reframing femininity
At five foot two, he reaches his arms up to hug me. My arms underneath his squeeze tightly as I breathe him in. He is both familiar and mysterious. Stepping back, I stand still as he studies my face. “Mom, my armpits stink,” he says. “Oh, I’m sure they don’t buddy. Let me smell,” I…
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I was cold before I even saw the table. It loomed large in the white-washed room. All around stood shadowy strangers, watching as I hovered in the doorway. Hands twitching at my side, gooseflesh along my skin, I hesitated. I was no one to them. I knew exactly what they saw: another in a long…
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My exhausted, swollen-faced four-year-old son snuggles into my warm-on-the-outside, yet broken-on-the-inside, body. Our eager eyes wait for nurses, who scurry past our jail-like cell window until the hour mark has passed again without any communication. This brand of déjà vu is palpable. We’ve been through this before, so now the wait doesn’t seem to carry…
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It may be that when we no longer know what to do we have come to our real work, and that when we no longer know which way to go we have come to our real journey. The mind that is not baffled is not employed. The impeded stream is the one that sings. –Wendell…
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I place a hand on my heart and a hand on my belly. I take a deep breath in and say, “How can I best nurture and honor and serve you today?”
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I am their Mother. Can I tend their heart and mine? Glory and Struggle.
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A little notebook sits on the back, left corner of a small, brown table in the tiny kitchen of my cottage on the Dutch Caribbean Island of Saba. No matter how many times I spray and wipe down the wooden surface, a thin film of “too many chaotic dinners” remains. I reach for this journal,…
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Of half-formed thoughts, of coitus interruptus, It’s heading to the living room and then being called to the kitchen It’s constantly having other’s wants and needs privileged over yours. Don’t read into this though. I am not complaining
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Music was softly playing in the background and my three-year-old and infant were sweetly sleeping in unison while my husband and I were driving on our way to a fun family outing. Breathing in deeply, I quietly savored the calm that surrounded us in the car. My husband must have also been enjoying that moment…
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By March, the worst of the winter would be over. The snow would thaw, the rivers begin to run and the world would wake itself again. -Neil Gaiman I feel a piercing pain in my chest as I talk with my friend Libby about the inevitability of weaning my daughter Charlotte. My body begins to…
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