There is old memory in all of us. Or perhaps what I mean, is there is human animal memory in all of us. Call it ancestral, call it instinctual, call it past life. It comes from the same place. Bone memory.
When the bees rained down on me, I had two choices. To panic, or to merge. It was 2010 and I had never been around a bee hive before. I was visiting a honey bee sanctuary, but having a clump of bees fall on top of me wasn’t exactly how I thought the day would go.
Read MoreWhat is your relationship to the stars? The actual stars in the sky, not the metaphor, although that's lovely too.
Can you see them at night where you live? A few? Many? I grew up in a place where I could count shooting stars before bed and make up my own constellations.
I’ve been in a big renegotiation about my relationship to work. I took this December off from classes and clients because I didn’t really get a maternity leave when my daughter was born. I worked all days and all hours throughout my entire pregnancy.
Read Moreo far, parenthood hasn’t been the hard chore so much of the internet (and people I know) implied. Every day is a joy of discovery. Granted, I have amazing help, but not always. It’s often just little Cricket and I trying to find a way eat breakfast before 11, composing work emails while breastfeeding, and circling the neighborhood wearing an ergo.
My daughter is one month old today. I am still landing in the steady belief that she’s really here, she’s really my daughter, and I get to keep her. Becoming a mother has been a lifelong dream of mine. I walked into it with no illusions. I knew it would be hard. I knew I’d need a lot of support. I knew I wouldn’t sleep much. But there really are no words to prepare you for what happens to your heart when your make a whole human, and they look up at you and smile in the early dawn light.
I wanted to be held by a man. Someone who loved me so much that he wanted to create life with me. I wanted to share the moment of that positive pregnancy test with him, in joy and disbelief. I wanted him to bring me hot cocoa and soup and marvel and my shapeshifting. It was a fantasy, but not entirely unrealistic, after all, couples experience this all the time.
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