2011 - Talk Birth

crib sheets and the shampoo that’s made with kukui nuts harvested by the indigenous people
of Brazil and imported by a woman-owned business. We go that one extra mile. We exceed
expectations...Is this wrong? Again, not necessarily. It’s not wrong to have ambitions, to dream
of home-sewn Halloween costumes (or ones we just ”whipped up” because we’re so crafty) and
slow food and perfect portraits and cooperative preschool.
But we have to remember that our standards of success, of happiness, of demonstrating our
love for our children are inflated. We’ll never meet them. Our reach will always exceed our grasp.
An essay I wrote pondering some similar topics was published in the [4]summer issue of Natural Life magazine.
I’ve had a lot of articles published in a lot of different places and this is only the second time that I’ve
received several emails from strangers thanking me for the article. I’ve received five emails like this during
September, which has really touched my heart! I look forward to taking a look at the issue myself.
Back to Inconsolable regarding her unexpected cesarean:
So that was it. I’d failed. Well, close the book on this one. Nurse Rachet was probably
stuffing a Nuk into the kid’s mouth or giving him a Happy Meal. Hooking him up to an IV of
Kool-Aid. He’d have to grow up in an iron lung. Maybe the other kids would use him as third
base. He’d call me ’Mother,’ and I’d sign his college tuition checks while he snuggled with a
rhesus monkey made of sheepskin.
I literally laughed out loud while reading that one :)
And then, finally:
Mothers of the world, we’ve got to have each other’s backs. Without working together, we
literally cannot survive. Because we are divided—into ’working’ and ’stay-at-home’ parents, into
’natural’ or ’attachment parents’ and ’mainstream’ parents–we remain marginalized as a group.
We just haven’t noticed, because we’re too busy shooting each other down, trying to glean little
nuggets of self-satisfaction from an enterprise that is still considered less significant than paid
work...
Much as I strive to be accepting of everyone and to honor the dignity and worth of each human being (like a
good human services pro!) I do see this tendency toward division sometimes sneaking out in myself—either in
thought, or conversation, even though my heart truly lies in helping other women. In helping other mothers.
This can’t be done through judgement or secret convictions of superiority!
At the end of my own Mindful Mama essay in Natural Life, I write:
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Perhaps parenting authentically, from the heart, can’t be learned in a book or through application
of a theory, but only
through being there and being aware – of both the beauty and the messiness. Perhaps it means
a loosening of attachment to attachment parenting as a prescribed set of practices and beliefs.
Perhaps it means being a more loving friend to my own imperfect self.