But she took me under her wing and showed me the ropes, and I’d be forever grateful.

It was late morning, which meant Jordan was probably at her co-working photography studio. She always said she did better work in the studio, and thought the GLOW offices, which were in the heart of touristy New York City, sucked all of the creativity out of her with its corporate ambiance. It was a fifteen-minute walk after I got off the train, and the heat of the day hadn’t yet settled into the cracks of the sidewalk. I grabbed my bacon, egg, and cheese from Amir and hummed as I strolled down the street, enjoying the sounds and the smells as the city rushed by me.

When I got to the studio, Jordan was there, shooting the shit with two of her fellow photographers who I’d met before. Beans, a tall, slender Black man who always had a shy smile for me, and Kara, an artsy-looking woman with cherub cheeks, who Jordan had previously informed me was wanted for an unnamed crime in another state.

“Hey, lady,” Jordan said, standing up off the threadbare couch. “What brings you here this time of day?”

“I just came from my meeting with Danny,” I said.

“You look suspiciously happy about that.”

“Well, yes! He said that he not only wants to keep my job, but he wants to expand it. And he wants us to cover a story together, as in, actually go somewhere together. On a trip! Act surprised when he brings it up, though, okay?”

Jordan squealed. “We’ve been wanting to do that forever! There’s budget for travel now?”

I nodded. “We’re going to Utah, baby.” I paused. “He didn’t really bring up anything about the other night at the bar, so I didn’t say anything. But also, he’s my boss, so that’s never going to happen.”

“Surely you didn’t come here just to tell me that, did you?” She raised an eyebrow.

“Guilty as charged.” I flopped down next to her. “I need something from you, something I’ve tried to get myself but can’t manage.”

She laughed. “If it’s drugs, I’m going to have to say no. I’m not dealing with you on Molly again.”

“It’s not drugs. I said never again, and I meant it.” I punched her on the shoulder. “It’s a sourdough starter.”

“A sourdough starter? That’s…random.”

“I know,” I said. “A new hobby, you could say.”

She eyed me suspiciously. “You don’t pick up new hobbies.”

“Maybe I want to start baking!”

“Your oven is barely big enough for a loaf, Han.”

“I want to try!” I wasn’t sure why I was going so hard for the stupid sourdough starter. She was right—I didn’t even know if I could make one in my apartment. But I had to try.

Kara piped up. “Oh! I know someone who has one!”

I whipped my head around. “Really?”

She nodded. “My girlfriend’s brother’s girlfriend was talking about one the other day when we were hanging out. Let me text her and see if she can hook you up with Katie.”

“Great! Thanks so much!”

She buried her head in her phone, and a few moments later, she looked up, triumphant. “She said you can stop by tonight! She’s an ER nurse so she’ll be off shift at 7:00, home by 8:00. She’ll be waiting for you for the handoff.”

“Thanks so much.” Jordan squeezed Kara’s arm. “Send me the info, okay?” She turned to look at me. “I’ll stop by your place around 7:00, okay? We can go together.”

“Perfect,” I said, relieved that something was going right for once. Famous last words.

Jordan arrived at my apartment thirty minutes later than she said she would. Knowing my friend, I had anticipated this. After I buzzed her up, she sank onto the tiny loveseat that doubled as my couch.

“Where are we going?” I asked her.

“Oh, yeah!” She pulled out her phone. “Kara just texted me the address but I haven’t looked yet. Hopefully not too far from here.” As she looked at the text, her face dropped. “Fuck.”

“What?”

“We’re going to Queens.”

I sighed. Of course, it would be to a place where, on a normal day, would be annoying to get to. But now? At night? When we’d have to take the train to Manhattan, then get on another train, then catch a bus. And at this hour, they’d be running local, which meant ten times more stops. With no delays, we’d be looking at two hours, at minimum.

“Should we just not do this?” I asked her. “I mean, you can make a sourdough starter, right?”

Jordan grinned. “Nah. This is an adventure. Plus, I do not want to be the one who pisses Kara up by showing up someone she knows. You don’t mess with that girl. Come on, it’ll be fun.”

“I think we have different definitions of the word fun.” I shook my head.

She grabbed my arm. “Let’s get you a starter, girlie!”

It was one of those nights. One of those nights where every train was late, if it came at all. One of those nights when some of New York’s weirdest folks decided to traverse the same path as us. One of those nights when even Jordan couldn’t make sense of where Google Maps wanted us to go. Was it a full moon? There was something funky in the air, something that was making everything go wrong. Looking back, maybe I should have listened to it.

I’d thought I’d gotten used to taking over 20k steps a day by living in New York, but by the time we made it to Katie’s building, it felt like the skin had worn entirely off my heels, and my calves were screaming with exhaustion. I didn’t even want to think about getting home, which, at this hour, would certainly be a longer journey. We scanned the names on the buzzers. Of course, Katie lived in a fourth floor walk-up, and I wasn’t sure if I’d make it up all of those flights of stairs.

Jordan hit the buzzer.

Nothing. We waited a few minutes.

She hit it again.

Nothing.

“Did we trek all the way out here for nothing?” I could hear the despair in my voice.

“One more time,” Jordan said. “She’s here, I’m sure.”

“It’s past ten,” I said. “She’s probably asleep!”

“It’s only ten.”

“She’s a nurse who just got off of a 12-hour shift.”

As we turned to leave, still bickering, the door buzzed. We looked at each other and pushed inside. As expected, climbing the stairs left both of us winded, but we got to Katie’s door and knocked.

A woman in pajamas answered, not saying anything. Her red hair was mussed, and she wore a look of pure annoyance on her face.

“Hey,” I started. “So sorry about this, it took us much longer than we thought to get here from Brooklyn and—”

Katie cut me off, shoved a mason jar filled with bubbling beige sludge into my hands, and slammed the door.

Jordan and I looked at each other.

“You’re right,” she said. “You should have just made your own starter.”

We made the journey all the way back to Brooklyn, and I was about to go home and tuck my sourdough starter in for the night when I heard a familiar voice call from behind us.

“Hey!”

Jordan and I both turned to look. It was Danny.

Jordan and I exchanged glances, but didn’t have a chance to say anything before he came up behind us and draped his arms around both of us. New York, the biggest small town, where you could run into your boss in the late-night hours. “You two! I can’t believe it!”

I hid a smile. Danny was drunk, the kind of drunk where people were friendly and touchy-feely and wanted everyone to have fun. The kind of drunk where your limbs felt loose and you wanted to dance all night. I loved that kind of drunk.

A group of people came up behind him.

“Is he bothering you?” A woman with thick glasses asked.

“Guys, these are some of my coworkers! They’re the best! Really, the best. This is Hannah and Jordan. My best people.”

The woman with thick glasses traded looks with a man with a mustache and long hair. “Hannah? The Hannah who—“

Danny cut her off. “We’re going dancing. Do you want to come?”

Before running into Danny, I wanted nothing more than to crawl into my bed and pass out, maybe post some Martha content and piss some people off a little. But despite my aching legs and feet, despite the exhaustion running through my bones, something inside me sparked seeing him and his infectious energy.

I looked at Jordan. “You down?”

“I am if you are.” She smiled. “Where are we going?”

She sidled up to the pair behind Danny and made quick work of getting to know them. Danny walked next to me.

“I’m so glad we ran into you. What were you doing? Were you out?”

“Something like that.” I didn’t need to explain the entire sourdough saga, at least right now.

“We were just at Joey’s,” he said, walking with his hands in his pockets. “They had two-for-one drinks, and it’s safe to say we took full advantage.”

“I guess I have some catching up to do. Exactly what kind of dancing is this going to be?”

“Oh, it’s great,” he said. “They have a 2000s night every week. Big time throwbacks. It’s not like, a club. I’m too old for that.”

“Please. You’re not even 35, are you?”

“34,” he said, and our eyes met, and he grew serious for a minute. “I’m sorry if I was weird at our meeting. I know we kind of met at that bar, with Jordan’s band, and then I showed up the next day as your new boss, and I didn’t know how to address it because I’ve never been a boss before and I was so overwhelmed by the job and the new responsibilities I didn’t handle it in a way I’m proud of.”

“It’s okay,” I said, relieved he was bringing it up so I didn’t have to wonder for the rest of the night. “We’re cool. It’s fine. Not a big deal. Now, tell me more about this dance party.”

“Okay, yes, so, they’re super fun, even for me. I didn’t know a lot of the songs growing up, cuz, you know, Mormon. But I’m happy to continue my education.”

I wanted to tell him that I knew that feeling when someone put on a song and everyone else in the room knew all of the words except for me. When a friend recounted a treasured childhood memory of watching a popular TV show that I’d never heard of, or spouted off a movie quote that made everyone laugh while I looked around and faked it, pretending I knew the reference.

Even after being in the real world for over five years, after poring over the discographies of Janet Jackson and binge watching The O.C., I still felt like the gap in my pop culture knowledge was more expansive than the Grand Canyon. It was such a small thing, inconsequential, really, but it was isolating, but it made me feel like an outsider nonetheless.

We made it to a nondescript building, and after the doorman took our money and stamped our hands, we pushed inside. It was dark, and Britney Spears was pulsing over the speaker system. Laser lights flashed to the beat as the bodies on the dance floor crushed up against each other.

“I’m gonna get a drink,” I yelled to Danny, and I dragged Jordan with me.

“He will not stop looking at you,” she said as we waited at the makeshift bar. “Like, I’m pretty sure he’s looking at you now.”

“Once again, he’s my boss.”

“Once again, I don’t think he cares.”

Drinks in hand, we rejoined the group. “Poker Face” started up and the girls with Danny screamed, and we all started dancing to Lady Gaga (at least I knew it was Lady Gaga). Danny came up next to me.

“I didn’t know you were such a good dancer.”

I laughed. “I’m really not.”

“Could have fooled me.”

Now I was certain he liked me; no one could have ever mistaken my dancing for anything skilled or experienced. Once, Jordan and I had taken a Beyonce and Beyond dance class, and I had to leave in the middle of it because the teacher told me my sense of rhythm was nowhere near as good as everyone else, and I was slowing the class down.

