pregnancy

The Collision of Sobriety and Humor

Published on by Lisa

Pregnancy has stripped my cells of all traces of caffeine and alcohol. But instead of sobriety, this scatterbrain syndrome of pregnancy has set in.

You know that horrible feeling when you see a patch of fog when you’re driving and realize that at ANY MOMENT YOU CAN VEER OFF THE ROAD because you can’t see one inch in front of you? That’s the state my brain has been in since I have been pregnant.

“Lisa – can you mail these letters on your way to work?”

Of course.

Five days later, the envelopes are still sitting on the table and I’m wondering, “Mhm, what are these?”

I was hoping the sobriety of my life would lead me to a higher clarity, like, I would wake up in the morning KNOWING something profound and rare. Hidden gems of knowledge. The exact location of over the rainbow. The formula for the sticky glue of post-it notes. Who really assassinated Kennedy.

No. None of that.

Pregnancy has dropped these really mundane rolls of weight gain and Babies R Us visitations in my lap and I have realized a few things about me. One of the disturbing truths is

I am not as badass as I thought.

With this new clarity, one thing I DO see is how ridiculously UNbadass I am. Sure, I have the audacity to ask unnerving questions to just about anyone and try to keep my guts in every decision I make. I kickbox. And then get choked up during the bridge of Gloria Estefan’s “Here We Are.”

Or jam to Bananarama.

Pregnancy hormones can cloud your mind, but the detox of caffeine, alcohol, and any stimulants can really move your pupils inward.

Two Questions during Pregnancy

Published on by Lisa

As pregnancy progresses, my writing is becoming foggy, my paintings more torrid, my age more prominent.

The two questions that remain unanswered and pumped with adrenaline are these:

What kind of mother will I be?

and

What kind of writer will I become?

The Complicated Life as a Regular Person

Published on by Lisa

My blog is doing it’s own ecdysis and I’m not sure how to respond.

I am watching it, observing it. Similar to how I am with my stomach.

My stomach is this ever expanding universe of placenta, amniotic fluid, uterus, blood, fat, and baby. Inch my inch, it makes itself more elastic-friendly.

And as my belly grows, my blog is shrinking. Or becoming shy.

Who am I now? Three years ago, I was this bold, feminist writer, searching for meaning, community, and blasting mainstream feminism for its uncaring blind spots and US-centric mannerisms.

And now?

Now I am morphing into my own authentic writing style.

My desire to write has grown day by day and my time to devote to it is decreasing day by day as my energy levels deplete and whatever hormone is responsible for making my brain so scattered increases, I am wondering

Where is my writing going?

I’ll tell you where it’s going — it’s going to a place that I’ve never taken it before. Or, at least, I’m going to TRY and take it to a place it’s never been before: intertwined with my life.

Unbeknownst to most followers of this blog, I have a tiny blog for friends and family to read about my daily life. Unbeknownst to my other blog, I have this blog to write longer, free writes about life, feminism, injustice, irony, and love.

Symbolically, I am ready to merge the two together. I feel this NEED to make things as simple as possible and that means to stop separating my writing audiences. It means to be scared and let people in my circles of life KNOW my writing and try to have some faith in them. I have more faith in putting my words to strangers and faceless commenters than I do people I have to face in life.

It will mean careful writing, truthful writing, brave writing.

THAT means more time, more deliberation.

One of the things that most excites me about this step is my bravery to write like the memoirist that I am. I am not so much a blogger as I am a writer. I am funny. I also like to write about injustice. I am just a regular woman with an extraordinary desire to create and express the usually forgettable details of life. I am excited to return to MY kind of writing. I am excited, in a way, to use humor again. To be me.

And with that, my friends, my plan is to push this blog into a full website in the near future. I’m working on this (among many things), but it’s in the works. I ask for your support, your thoughts about a feminist memoirist website, and overall patience in getting this thing up and running.

My goal is to have it up before my son arrives.

With new life, comes a new beginning.

This is my ecdysis.

Raising Isaiah

Published on by Lisa

Cross posted at Feministe

I think you should simply spare the little mongrel parasite from the burden of her life so that you can more fully experience the pleasure of a lifestyle unfettered by the Christo-fascist “reproduction memes” that are genetically engraved in the our DNA by the authoritarian patriarchy. Think about the lifetime “carbon footprint” of your potential child… can you live with yourself knowing the destruction you’re unleashing on your own home?

