“Mama And … Heat” August 2025 Prompt
As a mom and a part-time teacher, I need summer break. I need to sleep later than 5:20 am, which is when my alarm goes off from mid-August through May. I need to have a more relaxed schedule and not be bound by the limits of the school day. I need to not have to deal with so much traffic.
But I admit that the heat of summer is something I dislike. Between perimenopause and the more frequent heat domes that cover vast swaths of the US, I just can’t handle it like I used to.
There are so many ways in which the idea of heat and its connotations apply to motherhood:
- The passion and intensity of feeling that leads us to become mothers.
- The sweating associated with labor and delivery.
- Learning not to sweat small stuff while raising children.
- The fury that often comes with mothering whether it is from not being appreciated to having to carry the mental load of the family.
- The fire that is sparked when someone hurts or threatens our children.
- The bright heat that is the source of so many lovely summer memories with our children during the break from school.
This month, we’re inviting writers to explore motherhood and heat, in whatever form it resonates for you.
How to Participate:
Share your contribution in the Comments below, on Instagram with the hashtag #MamaAnd , tagging us @literary_mama , and Bluesky @literarymama.bsky.social. The prompt will be active all month.
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1 reply on ““Mama And … Heat” August 2025 Prompt”
Thank you Carrie for the prompts. These bullet points are all applicable to me and my heated life as a mother. Here is my “Mama And … Heat” creative take:
Hot. Heated. Humidity. Hotness. Waves of heat, stroke, sensitivity and sizzling happiness.
Motherhood seems to shoot backwards and forwards between happy and uncomfortable moments, but still we take pride in our role.
When summer months give children time to slow down, it does sometimes feel as if they melt into unstructured, indisciplined puddles. But various emotions of children on their holidays evaporate as quickly as ice lollies on a Texan sidewalk, so we shouldn’t worry too much about it.
Perhaps instead, regardless of whatever weather we end up experiencing during the summer months, our inner warmth for parenting might be allowed to replenish itself. It’s much needed, after all.
As parents, every moment of our lives is now connected with small people who intermittently yearn for our fiery pride, spark enthusiasm from our “old” identities, ignite our own emotions, even if those same little people also extinguish our heat on occasion.
Hot sauce on our family tables. Heated discussions about swimming. Healthy humidity as we live outside for a little. Hotness felt in our poor mothers’ bodies. Random thoughts but motherhood is random, like the best haphazard summer holidays.
Christina Francis-Gilbert
Now that we’re back in school mode, I don’t know about other moms, but for my family and me the heat hasn’t yet reduced to a simmer! Not that I’m having time to cook anything like a slow-simmering soup that would probably do us all a world of good. It’s Friday, so we’re having oven-baked pizza for dinner. How about you?