As the night went on, Danny got closer and closer, until we were dancing with our bodies pressed up against each other. It was how I imagined being at prom would be like. He smelled like sweat and cologne, in the best way. His arms wrapped around my waist, and he pulled me in. Was he going to kiss me? There was a tension between us, the most delicious kind, the kind where the possibilities stretched out infinitely in front of you.

His head leaned down, and I tilted my face up. Despite the crowded bar, we were the only two people in the room. Just as his lips were about to meet mine, his friend with the mustache yanked him away.

“Danny, let’s go request....” His gaze darted between the two of us, and he smirked. “I mean, never mind.” He backed away, but the moment was gone, evaporating like fog in the sun. But Danny smiled that crooked smile, and it was enough for me.

I couldn’t remember having more fun than I did that night. Things wound down, and after the DJ played the final song, we all stood outside the bar, coming down from the alcohol and adrenaline.

“Breakfast?” Jordan asked. We were all ravenous and piled into a booth at a late-night (or was it early morning?) diner. Danny sat next to me, his arm slung over the back of the booth, and I liked the weight of him on my shoulders more than I cared to admit.

When I finally got home, the sun was creeping up. It had been ages since I’d stayed up this late. I took a photo of my sourdough trophy, which had somehow survived the night unscathed and crashed into my bed.

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chapter 9

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The days leading up to my meeting with Danny followed the same pattern. Any time I would get anxious about losing my job, I’d fire off some controversial post from Martha’s account. At first, I thought it would make people stop following me, but it was the opposite. The more staunch I was in my beliefs, the more followers I’d acquired.

I was trying to thread the needle of showing I was conservative-coded without blatantly posting about things I didn’t actually believe in. It would be cheap, I thought, to stoop to some of the racist and otherwise vile things other influencers talked about for clicks, and that was how I justified it to myself that I wasn’t taking it seriously. If I really wanted to play in the big leagues, I’d go all out, right?

It was a common ploy for engagement I’d noticed with accounts on pretty much every other social media platform: post about something sickeningly racist or sexist and watch the user from the other side of the aisle flood in to tell them what an awful person they were. I’d stick to parenting, homesteading, and the obligatory Bible verse post every once and a while to reassure folks what my values were. I didn’t need political pundits and bro podcasters knowing who Martha was.

On the day of the meeting, I woke up determined to fight for my job. I’d be passionate. I’d be persuasive. He wouldn’t be able to say no, to turn me away, not after what I had to say.

I’d been texting Lottie, not about the specifics, but that I had “something big” I was facing. Her pep talk cleared my mind. I would save myself, because no one else was going to. I muttered it to myself over and over as I walked into the building, and got in the zone as the elevator took me to the 14^th floor.

I knocked on the door to Danny’s office.

“Come in!” he yelled.

I opened the door and tried to hide my shock at the absolute mess that he’d made in his short tenure at GLOW. Sonia had been meticulous about her space. The only thing on her desk was her phone and her computer. There was not a stray piece of paper, an errant pen, not even a notepad to scribble ideas. Her walls displayed contemporary art, mostly striking graphic prints with bold colors.

Danny’s style was the complete opposite. Books and notebooks stacked in haphazard piles. Framed black and white photos stood up against the walls, waiting to be hung. There were at least five empty Diet Coke cans on the desk. He shuffled papers, not even looking up when I walked in. How did he have so many papers when he’d literally just started the job? I wondered if he was as disorganized with his work as his office was.

“Anna? You can shut the door.”

“It’s Hannah,” I said.

“Hmm?” He kept shuffling papers.

“It’s Hannah, not Anna.”

He looked up, and recognition showed on his face as he ran a hand through his unruly hair. He clearly didn’t know how to handle this any more than I did. “Sorry, Hannah. It’s been a whirlwind since I started. And yeah, okay, I know who you are now. Hannah. I’ll remember that. Great name. Hannah. Have a seat.”

Was that his way of acknowledging the elephant in the room? I know who you are now. Did I need to bring that night up? Apologize? I had nothing to apologize for, but still, it felt like I should say something. I looked around. The chair was piled high with books, although I couldn’t make out the titles. Photography something, probably. He caught me staring and rushed over to grab them, tossing them on the floor. “Sorry,” he said again. “Still getting settled. You know how it is.”

“Sure,” I replied. I wasn’t sure I did, but pissing off my new boss during the meeting that would decide my fate as an employee was not on my list of things to do that day. This was the second time I’d seen Danny in person, and I mentally appraised him now that he was closer. He was definitely cute, with that clean-cut look I liked. He had a dimple when he smiled, but only on one cheek, and a pair of wire-framed glasses rested on the top of his head. And were those freckles dusting his nose? I’d have to get closer to confirm.

“Hannah, okay, great. You’re on the…” he scanned something on his laptop.

“Influencers,” I supplied. “I cover the influencers. Right now, it’s a lot of trad wives. A newish beat.”

“Okay.” He leaned back in his chair, and he smiled. “Fantastic. I’ve been really excited about this meeting.” My ears perked up at that.

I took a deep breath, about to start my pitch, but he began to talk before I could.

“I’m gonna tell you a little bit about myself and what I plan to do with GLOW. And I want to talk about what your place here will be and what I see for you going forward.”

“Sounds good.” I hoped my voice didn’t sound as nervous as I felt inside, because I was desperate to prove there was still a place for me here. I sat straight up in my chair and made eye contact to show how interested I was.

“I have a photojournalism background,” he started. “I’ve been interested in photography since I was in middle school. I actually set up a dark room in my house growing up.”

Oh, I’m getting the whole story, huh? I thought to myself. I tried my best to arrange my face into what I hoped looked like an expression of interest. After fifteen minutes, around the time Danny started talking about his work with some tribe in Africa, my eyes started to glaze over. Good looks could only take you so far.

My mind wandered back to where it always was these days: to Martha. I needed to make sure her characterization was well-rounded, that she was fleshed out. Although I was writing her as satire, that didn’t mean she couldn’t be a complex person.

In my head, Martha wasn’t raised how she was raising her children. She’d been born into a secular family, because that was something no one expected. Maybe before she met Gideon she got in with a bad crowd. Drinking, drugs, all of that. But there was a boy in her….school? Would Gideon have gone to public school? No, definitely not. Maybe Martha’s parents sent her to a private Christian school, and Gideon was homeschooled, but went there to play sports. Yes, that would work. That was believable.

And once they met, Gideon started bringing her around to his community. She saw there was something different about him, something she wanted for herself. Her parents were probably aghast. After all, this wasn’t how they’d raised her. But she was in love, and love makes people do crazy things. No college for Martha, she married Gideon in a small ceremony on his family’s farm after high school graduation. At first, they lived in a small cabin on his family’s property, but Gideon got to work right away on building their own family home. Of course, they also got to work immediately on starting a family, and had their first baby nine months after they tied the knot.

In the midst of my daydream, Danny said something that snagged my attention.

“…with my fundie background, it made sense that I’d work with people who had a different upbringing, and was partially what drew me to this job.”

His what background?

“What did you say?”

“I said, I grew up in a fundamentalist family, so I really admire what you’re doing.”

“You did?”

He nodded. “Out in Utah. Ex-Mormon.”

“Oh. Wow.”

“That’s usually the reaction I get. Any burning questions you have for me? No, my dad didn’t have more than one wife. Yes, I have a bunch of siblings. No, no one I know is on that TV show.”

I laughed awkwardly because I didn’t know how to react to everything he’d just said. I’d never have guessed he’d grown up with that background, never thought that….I shut down that train of thought. “No, no questions about any of that.”

“Well, you’re the first one who hasn’t been,” he said. “I blame all of the new cult shows that have been running on Netflix lately. It’s like people in this city have never met anyone from outside of their bubble. No offense.”

“None taken,” I said. “I get it. I like writing about the trad wives because they’re such a symptom of today’s culture, not just soft, pretty aesthetics. Trying to get people to understand that takes a lot of nuanced work. It’s what I love about it.”

“Let’s get into that a little more.” He leaned forward. “I’m really interested in what you’ve done with the beat so far, but, if you don’t mind me saying, it’s a little…”

“Shallow?” I supplied.

He snapped his finger. “Yeah, that’s exactly it. I like the showcase of the lifestyle, but I want it to go deeper, you know?”

I did know. I’d been begging Sonia to let me go deeper since I started covering it. Our disagreement about Lyla McInnis wasn’t the first time we’d butted heads over how much of these women we should expose. And…expose wasn’t the right word for what I wanted to do, which was what Sonia didn’t seem to understand. I wasn’t trying to uncover anything, but I wanted to show people how the women who put themselves out there on social media were only performing what traditional values were, not actually living them in the purest sense of the word. I wanted to shed light on that distinction, and not only that, I wanted to talk about the culture’s obsession with them, not just the women themselves.

I explained my thoughts to Danny, and his face grew more and more animated as I went on. “That’s it. You get it. You really get it. It’s not about making them look bad, right? It’s about readjusting expectations, it’s about holding up a mirror to society. Since I grew up the way I did, I’ve seen both the harm that comes from trying to uphold those values so strictly and also how social media has amplified mixed messages when it comes to the same values.”

I was about to say something, but snapped my mouth shut. Not today. Not during this meeting. Not with this guy. “I’m glad you’re on board,” was all I said.

“I have a couple of different assignments for you. One is more local, but for the second, I’d like to get you out to a Mormon community, if that’s okay with you.”

My ears perked up. Actual work travel was a relic of the past. With Sonia, I’d relied mostly on Zoom and the occasional quick trip outside of the city if I was able to get there through some combination of public transportation and Uber. I’d never dreamed I’d have a travel budget, not in today’s economy.

“I have a couple of connections I’m working on to see who I can link you up with. The local one should be easy. There’s a woman, Bella Lyons, who’s going to be in the city in a couple of days for a book tour. Maybe you’ve heard of her? What am I saying, of course you’ve heard of her.”

