Mama Musings, Spring 2024

Spring Equinox, Birth portal, Neurodivergence & always Grief

Dear Reader-

I am taking a break from this newsletter for a while as I prepare to birth my 3rd child.

Paid subscriptions will be paused until end of June for my unpaid self-imposed maternity leave (from anything other than my full time unpaid work of Motherhood) and postpartum lying in period. Though, knowing me, I’ll probably pop on at some point to share writings from the liminal space of post birth/early postpartum or to write about the birth itself.

Thank you for the ongoing support! All spelling and grammatical errors are my own. I try to catch them but I swear I always miss some.

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I turned 42 March 20- Spring equinox baby!!!! Or Pisces cusp Aires if you’re into that sort of thing. Holy shit I am well into my 40s now. And regularly I am reminded by someone somewhere that I am an old mom. I would like to befriend a teen mom b/c we have much in common - we are both stigmatized simply for being the ages we are. Funny how little critique there is of men and the ages they are when they impregnate women. But then this is America where all we want to do is control women’s and people with wombs’ bodies.

The male pacific chorus frogs in our seasonal pond are still singing nightly and have been for the past month! The daffodils are up! Tasseled blossoms are out on Indian plum! The grass is lush and green and ready to be cut. I have not dug my garden beds. I have not started any seeds. I think daily about entering my greenhouse and filling the trays and painstakingly planting one seed after the other under the dark potting soil. The trays outside the co-op are lush with spring starts and I want to take them all home and plant them but have no garden beds ready to receive them. I feel sad about this simply because gardening gives me so many reasons to be outside and I like to be outside in Spring. I bragged that I was going to garden this year since I haven’t gardened since 2021. But like last year this strange inertia has overtaken me. I know it’s mothering a toddler. I know it’s pregnancy. But it also feels like some other resistance I can’t put my finger on…. some fear about my own ability to care for these baby plants once they go in the ground…. so there’s a grief I feel about this as I’ve grown huge bountiful gardens on this land ever since I moved here six years ago. And because I know plenty of other Mothers with toddlers or babies who still manage to start their seeds… and so that doesn’t help the situation….

Garden harvest 2020 or 2021

Pregnancy/Birth prep

I’m 37 weeks pregnant this week. It feels as if this pregnancy has flown by. I feel a little shocked and in awe that shortly we will be back in newborn land. Despite me being in the much hated on category of AMA aka Advanced Maternal Age (see below under "still unfinished”) this old mom and this tiny baby in me are thriving and healthy. I’ve starting swimming laps weekly which feels marvelous (I was a mildly competitive swimmer in high school and swimming in general is one of my most soul nourishing pleasures- in particular swimming naked in natural waters out of doors). I’m getting acupuncture weekly from our low-cost community acupuncture clinic. I am doing my walks and my prenatal yoga and taking my papaya enzymes to ward off the terrible heart burn. My body hurts all over especially my back. My belly is huge. My feet and ankles are swollen. Normal but very uncomfortable pregnancy symptoms. I am still masking in most big public spaces and going to my Unitarian church most every Sunday I can. My husband got back a little over a week ago from driving cross country, instantly came down with a cold which our toddler now has so I’ve been up since 3am on account of a very sick and clinging little one. We are settling back into life together- already butting heads trying to re-member how to be a WE together- the message I keep getting is that beautiful wisdom from a Wendell Berry poem "Be joyful though you have considered all the facts.”* We took our daughter down to the river a couple days after he returned and had a wonderful time.

Nooksack River family time and returning ritual water and rocks

Grief Tending

I am just two days from four days of grief ritual with my fellow co-hort of community grief tenders or elders-in-training, our team of three facilitators and many support people and previously mentored grief tenders. I have been on this journey of becoming a community grief ritual tender since early last Fall. This was our first and only in person gathering and lucky for me, just down the road by 45 minutes on Samish Island. It’s hard to write about any transformational experience but weeping, raging, sharing deeply, eating and singing together is the best medicine I know. There were the strange and wonderful synchronicities that serve as much appreciated reminders that YES this is a calling of mine, but more than anything - these are my people and NO I’m not crazy. Inside these grief rituals I feel more at home in this weekend village than I do in this mangled and frayed dominant culture I currently live in on a day to day basis. This weekend I had some deep shifts in some old old stories. The last morning of our time together, our mentor and elder, Laurence Cole, led us in this beautiful song, which blossomed into full swell with 30 some of us singing together in harmony in beautiful choir. Then, they had me and the other newly pregnant mama come into the center and they sang to our babies. I started crying as soon as I stepped into the middle.

