Sayyyyy Whhhaaaattt?! A New Post?/Blogger Gets Persnickety About Your Body Talk

So there I was. Walking into the change room, in tight spandex-y yoga pants no less, psyching myself up for my very first 90 minute hot yoga class, minding my own business, and then ...

WABAM!

"I've just joined [insert diet company of choice - I refuse to advertise them] with all of my friends because I mean, enough is enough and we've all got to lose weight" says girl considerably thinner than me #1.

And WABAM! WABAM!

"I knnnooowwww. I keep hoping to sweat my fat off!" says girl considerably thinner than me #2.

Their conversation went on in this direction, as I tried in vain to quell the uprising of the body crap that had begun to swirl around me. I notice my hips and my thighs in spandex in a way that I hadn't when I walked in.  My negative body thoughts escalated, and instead of walking into my class feeling centred and gearing up for the challenge ahead of me, I walked in thinking about my body. How it looked to others. How it looks to me. How I wish it were different. Yup.  and Yuck.

This is only one of the many, many such experiences I've had like this in the past little while.  Women LOVE to share their body shit. Their fat-apologisms. Their self-hatin'.  Because somehow, if we say it out loud, we can be forgiven for the sins of our body imperfections (and here I will note, our body fat in particular).

And so womens, wimmins, lady-folks, grrrls, yoga-change-room ladies - I'm calling your asses out.  You need to stop. We ALL need to stop.

Why, you ask?  I'm going to tell you.

Your body 'confessions,' your fat-hating self-talk, your, oh-my-thighs, your oh-the-calories, your public pleas for imperfection-forgiveness or commiseration, or whatever it is you're looking for?  That shit is seriously selfish.

Don't get me wrong.  I fully support the right of women to do what they wish with their bodies.  You want to go on a diet for your own well-considered reasons? Give 'er. You want to change your body? Do what you need to do. I'm happy for you. I really, really, really am.  The thing of it is, I don't want to hear about it in a fat-hating way. I just don't.  Because it feels pushy.  It feels a little bit violent. It gnaws away at my hard-fought and very very tenuous body acceptances. Because it just. feels. gross.

We live in a world where no matter how hard we try, no matter how politicized, informed, and conscious about fat-phobia we become, all of our tetherhooks into that slippery mountain of body kindness and awareness and yes *love*, are so so so conditional.  They shift, they slip, they fall out, we throw them back in and try to start climbing up again.  It's tiring.  It's frustrating. That mountain is fucking steep.  For all of us.

We ALL have body shit, yo.  Because we're women-people and because we live in this world that hates women-people and reduces us in very particular ways to bodies of very particular kinds.  And rarely do we consider the impact of our negative body talk on those around us.  Rarely do we think, huh, if I unload the body shit I'm feeling on this person beside me, or loudly in the middle of a public change room full of naked, vulnerable people, I may well be pulling out one of their tetherhooks (or both!) and sending them down the freaking mountain again. And it's a long fucking way down.

I'm happy to talk to my friends and loved ones about grappling with their own body stuff, or to share.  On the days that I can. On the days when this isn't likely to send my own tenuous grasp on okayness willy-nilly and off-kilter and into a giant tailspin. And on the days these things feel alright to them/

So how - how are we to deal with the incredible prevalence of body-hating talk around us?  I don't know, exactly. I've been as guilty of it as others. And it's so so ingrained in our girl-rhetoric. I'm not saying that we shouldn't be able to ask for support.

I am saying that after thinking about this for the past few weeks, I will try very very hard to never again talk about my own body issues with anyone before first checking with them if they are in an okay space to hear it.  Because I don't want to create body-hating, fat-shaming toxicity into the air around me.  I don't want to throw the amazing and fucking gorgeous women in my life under that bus.  I don't want to leave the strangers in some change room heading into a tough-ass yoga class more anxious about the way their body looks than gathering the internal strength to make it through 90 minutes of yoga in 40-fucking degree heat.