One of the most beautiful, and quickly disappearing, forms of writing is letter-writing. I’ve always adored writing letters, little notes, maximizing the potential the back of a receipt, leftover notebook paper, the last unloved post-it note in the pile with the least amount of sticky left.

The shining gem of personal letter writing comes from the built-in audience. You write to or for one reader, but sometimes the revelation can be shared with many. I discovered this from Alexis Pauline Gumbs, a trouble-maker in Durham who once asked me to be a part of a writing collective, to submit a piece of writing about what it meant to be a woman of color, about what it meant to survive. It was entitled, “Without You Who Understand: Letters from Radical Women of Color,” and published in issue 5 of make/shift magazine.

It taught me about the power of letters.

Everyone else wrote magnificent essays, essays that came with their own brass bands. My writing doesn’t have a brass band. My writing is more like a solo violinist or pianist. I shared a letter that I had written to a friend one winter evening when I couldn’t sleep.

Letter writing helps me focus on one person and simultaneously, somehow, channel my own deepest longings and contemplatives.

Which is why I chose to respond with a letter to “Margaret Sanger,” who left the above italicized comment for me in my first post at Feministe.

Dear Margaret Sanger,

It is with a complicated heart that I try to answer your questions and respond to your comment. You certainly have a superior grasp of language, I admire, and have little doubt that someone with such a mastery of words makes any mistake in your comment. Each word sounds deliberate. And as a writer who loves linguistics, I studied and thought about your words a long time before I gave my answer.

Your advice to me about ridding myself of the “mongrel” inside me so I can enjoy a better life gave me an opportunity to ask myself, and others, “Why do we decide to have children anyway?”

I’m sure the answered are as varied as there are children, but the most common answers I’ve heard always point to some mysterious Knowing, some sort of underlying and assumed desire that many of us will procreate. Or, that having children is simply “what we do” or should do or end up doing as we age.

Why birth? Why adopt? Why be a surrogate? Why help bring more life amidst so much wrong and untailored mess?

Well, Margaret, I can only answer for myself and I know you’ll be unsatisfied with my reply because it seems that we that you and I probably have very different perceptions of what it means to be alive. Exchanging thoughts about global warming, population and birth control may be a healthy discussion, but that is not the arena in which I understood your question. I heard it on a more personal level asking the age old question, “Why are you having kids when you know how terrible things are?”

What does it mean for me to enjoy “the pleasure of a lifestyle unfettered by the Christo-fascist ‘reproduction memes’ that are genetically engraved in the our DNA by the authoritarian patriarchy?” One, it means that I find my own piece and peace of the world that is, quite clearly, full of kyriarchal domination and destruction. In many ways, my ability to enjoy life is already limited because of this kyriarchy. Is it possible to fully, truly enjoy every part of life knowing so much suffering exists in the world? Is it possible to be drenched in pleasure when the majority of the world is going without, while I, somewhat easily go forth?

It took me many years of maturing to find the balance in being a real, sensing, authentic writer and feminist. I believe it is not our natural state to be overwhelmed by the wrong, which I was for a long time. I grew into a writer that not only wanted to survive but also wanted, as Gloria Anzaldua said, “to record what is happening in my lifetime, to note the progress, to annotate the struggles.”

To survive this endless tidal wave, to be around for the next few decades, to live through this hell we are witnessing, it is imperative, in the most urgent sense, to find ourselves, our naked feminisms that stand counterpoint to the kyriarachy. If the utter victory of kyriarchy is to beat, rape, silence, and make miserable the lives of women, I am surrendering a sacred part of my life if I believe that this world is capable of nothing more than oppression. If I believe that the only contribution of a life brought out of my very womb would be nothing more than a carbon footprint, then, for me, hope is gone and kyriarchy has won.

Raising Isaiah to be a teacher, or a dancer, or a shoemaker, or a poet will depend on what I carry forward, what I harbor in my own vessels. If I believe that he’s a parasite, he’ll be a parasite. If I believe he will unleash destruction on the world, in my home, then he’ll be a destructive force.

But what if my partner and I believe he can bring More to the world? What if, along with his inevitable use of resources and adding one more set of footprints to walk the earth, he grows into a person capable of goodness that you or I cannot even comprehend? What if he brings a seemingly unreachable understanding of life to me, my partner, to others while he lives? What if my partner and I don’t believe that ceasing to produce life automatically equates a better living?

