My daughter is growing up as the world beautifully breaks apart.
Chapter 1
My daughter is growing up
She walks right past me and doesn't even look back
My daughter is growing up
She leaps off the couch and jumps in my arms and lingers awhile in the pudge
My daughter is growing up
Her birthmark is starting to fade
My daughter is growing up
She clings to the breast for comfort, and lingers awhile for the love
My daughter is growing up
And I am falling apart
My daughter is growing up
And the world is breaking up
My daughter is growing up
And I am separating into a million pieces, only to be put back together in a new way, in a new house, in a new life, all on my own. I am struggling with the reality that in two very short weeks, just that...the reality of my kids' world, the complete trajectory of their emotional life will be forever changed by a choice that I, their mother, made. I decided to divorce their Dad.
I did that. And I essentially did that to them. June 20th, moving day, will forever be the anniversary of the day I reclaimed my own life and declared my freedom. But it also may mark the tragic birth of every single one of my children's early traumatic memories.
Tonight I kissed my son's head at the table and started to cry. I wish I could throw my body on top of him and protect him from the shrapnel of our lives. I wish I could cary him into the year 2040 where we all are happy and generally healed and the hardest years are behind us. I want to protect him from my choices. I want both of them to never feel pain that I have caused.
That sadness is real
But I also realize that the expectation that it is possible to not fuck your kid up is a societal strategy to control all identifying women and mothers.
HEAR ME OUT!
Chapter 2
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I have never in my life been a perfect mother. I have struggled from day one. I have loved them, adored them, cried with them, nursed them, comforted them and encouraged them. But when you are a mom, you have never done your best. You are always just reaching at the attainment of what a "good mother" is. So you go to sleep feeling as if you were merely good enough at your ONE JOB in life, to be these kids' mother.
Well that feeling gets old pretty fast. If you could succeed in other areas of your life, areas where you can engage with mastery, you would begin to feel confident again. You might even be a better mother! You would step into your life in a new and powerful way. The desire for that peace of mind, or that flow, is what can pick away at a mother incessantly.
So at some point, you want to be YOU again. You want to emerge as not just a mother, but as a human adult who engages with grown up things and lives in her power.
Honestly, I did not go through HOURS of the worst pain imaginable to birth my child and be initiated into one of the most bad ass, mother fucking tribes to stay at home and change a diaper. After you give birth to a baby, you feel like a literal goddess. During a contraction of pain, you can leave your body and see God. You can literally black out into a spiritual realm. Your body merges with the goddess energy during the most natural and miraculous natural phenomenon, creation.
You birth the child, you face your own mortality and then you come out alive with a seconds old baby human in your arms. You have literally just switched places with higher power. It is exhilarating.
Many women die during childbirth, especially women of color. In the United States alone, "African American women are three to four times more likely to die during or after delivery than are white women." It is a goddamn miracle that any of us walk out of this alive, but those who do, especially women of color are absolutely MYTHICALLY POWERFUL!
I know people don't talk about it much, but giving birth is an insane spiritual awakening for A LOT OF PEOPLE. We face our own deaths looking down the spiral of contractions. We know we could die. But the only way forward is to get that baby out and into the world! Your spirit takes over your body. You retract and push and retract and push. You lay your body on the line and let go!
No one can emerge from an experience like that and not be changed forever.
You completely rearrange your insides in one second. The transition from "maiden" to "mother" is one of the most painful and profound experiences in my life. It did not feel serene or comfortable, it was like growing into a new cocoon every day and coming out a new person.
Why don't we talk about how identifying women and trans men completely transform after giving birth. Do people know that we literally emerge from pregnancy as a NEW BEING. Our body chemistry and blood is forever changed. Cells from our own children will live in our bodies for the rest of our lives. Here is an article that changed my perspective on my experience. It explains how we become "genetic chimeras" or an animal who is a mixture of different animals.
How are we expected to disappear into the background of our lives after this event? It is maddening.
Chapter 3
I am delighted that I am now surrendering into this cellular rearrangement. I have transformed in profound ways over the last four years, and I have accepted that I have to follow my heart.
I have had three pregnancies and two babies. My loss is still so present in my daily life. I never even met the one I lost, and yet I know them. They live inside me. We named them Robin. We spread their ashes in the waterfall at Shelburne Falls in western MA and cried. My body has been claimed by foreign cells and nursing babies and demanding toddlers. In a sense I become not myself so they will survive. I give my knowing away so that they can be secure.
But I have learned (partially from Glennon Doyle in her latest book, Untamed), that to save yourself is to save your children. To accept that you have changed and that your path is leading you to a different expansion, is to teach your children that growth and truth is the purpose of life. If we can embrace the temporary nature of life, then we know that every minute is a new life. We are in constant movement. To fight against that movement, I believe is to defy God. It is to say, I know better than you, world! I GOT THIS. I'm staying right HERE!
