We joke about how tired moms are. We put it on mugs. We bond over it at school pickups. We treat chronic exhaustion as the universal entry fee to motherhood and we have somehow convinced ourselves that this is fine.

We have decided that mom burnout is just what motherhood feels like. We laugh about it. We bond over it. We wear the exhaustion like a badge of honor that proves how much we love our kids. And in doing so, we have normalized something that is actually a genuine mental health crisis.