So I guess what I'm asking here, lovelies - is to think- to think before we speak, to think of when we speak, and to think about to whom we speak about our body shit. Because it would be so so so so decadently and beautifully wonderful if the only internalized hate we had to deal with was our own.

We can talk about our fabulous workouts without talking about fat-hate. We can talk about our new amazing recipes without talking about fat hate. We can talk about making diet changes without talking about fat hate.

We really, really, really can.

Angels when you least expect them...

Guardian angels come in all shapes and sizes, I've learned.  

Travelling solo with children is hard. Not impossible, but definitely *up there* in the realm of things you don't wanna undertake too often, lest you lose your mind. And travelling with my babes, who are BEYOND excited (nay, jumping out of their skin in jubilation!) on the fourth day of my not-smoking-ness could well have been a disaster of the epic variety.  My nerves were frayed. (That should read 'fucking frayed' for emphasis, but I'm trying to maintain a teensy modicum of decorum. (Hows that workin' for me?) Anyhow - I didn't have my crutch, which is both physical and emotional, and it felt like a pretty big loss. Consequently, I was wobbly, jumpy (jumpier than usual, that is), more sensitive (read: likely to cry at any moment without warning) and more reactive to stress.  Yes. Yes indeedy. A perfect day for air travel with small fry! 

Anyhow - the babes did pretty good. We got stuck in unreasonably long line-ups (middle finger shout out to Air Canada) and braved security. Boy-O's carry-on was selected for 'special screening,' which caused great amounts of anxiety about the stuffed puppy nestled within. Girlio had the requisite I-haven't-had-my-nap-today meltdown. 

And somehow, we made it through and on board, Boy-o's nervous chatter a constant juxtaposition to his sister's quiet watchfulness.

This day's angel came in the form of a rough and tumble diamond miner, who, when seated next to my son, listened to Boy-o regale him with endless questions, stories and general interruptions of the verbal variety. Like his mama, my boy is, um, verbose.  Very. Possibly extremely.  my G.A., he didn't bat an eyelash when boy-o talked of his trip to visit his lesbian grammas.  He didn't flinch when boyo talked about his divorced queer parents. He didn't roll his eyes at one single question, query or interruption (and oh man, there were many) on the two hour long flight. 

"What's it like at your work? Tell me about your work experiences! (YES! He actually sad this!) Have you ever found any diamonds in the mine? What about opals? Rubies? Gold? Coal? Have you ever gotten coal in your stocking? Do you have kids? Are you exited to see them? Do they have two moms or just one? What kind of juice is your favourite? Do you like Apple juice? Do you know that guy over there in the grey shirt? Do you eat Pringles? What flavour? Why do you have grey hair? Why Are you going to Winnipeg? I'm going to visit my Nannie and Grammie!" 

And that's just for starters. Whewf. I'm exhausted just writing it all down.

Being seated on a small plane that only has two seats per side, I was worried about travelling as a threesome. I needn't have, as my patient guardian angel shared his iPad with my boy and they watched movies together (punctuated by several questions). 

There is good in the world. It's always nice to be reminded.

A guardian angle of another sort came down the aisle and sold me overpriced cheap red wine. 

I loved him, too.  Just differently. 

A Repost from two years ago today: Femmes, far and wide

Today, if you don't already know, has the auspicious distinction of being International Femme Appreciation Day. You might be saying to yourself, what is a femme, and just why should I appreciate them? Or possibly querying (queerying?): isn't that just buying into traditional notions of femininity which have saddled women with all kinds of, you know, oppression-y badness, for years and years? Aren't those women just capitulating to heterosexist notions of beauty and gender? To the first question I say, read on. And to the second I say, not so much and I don't think so. And that, in my not so humble opinion, is an overly simplistic reading of what inhabiting 'femme' means for and to a lotta folks.

For starters - for those not steeped in queerspeak already - it's important to say that not all lezzies identify in terms of butch or femme, not all butches dates femmes and vice versa and etc. etc. Moreover, it is both tiresome and misleading to speak about femme-ness as the binary to butch-ness. Femme-ness is not the natural match to butch-ness any more than woman is the natural match to man. You see where I'm going with this? And further to this - femme is not just an identity inhabited by women. Many men, gay and straight and trans and not, also identity within the spaces of femme.