I love Laurence’s notes about the song:

Song Notes

In Robin Wall Kimmerer’s writings and lectures, she always makes it clear that if we wish to think and act in the manner of traditional indigenous people, we should always take into account the impact our choices and actions will have on the coming generations, and decide and act only in ways that are guided by the understanding that “all flourishing is mutual.”  When I saw the words of this song in the Sunbeam section of a Sun Magazine a while back, attributed to Winona LaDuke, I was inspired to set them into a simple song that conveyed that most basic understanding of our relatedness to the whole living web of life, and the necessity to make choices and live in ways that recognize we’re all in this together.

This was the longest time I’ve been away from my toddler. It was wonderful to be fed (as I am the primary cook in our family), to sleep alone, to love on strangers now friends, to be held by strangers now friends, to reconnect with others, to talk deeply all hours of the day, to walk alongside the waters of the Salish Sea, to watch juvenile Eagles catch a ride on the winds, and of course to weep together and bear witness to others grief and rage. Since I got back from the retreat, coupled with her sickness, my daughter has been particularly clingy. Although it’s been incredibly hard to have single parented most of this pregnancy while my spouse worked out of state, I have also become accustomed to it. Perhaps it is because I have mostly single parented since becoming a parent almost 15 years ago. I cherish my one on one time with both my children. I like my alone time after my children are in bed. I love nesting and making home and think I am pretty good at it- the stocked pantry, the stocked freezer, the always changing grocery list tacked to the side of the fridge, teaching my children how to clean up, cook together, tend home and hearth and on occasion field and garden. However, it’s still a balance tending home with a partner. I don’t think relationships need to be work all the time, but for us neurodivergent folks (see more below) I am learning that how I am wired is directly related to how I experience intimate relationship; which is to say- it has not and does not come easily to me. Though I maintain my ongoing complaints about the 24/7 nature of the unpaid work of mothering and the systemic failure of this country to support mothers/parents/caregivers- being a stay at home mom is still my favorite job (asides from other part time gigs I have loved and been paid for- singing on stage, working at a small herbal apothecary, farming, sex and love advice, doula work, live artist model, floral designer/arranger).

Birth Prep

The home birth supplies are packed in a tote. My doula and long time friend of over 15 years is standing by. Our midwife came to visit our home. My monthly midwife visits have now become weekly visits. My mom is coming for a month in May to help with postpartum care and toddler care. I am interviewing local high schools for my son to attend next year. The freezer is stocked with bone broth and I just got a quarter share of grass fed meat. My friends came out and celebrated me in the most beautiful blessing way ceremony. Another friend and mama, former midwife and doula has offered to set up a meal train for us. A fellow grief tender and mama is standing by to come offer her service of a closing of the bones ritual she learned in Belize when she studied abdominal womb massage.

We’re as prepared as we can be to welcome (gods willing) a brand new one in our midst. And still there is a grief alive in me now- that this time prior to this new human is coming to an end, this time where I spend so much time just me and my daughter and son, and now as we reintegrate my husband into the mix, how this blended family formation we’ve been in for the past six years is now about to shift again. I feel like I am more aware of how Life just keeps changing than ever before. How I want to hold on or have just gotten a hold on some aspect and then it slips out of my hands like water. Grief and gratitude in every drop.

Tying all the women together at my Mama and Baby blessing

Still Unfinished

Still unfinished are my essays on the land back movement- none of the local native people I know felt comfortable going on record to speak to me, which does not surprise me given how tender, fraught and complicated that topic continues to be; an essay on the wages for housework movement (did you know Richard Nixon almost passed a bill guaranteeing basic income?!?!?) and the important work of black women in that struggle, and a more personal writing piece inspired by my friend exclaiming a year ago when I said I planned to try for one more baby "you’re too old to be a mother!”