With a little bit of courage and whole lot of radical love, this experience is guided by my questions and deathless curiosity of what is possible and believing that my enjoyment of life is not the point of life, at least, not for me. It is with fearful hope, not certainty, that I choose this.

Be well,
Lisa

The Last Ungendered Day

Published on by Lisa

I started using the self-descriptive term “feminist” about five years ago and although my life’s work to create a better world extends much longer than those five years, the lens of feminism – my feminisms, to be precise – has positively enhanced the way I experience and percieve the mystery of socialization and gender.

Tomorrow, I have my 20 week ultrasound. Before pregnancy, I didn’t know that 20 weeks is a milestone. Usually with prenatal care, an “anatomical” ultrasound is done, which means Adonis and I get to see the baby growing in my uterus. We see the face, ears, feet, hands…everything…including its genitalia.

Many things have surprised me about pregnancy, but none moreso than the impact of hormones in my body. My memory has been underwater, my moods sometimes swingy, but my emotions have been fairly calm. I’ve felt peaceful. One of the few pieces of anxiety I’ve been experiencing relates to gender and finding out the sex of the baby.

I’ve been pretty open about my feelings concerning my pregnancy through my letters to Veronica, my unborn daughter, which I started a long time ago…well before I was pregnant. And one of my fears is not just having a child, it’s about having a son. I think that my fear dwells in my uncertainty if I can teach a child and have a larger impact than the rest of the world. All the lessons this child will learn will have to be undone at some level. It begins tomorrow. It begins the moment the ultrasound technician will say “boy” or “girl.”

And the barrage of texts, emails, FB messages, and comments wanting to know will begin. Along with the pink and blue bull that I don’t believe in.

Facing the reality that I am carrying life within me has meant coming to the reality that I am deeply responsible for the wonder and destruction this child shall bear on the world once it enters this life and takes its first breath.

I am faced with the reality that the men who rape women once had mothers too and I wonder what they learned (or didn’t) about loving and treating women, both in personal relationships and strangers. I think about the way teenage boys careen by the waterfountain at school and mock the budding bodies of womanhood and adolescence out of their own insecurity. I am, essentially, afraid of what boys because, after working with violated women and children, I know what they are capable of.

I don’t want to raise a son contributing to another woman’s disempowerment.

But feminism has also taught me that not only are men capable, and actually prefer, to be loving, active, energetic leaders for goodness and wholeness, it’s also taught me that women are not grouped together in their fight for equality. The bullying, the cut throat competition, the hidden jealousy, the betrayal…raising a daughter now terrifies me just as much as raising a son. After I’ve work with violated women and children, I’m afraid I’ll raise a daughter who doesn’t care about her worth and values her sexuality only at the price set by society and media.

Whether son or daughter, I’m afraid she’ll give up on herself.
I’m afraid, quite simply, they won’t care about the world they way I do and I won’t be able to stand their selfishness.
I’m afraid that when they ask me questions about what I’ve done to make the world better, I’ll look in the mirror and only see a half-worn human and full blown coward.

Somehow, in the years I’ve contemplated and studied gender and advocated that all persons are equal, I’m petrified I’ll find that I’ve only kidding myself because I know the world can and will knock me on my butt with its cruel, streamlined, flick of the wrist power to teach domination, selfishness, individualism, and greed.

Knowing this child’s gender makes it all real, too real, because once I know “boy” or “girl,” I’ll inherit an entire set of specific strategies the world has planned to brainwash my kid. I don’t have anything except what I *think* I know, a lot of guessing, intuition, and a loving partner.

I hope those seeds are enough.

Will they know how to love, truly love themselves and another human being?
Do they know the world is not fragmented and we, all of us, are inexplicably connected?
Does having this much fear dictate what kind of mother I will be?
Who will be there to save me when I’m the one in trouble?

In some funny way, I want this child to forever remain as it is right now – perfect, growing, dependant on nothing but amniotic fluid, oxygen, and my voice. Not only do I fear about this child hurting, but I’m afraid of the harm the child will be capable of doing as well.

Tomorrow I will know if I am having a son or daughter.