Anyhoo-

Inasmuch as femme can be described, we are difficult (and more than likely worth the effort) to pin down (and I do mean that figuratively and literally, in case you were wondering), a few general trends do emerge.

1. Femme is queer. Intrinsically. Always. 2. Femme rejects traditional culturally enforced notions of femininity. 3. Femme insists upon sexual autonomy. 4. Femme is complicated and muddied in all kinds of ways by social locations of class, race, ability, gender, body size etc. All of these impact the particular ways in which feminine bodies are inscribed with meaning and read in our culture(s) at large. (Fatness and body size has certainly has an enormous impact on my own experiences of femme, and how my femme-ness and body have been read)

And to explain further, I will turn to turn to some of the brilliant femme minds of "Brazen Femme: Queering Femininity", edited by Chloe Brushwood Rose and Anna Camilleri. In snippets. Just snippets. Because femme is shifty. Slippery. Ambiguous. We like it like that. It's part of the mystique ;). And also because it's really quite challenging to blog on one's iPhone in one's car on a roadtrip with children in the backseat. I do what I can...

Chloe Brushwood Rose and Anna Camilleri offer this:

[F]emme might be described as "femininity gone wrong"- bitch, slut, nag, whore, cougar, dyke or brazen hussy. Femme is the trappings of femininity gone awry, gone to town, gone to the dogs. Femininity is a demand placed on female bodies and femme is the danger of a body read female or inappropriately feminine. We are not good girls - perhaps we are not girls at all (13).

Kathryn Payne describes:

Femme is the position that deliberate feminine sexual agency often occupies in queer girl subcultures (49).

And one of my favorite descriptions, which answers to concerns (criticisms?) about the gender performance(s) of femmes, is brought to you by Lisa Duggan and Kathleen McHugh. They argue:

And now, in the postmodern reign of The Queer, the fem(me) reappears, signifier of another kind of gender trouble. Not a performer of legible gender transgression, like the butch and his sister the drag queen, but a betrayer of legibility itself. Seemingly "normal". She responds to "normal" expectations with a sucker punch - she occupies normality abnormally (167).

And last but not least, another gem from Duggan and McHugh:

Rejecting Girl-By-Nature, the fem(me) is Girl-By-Choice. Finding in androgyny...too much loss, too little pleasure, and ugly shoes, the fem(me) takes from the feminine a wardrobe, a walk, a wink, then moves on to sound the death knell of an abject sexuality contorted and subjected to moral concerns (166).

Sufficiently confused now? Good. Then all is as it should be. Remember - shifty. Slippery. Hard, (but not impossible), to pin down.

So - to the badass, the gorgeous, the sassy, the sexy, the saucy, the tough-as-nails, the fancy and the fabulous femme-tastic girls and boys out there - I appreciate you - your femme-y ways, femme-y wiles and femme-y wickedness.

And I send you all a great big air kiss with lips resplendent in my shiny and fabulous pink 'revolution' lipstick...

Excerpts taken from: Brazen Femme: Queering Femininity. (eds). Chloe rushwood Rose and Anna Camilleri. Arsenal Pulp Press: Vancouver, 2002.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Last day celebrations

It was boy-O's last day of grade one, and the parents were invited to see a video his wonderful and creative teacher made of the kiddos year. I was crying before the second song came on. It was so amazing to get to see images of my child learning an laughing and building friendships.  Among my favourite images was the classes snowshoeing adventure, which seemed to mostly result in an enormous dogpile of children and snowshoes.  Oh oh oh! The cuteness!
I even made the video on the day I went to his classes field trip. Not such a shit mom, maybe? Well - at least it felt like it for a wee brief moment, when the image of me and my grinning boy at the field trip  appeared onscreen, and he grabbed my hand and squeezed it tightly. Mama swoon.

But the tears really started flowing when part of the video showed each of the students baby photo followed by their beginning and end of the year photos.  At the end of each photo sequence was an 'I statement', like I am a learner, I am respectful, I am playful, etc. and my heart very nearly exploded into pieces when Boy-O's statement came up. 