Still unfinished with texts to follow up on is my Tending the Veil interview series in which I plan to talk to grief tenders, birthworkers, artists and farmers and others who are tending the edges. So many cancellations due to sickness that has plagued our corner of the world since last fall it seems. Such is life with children!

Reading

I’m aiming to read a book a month for 2024 (at least). So far I have mostly loved everything I’ve read. Though March’s novel, All My Mother’s Lovers was meh - if you’re curious about it just read some of the lackluster reviews over on GoodReads.

January - Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver

February- Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zaneur

March- Bad Behavior by Mary Gaitskill

All My Mother’s Lovers by Ilana Masad

April- on the docket and already started is Brutalities by Margo Steines as well as Melissa Gira Grant’s Playing the Whore (an interlibrary loan that is long overdue) and Talking to the Dead by LeRhonda S. Manigault-Bryant.

Got any books you think I ought to read this year? Comment below or email me. I’m somewhere like #34 on the wait list at my local library for Tommy Orange’s newest novel Wandering Stars (which I look forward to reading)- did you read There There? Brutal and beautiful- I loved it! I need some fiction recommendations please- these three listed for April are no lightweights so please something like a beach read, family drama, and bonus if it has some juicy sex scenes! Smaller books appreciated since April and May will be a lot of sitting and nursing and I’ll need books I can hold with one hand so no tomes like Kingsolver’s Demon Copperhead!

Old mom, cute toddler who DGAF how old her mom is, midwife taking measurements- measuring right on target which comes from over 15 years of cycle tracking and knowing just about right when we conceived

Neurodivergence & Grief & Parenting

I’ve been thinking a lot about my own neuro-divergence recently. I was diagnosed with ADHD with"autism spectrum symptoms” at the age of 40. There has been a lot written about over-diagnosis and over-medication as well as how it presents in female people as opposed to men, a lot of which I’ve read about by now as I grapple with the questions of "is this even a real thing?” and "what now?”

“Neurodivergent is a non-medical umbrella term that describes people with variation in their mental functions, and can include conditions such as autism spectrum disorder (ASD) or other neurological or developmental conditions such as attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).”

While both of the two practitioners (my long time PCP and then a psychologist with 30 years in the field) who diagnosed me made it clear my ADHD is "mild,” the more I learn about it the more sorrow I feel… what could my live have been? What writing would I have published? What children could I have had? What home stability? What lovers would have stayed? While I don’t ascribe to a life lived looking back, from time to time I think it’s wise to visit the past- to look back at our little rock pile of regrets- to sorrow about all that could have been, to sorrow over the terrible things we have done and said. All of the downsides of ADHD though have long plagued my life - depression, alcohol abuse in my early 20s, poor choice in men, self harm, suicidal ideation, rage fits, isolation, anxiety, constant self-criticism and unhappiness with just about any paid job I’ve ever had, impulsivity, financial instability, inability to sustain healthy intimate relationships, so much self sabotage…. I could go on…

"In early adulthood, ADHD may be associated with depression, mood or conduct disorders and substance abuse. Adults with ADHD often cope with difficulties at work and in their personal and family lives related to ADHD symptoms.  Many have inconsistent performance at work or in their careers; have difficulties with day-to-day responsibilities; experience relationship problems; and may have chronic feelings of frustration, guilt or blame.” - Chadd.org

HOWEVER… Is it ADHD or is it America and our orphaned traumatized roots hacking away at our collective and individual nervous systems? Is it ADHD or is it Motherhood in isolation? Is it ADHD or is it compulsory heteronormativity and monogamy culture? Is it ADHD or lack of community held rites of passages for young people? Is it ADHD or is it simply bull shit to live a superficial life where you only make small talk? Is it ADHD or inherited unprocessed ancestral grief? Is it ADHD or is it extractive capitalism? Is it ADHD or is my sensitivity actually sanity? Is it ADHD or is it completely sensible rage over the ongoing annihilation of my more than human relations?