I had heard of Bella Lyons. She basically pioneered the entire trad wife-on-social-media thing, close to a decade ago. Her husband came from a wealthy family, some sort of media conglomerate, so she had the opportunity to actually be trad, but she wanted to make her own way. She wasn’t religious like some of the others I’d encountered, and that element intrigued me. Bella and her husband lived in a cottagecore enclave on an island off the coast of Maine, and they were famous for teaching their kids how to dig for clams and fish at a young age.

“Bella is big,” I said. “Like, really big.” Talking to her would be the biggest influencer I’d covered in my time at GLOW. I swallowed and tried not to look nervous.

“She’s the blueprint. And I arranged for you to have an interview with her the day after tomorrow.”

“That was fast.” I was impressed with Danny’s connections and how he was hitting the ground running.

“You’ll have to be efficient,” he said. “I got you squeezed in for a quick lunch after begging her publicist for a slot. She owed me a favor from my time at Nature, luckily.”

I didn’t have time to think about how a former nature photographer had a connection with a trad wife publicist, but I marveled at how plugged in he was. Maybe he was the right choice for the job, despite being a man. “Your meeting will be at the Ritz. I’ll send the info later today.”

The Ritz? One of the fanciest hotels in New York City, overlooking Central Park? There were times I’d dreamed of lunching there. Now, it was happening, and I had a corporate card footing the bill.

I tried to play it cool. “Sure. That sounds great.”

“And for the other profile, I’m thinking of sending a photographer with you. Is there anyone on the photog team you mesh well with?”

I could hardly believe my luck. “Jordan. Jordan Hamilton.”

He made a note. “Got it. I’m working out some details with contacts still, but I should have details in your inbox early next week. Plan to fly in two weeks, okay? We’ll touch base before you leave, but check in with the travel people, and they’ll help you book flights and hotels. I want you to know I trust you on this, Hannah. You have good instincts.”

“Thanks, Danny. I appreciate your faith in me.”

He nodded and gave me that crooked smile. “I think we’re going to be a great team.” Was it just me, or was it getting warm in the room?

Thankfully, our time was up, and I stood to leave, almost in a daze. When I’d walked into this office, I was sure I was going to lose my job. Now? A whole new world had just been offered up to me on a platter.

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The invitation for my one-on-one with Danny came the week after Martha went super viral. I was at One More Cup, trolling LinkedIn for freelance writing jobs (just in case), and simultaneously looking at r/homesteading, double-checking a few of the things I wanted “Martha” to post later. The timing was fortuitous, because replying to everything kept me busy enough to focus on something besides what I felt was my imminent firing. My logic was simple: Danny was a man, and men didn’t “get” the whole influencer thing. They thought influencers, especially of the female variety, were silly, vain, and didn’t realize how they held a mirror up to our society.

Plus, there was the whole social dynamic between the two of us that he surely wouldn’t want to deal with. I’d be the first to go, I was sure of it.

There had been no talk of any other layoffs at GLOW (I wasn’t even sure you could call Sonia’s departure a layoff), but I was still nervous Danny would consolidate departments or “trim the fat” around some of the beats. I didn’t know if he understood what I did, and I didn’t know if explaining it to him would help. Did he even know what a trad wife was?

Hence, the LinkedIn trolling. Unfortunately for me, the situation for writers was looking grim, especially for people without a college degree. I was deep into stalking the connection of a connection when my email dinged with the notification, shocking me out of my rabbit hole stupor.

“Hold for: Danny/Hannah chat” was all the invite said. No agenda, no hint of anything we’d be discussing. Nothing in the invite indicated he recalled our previous meeting at the bar. If that was how he wanted to play it off, so be it. The date was two days away. Plenty of time for me to fully crash out over what was going to happen to me and my job.

I texted Jordan immediately. Did you have your one-on-one with Danny yet??????

She replied right away. Tomorrow. But I heard some stuff from Amber in graphics. Are you at OMC?

How did you know, I typed back. I was nothing if not predictable.

Be there in like 10, she responded. That meant I had 20 minutes before she came to ease my nerves.

Anxiety coursed through me, and I had so much pent-up energy I wondered if I should take up running. No, it wasn’t that serious.

I clicked over to Instagram and glanced at Martha’s profile, looking over what I’d posted so far. The grid looked good.

At this point, a little over a week into this game I’d created for myself, I’d kept her pretty controversy-free, staying away from politics and current events. She hadn’t stated any extreme opinions, but maybe it was time to change that.

So many of the other women I followed were always getting into virtual back-and-forths about the natural or medicated birth, the benefits of breastfeeding, and the value of homeschooling. I searched my brain for something from my past that would be slightly—but not too—controversial. Something that would make people want to respond on both sides of the issue.

A memory crystallized in my mind. Breakfast, when I was little. Chaos at the table, waiting for my turn to eat. A big, frothy glass of milk, set down in front of me. It was raw milk from our dairy cows, and I loved it. It had been ages since I’d had milk fresh from the cow, but I could still remember how creamy it felt going down my throat. I pulled up my work database for a photo I could use to accompany the post.

There is nothing better than a fresh glass of milk straight from the udder, I typed. Nothing better for me and my littles. Where are all my raw milk fans at?

That should do it. People online were absolutely rabid about raw milk these days, that is, milk that hadn’t been pasteurized. On one hand, I understood the risk. There was a reason science developed pasteurization. On the other hand, I’d grown up drinking raw milk and could conclude that it was delicious in a way milk from the store wasn’t. The fact that I could see both sides of it made raw milk the perfect thing to post about.

I was closing out the webpage when Jordan walked in, exactly 20 minutes from when she’d texted. She flopped down in the armchair across from me and wiped the sweat from her brow. It was one of those days in New York where the whole city felt like it was under a heat dome, and while the tiny AC window unit in my apartment tried her best to keep up, she was failing I’d planned to stay somewhere air-conditioned until dark for that very reason.

“Okay, so,” she started, no preamble. “I ran into Amber at the office yesterday for the Senator Dixon shoot, she was working on the graphics with her team, which are incredible by the way, Amber really knows what she’s doing in that space, and we got to talking. She had her meeting with Danny on Monday.”

“And?” I didn’t care one bit about the photo shoot; I wanted the dirty details on the meeting.

“She said it went fine,” she shrugged.

“Fine” could mean anything, and I cursed Jordan internally for not getting more information out of Amber. Didn’t she know how stressed I was about losing my job?

Job security was one good thing about being a trad wife. They never had to worry about being put on a performance plan, or getting fired, or when their paycheck would hit their bank account.

“Did she say if she thought there would be layoffs?”

“Apparently, he said it was ‘possible,’ depending on how the meetings went. There’s ‘potential’ for a re-org.”

That didn’t make me feel any better. “What does that even mean? I have to go in there and demonstrate why writing about trad wives brings in shareholder value?”

“Something like that,” Jordan said, seemingly unconcerned, playing on her phone.

“Aren’t you freaked out?” My mind raced with different ways I could prove to Danny I was beneficial, that the work I did brought something special to the website.

I started making a mental list of all the things I needed to do before the meeting. Get a hold of my analytics. Make sure I had a complete catalog of everything I’d written so far, going back to my copy-editing days. Put together a short speech about why covering influencers and trad wives was in the zeitgeist, and how it tied in to the political temperature of the country.

Jordan kicked her feet up onto the table. “Not really. Of all of the photogs, I’m the best.” So modest, my best friend. “And my cousin told me that if worse comes to worst, he can hook me up with something at his work.”

“Doesn’t he work in the adult entertainment industry?”

“A job is a job, Han. It’s not going to come to that. And if it does, well, it’ll be good experience for my resume.”

I had always been envious of Jordan’s close family, how they were willing to drop everything for her. What must it be like not to have anxiety over losing your job? I thought. Or to know that even if you did, you had someone to call on and bail you out. I supposed I could stay with Sarah if I really had to, but she was a stay-at-home mom in New Jersey, married to a finance bro, and I wasn’t exactly dying to sleep on her couch and commute in every day. It was the last resort.

“Well, now I’m even more nervous about it, so thanks for that,” I said, draining my iced coffee.

“Chill, Hannah. You’re a great writer. Danny will see that. He’ll want to keep you on.”

“He better,” I muttered. “Because I cannot lose this job.”

Her face softened. “I know you’re stressed about this, Han. But I promise you, borrowing trouble that doesn’t exist yet isn’t going to do you any good, okay?

“I know, I know. I just…really like this job, this beat. And I don’t want to have to start all over again, you know?”

“I get it. It’s stressful. But we will both be okay. If the worst happens, I will help you. This is why you have friends, right?”

“Right.”

Jordan, as always, was right. I didn’t have many close friends in the city. I knew a lot of people—people I could call to get a drink or spend a Saturday with—but even though I’d been in the city for awhile, the only people I saw on a consistent basis were my sister, Sarah, and Jordan. And I needed to remember that, though I didn’t have a million close friends, the two I did have were worth their weight in gold.

“You wanna go grab a burrito or something?” Jordan asked, looking at her watch. “I could eat.”

“Sure,” I said. “But only if it’s cheap. I’m watching my spending until I know I still have a job.”

She rolled her eyes. “Let’s go, Debbie Downer.”

I got back to the apartment after the sun had mercifully set, and when I turned on the AC unit, it geared up and blew cold enough air into the space. The perks of having a 350 square foot apartment.

I took a cold shower, which barely helped, and remembered I’d thrown some Martha controversy into the Instagramverse earlier. I eagerly pulled up the post, and the comments did not disappoint. They ranged from praising me to claiming I was trying to murder my family, and my engagement was through the roof.

Yes, mama! It’s simply the best for our little ones! And for us, too!

Ur disgusting. It’s like ur trying to k*ll your kids. If I knew who u were id call CPS

I’m not sure if you’re aware, but it’s really really really not safe for people to drink raw milk!!!!! Its actually super dangerous, especially for little kids!!!!

