Ok. Cat’s out the bag! I been busy:
Yup! It’s happening. A real life bonafide human is baking in my body as we speak. Basically, wtf?!?! And how on earth does biology even make sense without equating the things women are capable of as innately science fiction…
Of course motherhood is on my mind. But not as you’d expect. I wanna mother me.
Maybe it’s the product of having a baby this far into being a full ass and grown woman. I don’t wanna let go of nurturing me. And getting to know and celebrate the strange and uniquely beautiful blueprint of human I’ve come to know as myself these past 40 years.
So much of how motherhood is defined in this culture feels saccharine and off the mark to me. It’s about commercial PSAs and pushing a very capitalist agenda. Or it’s about the fluffy hallmark take on nurturing and being someone’s home.
Motherhood is so much fiercer than all that. It’s visceral and feral and raw and the most demanding hold on a heart.
It’s a power we’re often asked to turn onto others. What would happen if we turned that power onto ourselves?
Over the years, I’ve thought of this often—and long before pregnancy. How can I mother myself? Not because I was failed, but because that’s the fcn work of adulting! Where are the places where I’ve still got wounds that need tending? And how can I heal those parts so I’m not passing on the bleed to someone else?
Of course, becoming a mother makes this project so much more potent to me.
How can mothering myself make me the kind of parent who doesn’t pass intergenerational pain and wounds?
This is an especially sharp question around dismantling white supremacy. Cause the healing you do mothering yourself doesn’t just stop at you. And even if you never become a mother, such work is never wasted.
Here’s to loving yourself as deeply as you’d mother someone else.
❤️
Magogodi