'I am open-minded.'

Ohhhhhhhhh.  And ohhhh.  Does this mama's heart so so so proud.


Sent from my iPhone

Update and a post: Looking and Leaping

Update: Heya fine peeps!  I've been mysteriously MIA, I realize.  Apologies.  Life has brought lots of work challenges and I was prepping for a conference and going to a conference and then falling all in love... you know how it goes... :)


Looking and Leaping

You know that moment when you've been flying or walking the high wire  or swinging trapeze or whatever your metaphor of preference is ... And you look down and realize, in a momentary panic, that you are completely and totally leaping about in the air without a safety net? You know that moment? 

People respond to that moment in all kinds of ways:

They climb down the ladder and choose the stability of floor boards over the stomach butterflies and always looming potential of free falling. 

They go half-way and demand a safety net before they risk. 

Or they do like me. And say 'ahh, fuck it! What's so great about a safety net anyways?' and they continue to leap. 

No risk is without calculation.  In my case, the risk of falling in love, of letting go of the safety net, of refusing to go half-way, almost certainly guarantees that some shit is going to hurt in profound ways at some point. Maybe I will be left or betrayed or misunderstood or not heard. Maybe I will do those things to someone else. Maybe.  Each of those scenarios  would certainly be very painful. 

But - it also seems to me that if love doesn't hurt you and smack you in the face from time to time, you probably aren't doing it right. Growing on our own is painful enough. Risking enough to grow with another person doubly so.  It's tricky shit, this business of letting go and trusting another person to be careful with your heart. No matter when or how, or even if, it ends.  

And what would I lose if I chose *not* to let go? Not to love? That is a question I don't think I could live with. 

Loving is brave and it is foolish and it, in my case, is absolutely necessary.  Perhaps it will Blow Up in our faces all cataclysmic-like. I don't think it will - but people in love seldom do. Of course, this is certainly a possibility. I would risk that and more for a chance at this here and this now with my lover. This chance to grow with someone in real and difficult and wonderful ways. A chance to let go and trust that right here and right now, I am loved. And that I can live without a safety net. 

I generally dislike the ways we tend to speak of love. As if there is no choice or reason in it, as if it truly makes us blind. I think this is mostly garbage. Of course, there doesn't seem to be much sense-making in the business of attraction.  But love is a whole other matter entirely. It is a choice. It is a choice to learn someone in profound and sometimes frightening ways. It is a choice to lay yourself bare enough to be known. It is a choice to open yourself up to the possibility, the probability, of loss. And I choose it. In the most full-bodied, open-hearted way that I know how.  

Not everyone can understand this choice. That's ok.  It's not a choice for everyone. It's a choice for me.  And while it may look from the outside that I'm leaping without looking, I'm looking. Eyes wide open.  

And *then* I'm choosing to leap. (Safety net, be damned.)

life fail

I am a reasonably smart person. Not the smartest in the world, you know, I'll never be an academic superstar - but I do pretty okay.  But one of the many things I have learned about myself, post-separation, is that I'm rather a fuck up at life. Okay - that's not entirely true. I'm good-ish at the emotional side of life.  You know, aside from being slightly nuts and all. (I insist that it's the folks who don't know they're nuts that are the most fucked up and will maintain this until my dying day). But I can take care of people and their hearts like nobody's business. I'm kind of good at loving. Or at least it's an area I try really hard at.  So yay me. Imma well-trained girl and can nurture with the best of 'em.  (Yes, that was me being sarcastic).

But everything else I sort of seem to suck at.  I guess I'd never realized before, because I've never been on my own (yes - this sounds pathetic and likely is). And apparently I gravitate to the, um, competent. The details, the bits of life that grown ups are supposed to keep in their brains - not so good at them. It's not like I don't mean to. I do. I really do.  But details go into my brain and immediately fall out. I think to myself, I should write that down - and then I promptly forget that too. (Yes - I remember to feed the kids. But likely only because they tell me they're hungry. We won't mention the awful demise of our two beta fishies who sadly forgot to tell me to feed them and clean their tanks and stuff.)