Yum! That looks so tasty. From your cows?

Did you see this? I texted Lottie. People are worked up about my raw milk post!

I did see! She replied almost instantly. Was wondering how you were going to deal with it.

Look, if you’d had raw milk before, you’d get it, I said. There’s no going back.

Pass, for now, Lottie said. OH also my thermometer came and I’m ready to start charting everything!

Good luck!

Back on Instagram, I replied sweetly to the nice ones, and poked back at the ones who were obviously upset. Satire, I thought to myself. It’s all satire, obviously.

It was fun, social media, and I wondered how far Martha could take me.

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Back in my apartment, my heart was racing, and not just because I’d practically run at full speed from the subway stop. Once inside, I flipped open my computer and clicked on Instagram, sweat dripping down my brow.

There were even more notifications than the day before. It was like the multiplication of the loaves and fishes, but with comments and shares. The people were hungry for Martha, and it was up to me to give them what they wanted.

All of this online attention was brand new to me. I had the standard social media platforms, but I’d come to them late compared to my peers, so I wasn’t as compelled–and by that I meant addicted–by it as most people my age. I used it for events, as a way to stay on top of bands I liked or bars I frequented, but I was more comfortable lurking on the rare occasion I ventured online. I preferred to see what everyone else was posting, how friends and acquaintances were living their lives. The people who I really wanted to know what they were up to were not on social media, so it was largely useless to me.

But now I could see why people liked it. The dopamine flooded my system as I read through the responses. The majority of the comments on “Martha’s” posts were so…nice.

Inhisimage92 told me she had some kids the same age as mine. I replied that weren’t those such fun ages? Boys will be boys, but I loved it.

Illumimatedbarbara welcomed me to the site and asked if I had any sourdough tips Of course, I replied. I’d love to share them with her. I made a mental note to look up how to get a sourdough starter. This was Brooklyn; it couldn’t be that hard.

Wyomingmama asked what church we attended. The religion question again. I’d have to sit down and iron out Martha’s theology, make sure it was cohesive. I answered with something vaguely evangelical and non-denominational. I could flesh out the details later.

I was doing this as satire, I told myself. It was performance art, creative expression, freedom of the press. I didn’t have to take it seriously. I could be a caricature of what I thought — what I knew — trad wives were.

I’d think of it as a conglomeration of all of the assignments I’ve done so far, of my experiences, mixing in the characteristics of the women I’d written about to form the most perfect and put-together trad wife who ever existed. People would get that, right? The satire, I thought, would be in the unattainable perfection of Martha. She wouldn’t just be the mom who made homemade meals, she’d be harvesting the ingredients from her gardens and animals. She wouldn’t just be homeschooling, she’d be creating and crafting her own curriculum. It would have to be over the top, but first, I’d have to establish her as believable in the online space.

I looked around my studio apartment, trying to envision what I thought Martha’s home would be like. Because it would be a home, not just a house. Gideon built it, of course, with help from the men from the church. It would be one of those modern farmhouses, all exposed beams and sliding barn doors. It would be white, and the paint would never peel because Gideon would make sure it was fresh and clean every spring. There would be enough room for the kids, but of course, they’d still have to share rooms, because that was good for them. It built character. They would have a basement (this was the Midwest, after all, with tornado season a looming threat every spring) that served as both a play space and an area to homeschool. After chores, Martha spent her mornings there teaching the kids their ABCs, numbers, and Bible verses.

In the afternoon, it was a free-for-all, and the kids would spend most of their time outside, no matter the weather. After all, there was no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothing.

In the summer, they would play in the creek that ran out back, and in the winter, they would skate on the pond next to the house. They’d take their sleds up the hill behind the barn and spend all day going up and down, and there would be hot chocolate waiting for them when they came in, cheeks flushed from the cold. Martha would have a massive garden that she and Gideon tended to with the help of the kids. They’d grow corn and wheat and peas and peppers, pumpkins and tomatoes and herbs. Martha also had a flower garden that she cared for, just for fun.

There would be a classic red barn on the property where the animals lived, and Gideon and the older kids would milk the cows and goats twice a day. The family would drink the milk raw, of course, because it was better, healthier, and sell some of it as part of their income. They’d do the same with eggs and the chickens.

Gideon would also hunt, providing for his family by killing food with his two hands. He would take the boys with him in the fall, and they learned how to dress their kill, to respect the animal that fed them. Their goal was to be as self-sustained as possible, whether that meant growing and raising food themselves or relying on their church family to barter and trade. Martha and her family were slightly anti-establishment and wanted the government to stay out of their lives and choices, but I wasn’t going to focus on that too much. No need to get political; people could draw their own assumptions.

Martha and the older girls would bake and cook in the afternoons because Martha was always cooking up delicious, healthy home-cooked meals for her family. Her kitchen would be expansive, open plan, so she could keep an eye on everyone as they played kick the can (did kids still play kick the can?) or tag. There would be no screentime for Martha’s children.

At dinnertime, they would all sit together at the long farmhouse table where, after a prayer, they would laugh and eat and talk about their day, sharing highs and lows. The kids would help clean up, and then it was family reading time. Slowly, Martha and Gideon would put the younger ones to bed, and the older ones would follow not long after.

In the adult hours spent alone, Martha would knit or cross-stitch. She was also learning how to weave using a loom a woman at her church had gifted her. Gideon would practice his banjo or guitar and serenade her, or maybe he’d read her poetry. They’d been together since they were teenagers, but they still loved each other as much as they did on the day they got married. They rarely fought, and when they did, they kept their voices low and never disturbed the children.

I looked up from the document where I was compiling my notes on Martha so I could keep everything straight. After creating this narrative, I was freshly aware of how small my studio apartment was, and also, my life. At 27, it was the first time I’d lived without a roommate in my life.

It had felt like a huge accomplishment when I achieved it, especially after living with roommates for years when I’d first moved to New York, but thinking about my fictional family’s house and space made it feel cramped, like the walls were closing in on me.

Everything I owned was in one room. I could see my bed from every part of the apartment, including the bathroom. I couldn’t have guests stay over, because other than my bed (which was a full, not even a queen), where would they stay? The stove could barely be called that, and it was a good thing I wasn’t invested in cooking because I’d have to get creative to make a decent meal in my tiny kitchen.

I loved living in New York; it had saved me when I’d needed it the most. The chaos and the noise kept my mind busy, and I always had something to do, places to go, people to see. I’d made a life here, a life I was proud of.

But every once and a while, I missed the wide open skies and the grassy fields of my childhood. How I could walk for miles in the woods and not see another soul, only hearing the sounds of the birds and the insects. I felt at home in the wildness that surrounded me when I escaped my house, no one knowing I was even gone. I’d been invisible, but in the best possible way.