It’s A Boy, It’s a Girl

Published on by Lisa

There’s no better dumping ground for socialized gender stereotypes than the ears of a pregnant woman. For a womyn like myself, it raises my blood pressure to listen to all the gendered talk and so I see writing about my pregnancy as one of the necessary exercises to stay sane and keep the kid healthy.

Sharing your pregnancy with others is like an invitation for the worst gender assumptions to pass through my ears. There’s nothing, I repeat nothing, more annoying to me right now than the comments that sound like misogyny on steroids.

“It’s just better to have a boy. You’ll worry less.”

“I wanted my first born to be a boy. ‘Cause after that, you can just relax and not worry about what the others will be.”

“Girls just are too much.”

“It’ll be better if you have a boy. With a girl, it’s just, it’s so…it’s so much more worrying.”

What is this equation in birth? Labor + boy = relief
while Labor + girl = stress

Let’s go past all the generalizations (all BS in my opinion anyway) about girls spending more money when they grow up, you’ll have to deal with more emotional crises, you’ll worry more about violence, etc…

I see both boys and girls as precious and vulnerable little things who will look up at me and not know left from right, evil from good, right from wrong…and they’ll learn what from me? –> That because she was born female, I will worry more about her being a victim of violence? That the world will treat her less, pay her, view her less because she was born with a vagina? What impact does that have on how she confronts the world? Will she fight it or believe it?

And what will I teach my son? I presumably don’t worry about him because he was born with a penis and we all know that the world prizes that much more than if he were born my daughter. Maybe he’ll have it tough from time to time, but he’ll never worry about his safety or getting raped or drugged because he’s a male.

The reality of the world is not hidden from me. I see misogyny, I see the violence, I see who takes the brunt of poverty, brutality, trafficking, and abuse. I understand how the world will treat my child differently based on its genitalia. I get it. But how does knowing how the world mistreats girls and women lead to the thought it’s better to parent a boy?

How radical is my mothering if I just walk the stereotyped line and accept the world as it is, not as I want it to be? Am I more of a mother if I protect more, worry more if it’s a girl? Or does that make me a coward?

My deepest fear is not in having a girl. I feel like I would know how to raise a girl because I identify womyn. I’ve never been a boy, I’ve never been a man. I don’t know how to teach masculinity in healthy, loving ways except in what I imagine it SHOULD be. My fear is that I do have a son and he grows up, eating the garbage available from media, peers, and school. And instead of regurgitation, he’ll swallow it, whole. And in my naivety of not knowing how to raise a man, he’ll grow to eventually be one of those fathers telling a young mother that it’s best to first have a son than to ever have a daughter.

That’s more terrifying to me than having a daughter.

Letter # 8

Published on by Lisa

Dear Veronica,

I’ve been thinking about how these letters will be if I find out you are, in fact, a boy, not a girl as I have been thinking.

I don’t think it will matter much. You’ll be either Veronica or Isaiah and what I have to share with you is the same, regardless of what sex you happen to be.

I’m about to enter my second trimester with you and I can scarcely believe it. The picture Dr. David gave me yesterday of you nearly took my breath away. You LOOK like a baby. A head, limbs, and the outline of a body…I couldn’t believe it. I also couldn’t believe how I already thought you looked so cute. You’re, literally, a picture of shadows and, to me and your Pops, you looked simply adorable.

I’ve been thinking about what kind of world you are about to come into when January 2010 strikes and what captives me most is you are in me, yet not of the knowledge that I have. You have no knowledge of what evil looks like, or how it will pain you once you come into this world. You have no knowledge of what kindness looks like. The only thing you know is peace inside a floating sac of my blood, nourishing you with no disturbances or worry. All of that will change soon.

I shared with your father yesterday that I have observed how protective of children I feel these days. Suddenly, the world seems like a cold, cold place. An unloving and precarious playground with sharks in the pond, strangers leering at the fences, and untrustworthy mystery figures walking about. Isn’t it clear? I’m afraid to bring you into this world and the responsibility I will have to protect you as best as I can. So far, the only person I’ve really looked out for is myself. Selfishly, I sometimes think I will be a good protector because I don’t know if I can handle any amount of harm done to you. A selfish mother, indeed.

The wonder and innocence you symbolize to me right now cannot be adequately communicated. You are life, a breathing life waiting to grow and come into the world through my body and I find myself writing about the rights of women’s bodies, the rights of our voice and the place of our humanity. Your mom’s writing is often misunderstood and I hope you can learn from me. There is nothing wrong with being misunderstood. Actually, it only confirms that the more you speak your own way, the more of your own path you’ll find, the more others will misunderstand your ways.