So I think I have come to see, like others are calling it, my neuro-divergence as gift rather than hindrance. Does it mean I will ever be highly productive in this extractive system so I can win accolades- doubtful. Does its mean that my messy brain that takes in dozens of things at once makes it heart to write or speak clearly some times- yes. Does it mean I’ll ever stop being flooded by the sight of the daily heart break I witness- also doubtful. It was validating to spend time with a loved one recently who gets me, both of us laughing and shaking our heads at the "normal” people we’ve know. The normies can stay steady the course of work and home and marriage for the most part. The ones who don’t FEEL IT ALL/ who don’t feel rubbed raw by certain sounds at certain times, the ones who have never lashed out in a blinding rage at loved one only to break down in sadness and overwhelm; never had their neighbor knock on their door at 3am because of the strange keening grieving sound you were making for an hour straight, never struggled with alcohol and drugs and sex and sought out pain for pleasure for curiosity or just so you could feel something else than the despair inside; who’ve never left home to walk for miles and miles in the dark, who’ve never taken a knife to their own skin or been asked to be slapped, who’ve never wept the entire drive home from a work meeting so cognizant of all the things unsaid, all the feelings whirling in the room but only understood by you while everyone around you just continues on as if everything is fine.

And maybe ongoing participation in community grief rituals is key to staying alive and healthy as a neuro-divergent person.

My handsome first born- been thinking how first borns are often saddled with so much and does this have to be inevitable?

It’s mysterious and wonderful to me that as I prepared to enter the community grief ritual I close out this cycle of bearing my third and last child. There is too little said and written about the weight in and of itself to be a birthing person from whose body a new human comes forth on the ancestral level- what it means to carry another’s lineage within our bodies- a being formed in the ethers, carrying with them certain alchemical properties/tendencies drawn from my Southern- Irish/Scottish/English/German ancestral lineages and my husband’s Pacific Northwest Norwegian and Scandinavian roots.

There is great opportunity in bearing, birthing, and raising children. I have heard people choosing not to have children as a radical act of stopping generational trauma. Modern parents are so top heavy in their simultaneous over-responsibility for their children and neglect of our children- worrying too much about the "right” foods to feed them, what brand of diapers to buy, what kindergarten to send them too (all symptoms of a fear based/rootless culture with no village to fall back on), but often not enough on their relationship to place, to their own spiritual and soul work as well as building community for themselves so they can then nourish their children. I say this as much about myself and to remind any of us parenting right now that it is not up to one generation to heal all. To keep showing up to the lands and places around us that nourish us. To at the very least name them in thanks at the dinner table. It is not up to us to burden our children with our own woes, but we also need not fear burdening them with our woes which of course we have. Again- to be fully alive is to know grief and praise simultaneously.

This baby inside me has now accompanied me through months of grief training, as well as two in person grief rituals. Does this timing say something about this baby’s work in this world? Malidoma Somé and Sobonofu Somé, the Dagara tribe (Burkina Faso) elders who influenced and inspired my grief teachers, were told by their village elders that we in the west did not know how to grieve and so they came to the west to help us because to not grieve causes immense harm. Malidoma’s name means "he who makes friends with the enemy/strange” and Sobonofu’s means "keeper of the rituals” In the Dagara tribe's ancestral tradition, every child brings a gift to earth that is 'needed' in their 'Village.' So that’s what’s alive in me now- the longing for both village and elders or at the very least wise people who can hear the name and calling of this baby who has chosen me and papa Carsten as their parents, and knowing deep down that we all come to Earth already seasoned to an extent- filled with gifts, callings and affinities for our own particular way to create beauty and healing in our life time.

No pressure baby ;) who kicks inside me joyfully as I wrap up this writing.

Til this summer y’all.

Wishing you well wherever this Spring time of transformation and budding out finds you.

Post Grief and Gratitude river and rock blessing at my blessing way

*P.S.

I didn’t remember much of that Wendell Berry poem except for that line about being joyful, and the main reason I remember that line so well at all is because my sister Christine’s one and only tattoo is of this quote. So of course I had to look up the poem to read it in it’s entirety. I think Wendell Berry is something of a living treasure, testament to a sane life in relationship to place. I love him even more now that I come to reread this poem and take note of this excerpt of which I all think we ought take heed.

From Wendell Berry’s poem, Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front

So long as women do not go cheap
    for power, please women more than men.
    Ask yourself: Will this satisfy
    a woman satisfied to bear a child?
    Will this disturb the sleep
    of a woman near to giving birth?

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