The next time I looked at my phone, it was past eleven. I’d spent the entire rest of the afternoon and evening getting lost in Martha’s world. It had been cathartic to escape the uncertainty of the day. I got ready for bed, and before I went to sleep, I opened Instagram one last time. More notifications. I smiled to myself, and as I slept, I dreamt of wide open spaces, children singing in a meadow, and fresh sourdough bread.

~~~

Much to my surprise, Lottie slid into my DMs again as I was lounging in the park near my apartment, the sun hot on my skin. I’d been trying to read a book for a book club Jordan wanted to drag me to, but was finding it difficult to concentrate. The buzzing of my phone was distracting me from the same sentence I’d read at least five times. Despite our differences in theology, I’d enjoyed seeing Lottie in my inbox and was pleased she reached out again. I was also curious why she was messaging me again—I had thought our conversation was a one-off.

This day, she wrote. I can’t!

What’s going on? I asked. I’ve got a few minutes to chat between kids and barn chores.

Maybe you have some tips, she started. I hope this isn’t too personal but my husband and I have been trying to get pregnant for almost a year and we’re not having much luck. Last month I had another miscarriage, my second one, and I dunno, I just feel…broken. You probably don’t get it because you have kids already but none of my friends are at this stage yet and I don’t have anyone to talk to about it.

I sat with that information for a moment. Lottie was confiding in me because she thought I had experience—lots of experience—trying to get pregnant. I should bow out, I thought to myself. I have no practical experience here. What could I say to help her? But she’d said she needed someone to listen. I could be a listener. It was something I was actually very good at, and Sarah had kept me in the loop when she’d first started trying to get pregnant. I knew about basal body temperatures, luteal phases, and cervical mucus. Maybe I did have something to offer her.

I’m so sorry to hear that, I wrote back. While we have been lucky not to have that particular hardship, I know what it’s like to yearn for a child. You’re welcome to vent.

How long did it take you and Gideon to get pregnant, if you don’t mind me asking?

I thought about that for a minute. We’re truly blessed that it hasn’t taken more than a couple of months with all of our kids so far. I’m very fertile! Was that something people actually said? I feel like this is what I’ve been put on this earth to do, have babies and raise them up right.

You’re lucky, she said. I’d hoped that would be me, because my mom didn’t have any issues. But just my luck, bum uterus or something.

Maybe you should try a vacation, I suggested. It might help you relax. I feel like if I’m not thinking about trying to get pregnant, that’s when it happens for me.

Easier said than done! "But I’d welcome any other tips from a pro," she said.

Crap.

Are you tracking ovulation? I asked her.

I don’t think so? How do I know when I ovulate?

I broke down the basics for her, explaining that Gideon and I didn’t use birth control, but used a fertility awareness method she could try. I told her she needed to start taking her temperature every day when she woke up with a basal body thermometer, not a regular thermometer. She should record the number every day, and there were apps she could use to plot them out on a graph.

Your temperature will spike after you ovulate, I explained, trying to remember how it all worked. If you use those ovulation sticks along with it, you can start to have intercourse at the right times. You’ll confirm ovulation after it happens, but once you get some data, it will be easier to tell going forward.

Wow, that’s really cool! I never knew about this. It’s the kind of stuff they don’t teach you in sex ed.

It’s very common in my community, I said. Another reason why I homeschool, too. I want to teach my kids the way I believe is best, not what institutions believe. We don’t prevent pregnancy with chemicals or pills, but there are times when it’s not ideal to conceive, so this helps to avoid the most fertile days if we need to. Don’t forget to look for secondary fertility signs, like when your cervical mucus is the consistency of raw egg whites!

Excuse me? She wrote. I remembered having the same reaction when Sarah explained the whole mucus thing to me.

Once you start learning the signs your body gives, everything will be much easier for you to time intercourse and hopefully carry a successful pregnancy to term. I can’t wait for you to experience all of the joys of motherhood.

There’s so much I didn’t know, thank you for sharing it with me.

I recommended a book Sarah told me was her conception Bible, and Lottie bought it from Amazon immediately.

I’m diving into this right now, she said. And…sorry if this is weird. But do you want to exchange phone numbers so we can text? I’d love to keep you posted on all of this but I’m not on Instagram super often.

I hesitated. Giving out my number to a complete stranger was not on my bingo card. It certainly wouldn’t help me keep a healthy distance from my followers. And what about my area code? It was a Wisconsin one, but I could explain that away somehow, right? Tell her that’s where I’d gotten my phone or something. No one had the area code where they were actually living these days.

There were a thousand reasons to stop the conversation right then and there, probably more. You weren’t supposed to actually become friends with people online. Wasn’t virtual stranger danger a thing? I’d definitely missed that day at school growing up.

But something about the vulnerability in how she wrote tugged at my heartstrings. It was pouring out through the texts, and it broke my heart.

I could tell she wanted a baby so badly and was struggling with how to make it a reality. Maybe I could help her, support her through this tough time, give her some advice. Lottie really knew nothing about trying to get pregnant, and I knew more than most about the technical, science-y side. And she sounded like she needed a friend.

Against my better judgment, I gave her my phone number.

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Tension hung in the air of the boardroom when I got to work the day of our all-hands meeting. Looking around, I wasn’t the only one who was unnerved by the email we’d received. My coworkers picked at their nails, exchanged nervous glances, drummed their fingers on the table, all wondering why we’d been called together.

For some unknown reason, John had set the meeting for the afternoon, which meant I’d been in agony all morning, pacing my apartment while checking my bank account to try and calculate how long I could survive without a job. It wasn’t looking good.

This would never happen to Martha, I thought to myself. Martha would never put herself in this situation because Martha would never be a cog in the corporate wheel.

To take my mind off my work stress before the meeting, I hopped back on Instagram, reading all of the comments under the posts I’d made. I’d fallen into the habit of staying up way too late scrolling online, and, as such, had made some pertinent observations. I realized Martha was missing something key: a profile picture that showcased her beauty and grace. It was amazing I’d gotten as far as I had with nothing but a stock photo of a blonde woman turned away from the camera. It was fine, if not generic. But Martha deserved better.

I pulled out my iPad and opened ProCreate. Drawing always focused me, and in an hour, I’d come up with a profile picture I was happy with.

Long, perfectly curled hair that looked more natural than done with an iron, a peaceful smile on her face, and rosy cheeks. The queen of the trad wives. I’d posted a few more photos introducing my family (no face photos, only glimpses of feet and hands tastefully turned away from the camera) and replied to some of the other similar accounts that popped up now that the algorithm knew what I was looking for.

It calmed my nerves to pretend my only worries were making sure David (her oldest) fed the cows on time and that her garden was on track for a bountiful harvest. I sighed and decided it was time to face the music and headed to Midtown.

I squeezed my way through the throng, scanning the bodies packed in like sardines. I spotted Jordan in the corner furthest from the head of the room, a worried look on her face. She wasn’t the only one. People were talking in hushed tones, shifting on their feet, looking around as if they were waiting for an axe to fall.

“You find out anything?” I asked Jordan, pushing myself up against the wall. The space was definitely not big enough for the fifty or so staff members who were eager to find out if they still had jobs.

“No.” She looked as anxious as I felt. “But I don’t see Sonia, do you?”

I looked, and Jordan was right. No Sonia, one person who should definitely have been in attendance. My stomach churned.

“She didn’t respond to me when I sent my latest piece,” I said. “She always acknowledges receipt.”

“This is getting freaky,” Jordan said. Before I could say more, John Simpson strode into the room. John was an imposing figure, a cliche of the media mogul. Tall, silver hair, a perfectly tailored suit, and blue eyes that made you feel like he knew all of your secrets with one glance. Behind his back, I called him a knock-off Anderson Cooper, although I would have died with shame if he ever found that out. GLOW was only one of the websites in his portfolio, and he rarely set foot in our offices, from what I heard from those who were there more often.

“Thanks for gathering here today on such short notice,” John started.

“As if we had a choice,” Jordan muttered. I elbowed her and tried to keep a straight face as John went on.

“Our employees are the heart and soul of GLOW, and I know how hard you all work every day to keep up our immaculate reputation. I want you all to know how valued each and every one of you is.”

“Here it comes…” Jordan said, and I braced myself.

“That’s why I want to make sure we’re challenging ourselves to be the best. Which is why I’m so pleased to announce that I’m bringing in Danny Smith as our new Editor-in-Chief.”

There was a collective gasp in the room. Not only had Sonia been at GLOW for years, but there had been rumors that she and John had some sort of…entanglement going on. Her experience, coupled with whatever relationship she had with John made her the one person I’d thought would be safe from whatever culling I’d suspected was going to happen.

“Sonia Kennedy has done a fantastic job for the past ten years,” John said. “But we both mutually decided it was time for her to move on.”

If she’d done such great work, why wasn’t she here to say goodbye? I wondered.

Whispers rippled across the room, and I knew everyone was having the same thought.

My attention turned when the door to the conference room opened, and in stepped the cute guy from the bar.

My mouth hung open in shock, and as he scanned the room, his eyes snagged on me, widening slightly.

How was he old enough to run GLOW? He was hardly older than me, maybe 35, at most. More importantly, how was the guy I flirted with now my boss? My stomach churned.

“Danny Smith has done a fantastic job at Nature, and I was excited I was able to scoop him up and give him a home here at GLOW,” John said. “He’s won several awards for his writing, and he’s a visionary when it comes to editing. He’s going to be a fantastic addition to our team.” I’d heard of Danny Smith in passing, the wunderkind of the electronic publishing world and, on top of that, an award-winning photojournalist.

The irony was not lost on me that a man was now editor-in-chief of a women’s website. Didn’t this go against everything we stood for as a magazine? Girl power? Boss babes? Female-led empowerment? Only if a man is the one leading it, I thought. I felt my phone buzzing in my pocket, but I ignored it. I couldn’t look away from Danny and John.

“Danny, is there anything you’d like to say to the team?:

Danny smiled and cleared his throat to speak, and he looked determined not to catch my eye.

“Hi everyone, and thanks so much for the warm introduction, John. I’m happy to be on board at GLOW, and I’m really looking forward to getting to know all of you. I’ll be setting up one-on-ones with everyone to dig into what you work on and how we can improve together, so look for calendar invites later in the week.”

My phone kept buzzing, but now was not the time to check it. My mind raced with what Danny’s new role would mean for my job. Sure, he thought I was cute, but would he see the value in the work I did, or would he consider it superfluous? Would he take me seriously? What I assumed were spam texts or emails could wait.

“Thanks, Danny,” John said, clapping him on the back. “That’s all from me for now. Keep up the good work, folks.”