But I have let myself go. I have said, "Just go! Go, wild one! Expand into the incredible, goddess being you were born to be. I understand your pressure to play house and prove your worth, but your life is more important than anyone's opinion of you."
Go! And bring the kids along for the ride. You will become their hero! And you will teach them that to leap is not a bad thing. It is an act of faith - an alignment with the energy of life. We are born, we die. We are born, we die. And we are born again. The cycle of life is engrained in our DNA. So why do we fight it?
Chapter 4
Why do we fight against the natural cycles of the world - the moon, the tides, the seasons, the light? We create systems to train the earth, to create order in chaos, to show that we are safe, that our power is greater than that of the world.
I believe cis, white men fight this natural order because they are threatened by it. The patriarchy knows how connected the woman is to the earth's rhythms. Hell, they may have forgotten that their bodies are too. But the patriarchy (including all genders who play a part) believes that if we acknowledge women's powerful connection to the natural order, we are accepting their superiority. The patriarchy will not accept that truth!
So, they will defy the cycles and create their own rules. They will suppress the natural power of the feminine to protect them from her wild powers.
So women buy into this. We believe that we are powerless over the expectations society has placed on us. Our attempt at survival most likely means to follow the rules of the patriarchy. We essentially are tamed exactly because we are wild. And we are powerful.
So we are told to obey, to serve, to delight, to tantalize, to submit and commit, to become mothers and to sacrifice our lives for our children. We are taught to extinguish or dim our lights for cis white men and their fragile security. We are taught to fear our own power. We are told to never beat a man at a game of cards. We are told to give them a break, they are working so hard. We are taught to consider the men in our lives with every decision we make and with every second of the day we do anything. "How is my action living up to the insane expectations placed upon me by the patriarchy? Probably about 2%, cool, cool. I'm a failure." We loose our self esteem, we become less embodied and instead leave our milk factories and diet scarred bodies to escape into fantasy. We can no longer live our own lives. We have officially been "owned" by society. There is no daycare for our babies. There is no support for our employment after the few weeks of maternity leave we may or may not get. We aren't even paid an equal amount to men exactly BECAUSE we are expected to have their babies. The system is dependent on our desire to stay home with the kids. The entire system has been built on the age old idea that WOMEN BELONG IN THE KITCHEN. And no matter what they do, they should be shamed and tamed and controlled.
Are you working? Shame on you.
Are you staying home now? Really? Shame.
Are you gaining weight? Shame.
Are you potty training? No? Better get on that.
Are you having sex? No? What's wrong with you?
If we are ashamed we will stay small. We will stay malleable and believe we need a man to tell us what to do. We will believe that our emotions are proof we are not meant to lead, and yet why do we cry so deeply? Why do we weep? Because we are oppressed. And it hurts. Time truly is up.
Chapter 5
In all my reflections of the oppression of women, I know that black women and women of color and black trans women have experienced this 10 fold. You have always been here, and I see you now.
You are POWERFUL MOTHER FUCKING WITCHES. The patriarchy will never "allow" you to have a seat at the table. You will have to TAKE IT.
It is your birthright.And fuck. You earned it.
The advancement of female-identified people depends on our defiance. Break the rules. They were never meant for you anyway.
Women and trans women of color, it is your time. We need you now more than ever. You are IN YOUR POWER. I support you and think about you every day. I know that your voice is maybe the least heard in the history of people. But I hear you now. And I am going to follow you and hold you up and know that if you get a step closer we all do.
I will use my insane racial and economic privilege to amplify you and remind the world that women are what the world needs now, and especially women of color, especially trans women of color. We need a voice that represents the oppressed striving to be heard. We need that kind of power in the White House, we need it at every single mother fucking level of leadership all around the world. It is time to lift Black Women up to the glorious seat at the table that they deserve.
Now that is a future I can believe in.
White women, it is our responsibility to support our sisters. We need to amplify black women's voices, we need to support their businesses and their activism. We need to let them lead, and bring their message to our white bubbles. I am trying my best to educate myself and take action. What are you doing to advance the cause for Black Women?
It is my duty to try to build the world I want for my kids. And I want a world full of diverse women running things by the time my kids graduate! I want them to align with the natural processes of love and kindness. I want them to be bold and unashamed and unapologetic. I want them to look disheveled and tired and mad as hell. I want them to nurse their babies and kiss their lovers and show their freckles and natural hair and
age spots and humanity with us. I want women to take their natural seat of leadership.
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I want my daughter to see a Black Female President. She needs that. We all do.
We can do it. We just have to dismantle the racist patriarchal system one life and choice at a time. We are the tools for change that our children will raise against the ceiling to break it down!
It is time for us, and by us I mean me, to lend my voice to the cause.
I will be blogging about this quest. I hope you will go on it with me.
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