Usually I wouldn’t break the fourth wall when writing something like this. I am the Editorial Director of She Reads and write many pieces in the quiet, neutral way this role often requires. I almost never write a piece in first person, let alone give my unfiltered opinion, but in this case, it felt impossible not to get a little personal.

When our team was given the opportunity to pre-screen the adaptation of Rachel Yoder’s 2021 debut, Nightbitch, I’ll admit, I hadn’t read the book yet. I was quite familiar with its premise and had covered it more than a few times on the site, but as much as I wish I could, I can’t read EVERY SINGLE BOOK that comes across my desk. It’s hundreds a year.

Nonetheless, I was excited to see the movie. I knew that the story centered around motherhood and starred Amy Adams (who I’m a big fan of), and that was about all I needed for it to be a movie I was interested in.

But I wasn’t prepared.

I wasn’t prepared to cry, big heavy, bordering on embarrassing, tears that I had to choke down so I wouldn’t outright sob. I wasn’t prepared to laugh as many times as I did. I wasn’t prepared to be so unbelievably seen. I wasn’t prepared to feel so alive when I left the theater. It’s been a long, long time since a movie made me feel that way.

As a mother of five children ranging in ages from two to sixteen, I gravitate towards stories that center motherhood. I have spent my time in parenthood as a stepmother, a stay-at-home mom and a working mom. I’m also, like the main character, an artist, having written three novels since the birth of my first biological son. And in the nearly 15 years I’ve been raising children, I don’t believe I’ve ever consumed a piece of media that hit motherhood, marriage, and identity with so much accuracy.

The Premise

In the story, a mother has forgone her career as an artist to stay home with her young son. Her husband travels often for work so she finds herself frequently alone in the responsibility of caring for her tiny human. The pattern and routine of this existence has worn her down from the person she once believed herself to be into a woman she hardly recognizes. In fact… she may be turning into something else entirely. Amidst the stress, redundancy and strain, she also starts believing that she might be turning into a dog. Something primal is emerging from her, and she can’t seem to stop it from surfacing.

Motherhood’s pain was apparent, but so was its beauty

My number one complaint with so many representations of motherhood is that it almost always lands the hard, and very rarely captures the beauty. In most cases, if it does attempt to show the beautiful side, it feels contrived, cheesy, forced and expected.

In Nightbitch, I saw the two things sitting side by side in every scene. The sheer, unimaginable exhaustion, right next to the heart-exploding delight. The push and pull of doing what you know is best for your kids, while also feeling a little (okay, a lot) tortured. The isolation from yourself and other adults, but the earnest desire to never want to let your baby go. It was all there in a way I hadn’t seen it, other than in my own home.

There was an unusually pleasant predictability to some of the scenes that made me wonder if they installed cameras in my home. I felt myself yearn for the littleness, but also flinch at just how hard those days are. I frequently knew exactly how each scene might end because somehow they plucked out the most universal, yet intimate, moments of motherhood.

Amy Adams nails the scenes where her character hilariously gawks at and mocks herself in the mirror, as we all have done. She is both disgusted and amused at the changes, as I fear all of us have felt. And yet, her character wakes up every morning, genuinely trying to do her best, even if she’s drowning.

I won’t go into any specifics, but it’s hard for me to imagine a mother who couldn’t connect to the depictions of motherhood in all its fluid-covered, tiny giggle, sleep deprived, “I love you mommy” glory.

Marriage was depicted honestly, without dumping all over men for the ways they don’t and can’t understand

As a society, we’ve gotten pretty comfortable with entertainment’s representation of the dopey, incapable husband whose wife is running circles around him while he tends to his own needs and seems oblivious to those around them. And while the movie doesn’t fully alleviate men from this stereotype (it exists for a reason), what it does instead is show just how different the thinking patterns are for men and women. It puts on full display that often a man can truly, deep down, believe he is doing exactly what his wife has asked for, and yet, she’s bitterly unhappy and he doesn’t understand why.