With that, John walked out, Danny behind him. He turned his head to my side of the room, but I pretended to be deep in conversation with Jordan. After he left, the rest of us looked around, shell-shocked. My brain raced, trying to calculate if this meant I did or did not have a job.

“What the hell just happened?” Jordan said as we gathered our things. “Postgame at Clemmens?”

I nodded, checking the time. Just past three, which was an acceptable hour to start drinking, especially in the summer. Clemmens was the sports bar not far from the office, where Jordan and I often convened to talk shop. Despite the athletic atmosphere and the prevalence of finance bros, they actually made a good cocktail, and were cheaper than most in the area.

We walked into the bar and were immediately greeted by Kai, the sexy bartender who also played rugby on the side. We waved and sidled up to the bar, ordering our standard drinks (a classic daiquiri for me and a dark and stormy for Jordan).

“That was interesting.” Jordan started folding her napkin into a tiny envelope. “But at least we’re not getting fired?”

“Yet,” I said. “We’re not getting fired yet. Who knows what kind of re-org Danny is going to pull?”

“You’re always such a downer,” she said. “Can you look on the bright side for once? We still have jobs!”

“Previous life experience has shown me that expecting the worst is always the best option,” I said, sipping my drink.

“And yet you never want to talk about your past.”

I mimed zipping my mouth shut. “The past is in the past. Going forward is the only way. Besides, you’ve met my sister. It’s not like I’m hiding anything from you.”

Sarah, my older sister, lived outside the city in the suburbs, and even though I didn’t see her as much as I’d like, I saw her more than anyone else in my family.

“It just feels like there’s a lot about you I don’t know, and I’m your best friend.”

“There’s nothing to know,” I said. “Grew up on a farm. Parents were religious and didn’t want me to leave home, but I left anyway. Boring stuff.”

“Sure,” she said, sensing I wanted to drop the topic.

“Besides,” I went on. “I have something much more interesting to tell you.”

She leaned in. “Oh?”

“Danny was at your gig the other night.”

“Who?” She looked confused. “Danny, the new EIC from GLOW?”

“One and the same. And,” I leaned in closer, “he was flirting with me. I’m pretty sure he was going to ask for my number.”

“Excuse me?” She was elated. “This is great for you!”

“No, this is not great for me! He’s my—our—boss now. What if he fires me because he doesn’t want to deal with all of the drama?”

“Okay, you’re jumping straight to worst-case scenario again,” Jordan said.

“It’s not like he can date me now! It’s unethical! Power dynamics!”

“But it’s kind of hot, though, right?”

“No, Jordan, it’s not kind of hot. I’m worried about losing my job!”

I could hear my phone buzzing away in my bag. Jordan must have too.

“Why is your phone going off so much?” she asked. “No offense, but I feel like your phone never rings.” She wasn’t wrong; I wasn’t exactly Ms. Popularity.

I took it out to look at the screen, and my heart stopped.

“Nothing,” I said, silencing it and shoving it back in my bag. “It’s nothing.” I proceeded to explain to her in detail why Danny's taking over GLOW was a death knell for my career as I knew it.

But when I got home, I dove into my notifications and found that it wasn’t nothing. Martha’s profile was blowing up even more.

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Last year, I got a comment on one of my Tiktok posts accusing me of “copying” Hannah Neeleman, aka Ballerina Farm, one of the more prominent trad wife accounts out there, for my book, TRAD.

It’s a pretty good presumption, but no, Hannah, the protago…

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I was elbow-deep in cow colostrum when I made the unconscious decision to become a trad wife influencer. I was not religious. I was not married. I certainly didn’t have the slightest inkling of how to raise anything besides a fiddle leaf fig (and even that was debatable).

But what I did know was that the woman in front of me was a fraud. In my line of work as a writer who interacted with influencers on a near-daily basis—the fitness girlies, the mommy bloggers, the lifestyle influencers—and was in the process of writing an article about the woman standing before me, it was my educated opinion that exactly none of them were the people they portrayed themselves to be on social media. Not a revolutionary nor original idea, I know, but it got under my skin more than it did most people. Which was why I was working said trad wife beat, despite the fact that it paid close to nothing.

“It really works miracles!” I snapped my attention back to my subject, a tall, willowy woman standing before me inside a farmhouse kitchen that was double the size of my Brooklyn apartment. “I drink it every morning, and the babies love it. Colostrum builds our immunity without any yucky chemicals and protects our gut health.” She sounded like an ad for the stuff, which, to be fair, she kind of was. I just wasn’t buying what she was selling.

The woman in question was Lyla McInnis, one of the up-and-coming figures of the online trad wife community, a faction of the influencers I’d been covering more and more lately.

Surely you’re familiar with trad wives at this point, right? They’re women, usually religious, who adhere to traditional gender roles. They stay home. They have lots of kids. They make food from scratch. And they’re having a moment, taking over social media with their videos of them pouring milk from one container to another, making sourdough bread, and always talking in a soft, sweet voice. They are the quintessential Proverbs 31 woman (If you’re not up to date on your Bible verses, look it up. It’ll all make sense.)

And Lyla McInnis was every bit the social media trad wife. Her shiny blonde hair was slicked into a neat bun, her long, floral dress accented her figure without revealing too many curves, and a beatific smile spread across her face as she handed me the jar of creamy liquid. Speaking of her face, despite having six children and one on the way, it was free of any kind of line, crease, or crow’s feet. She was glowing. She was radiant. She was perfect. She was a liar.

Because, of course, she was. I knew any true trad wife—that is to say, anyone who actually believed in the tenets of trad wifery— wouldn’t be showing her kids online, shoving their faces in front of a camera for the world to see. She wouldn’t be online, period. She most likely wouldn’t even have internet, never mind the newest iPhone to post her content with. She would be focused on her family and her faith, not worrying about creating content to be consumed by millions of strangers. The performance Lyla was doing was all a facade, a very carefully curated facade, with the end goal to generate income.

I wanted to call her what she really was: a working mom, just like the mom who clocked in at the office every day. But instead of creating shareholder value, Lyla’s job was to make content that reflected an unattainable reality. Feeding the chickens at dawn. Making sourdough from scratch. Submitting to her husband joyfully and without hesitation. Welcoming one pregnancy after another.

“I give it to the kids every morning, in a smoothie, after we have Bible study,” she continued. Children gathered around her as she poured the colostrum into a mason jar for each of them. The children yearned for the cow colostrom. I focused my energy on trying not to gag.

Yes, it was chaotic, all of those kids clamoring for their colostrum, but in a calm, respectful way. They ranged from the ages of one to eight, and were all dressed in clean clothes, in complementary colors, and not a hair out of place. Their cheeks were red with excitement, but the older ones looked at me with skepticism, as if they knew my deepest desire was to reveal what actually went on behind the scenes.

Without warning, the front door swung open, and Lyla’s husband, Matthew, stormed in. His steps shook the floorboards, and when he walked into the room, the energy shifted, a change in the air.

“What’s going on in here?” His face was dark, and out of habit, I stepped back against the sink, trying to get out of his line of sight. “Who the hell is this?” He jerked his head towards me.

“This is Hannah,” Lyla said in a voice that tried to convey strength but wasn’t convincing. “I told you she was coming by to spend the day with us so she can write an article about our family.” Another fake, strained smile.

Matthew pulled an empty soda bottle out of his back pocket and spit into it. The brown sludge at the bottom of the bottle. My stomach, already churning from the cow colostrum turned even more. “I told you I didn’t want some stranger coming in here nosing around.”

“We’re so close, Matthew,” she pleaded. “I know you don’t like all of this online stuff, but with all of the deals I did last month, we have more than enough for the mortgage and the farm loan.” She glanced over at me to see if I was watching. I was.

“You don’t need to talk about that stuff in front of her,” he snapped. “This is personal, Ly. This is our life, our kids.”

“We’ve talked about this.” Lyla folded a kitchen towel and put it in one of the drawers. “This will give us all of the freedom we’ve been striving for.”

Matthew looked like he wanted to say something more, but he looked over at me again and his mouth snapped shut. “Lucas! Samuel!” he barked, and the tallest of the kids jumped to attention. “Let’s go. We’ve got chores to do. No more of this standing around doing sissy stuff.” He grabbed the older boy, a little roughly for my taste, and the younger followed Matthew out of the house.

If I’d seen this once, I’d seen it a hundred times. The relationships between trad wives and their husbands were forged on gender roles, with the husband providing for the family and the woman being the homemaker. But what the internet did was give the women an opportunity to flip the script. It was, ironically, a feminist move where the women became the breadwinners. They could monetize the things they were doing anyway, and what’s more, people applauded them for doing so. They were bringing in more money in brand deals than the average person realized—$35,000, $40,000, $50,000 a post, oftentimes more—and even after they paid taxes on it, there was more than enough for them to live comfortably or upgrade their lifestyle if they wanted to. It was lucrative if you were willing to put in the work and had a modicum of creativity.

But the problem was those pesky gender roles. Once the men weren’t the provider in the household, many of the men in these couples became agitated, like there was a target on their masculinity. There were conversations like the one I’d just witnessed between Matthew and Lyla playing out with trad wife influencers all over the country.

As Matthew slammed the door, I gave Lyla a small smile, trying to let her know she could trust me. “Is everything okay between you two?”

“Can you leave that out of the piece?” she said in a rush, trying to smile. “This never happens. He just had a bad day. Lots of stress.” Her shoulders sagged, and any confidence she had previously displayed before her husband joined us was long gone.

“Don’t worry,” I reassured her. “I understand.” And I did.

I caught an Uber back to the train station, which would take me back to Brooklyn. The quiet in the car gnawed at me, clawed into my brain as I turned over everything that happened at Lyla’s. I couldn’t put my finger on why it bothered me. After a year of covering influencers for my job, why was Lyla McInnis the one to get under my skin? The answer was there, tucked into the back of my mind. It’s because I knew I could do it better. Even though she was living it, I knew it better than she did.

Once safely back into the chaos of the city, I trudged up four flights of stairs, dreading how I was going to spin this story. After grabbing a beer from the fridge, I kicked off my shoes and opened my laptop.

I chewed on my pen until it was nothing more than a mangled mess as I contemplated how I was going to write this piece. This piece, about a woman whose job was to make it seem like she had everything going for her. A woman whose husband clearly felt emasculated by her rise to fame. A woman who was selling a lifestyle that didn’t exist. A woman who would get paid more for a singular Instagram post than I’d been paid in the past year for writing profiles about said women. I wanted to talk about the meaty stuff, not what brands they were wearing or the colostrum they drank every morning, even though that’s what brought in the clicks.

