Rosie Colosi McDevitt

See this woman? It me. Like her, I am overwhelmed, overstimulated, fed up, and exhausted ... yet I’m still wearing Christmas gear and pretending it’s the most wonderful time of the year. Why do women (and especially moms) do this to ourselves?! When I spotted @hadas.knox ‘s post about the magic of Ireland’s Women’s Christmas, I felt seen. As Irish history communicator @Janecasey.ie told me, Women’s Christmas (Nollaig na mBan) is a sort of a “ghost” of Irish culture. It occurs on January 6th, the Feast of the Epiphany, when the Magi brought gifts to the Christ child. Throughout the 19th century, “women would take the 6th of January off to rest,” Casey mentioned. “They met up with friends, went to pubs — a novelty, as women weren’t allowed in many pubs — gathered in one another’s homes, and enjoyed the leftover food from Christmas.” Of course, they only got to celebrate at the end of the season AFTER doing all the heavy lifting. The holiday fell out of fashion, but recently Irish women have started reclaiming the day “as more of a way to celebrate women’s contributions to Irish culture, art, politics and everyday life, as well as female friendship, connection and community,” Casey said. It sounds like HEAVEN! This year Nollaig na mBan happens to fall on a busy Tuesday, so my personal “celebration” will have to occur around work, doctor’s visits and shuttling kids after school. It might be as simple as taking a moment to rest, reset and resolve to offload more of the mental load next year. So ladies, somewhere in your post-Christmas chaos, please join me in raising a glass to the wise men who may have unwittingly started this much-needed tradition — and the wise women who deserve its continuation.

Guess who had a visit with someone who has been to the Upside Down?? This story is a Venn diagram of many things I love: “Stranger Things,” teachers, and theater kids. It was an absolute delight to chat with Hope Hynes Love, who taught the creators of “Stranger Things,” Matt and Ross Duffer, when they were in high school in North Carolina. Love has kept in touch with the Duffer brothers since she met them as freshmen in high school. They wanted her to play a teacher in Season 5 of the show. When they asked if she could make the shooting schedule work, she remembers thinking, “’Make it work? I think I’ll make it work!’” “High school was rough for me and my brother,” @rossduffer wrote in an Instagram post dedicated to his former teacher. “But Hope saw something in us we didn’t see in ourselves — and she helped give us the confidence to not only survive those four years, but to move to L.A. and chase our dreams.”

I’m constantly amazed by how miscarriage can be so common yet feel so isolating. When content creator Jeenie Kwon was in the middle of a miscarriage in 2024, she continued to appear on camera, smiling broadly in pictures and videos. Her millions of followers had no idea anything was wrong. “We keep smiling when we’re bleeding, literally,” Kwon tells TODAY.com of women experiencing loss. After her first miscarriage, Kwon remembers thinking, “‘Something’s wrong with me. I’m broken. It’s my fault,’” she recalls. “I think that’s wrong. It’s not our fault. And the more that I knew that (miscarriage) was common during this process of trying to grow your family, it gave me a sense of comfort, and that is what I want to share with other families.” @jeenie.weenie

When I tell you that Amy Duggar King does not hold back in her new book, I am not kidding. I raced through the pages, and my jaw dropped at multiple points. King was a fixture on TLC’s “19 Kids and Counting,” which followed the adventures of a large Arkansas family. As an only child living near her strict uncle and aunt, Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar, King was portrayed as being “Crazy Cousin Amy,” a nickname that she did not appreciate. Bracing herself for the public response to the book has been “nerve wracking,” King says. “If there is going to be abusive behavior, no matter who it is, I feel like it’s OK to call that out.” @amyrachelleking

Mayci Neeley may star in a reality show that some consider fluffy but there’s more to the secret life of this Mormon wife than meets the eye. In her new memoir, Mayci says that by age 20, she had been abused, drugged and raped by her ex-boyfriend. She moved on to a healthy relationship and accidentally became pregnant, she says, only to find out that her boyfriend was cheating on her. Then, her son’s father was killed in a tragic car accident. And that was all in the first few pages. I loved learning that there’s more than meets the eye when I talked to Mayci. 💗 @maycineeley

Every day for weeks I watched jealously as all of you sent your kids to school while mine were … at home for what seemed like an eternity. But today it’s MY TURN! I joyfully sent them off to school this morning … and then promptly remembered this article I wrote about restraint collapse, which basically means that kids absolutely lose it after school. So now I’m steeling myself for the hunger, the whining, and the big feelings that I know will come. Someone once told me to schedule nothing in September and let your kids relax at home as much as possible. I still abide by that suggestion! @nurturebynaps @theworkspaceforchildren @thrivingkidspod