It's not that I'm careless. I actually do care. I just am always one step behind and scattered and frazzled and this leads me to constantly get it wrong. Like, I can remember to write a blog because it's a more a heart thing and less a brain thing, but I can hardly ever figure out how to get the kids to school five minutes ahead of schedule or pay the bills on time or call people back when I'm supposed to or remember to check my school email or where I  put my cars keys (even though there's a damn key hook that I put up my own damn self) or book my plane tickets at the time I said I would in order to figure out child care juggling.

I hate this about myself. Really hate it. I boggle own mind. I'm self-baffled and be-flummoxed.  I want to be better at this life business. I hate asking for help (even though I have these amazing friends who continue to blow my mind and be there at the drop of a hat).  I should be able to do this shit on my own. I should. Yeah, yeah single mom. It's true that there's a lot in my plate. It's true that life is frazzling and that I tend toward frazzled-ness under the very best of circumstances. But other people can do this.  *I should be better at this*.  And I'm just not.

So, there it is. I'm getting A's in school and a failing grade at life.

A repost and preamble to the repost: Body talk

So this body business has been on my mind a lot lately. I read about body politics. I write about body politics. I'm right in the thick of writing a fat paper, in fact. But living life in a much smaller body than my former (for now) fat chick's body (and proud fat chick, yo!) feels like it complicates the body politics that I used to be so comfortable with. I identify with fat politics and always will. I love fat studies, and am thrilled to see it growing exponentially from when I was doing my M.A., and was occasionally asked: 'And how is this feminist research?'.  But when I throw around words like "fat" in the company of other fat women (which I used to do no prob), I sometimes now get the 'what the fuck do you know about it' look. And this is a reasonable look to shoot a girl like me, who no longer shops for clothes in specialty stores. I'm rockin' life with thin privilege, and sometimes it messes with my fat brain.

My body has changed a whole, whole lot in the past few years. It's gotten a lot smaller. For reasons of goodness (a teensy bit) and badness (a whole lot of it).  And there you go. As much as I tried to ignore the weight-loss high-fiving for the post-divorce 60 pound sudden loss, it filtered in. How could it not? It came from everywhere, and was (and still is) constant. I tried to stubbornly maintain my fat-chick feist and push the positive reinforcement for this new body of mine away. I still do. But I am acutely aware that with the 'positive' reinforcement comes its opposite, the proverbial backhander. The message that for the first 35 years of my life, I was unattractive, deviant (not in a good way), abject, unhealthy and - insert a whole host of other badness here-. And the sixty pound weight loss became an eighty pound weight loss, and for a little while there was more than that (until I got my shit back together, you know, after a wee trip to the emergency room). My point being, I suppose, that we need to be so, so much more careful about how we talk to people about body issues, and weight specifically. As queers, as feminists, and even, as I am discovering while writing my current paper, as fat scholars - we need to be checking our own shit.  (And you don't even want to get me started on the health professions. DO NOT GET ME STARTED!)

I will continue to study and research in the world of queer, body and fat studies - because that's where my heart is. Does it matter that my body is no longer what we might  term 'fat' (as arbitrary as that term is used?) I'm not overly sure. But I do know that I now work within an unfamiliar territory of checking my body privilege along with my race, ability and educational privilege (among others). New terrain. But terrain I still very, very much love.

Anyhow - here's the repost ...

a queer family grows in redneckville: Body talk

xo T

memory lane

So, yesterday I looking over some old blog posts, a little nostalgically. It's kind of fun (and possibly a small bit masochistic in the oh-man-I-remember-that-day-and-it-was-a-doozy sort of way).

I re-read the first two posts I ever made, which got picked up by Offbeat Families (formerly Offbeat Mama). I was a guest-poster there for a little while before they decided I was a little too disgruntled and a little not enough happy-go-lucky.  I am actually a pretty happy person, you know, dabbles in depression, anxiety and disgruntledness with the world notwithstanding. True story. Not altogether sure why they'd have thought I was going to be in any way a happy-go-lucky kinda writer in the first place, what with the tenor of these first two posts.  But there you go. I got columnist dumped. (Angry feminist mama strikes again...)