I spoke to you this morning of individuality and trusting the voice you will develop inside you. The voice may not always be certain, but it will be strong in curiosity and wanting to do the most loving thing. That will lead you to where you will need to go. I don’t know if you can hear me, let alone understand the little talks we have in the car, but I hope you can soon understand that individuality can and should only exist in the context of community, accountability, and justice. Never, in all the days you will live, should you ever think you are alone in this world or this world was made just for your path. It is a beautiful, intimidating mudball where you will be pressed to find your own path. If it resembles anything like mine, it should be crooked with lots of uneasy turns that are hard to navigate. But it’ll be your path.

And then you are to share it with others. Should you ever be misunderstood along the way, know these letters serve as my companionship in your journey. To be misunderstood, my dear Child, is a blessed thing.

Love,
Mama

It Will Feel All That You Feel

Published on by Lisa

My mother told me that the baby will feel all that I will feel.

In relation to a high sodium/sugar diet warning, or a lesson about high blood pressure, it seems like an appropriate lesson to understand about the effect I have on the fire growing inside me.

And then I wondereed if my baby can feel my sadness, my anger, my joy, and laughs when I laugh.

I’ve never had anything grow – alive – inside me before and that statement just shot a syringe of terrifying responsibility through my veins.

In my dreams last night, I dreamt I drank alcohol, fully knowing I was pregnant. I dreamt I was indulging in behaviors I never had before — sorrid love affairs, whole loaves of bread and muffins, and cigarettes. I wake up, sighing a relief that it was just a dream.

But where is this terror coming from?

As a soon to be new mother, I am just beginning to glimpse this new world of responsibility. The world that I’ve heard stories about, but never stepped into. I think this is the world where I’ve heard so many womyn judge and compare at the highest stakes of criticism: motherhood.

I don’t have much in excess. I don’t have a lot of savings. I’m not in therapy. I can’t buy organic. I sure as hell don’t have a mini-van or buy new clothes and sandals from a name brand store. I don’t know how to sew, have changed about 3 diapers in my life, and can’t stand doing the laundry.

I do believe that the memory of my mother’s rearing will guide me in what I need to do.

My mother entered the United States when she was 20 years old, determined to make money for her family in the Philippines. Over the course of 43 years, she’s managed to raise four children with no college degree or a lick of luxury to speak of. She raised us without lollipops or ice cream trucks. She hid, literally, from her children, when the ice cream truck music sounded on our street and pressed herself into a wall because she didn’t even have a quarter to spare for a popsicle.

My mother fought her way through high blood pressure, diabetes, sleep deprivation, heel spikes, thyroid problems, and bitter racism in the midwest.

She had religion. She had her faith. She brought us up, surrounding us in a protective circle of love, prayer, and simplicity. Where others had salads and desserts, we had a pot of rice, two fish sticks, and water for dessert. We were a family and didn’t need much else. Not until we were told that we needed “more” by our friends and commercials. Then our conversations became more and more westernized, more Americanized.

It’s only now I can begin to appreciate the decisions my mother made and how difficult times were for her, but we barely understood the stress she must have been under for so long. She raised a family in a foreign country while supporting her other family back home, sending her siblings to college, supporting her widowed mother.

It’s the memories my mother has left me that gives me strength when I feel terror, when I feel I may not have “enough” to bring life into this world. When I wonder how we’ll afford a crib, baby seats, strollers, changing tables and food, I remember that my mother never bought baby food, but used her big pots, hot water, an old blender, and tupperware.

It’s the memory of my mother that releases any external pressure or worry that I may not “have,” or am, enough.

This Pregnant Feminist Will Eat You Alive

Published on by Lisa

Everything’s changing.

The moment was actually split. Plural.

There were two realizations that changed my life. One was the moment I knew I wanted to be a mother. The second when I realized I was pregnant.

Those two moments were distinct and both charged with a transformative power difficult to express.

The moment I knew I wanted to become a mother of some kind was a shock of worry — what if I couldn’t become pregnant? What if my health was not up to par? What kind of mother would I be? How will my life change?