I have seen moms repost and share this powerful image from @rtsongphoto and @startribune . It has been clogging my feed. Part of me wants to bury my head in the sand and pretend this will never happen to me. But this is not the time to look away. The photographer told me, “I took the photo as parents were still rushing to get to the school to check on the status of their kids. I saw this parent running a couple blocks from the south end of Annunciation Church. She couldn’t run fast enough with her sandals. I could sense the desperation to get to her child. She did the only sensible thing and took off her shoes. I suppose her momma bear instinct kicked in.” We all need our mama bear instincts to kick in and take action so we never have to run toward a crime scene to make sure our kids are okay. @todayshow

When I first had kids, I thought I would absolutely cart them to auditions. It was a world I knew and I figured that I could jumpstart their college funds. But then my first baby was colicky and I was busy simply trying to survive. I ended up securing a Broadway audition for my second for “baby who doesn’t crawl,” but she learned to crawl two days before the audition. After reading Alyson Stoner’s book and talking to them about the “toddler-to-trainwreck pipeline,” however, I’m way less sad about these missed opportunities.

When I got on my Zoom interview with the one and only Kylie MCDEVITT Kelce, she threw up her hands and said, “My long lost McDevitt cousin!” Then we realized we were both hiding in our cars, which was the only place to get peace and quiet, and I knew the interview was off to a good start. 🥰

Let me answer two of your burning questions right off the bat: Yes, breast milk ice cream is real. I know because I just tried a pint. No, it does not contain literal breast milk. Just like Ben & Jerry’s Chubby Hubby doesn’t contain actual husbands. The Frida company — known for its baby, mom and fertility products, as well as its creative marketing — teamed up with OddFellows to develop a scoop “inspired by” breast milk. (As my editor said, the words “inspired by” are doing “a lot of heavy lifting” in that sentence.) As a mom of two who who found breastfeeding to be the most trying part of the newborn experience — and perhaps the most difficult thing I’ve done in my entire life — I have lots of feelings about breast milk ice cream. On one hand, equating breast milk with ice cream somehow cheapens it. If it were as easy to make breast milk as it is to buy ice cream, my early motherhood experience would have been a LOT easier. On the other hand, I love that this campaign is making people say “breast milk” out loud. The more it becomes part of our everyday vocabulary, the more normalized public breastfeeding becomes. What do you think? Are you pumped to try it?

I had the magical opportunity to return to 51st Street last night. For two years, I lived across from the stage door of the Gershwin Theater, the lights of “Wicked” blazing brightly as I tried to sleep. The first time I saw “Wicked” was the matinee before opening night in 2003 on a field trip with @scholastic . I saw the show with my parents the following year. And then I can’t NOT mention volunteering for a Hurricane Katrina benefit performance in the Gershwin in 2005; I had the terrifying assignment of making sure Liza Manelli finished her (indoor) cigarette and made it on stage on time. Last night I got to see “Wicked” with my kids, starring two Broadway parents (Jordan Litz as Fiyero and Jennafer Newberry as Glinda) who I had the honor of interviewing for TODAY.com. The kids were SO FULL of questions that I was exhausted. (How did Glinda’s hair go from curly to straight so fast? Do the flying monkeys have strings attached to them? Does the theater have to change the lobby decorations when a new show starts?) And apparently the kids exhausted themselves too. Despite the pile of candy I let them eat to keep them awake, one took a power nap during “For Good,” which honestly gave me a welcome break from questions. So many people wondered how I could have ever lived in Times Square for so long. Yes, it’s crowded and dirty and too much of everything. But it was so thrilling to know that just across the street every single day, performers like Jordan and Jennafer were making magic.

I grew up in a no-cursing house, and I still don’t curse today, so when I heard Kylie Kelce say that she curses in front of her toddlers, I was horrified. (Sorry, Kylie!) And when my 7yo with angelic ringlets asked me seriously one day, “Mommy, is the ‘F-word’ &@$!?” I burst out laughing. So I was really intrigued to find out what the experts had to say on the topic. Little did I know that using curse words demonstrates an accomplished linguistic ability and has been scientifically proven to help with pain management. I mean, I’m not planning to integrate cursing into my speech anytime soon, and I certainly won’t let my kids do so. But I promise I’ll try to clutch my pearls a bit less tightly when I hear other kids cursing in the appropriate context. @colette_ingrid @askdoctorg