Confronting Motherhood from an Altered Body

What do women hold?

Mar 18, 2024

Note: This is a re-write because the last version I wrote I was on Percocet for pain. Duly noted that writing while drugged creates circles of thought. Thanks for being here.

I recently listened to a narration of Maira Kalman’s poem called “Women Holding Things” set to a video. I quickly became obsessed with the variety of objects women were holding. They held vacuum cleaners crossing the street, babies, baskets and chairs, a baby stroller and a child’s hand, big boxes, elderly hands, and more.

It helped me remember the simple beauty and strength of being a woman. It’s simply not celebrated enough.

What do women hold?
The home and the family.
And the children and the food.
The friendships.
The work.
The work of the world.
And the work of being human.
The memories.
And the troubles
and the sorrows
and the triumphs.
And the love.
Men do as well, but not
quite in the same way.
-Maira Kalman

Such tenderness, strength and acknowledgement.

Acknowledgement.

We are overwrought and stuck in denial and grief. We hold a lot; hope, despair, the world’s pain, one another’s pain and joy, sorrow, holding our values near to our hearts and complete the tasks through it all.

I recall working in a high pressured job while my son was living temporarily in the adolescent psych ward drugged for safety, pretending everything was normal. It was a secret. It was a lot to hold.

Fast forward to the present and it was my turn to be drugged. My body was in a sense, rejecting some of its anatomy perhaps to leave behind old grief.

The night before surgery, I dreamed of him, young and small with his smiling eyes and mouth greeting everyone with the pure joy of being alive. People would stop us on the streets to communicate with him, a beam of light, brown eyes dancing with excitement to be alive.

Then the dream morphed his age into about 10 years old, laying on my bed with his head down by the foot, rolling around giggling and being naturally loving. My sweet guardian angel of youth gone by.

They say the body keeps the score.

What was the score it was keeping now? The trauma of birth and our journey for the last 8 years?

Maybe it no longer serves me to have this energy connected to the guilt I feel from his birth, from his mental health journey.

I sometimes feel like a shadow of a person around him begging him to pay attention to me, interact with me, tell me his thoughts like he used to. He’s mostly silent now and his sentences abbreviated. When I tell him I’m having surgery, he simply said ok and looked back at his food to eat. I know it impacts him somewhere but I don’t really know.

And now I have 4 scars on my belly, it’s bloated and deformed for now. Thankfully, not everything was removed from my female anatomy but it still feels like something was taken from me. This part of motherhood rejected as if it’s part of my son rejecting me.

Is it the medication or the negative symptoms, the typical characteristics of the mental spectrum where he resides. I refuse to call it an illness. There is more recovery for him. This is not it. It cannot stay like this forever.

Sure, I have to let go and allow him to be on his own journey. What does that even look like? I can’t ethically live without caring about him. I cannot ever let go.

You may be exhausted from holding things
and be disheartened. And even weep if
you are very emotional. Which could be
anyone on any day. With good reason.
But then there is the next moment
and the the next day and
hold on
- Maira Kalman

Holding the mundane

Remember the beautiful magnificence of the mundane?

All the things we hold and carry should be celebrated. Flowers and hugs, children and desire, projecting and balloons, a smile from a stranger that isn’t creepy, the caressing wind blowing enough for hair to move away from your face, and when meditation takes us to another place and time, the weight of the world becomes manageable.

The cracks of bliss live beneath the surface ready to be felt, expressed, changed, evolved and with its miraculous ability to be graciously released. Allowing the beauty of motherly grief and ancestral grief to morph into acceptance.

Is it really possible? It reverberates through all things for the rest of my life. No need for it to be pushed down into the depths. It just is always part of me as I live and breathe.

Our stories live in the present moment with every interaction. Although the past is gone the past lives with us in the present moment. I’d like to say the past can be buried like the bottom of a swamp, beneath the water, muck and roots of trees and grass holding them down but it’s simply not possible to keep them there.

And the wounds live like scar tissue helping us to move on, always with us, like the lioness, afraid with courage and strength with the belief that light and goodness and kindness will prevail.

Do you know what it feels like to live in ambiguous grief? Tell me about it.

How do you live with it?

Do you feel it simmering?

Do you become manic into high bliss and then low despair?

We cannot be immune to the dark, but only to look at its benevolence and beauty trying to teach us that we can be free. So stretch your roots that are deep in the muck, bringing up the nutrients from the earth so readily to provide, up to the green leaves growing like a crown of pride; for you are here now.

Thank you for being here dear reader. Take good care of your heart.

There’s a P.S. below.

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For further reading and viewing:

The Body Keeps the Score Summary

Women Holding Things - video and narration

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