I found the role of the husband in this movie simultaneously infuriating and also endearing in his naivety. He was a perfect stand in, in my opinion, for so many husbands. He’s doing what he’s told, doing what he thinks he’s supposed to, but the gap between his efforts and her needs are a canyon he can’t even see.

The truth all mothers know, but struggle to articulate and even struggle to remember at times, is that there’s no real way for a father to know what it’s like to grow a life. What it’s like to have a person literally biologically tethered to you for eternity. Or the way our minds will spend all day and all night worrying, wondering, self-flagellating and doubting as we try to usher this small person through the phases of their lives.

I found their dynamic to be so raw and realistic that at times I wanted to look away. Thankfully, they often made me laugh instead. But the punchline was, more or less, that this is reality. Which was sad and validating all at once. I saw every girlfriend, sister, aunt, cousin, mother, wife, daughter I’ve ever known in these exchanges and it made me ache for men and women alike. Why is it so damn hard for us to understand one another? Especially in the throes of raising kids when we need each other the most?

The life of an artist is one fraught with doubt, insecurity and inescapable desire

One of the more subtle, but equally important aspects of this movie was the mother’s loss of self and her mixed feelings around missing her life as an artist. At times she would downplay it as frivolous and yet, the yearning was still there, begging to get out.

Speaking for myself, I know the pain of having a story to tell inside you, but struggling to give it the room it needs to breathe in all the chaos of motherhood. I’ve felt that deep agony of wanting so badly to be present for your children, but feeling a voice from deep inside beckoning you elsewhere. To have the childless around you ascend to where you wish you were while you feel like you’re only in decline.

This movie is not only a meditation on motherhood. It’s a eulogy to the people we all were before we became mothers. It’s a display of the inner battle that wages in so many of us as we navigate between the tremendously important work of child rearing and the artistic work that ignites something inside our souls. Watching the main character grapple with identity and the importance of having something that is all your own was a true testament to the severing from self that can happen. But the movie also lends itself to the hope that perhaps something even more beautiful can be born.

I don’t know that this movie will be for everyone. And perhaps it just hit all my buttons in particular at this stage of life. But as I sat there crying, laughing, aching and, finally, feeling triumphant, I couldn’t help but feel anything other than: this is a very important piece of work that should not be overlooked for its simplicity. That although the topic of motherhood has been tread over in countless books and movies and TV shows, that this one has a beating heart that will ring in the modern mom’s ears for a while. My immediate reaction was that I wanted every mom I know to go see it. And perhaps too, those who aren’t mothers, so that maybe, for a second, they can see not just the hard parts we all are subject to complain about, but the intermingling of that struggle with profound and immense joy.

As I wrote this, I, of course, did some research into what others had to say about the movie. I was unsurprised to find that a handful of the top reviews were not entirely flattering, but were also, almost exclusively, written by men. And while I’d never be one to say “this movie isn’t for men”, I found it completely unironic that most of them didn’t seem to connect with the film. In fact, I chuckled an exasperated little laugh as they flippantly dismissed it, much like the husband character in the movie does to the mother. It feels like a familiar brush off that says “yeah, yeah, we get it, motherhood is hard”. This is exactly how moms are treated when they dare to express how they feel about being a mom. So while, sure, this wasn’t a perfect movie, it’s yet another valiant attempt to take something as ordinary and common as motherhood and shine a light on the earth-shattering transformation women go through to step into this role. When so few people have a village, and the concept of elderly matriarchs is shooed off into nursing homes, this movie attempted to hold a new mom’s hand and say, it’s okay if some days you hate this, but also love your kids more than anything you could begin to describe. And I think that has value. I know it did for me.

To Rachel Yoder, whose book inspired the movie (I bought the book IMMEDIATELY, something I never do after seeing an adaptation), you’ve done it. You’ve captured the essence of so many women’s experiences. And to Amy Adams, the rest of the cast and the director, bravo for not pulling any punches and just delivering this story in all its raw pain and unbridled beauty.