A friend asked me how motherhood is going. I said it’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done. She responded, “you can do hard things!” I was immediately offended. I thought it was incredibly patronizing but now I find myself repeating that mantra often. Like today we took baby to the mall and as soon as we got there she was inconsolable. We fed her, changed her, held her but nothing worked (she’s teething!) so we surrendered any ideas we had of spending the afternoon outside and left within the hour.