So we women, we mothers, are used to the turned cheeks, the glazed-over eyes as we try to be understood as having something a bit more compelling to say than the mwa-mwa-mwa of Charlie Brown’s teacher. We are used to feeling your impatience and indifference; we learn it as girls. That we talk too much, that we have nothing to say, that we are frivolous. Girl talk.

We are used to it at doctor’s offices and in hospitals, where we are in pain, where we know something isn’t quite right, where we are scared. We hear it in the many stories of women’s pain being brushed aside and discounted, most recently in Ask Me About My Uterus by Abby Norman and Sick: A Memoir from porochista khakpour.

We are used to it in this country, where we are losing our babies and losing our lives because hey, we are just women complaining. A recent NPR and ProPublica investigation showed that mothers in the U.S. are about three times more likely to die during childbirth than mothers in Canada or Britain. And as jarring as that statistic is, it becomes exponentially horrifying when you consider that for every mother who dies, another 70 come close.

All because no one listens to us. No one believes us. No one takes us seriously.

We are used to it as we watch press conferences and courtrooms packed with primarily white men as they decide what women can and cannot do with our own bodies. We are used to thinking this is as worse as it gets, and then it just gets worse.

We are used to it at work, where we are told to pump breast milk in a break room, in the bathroom, behind a door with no lock, in a space without privacy — or to just not to pump at all, because gross. Where we are told to take the joke, take the fall, take a lesser job, a lesser raise, a lesser role because of our children but funny how those fathers just keep moving up and up and up, using the labor of their wives as rungs.

We are used to it from a culture that both infantilizes us and has us praying at the altar of self-medication. We brush off real mental distress and are told, both overtly and implicitly, to keep our uncomfortable conversations to ourselves. We are told that “mommies night out” and “mommy juice,” served up in puff-painted fish bowl-sized wine glasses — as if all motherhood-related problems can be solved with crafts and alcohol — is the only way to handle all this mommy stress.

We are used to it at home, where we try to frame every horrifying reality for our children — sexual assault; school shootings; ready for prime-time, hoods-off racism; the criminalization of and discrimination against every imaginable ‘other,’ children being ripped from their parents’ arms; every immoral failing of a man in power (there are so many!) — in a way that doesn’t send them spiraling into the utter depths of anxiety and despair. And while we’re at it, our culture adds to the To-Do list: Unbreak boys. Fix that whole toxic masculinity thing while you’re at it. It’s on you. You are the mother.

We are used to it in our government, where, out of 535 members of congress, just 112 are women (and five of them represent non-voting districts, like Puerto Rico). The first time a United States Senator, Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Illinois), brought an infant to the Senate floor was just months ago. Yet in the United States, there are over 40 million mothers with school-aged children. There are more women than men, period. We are the majority. When women do run, they need to be utterly extraordinary — like 2016 National Teacher of the Year, Jahana Hayes or MJ Hegar, who is essentially an action movie superhero — unlike the pedophiles, out and proud racists, serial abusers and just less-than-stellar white guys that set the political bar these days.

And yet, and yet, and yet.