She looked at me and said, “They say it takes two years to get your pink back.”

What?

I had spent 35 years building a life rooted in ambition, purpose, and adventure. A thriving career I built myself, brick by brick, from scratch. A tidy, organized, systemized home. And this comment — surely meant to be encouraging — was somehow just the beginning.

Now I’m just a color? We’re all the same color? All out here trying to be “pink” again — as if my life’s greatest purpose were to become a marker shade. And this is the work of being a mother? Not: heal from your traumatic emergency C-section. Not: get your life back on track. Just… be pink again.

The phrase comes from flamingos, I know. They lose their color after they have babies, and eventually the pink returns. It’s cute. I love a flamingo.

And I’m not one.

Pink was never my vibe. I didn’t lose my pink, so there’s no pink to get back. If someone handed me a map after my daughter was surgically removed from my womb, the last thing I’d be looking for is the color pink as the way back to myself.

If motherhood were a color, it sure as shit wouldn’t be pink.

It’d be red. Deep, crimson red, so dark it almost looks purple. Hypnotizing. There has been nothing pink about motherhood — despite having a daughter. The road back to myself is red. Bloodshed. War. Battle. I have never been so tired, so worn out, so relentlessly humbled.

What a nice, easy-to-package thought, though: after the hardest years of your life, just keep an eye out for feeling pink again!

But here I am, less than two years out — and I can tell you I have my color back. It’s just not pink.

I’m having hot sex with my husband with the lights on. I push a 30-pound stroller on runs several times a week. I’m in a leadership role at a new job, with a waitlist of consulting clients on the business side. I sleep four hours, get up, put on a nice outfit and my jewelry, and go run some shit. I’m a jungle gym and a writer. I am more powerful than I have ever been in my life — and my kid is literally climbing on me as I write this.

I don’t want to be pink. I want to be red and dangerous.

And I am — even now, with my daughter climbing up my back as I write this, squawking for more breakfast. That’s the part they don’t tell you. You don’t get your old self back, and you don’t turn soft and pink either. You come back as something with teeth. Something that runs shit at work, runs with the stroller, and still shows up for the 3am shift.

“Getting your pink back” is just the first lie they sell you about motherhood. It won’t be the last one I take apart.

I’m not pink. I’m red. And I’m just getting started.