Then the moment arrived when I realized I was pregnant. Everything turned into a statement, not a question. That left me in shock. I am now pregnant. My health is not up to par. I will be a mother. My life will change. All declaratives. All terrifying. No more questions.

I’ve come to understand my life in terms of my feminism and vice versa. My feminism is subdued or enthralled by the ongoing events and lessons of my everyday life. The more I engage in my life, the clearer my thoughts become, the more complex my issues grow. I wondered how my blogging would be affected — would I suddenly be thrust into the prego blogosphere? No…I thought to myself, I’m still the same person. I’m not a genre. I’m a womyn of color, pregnant. I am growing fire inside my uterus. You better believe I’m going to be writing about this.

Being a pregnant womyn has pushed me into a new role in this world. It has shifted my thoughts to a future-oriented way of thinking. When I watch the news, it’s not longer about me, but how it might affect the future my child will live in. When I see a car accident, I wonder if a child was lost, or if a child just lost a parent. Then I cry.

My eyes are wet with weepiness. As I ran on a treadmill, I stopped to weep into a corner. Then I got up and ran again.

The assault of medical worries and superficial expectations on what makes a “Good Mother” has astounded me. Everything from pre-natal yoga to avoiding bologna…all of the information and “education” has paralyzed me.

The greatest advice came from a friend who simply said, “Listen to your body. It knows what it needs.”

There’s a new fragility in my life that has gifted me with a strength I do not want to refuse. I want to be a strong mother, a strong womyn. I see the demons of this world who have painted the canvas of motherhood with images of white perfection, middle class luxuries, and the oldest tool of oppression used toward new and old mothers: guilt. I see the expectations heaped upon my life in the short 9 weeks I’ve been pregnant and am tickled with excitement. The world has no idea who they are messing with. Me. You are messing with pregnant me and my writing is going to fire back at all the mainstream feminisms that have contributed to the locking down, locking up, and criminilization of womyn of color who choose motherhood despite the odds, who choose to have children with or without a partner, who choose to raise their children with less than adequate healthcare coverage, who work and fight and love all in the same day. My blog will be focusing on the issues of pregnancy and feminism, on giving love and attention to all the truthful ways real womyn birth life into the world.

There is no epidural for the kind of birth I want.

Letter #5

Published on by Lisa

Dear Veronica,

“One disaster at a time.” Those were the last words told to me by my doctor, one of my partners in this process of trying to make you into a cradling reality. Today, I had a hysterosalpingogram which is fancy word for shooting dye through fallopian tubes to make sure they are clear and functioning properly. Your only Tita, my wonderful sister, spoke her usual positive words when I told her that the discomfort was like getting a papsmear multiplied by fifteen, “Well, you never, ever, ever have to get that done again. Ever.” And when I told her how they stuck cold metal up my Precious and then inserted a long application into me, and then filled me up with a fluid that made me feel like I was either going to die of cramps or explode, she replied, “Mhm. Sounds great – like reverse birth.”

Humor, my dear, will be the key to surviving life. You’ll learn that when you are born.

Your father was made to put on a safety apron because it was in an x-ray room. It was scarlet and tightened around his torso with a big piece of velcro. He looked quite anxious when he noticed stains on it, but he tried to keep me laughing. Or maybe both of us to relax before the horrible test I was about to have.

To distract myself from the pain, I tried to imagine what it might feel like to actually be pregnant with you. It’s worked so many times before. The discomfort and sense of invasion was so thick, I could hardly get away in my thoughts. That’s rare. I’m usually the kind of woman that cannot be followed in the secrecy of my mind. I can usually escape in a moment, but not today.

To make things even more complicated, I have some sort of tear in my – hold onto yourself – my rear end. A fissure, is what it’s called, and feels like I am passing GLASS once a day. Yes, glass. More fiber, water, exercise, yoga. I’m doing everything I can, but the pain is so traumatic, so acute. Today it was so consuming, I cried in the shower for a long time. It’s been weeks of pain, my dear, and with the thoughts that you may or may not be realized only makes me hold tighter to a thread of possibility that may not even be real anymore, but I still hope.

I have to believe that since the dye cleared my tubes, my surgery was successful, and I am surviving some of the most physically painful times of my life that I am a mother in training. I shovel snow, have my tubes inked, write manifestas, and cook mean meals that stick to your ribs. I am woman.

Hear me roar.

If you are ever born inside me, you’ll be the first to hear it.

Love,
Mom