Describe… your mother. 

One week ago today, in darkness and pain. Our daughter was born. Every day that passes we tumble through a thousand worlds, moving further from that place. The memories are etched but they change, too . A sacred space opens and closes behind us, revisited in memory but no longer present. The story grows less complex with the telling, more complete but small details lost. I don’t want to go. Here in the dark at 7.05am, I sit with my love and we look at photos of the birth, my raw and naked body in labour, birth team holding me, face twisted in anguish and face at rest. Tears running down my face and milk weeping from my breasts over my vast, stretched stomach, like a baptism. Since the water in which I birthed I’ve been bathed in blood, urine, tears, milk, vomit, and sweat. Waves on a sandy shore. 

The days pass, bringing us back into the world where there are things to do, goals to meet, tasks to accomplish, people to interact with. Every hour taking us further away from something I can’t help but grieve the loss of. Grief and love and terror tangled in together. Dazed and bewildered yet somehow seeing her and myself and the world more clearly, sight dimming gradually. The only way to get it back is to let it go. Fall down the rabbit hole. It hurts, every time. 

I was so afraid everything would change when she was born. Now I cannot bear for things to remain as they were. 

Welcome to my world, little girl. I am your mother.