I sighed and put my head on my desk. My studio apartment felt like it was closing in around me. After seeing Lyla’s acreage, not to mention the size of her kitchen, the sight made me claustrophobic. I thought about the work ahead of me, staring at a blank document with the cursor blinking as if it was mocking me. Once I’d gotten my words down, I’d have to re-read, send to my editor, work with the art department on graphics or photos for the piece, and work with the social team to come up with a plan. All Lyla had to do was take a photo of a chubby baby foot, and she would get enough engagement to generate countless brand deals. I was in the wrong line of work.

The phone on my desk lit up. I glanced at it, seeing my editor’s name flash on the screen.

“Hi, Sonia.”

“How was the day?” Sonia Kennedy was my boss and the editor-in-chief for GLOW, a lifestyle website that catered to the modern woman. No-nonsense and to the point, Sonia was the best at what she did, and, because of that, always checked up on me after I came back from an assignment.

“It was good,” I started, still gnawing on the pen. “Long but good. And the McInnis family has all the hits. Cute kids, fuzzy animals, questionable recipes. But the vibes got weird at the end when her husband came home.”

“Oh?” Her voice perked up.

“I could tell he was upset that I was there. I think if you let me explore this angle of the husband’s role—”

She cut me off. “Hannah. That’s not what we’re doing here. This isn’t the place for exposés. We’re showcasing the lifestyle. That’s what I pay you for.”

“There’s something here, though, Sonia, I can feel it.”

“We’re never going to get another interview with anyone from that community if you blow up Lyla McInnis’ spot,” she said. “You’re the trad wife whisperer. You’re not here to take them down.”

“I don’t think you understand—”

“I understand plenty, and I know what our goals are for GLOW. Telling me everything you hate about influencers isn’t what we’re going for here.”

“I don’t hate them,” I protested. “I want things to be more, I don’t know, real. Not so artificial. What makes them tick, underneath it all.” But I knew it was useless to try to make my case. The last time Sonia and I had bumped heads over this, I’d wanted to look into a health and wellness influencer’s suspiciously fast weight loss, but she’d nixed it, saying it wasn’t what our readers wanted.

“Write some trad wife fanfic to get it off your chest, I don’t care,” she went on. “But right now you’re contracted to write this piece for me, the way I want it, and I want you to take out anything negative. Got it?”

“Fine,” I snapped, and ended the call. Sonia wasn’t actually mad at me, but I knew she was frustrated I kept pushing her on going deeper with my beat. I couldn’t understand why she didn’t see it from my point of view. It was becoming a pattern, me having great ideas and her turning me down. Just in the last week I’d proposed writing from the angle of the husbands, interviewing them on their thoughts and feelings about their wives’ work. But Sonia had said no one wanted to hear about the men of the trad wife movement; it was all about the women, the femininity, the beauty. She’d told me to stay in my lane and write about the ladies.

I paced the apartment, thinking about what Sonia said. I could do it better, I thought for the second time that day.

I opened a blank document and started writing.

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I did what Sonia said. Frustration coursed through me as I started typing furiously. The words poured out of me, like I’d been anointed by the muse of writing. When I read back what I had written, I was impressed. This was good. Great, even. And Sonia had been right, it was cathartic to roleplay a trad wife, like therapy or something.

Before we get too deep, let me start off by saying this: I didn’t mean for it to go as far as it did, I swear. It was an exercise in creative writing, a way to vent about the women whom I interacted with day in and day out, maybe some kind of joke, even. And it was fun.

When I woke up the next morning, all I wanted to do was write. It had been a hot minute since I’d been so inspired to write something, and I wanted to harness the energy and get words down on paper.

My very own trad wife.

Her name was Martha, because of course it was. She lived in the Midwest in some unnamed plains state. Kansas, maybe. They had a homestead, which of course they called a homestead, not a farm, never a farm.

Martha had five—no, six, six was a good, round number —kids. All homebirths, all unmedicated, no complications.

Her husband’s name was Gideon. He was a tall, gentle man who worked the land with his hands and came home and kissed Martha on the head every night. He was a good man. They never fought, never raised their voices to their children, and were always there when the kids needed a hug or to wipe away tears.

They all went to church every Sunday in their white Sprinter van, and the kids never complained, never argued, and never talked back to their parents. Martha would probably feel called to share her wisdom with the greater world, it would be placed upon her heart, so to speak. Who was she not to answer the call?

They were the family every trad wife online wished they could be.

With that fantasy out of my system, I shut my laptop and was ready to start my day. I threw on my normal uniform, that is, a pair of jeans and a worn band t-shirt I’d gotten at a thrift store. Not having to dress up was a perk of my job, not to mention the money it saved me on work clothes and commuting. My position was mostly remote, so I took advantage of the freedom to work from wherever. I checked my phone to see if I had any meetings today. Nothing, except attending my best friend Jordan’s band’s show tonight.

My routine was nothing if not predictable, and my first stop was the bodega.

“Amir!” I called as I strode into the small shop.

“Hello, my dear!” Amir was one of the first people I met when I moved into my current apartment. A bacon, egg, and cheese bagel had become a crucial part of my identity when I got to the city in my early 20s, and I was thrilled to discover the best one in the city was located almost directly below my apartment. Plus, it cost less than most, which was an advantage in my book.

“Have a lot of plans for today?” he asked me, his smile wide.

“The usual.”

“When will your next article come out?” He handed me the tinfoil-wrapped bagel, and it took everything in me not to unwrap it and inhale it immediately.

“Have to turn it in first,” I said. “A little bit of writer’s block on this one.”

“I know it will be fabulous. A delight to read! As they all are.”

Amir was my biggest fan. Why a 58-year-old Muslim man was interested in trad wife influencers was beyond me, but I appreciated having someone in my corner who would read every piece I put out and lavish me with praise.

“I’ll send it to you when I’m done, okay?” I waved as I left the bodega.

It was a brisk ten-minute walk to my favorite coffee shop. In a world where the trend was for local shops to look sleek and sterilized, One More Cup was crammed full of overstuffed sofas and chairs. None of them matched, and it was delightful. I slung my messenger bag into an open chair and ordered my usual black coffee. I’d tried to get more creative with my coffee, but at the end of the day, I liked what I liked, and I wasn’t about to blow my meager paycheck on $7 lattes.

I knew I needed to start working on the Lyla McInnis piece, and I jotted down a couple of half-hearted sentences in my open Word file. But Martha called to me. I needed to flesh out more of her story. I’ll just write a little bit more on her, I thought to myself.

I clicked over to the other document and immersed myself in the idyllic world I was creating. Martha. I gave all of the kids names (Biblical), plotted out their age gaps (1.5 years max, of course), and gave a brief description of how they looked. I made a list of animals that lived on the farm–homestead– (two dairy cows, a herd of goats, a flock of poultry, and two livestock guardian dogs). I was so in the zone that the ding from my email startled me.

URGENT! The subject line read. PERSONNEL CHANGE. My stomach dropped It was an email from work. And not just from work, but from John Simpson, the owner of the website. This, I thought, couldn’t be good.

Dear GLOW Employees,

Due to some recent changes, we will be reorganizing departments. Please join me for an announcement at the home office tomorrow at 2:00 pm. This meeting is not optional.

JS

My heart sank.

As if on cue, my phone buzzed. It was Jordan, my work bestie, and also my bestie bestie. My lock screen showed the two of us embracing at a street festival, her with long, dark hair wound around her crown in a braid, and me, shying from the camera but smiling, my short blonde hair curled into beachy waves. Jordan had showed me how to spritz them with sea salt spray, and coached me through how to do my makeup, which I was beyond hopeless at.

We’d met when I first moved to New York, in the waiting room of a temp agency. Nervous energy was radiating off of me, in my Goodwill suit, and I kept touching the bob I’d cut myself at the hostel. And there was Jordan, sitting next to me, looking every bit the New York City cool girl. She wore a leather jacket and Levis, and she didn’t have a care in the world. I was fascinated by her microbraids, which yes, I now I know sounds very cringe, but the small town I grew up in was not exactly diverse.

Jordan, with her finely tuned empathy, knew I needed a friend. Either that, or she wanted me to stop bouncing my leg so hard I was jiggling both of our chairs. We’d been attached at the hip ever since, and by some stroke of luck, were now both working for GLOW.

“What the fuck?” she screeched before even saying hello. “Are we getting laid off?”

“That was my first thought.” I said a silent prayer it wouldn’t be the case.

“It’s always the art department that goes first.” Jordan was a staff photographer and had been working for GLOW for longer than I had, and was part of the reason I’d gotten my job.

“If it’s last in, first out, I’ll be on the chopping block before you,” I pointed out.

“Please,” she said. “Sonia needs you. She’s not letting you go with the number of clicks your nutso trad wives get.”

I was a staff writer on the influencer beat, which had only popped up in the past year or so. Before that, I’d been a copy editor for the entertainment division, something I was woefully unequipped for. I’d applied at GLOW on a whim after getting fed up with hopping all over the city for temp jobs and freelancing and, much to my surprise, I’d gotten it.

I hadn’t asked Jordan to put in a good word for me, but she had anyway. A few years after I was hired, they developed an influencer beat, due to how prolific they were becoming online. Again, I threw my hat in the ring, not thinking anything would come from it, but during my interview with Sonia, she offered me the beat on the spot.

“If I lose my job, I’m fucked.” I could sense an anxiety spiral coming, and I didn’t want to think about trying to find another stable writing job in the current economy.

“It’ll be fine.” Jordan knew where my mind was going. “If it’s bad, you could just move in with me. Or with Sarah. And then, you know, there’s always home as a last resort. And I mean very last resort.”

“I can most definitely not do that,” I laughed. “But I’m sure you’re right, it’ll be fine. It’s all very mysterious.”

“I’ll see you at the show tonight?”

“I wouldn’t miss it.” I hung up, and in a fit of determination to not get canned, typed up a cool 2,000 words on Lyla McInnis. I shot the document over to Sonia, and was unsettled when I didn’t get her customary “thumbs up” reply. That was suspicious. Sonia was famously addicted to her email, and as a micromanager, rarely did I send a piece to her when she didn’t have feedback almost immediately.

Let’s not overthink things, I thought, and clicked into my browser to troll the internet. On Instagram, I checked in with the trad wives I followed. They were posting their usual content. Bible verses. Photos of kids playing with wooden toys. Elaborately cooked meals. What a life. It looked so peaceful and stress-free. These women weren’t worried about getting fired. All they had to do with keep the home, play with their kids, bake some sourdough. I knew it wasn’t as simple as that, but at that moment, I wanted the fantasy. I wanted to be safe and be able to depend on someone else for security. It wasn’t fair, I thought for the second time.

I can only blame the stress of thinking I might lose my job that led me to what I did next. What if I made an account for Martha?

But how could I post photos? I didn’t have a wealth of pictures just sitting on my phone.

Except…I did. I navigated to my work website and logged in to our photo database everyone on staff had access to. There, I was able to search anything from “farm” to “kitchen” to “cow.” GLOW had taken photos for any kind of story imaginable. Hell, I’d taken some myself when there wasn’t a photog available, like for the Lyla McInnis story. They were practically my own pictures, really. Who would ever know if I used them for a side project. I couldn’t. Could I?

