The Permission to be Honest About Motherhood

On June 22, 2026, the world lost Jill Smokler, founder of Scary Mommy, to brain cancer.

Maybe you've heard her name, maybe you haven't, but if you are a modern-day mother, I can almost bet you've been personally touched by what Smokler created. Because the truth is, it is much bigger than a web site.

I've been a writer in the parenting space for 11 years, and I've been a mother for seven. And if there's one thing I've learned from both experiences — if we're being honest, more so that latter — it's that motherhood is the most complicated, most human experience of all. You will hear someone say it's the best thing they've ever experienced, and you'll also hear that it's the hardest. And both perspectives are right...in fact, they may even both come from the same person.

At least if that person is anything like Smokler was. Because her legacy is so much bigger than Scary Mommy, which is already a big thing. She created a space for mothers to get honest, sometimes radically so, about everything from sex to guilt to friendship to the messy, nuanced, complexity of what this wild ride truly feels like. In doing so, she led a cultural shift. For so long, mothers (women in general, really) were not given permission to hold complicated truths about the one thing they've been told they were designed for. Smokler broke those unspoken rules.

Today, in our social media-driven world, extremes are being platformed, narratives are being flattened, and that feels particularly dangerous where motherhood is concerned. Because the hard stuff deserves a space in the culture. The complicated feelings need airspace. The moms should get to complain and to not be told "well, you signed up for this".

Jill Smokler gave us permission to do that. May her legacy live on in the stories we write, the conversations we have, and the duality we hold.