Anyways - in re-reading those first two blogs, I was freaking blown away at how different my life was when I first moved here to Redneckville.  Okay, yeah - pretty much completely different - except I still have the small-fry, bless their wee small-fry hearts.  But the thing that really stood out for me was how incredibly holy-hell isolated I was at the time I was writing. At home with the kidlets, tucked away in the north end in a neighbourhood full of old people that was so quiet you could hear a pin-drop), in an unfamiliar city, with very few friends, and almost no queer community to speak of.  Holy crap! I'm amazed I came through that time as well-adjusted *tongue-firmly-in-cheek-there-folks* as I did. 

http://offbeatfamilies.com/2010/02/queer-parent-101/

http://offbeatfamilies.com/2010/03/feminist-housewife/

p.s.  You should check out offbeat families.  It's pretty good stuff.  You know, for happy-go-lucky writing ;)

wednesday poem, a day late this time

This bit of gorgeous is a new one from Edmonton's own Laurie MacFayden.  For more MacFayden work, you can check out her book White Shirt (Frontenac Press, 2010) or her blog spatherdab.com.

 

turn

Posted on May 16, 2013 by laurie macfayden

Prompt: Why should you turn? Louise Glück

is this about the earth,
this planet we have come to know and weep over?
why should the earth turn?
why should you turn? for the same reason you should tango
for the same reason you should quiver with delight
at the sight of the northern star, the first robin,
at the way the red and white polka-dotted dress
hangs off your 14-year-old’s confident girl-child hips
why should you turn?
why shouldn’t you turn.
why shouldn’t you stomp.
why shouldn’t you race to the edges
and screech to a halt
just before the cliff meets the sky?
why shouldn’t you kiss the stranger on the train
why shouldn’t you drink the deep-fried carnival koolaid
why shouldn’t you trust in gravity and the tides?
why shouldn’t all the songs be sung
and the dishes left until later?
why shouldn’t the nightingales?
why shouldn’t the dogs go on barking
and the cats go on ignoring
and the morning go on perfecting that precarious hue of crazy blue
just for you?
why should you turn?
because.
because you are the key, the wheel, the corner.
because the crux of the turn is the sweetest hullabaloo.
because turning the turn is living the question
not being slave to the answer.
of course you should turn.
you should turn, and turn again,
and turn again and again and again.
and when the turn
becomes a spin
that begets a fizz
that whisks a twirl
into your most familiar pounding tribal whomp,
you should turn again.
to the dawn,
to the light,
to the circle,
to the wind.
turn to the great self-sustaining bonfire
burning inside of you
and gulp that blessed flame.
turn.

Dear Adrienne Rich...

My children cause me the most exquisite suffering of which I have any experience. It is the suffering of ambivalence: the murderous alternation between bitter resentment and raw-edged nerves, and blissful gratification and tenderness. Sometimes I seem to myself, in my feelings toward these tiny guiltless beings, a monster of selfishness and intolerance. Their voices wear away at my nerves, their constant needs, above all their need for simplicity and patience, fill me with despair at my own failures, despair too at my fate, which is to serve a function for which I was not fitted. And I am weak sometimes from held in rage.  Adrienne Rich journal entry, 1960

Dear Adrienne Rich,

I'm a big fan. Of your poetry especially.  A really big fan. (Theoretically speaking, you and I haven't always gotten along, though sometimes we've been on the same page.  I really, really loved What is Found There: A Notebook on Poetry and Politics).

I've been doing research informally about motherhood and feminism and queerness since I had  my first baby six and a half years ago. Thus far, I have avoided reading your book Of Woman Born. Even though I knew I really *should* read it. Even though it is widely recognized as one of the most seminal mothering texts in existence. Or maybe because of that. I can't really tell you why I avoided it for so long, except to say that I thought about doing it, often, and that there was something in me that urged me not to. But I've started some PhD work on mothering and difference, and I knew I couldn't avoid reading your work any longer.