It was like my hands moved of their own accord as I navigated to create a new account.

Mother Martha’s Corner? Too Catholic.

Martha’s Family Abode? Too boring.

Martha’s Hearth? Perfect. And available.

I downloaded a picture of a green pasture and blue sky, a red barn in the background, and started typing a caption.

Joining the wonderful world of social media! Hoping to connect with some like-minded homesteading mommas who love Jesus, their family, and are striving for self-sufficiency so we can share tips and tricks and fellowship together.

More from me soon!

Blessings,

Martha

In a few quick keystrokes, it was live, and my life changed forever.

chapter 3

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One thing I appreciated about living in New York was that there was always something going on, something to distract me when I was stressed or had energy to get out of my system. That night, it was Jordan’s all-girl punk band, Crash Theory. Did I like punk music? Not particularly. Was her band good? Also no, not particularly. But she was my best friend, and I was at every show, in the front row, sporting my Crash Theory shirt, ready to rock and ready to mosh.

I was glad to have something to do instead of sitting in my apartment and spiraling over whether or not I was going to lose my job. I’d gone back into Martha’s Substack, and, to my surprise, she’d gained a few subscribers, fellow trad wives like her.

For someone who rarely used social media, I was strangely proud of the feat. Maybe it was because no one in my real life knew what I was doing, so to have something I was building on my own without any help was a boost to the ego.

The band was still setting up when I got to the venue. It was a small place, one of those joints where your eyes slid from the check-cashing place on one side to the shawarma restaurant on the other. Jordan and I frequented it often, and, once we’d chatted up the bartenders enough, they let the band play there on weeknights. The floor was worn and scuffed from the countless pairs of Chuck Taylors that had traversed it, and the vinyl on the stools at the bar peeled off like a bad sunburn. Christmas lights hung around the bar, and I walked past it with a wave to the bartender, Justin, with whom we were on a first-name basis.

Jordan, the lead singer, was testing her mic levels and waved at me when I got to the stage. I waved back and took stock of who was around. Aside from the band and their various partners and supporters, I was the only one there. Wait, no. That wasn’t right. Tucked away in the far corner of the room was a man I’d never seen before. The lights were dimmed so I couldn’t see his face, just his blonde hair falling into his eyes as he scribbled something down onto a piece of paper.

I grabbed a PBR from Justin as the band started their set. A few more people had wandered into the bar, and now we had a concert. Brash guitars, loud drums, and Jordan, hopping around the stage. She was a good singer, but for reasons unknown to me, she’d decided punk was the best way to showcase her voice. Far be it from me to stand in the way of artistic expression, though. I jumped when she told me to jump and yelled when she told me to yell.

I wiped sweat from my brow and decided to take a break to get another drink, or water, possibly both. Sidling up to the bar and signaling Justin, I noticed someone standing next to me. It was the blonde guy from the back table.

“You were really going for it out there,” he said with a crooked smile.

“It’s my best friend’s band. Isn’t that what I’m supposed to do?”

“Sure,” he said. “Very supportive. You’ve been here a lot?”

“I live close.”

“Same. I stopped in because I thought it would be a quiet place to write,” he laughed. “Didn’t know there was going to be a whole concert going on tonight.”

“Not exactly the place for quiet contemplation.”

“Not tonight.”

Silence stretched between us for a moment, but it wasn’t uncomfortable. He was cute. Like, really cute. A fitted black t-shirt. Dark jeans. Dimples. Was he checking me out, too? His eyes searched my face, and, although he tried to hide it, the rest of me. I knew I should be offended on principle, but I was flattered. A guy that cute, and he was attracted to me? That would be far too easy. I smiled back at him, grabbed my drink from Justin, and turned to walk back to finish out the rest of the show.

“Wait—” The guy from the bar called out. “I have to go—I start a new job tomorrow—but maybe I’ll see you back here sometime?” It was a question, and I knew the answer at once.

“Yeah, I’m here a lot.” I smiled, and something sparked between us.

He looked like he was going to say something else—maybe ask for my number?—When Jordan appeared out of nowhere and pulled me away to talk to someone before I could find out what.

Embracing femininity is hard! I wrote on my newest post. The accompanying photo was the bottom of a long, ankle-length dress walking through tall grass, holding a child’s hand. The child was also wearing a long dress. It was very aesthetic. Especially in today’s culture, but it’s so, so worth it. I’ve started this account to show that is is possible to live out traditional gender roles in a graceful way. I want to share my lifestyle in hopes it will inspire anyone out there who needs it to tap into that well of femininity God calls us to, not the feminism of the world.

I read over my words before hitting post. After Jordan’s show, I’d had drinks with the band, but it hadn’t taken my mind off of the work meeting the next day or my meeting with the cute blond guy. I was nowhere near tired, so I opened up Instagram and found more people for Martha to follow. There wasn’t a shortage of options, and I was overwhelmed by the different factions I could align myself with. All trad wives might seem the same to the casual observer, but I knew that one size did not fit all.

From what I could tell, and from what I’d experienced in my work, there were the Catholic trad wives, the protestant trad wives (which encompassed a wide spectrum in and of itself, from evangelicals to Baptists to extreme fundies, not to mention the Mormons), and the health-coded trad wives. The Catholic and Protestant trad wives agreed on a lot politically and thematically, except when it came to Mary. Obviously, there was a split there.

The health trad wives weren’t religious, but were very crunchy, touting natural remedies, growing their own food, and often shunning vaccines and modern medicine. But, despite theological differences, all of these women had a lot in common. They wanted to live off the land. They promoted procreation. They showcased a gentle, peaceful lifestyle. They didn’t want to be disturbed.

I followed a bunch of accounts that fit into the mold I wanted Martha to sit in—I had a hunch she landed with the Protestants (write what you know and all that), and my heart jumped for joy when a few followed me back. I was thrilled to have three, four, five followers at that point.

And maybe everything that happened next could have been avoided if my attention hadn’t snagged on the account it did. Because looking back now, knowing what I know now, it shouldn’t have gone down the way it did; it makes no sense that she did what she did.

The woman had a lot of followers, over 300,000. Her whole thing, from what I could tell, was lashing out and cutting down the modern, feminist woman, talking about how sleeping around before marriage was a sin, how tattoos were abhorrent, and how men didn’t want wives who had their own opinions. I didn’t want to emulate her, but Martha should have her in her circle. I clicked the “follow” button, and, much to my shock, she followed me back immediately.

I almost passed out when she shared my post to her story. I guess I’d said something that resonated with her. And again, now that I know everything there is to know about social media, she shouldn’t have even noticed my account, shouldn’t have paid attention to a brand-new trad wife with five measly followers.

But she did.

It’s so encouraging to see the next generation thinking this way, she’d added to the story. When I think all is lost, there are women like Martha who desire to live as God intended.

I went to grab some food, and when I opened my phone back up, I was assaulted by little pink notifications in the upper right corner of the app.

From that initial share, a smattering of followers came quickly after, along with those folks sharing my post with their followers. It was a ripple effect.

I’d never had the experience of going viral before, and the notifications came fast and hard. Some applauded me for standing tall in the face of the predominant liberal narrative. Others scoffed at me for being old-fashioned and wanting to set women’s rights back. I was getting thrown head-first into all things trad wives, and was quickly realizing how many critics they had. Who did these people think they were, accusing me, someone they didn’t even know, of these things? Even though I was satirizing myself as Martha, I already had a hard time not taking the nasty comments personally.

A message popped into my inbox, and I looked at the notification with dread. Was a friend or foe lurking there? The profile picture was of a young woman, maybe my age, with long, straight black hair. She didn’t look particularly threatening, so I held my breath and clicked on it.

Sorry for the unsolicited message, it read. But I saw your post. Do you really believe that stuff?

The message seemed like it was in good faith, so I responded. I really do. I lived a life without God in it, and I know it may not make sense to you, but living this way fills me with so much peace, I know it’s what He wants.

I’m Lottie, she wrote back. I grew up evangelical but left the church after college. Just like my parents expected, lol! Funny how we have had the opposite experiences on our faith journeys. I get it—I feel more free without religion.

At that point, maybe I should have started to feel bad, but I didn’t. Not only was pretending to be Martha fun, but it was good practice for my work, putting myself in someone else’s shoes. Maybe it would make me a stronger writer in the end. I’m glad you feel free, I said. But remember, freedom isn’t always the goal. Sometimes too much freedom can hurt us, which is why Jesus is the Good Shepherd. He keeps us safe.

Noted, she said. But in the meantime, I have to admit y’all do have some killer clothes. I mean, Anthro has a whole milkmaid line right now that I’m pretty sure is trad wife/cottagecore inspired.

I kept the conversation going, enjoying the back-and-forth, almost like a cosplay.

If nothing else, this was keeping my mind off of what I was certain was my impending firing the next day. I kept scrolling trad wife accounts and milkmaid dresses and sourdough starter recipes until my eyelids grew heavy.

Until next time! I’ll be sharing new chapters every Tuesday and Friday, so see you next week🙏🏻

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So I sat with it. And I felt my feelings. And I made my peace with it (or so I thought).

And then Yesteryear came out, of which I had read an ARC of, and really enjoyed! There’s been discourse—oh, has there been discourse—from people who have loved it and from people who have hated it.

But I was a little bummed, because my book, if you recall, was also a trad wife book, and even though the premises are very different, I felt like they could have been in conversation with each other. I have a lot to say about trad wives!

However, I realized that nothing was stopping me from releasing my book, so that’s exactly what I’m going to do, just in a slightly different format.

Introducing TRAD: The Series.

What does that mean? It means I’ll be releasing a chapter on my Substack every week for anyone to read (the ‘ol fanfic method).

For my subscribers, it’ll be delivered to your inbox every Friday for your reading pleasure.

If you’re not familiar with TRAD, here’s the premise:

It was only supposed to be a stupid internet scheme—a fake, influencer, tradwife account to make fun of the women Hannah (a broke, single woman in New York) can’t stand.

Because after all, who could ever take a trad wife seriously?

Except, soon, it explodes in a flurry of viral posts, a devoted following, and brand deals. Suddenly, Hannah is juggling the kind of internet fame available only to those who preach conservative values and the benefits of raw milk and cow colostrum.

Turns out, the line between satire and reality is very thin. Maybe Hannah is a tradwife? Or, maybe a little lie never hurt anyone, after all?

TRAD is about religious trauma, the lies we (and the internet) tell ourselves, and the chaos of pretending to be someone you’re not.

If you loved (or hated) Yesteryear but can’t stop talking about it, and couldn’t look away from the trainwreck that was Yellowface, then this is the story for you.

I hope you’ll come along for the ride 🙏🏻

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