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8 may 2022 It’s been a week to hold the fullness of motherhood and experience how everything we know to be true can be disrupted in the blink of an eye Late Monday night POLITICO reported the Supreme Court would vote to overturn Roe v Wade. Then on Tuesday morning, I received the following text: Unfortunately I tested positive for Covid this morning and have enough symptoms: congestion, cough, very sore throat that I’m sure this is not a false positive. So sorry that our Mother’s Day outing won’t be possible. Hope you can find someone to go with you. ❤️ Glad your trip to Utah has been so special
By the time we spoke later in the afternoon, my mom sounded as if she was underwater. As someone who suffered from asthma, I am all too familiar with the wheezy crackles and rasps accompanying acute respiratory distress. When I asked my dad what her oxygen saturation level was, he told me he would check. 88% You need to go to the hospital now, I said. blink I’ll spare you the details of frantic phone calls, a middle-of-the-night emergency admittance, anxious text exchanges, a turbulent flight home…suffice it to say, my mother is getting better. My mother was lucky to receive the medical intervention she needed, and in a few hours she will be released, on Mother’s Day. I could not ask for a more precious gift The narrative thread of motherhood will be forever woven through our collective human consciousness, filled with our unique stories, both fragile and fierce. So too, they are taut stories that begin within a woman’s body, and the cost, the courage, the choice to mother or (k)not should be a choice all her own. Motherhood should neither be forced nor enforced, and there is “nothing more demeaning to women than to have a man, especially a man we don’t know, define the laws that will govern our milk and blood.” Terry Tempest Williams As many know, I have begun a project to collect the stories of women who have chosen to terminate an unintended pregnancy. These are stories previously unspoken because of the stigma and shame brought upon women who have chosen not to mother at a specific moment in their lives. Until now. Because the cost of (k)not speaking is too great. blink Thank you to the many who have already asked to contribute to the project. I have finally found a home to collect, distribute and share these stories in service to collective healing within a space honoring both how we remember and interpret in the moment, and then when the moment itself has passed. I will be sharing more details soon, but if this project interests you in any capacity, please send me a message. This is a moment of urgency and a crisis by definition is a moment and an opportunity to shift and sift. I’ll be sharing a resource list via my IG tomorrow but for now, I’m going to make some soup. Because my mother is coming home. Happy Mother’s Day xosew … . ..
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