It arrived in the mail yesterday morning. So, I bit the bullet, drew myself a hot bath, and cracked the spine. I had to put it down after the first chapter.  Like, really, really had to. It was, quite frankly, too intense - an opening of the raw wound of some of the particularly dark places that motherhood has taken me. These places are still so riddled with feelings of grief and shame and failure, and I am still so in the midst of them. They are also dark places that I felt sure were specific to my own considerable inadequacies: my selfishness, my crazy, my inability to ever be *enough*. My steadfast belief that I was not, as I had thought, cut out to be a 'good mother.'  There are still many parts of me that believe this to be true. The word motherhood for me conjures such intense feelings of rupture and inadequacy.

I feel naïve.  Maybe even a little bit stupid, to have believed that I could have been the only person to feel like I have felt, like you have felt, like I feel still. But I am surrounded and steeped by messages that tell me what selflessness is required of this job. Messages that say this is just what mothers *do*. Messages from people who spout only sunshine and roses and delight at their children, in the present and in hindsight, which only confirm for me my own constant failures to measure up. I must be whiny. I must just not be strong enough. I must be exaggerating these difficulties. And yet the intensity with which I feel anger and love and failure (I totally don't get an A+ in mothering, friends) and grief and loss and captivity and wonder and awe cannot be ignored. The nights I stay up in a cold sweat of fear that I do not have what it takes to walk them through this world whole - positively and brightly, with sunshine and roses - cannot be ignored.

I feel awestruck by the realization that you, a woman who gave birth to her first child a full fifty years before I did mine could articulate such close experiences to my own. When I read about the degradation of your mental health and its impact on your marriage, saying: "I experienced my depressions, bursts of anger, sense of entrapment, as burdens my husband was forced to bear because he loved me, I felt grateful to be loved in spite of bringing him those burdens" (27), you could have been speaking through my mouth, with my words. Your husband, like my wife, was supportive and loving and caring and helpful. But there are some things that can only be understood as the primary caregiver, as a being who has lost their ability to move and think freely, their body space - as a person who has, for all intents and purposes, disappeared from the world outside of their home. Your bouts of depression and anger, and mine, make a world of sense. It is, perhaps though, a world of sense one cannot understand without dwelling in.  Sense in the senseless.  I feel incredibly saddened that in those fifty years so much and yet so, so remarkably little has changed.

I feel relieved that I am not the only one. And again, strange that I, a staunch feminist with a whole schwack of political awareness about many things, fell prey to the notion that I must be an incredibly horrible person to feel the way I do. One of the most piercing moments occurred when reading this passage you wrote about sleep interruptions:

I remember being uprooted from already meager sleep to answer childish nightmare, pull up a blanket, warm a consoling bottle, lead a half-asleep child to the toilet. I remember going back to bed starkly awake, brittle with anger, knowing that my broken sleep would make the next day a hell, that there would be more nightmares, more need for consolation, because out of my weariness I would rage at those children for no reason they could understand. I remember thinking that I would never dream again (the unconscious of the young mother - where does it entrust its messages, when dreamsleep is denied her for years?) 31/32 (emphasis mine)

Oh.  Oh. And ohhhh. I have only now begun to dream again, as my son rounds the middle of six years of age, and only sporadically. (Sporadic is still how I sleep). I remember telling someone that I just didn't dream, matter of factly, without much thought as to why this might be the case, or what I was missing. Tons of bricks, this passage. It hit me like a ton of bricks, and is hitting me still.

I want to thank you (although those two words are surely inadequate) for being so astoundingly brave. Voicing what you did, fifty years ago, when I am still so scared to voice such words now ... you were incredible.  I love that you had the support of your three sons writing this book. Someday, I will talk with my babes about the intensity of love and loss mothering has brought me. I hope, like your sons, they will understand that my difficulties with this journey in no way diminish my love for them, my joy in watching them grow, my desire to help them do so in ways that nurture and sustain them.

With much love and admiration,

T