Unsilenced Woman

Do I love my baby enough? : Doubts and knowings

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My first Mother’s Day with a child in the world was a glorious day of sunshine and picnic food and blanket naps and grass crawling. It was one of those days when I felt the vibrations of motherhood powering me like a golden light within. All felt right. 

I thought, “Blessed be. Bless this child and the way he made me a mother. For some reason I was chosen for this job when others who long for it and breathe it and cry it are waiting to have a little of what I have this morning: A complex layering of skin and muscle and bones, with a beating heart and eyes that smile and a mouth that tugs at my breast. Even the teeth that sometimes feel like a cheese grater on my nipples. They would gladly have those teeth. This. This is wondrous life.” [Read more…]

Where imagination met reality in my birth

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The story of my son’s birth was mysteriously erased from my computer. Centimeters of dilation lost, timeline lost, contraction history lost, direct quotes from my doctor lost. The medical story, the story of facts and numbers, vanished.

At first I despaired in the loss of history and record. I thought, “I need to write it as best I can again before I forget ALL of it!” But when I thought about re-writing the whole thing, it felt like a bore, like a labor I did not want to endure. Maybe that was the universe sending me a message: That story does not matter. Or, that story is not your story. There is another story underneath that story. A story of inner journey. A story of the senses. A story of imagination and the worn landscape of birth.  [Read more…]

A perfectionist’s Lenten journey of radical self-care

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“You are my beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”

I imagine God telling me these words. And I enter the wilderness.

Two things happened the day I realized I did not love myself. I sat tall in my vessel in yoga class, motivational words pouring into me. “How you treat your body says a lot about how you feel about yourself. Listen to what you tell yourself in yoga class.”  [Read more…]

This belly held a piece of the universe

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“I want to take a family beach trip,” I kept telling my husband. It stood for so much more than putting my feet in a large body of water and getting a good tan. Traditions. I was desperate to start traditions. I wanted the different seasons to come with rhythms of anticipation for my son. I wanted part of our summer tradition to be piling into cars and driving to the beach with grandparents, aunts, and (someday) cousins. For my 29th birthday, my in-laws granted my wish. They were taking us to the beach. It would be our 3-month-old son’s first trip.

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