I am Mother
We just wrapped up our latest Feminine Leadership program this week. What a soul-nourishing, creative gift this group was! Mothering was very alive this season. Jessica, my co-facilitator, gave birth to a blue-eyed, chubby-cheeked girl named Noelle in May, one month before we began our leadership journey. I was pregnant with my first. And, all the women in the program happened to be mothers, some committed stay-at-homers alongside career-driven mothers.
Three months into our program I unexpectedly went into pre-term labor on a family vacation in Wisconsin. I was laying low one day, reading in our little cabin nestled in the deep, old growth forests of northern Wisconsin and the pregnancy app on my phone buzzed with an update. This was odd because I had no cell service or wi-fi. I was at the 24 week mark. I will never forget reading that update. Something about lungs still developing and then “Your baby is now considered "viable", which means they could survive if they were born right now and given the right support.” My eyes lingered over that last part.
My son Clyde was born at 2:47pm on August 5th at almost exactly 24 weeks. He survived just two days and just like that I became a mother. Then just like that I became whatever you call what I am now. There were many dimensions to that experience - spiritual, physical, emotional, relational - many that are still unfolding. But the one I want to share with you is what it was like to become a mother.
I was not a woman that simply had to have children. Even after I decided to get pregnant, I experienced a lot of conflicting feelings. I remember a random run in with an old high school friend that I hadn’t talked to in more than a decade. I told him I was pregnant. He filled me in on his life. He had three girls. He shared that he did not remember what he cared about before children. “eww that’s weird. I totally know what I care about and I do not foresee that changing” I thought. That was a really silly thought on the other side of all this.
Choosing to become a mother felt like choosing to become a nobody. I don’t think this is everyone’s experience, yet I do believe there is an undercurrent here that most women can feel. For the career-driven mothers in our group there were questions like, “can mothering be enough?” “What if this is exactly what I want to be doing?”
Becoming a mother did not make me feel like a nobody; it drew out my somebody. I must admit that statement less than a year ago would have made me cringe. As if those of us who might not have children are missing out on something essential and vital to life.
But that short foray into motherhood did something different for me. It initiated me into the river of life. A birth doula and dear friend (who is not a mother) described hearing of this sentiment from many of her clients. She helped me name what I was struggling to describe about the experience. Birth connected me very intimately to life and it opened up a longing in me to meet that life with even more whole hearted engagement. Life calling forth more life as my friend put it.
Even now that Clyde is physically gone, I find myself walking the dogs down by the river and sharing with him about the birds we come across, thinking how he might react to a surprise gust of wind or laughing about the way the dogs rough house. The Mother has been activated within me. It has me describing the physical world to my dear, dead child and in that it also calls me into deeper and deeper connection with the land around our house, my family, my Michael. This is so much of the aliveness that I see come from women who begin to turn towards their feminine for the first time. The feminine brings a vitality to life whether you are a mother or not. Oh do we need that love, connection and engagement in our world now more than ever.
I was once timid and hesitant about this new title and all the responsibilities in would entail. Now, I start my days looking down at my softer belly, grief still heavy in my heart and I think gently, I am a mother. I feel a strength in that sweet little statement that I did not know before. I am thankful to know this feeling.