“The experience of the mother—as a caregiver, as a woman in crisis, but most importantly, as a human—is often at the center of Netflix’s Stranger Things. And when I, like so many others, became captivated by it this summer, I felt myself exhaling as I watched Joyce Byers (Winona Ryder) navigate the mystery of her son’s disappearance.

I saw her frantic despair, her angry resistance to giving up, her aggressive need to find answers, and I thought, ‘Finally.'” More from Katherine Webb’s beautiful essay on motherhood and its representations here.