HeyJaredfirst drafts
Motherhood, fiction, and poetry, by former journalist-turned-full-time boy mom Katherine Mansfield
- Indexed issues, last 90 days
- 11
- Latest publication
- Sep 28, 2026
- Audience
- Checking…
- Earliest in this view
- Jul 16, 2026
Latest issues
“stop taking pictures, momma!” (opens the original)
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There’s a video in my camera roll that captures my son standing in the kitchen on an ordinary afternoon, doing nothing of consequence. After a few seconds, he looks up at me and says, “Stop taking pictures, Momma!”<img alt="" class="sizing-normal"
the blue knit sweater (opens the original)
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on my 35th birthday, it rains. it’s the kind of rain that bridges seasons and replaces a week’s worth of summer-blue skies with pittsburgh’s signature gray. the dreariness seeps through the gap between the window and blackout curtains, casting the bedroom a dark dreary. i don’t mind. i roll out of the bed i share with my daughter and pull on the blue sweater in which i’ve celebrated other numbers—my 31st, my little boy’s first. it’s not particularly comfortable, this sweater, but it’s one of my
why i let my kids watch tv (opens the original)
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I was that mom, the one who senses a television on before entering a place, the one who reminds friends before a play date we don’t do screens. The mom who hides her backlit iPhone from her kids (and, inadvertently, herself from the wider world). The one who silently judges other parents for allowing their children to so much as glance at a screen of any size. For the record, I’m not crunchy. Goodness, no. A few years ago, I penned an article about crunchy moms for the Observer-Reporter. I inter
something akin to a love letter (opens the original)
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the starlings’ dizzying dance is done. geese honk their descent to the muddied creek, long-necked silhouettes at dusk. a streak of daytime blue stands out against the pinkish-white hue of late-evening sky, bathing the world below in mellow light. slowly, then in the blink of an eye, that early-autumn sky fades to purple-gray, the last color of day before the world’s plunged into nighttime black. and just like that, summer’s nearly spent; it’s september.september, a tapestry threaded in gold. wha
heatwave~ (opens the original)
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<img alt="" class="sizing-normal" height="693.1923076923077" src="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!viPs!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F4366c004-1294-4447-b35e-b3e200b78b
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