Being Mama
I’ve been wrestling with my identity as a mother since I found out I was pregnant with Luca in 2017 – by surprise, with someone I’d been dating for a few months, through a Plan B pill and an allergy to semen (yes, that’s a real thing).
In the years leading up to that moment, I had slowly let go of the mom fantasies I’d had as a kid, the mental lists of things I would carry on and things I’d do differently as I observed and experienced being parented myself.
As I look back today on those years in my life, it’s clear that what I had actually lost connection to was my own inner child – a gap that grew wider every choice I made to be in relationship with people who were harming my spirit, every move I made that diverged from my primordial needs and desires.
I found out I was pregnant after I returned home from a two-week trip through the South that connected me back to my spirit through the guidance of angels in the form of friends, Airbnb hosts, and bell hooks – who wrote “love heals” in my copy of All About Love at a book fair in Kentucky on the final day of the trip.
When the pregnancy test came back positive, I laid on my bed alone with the sun on my face, searching my soul for any sign that I should go through with what I had planned to do long ago if I ever found myself in this situation: an abortion. Instead, I burst into giggles. I felt a wave of peace wash over me, like dipping into warm water. And I knew, without thinking about it another minute, that my choice was to see this pregnancy through.
That feeling of peace and the clear path that it illuminated lasted throughout my entire pregnancy: through a rough breakup with Luca’s father, through a move from Queens to Brooklyn to Salt Lake, through rallies and marches and lockdowns, through new and unexpected love when I met Lauren a couple months before giving birth. Every choice I made during that time felt intuitive and in alignment with my inner child, literally and figuratively.
The bubble broke on July 18, 2018 when I gave birth in less than ideal conditions. And since then, fear and doubt have crept in. It took me a long time to bond with Luca once he was outside of my body. He felt like a stranger asking me to give up my life for him, and it triggered all the troubles I’d had setting boundaries across my relationships, particularly with men. Every development leap he makes, it feels like the process of connecting with him starts all over again. While the first six months of his life were the hardest of my own, this year has given that time a run for its money. It feels like violence has found its way back into my home through constant illness and injury, loss of loved ones due to governmental failure, earthquakes, destructive wind storms, toxic air, news of more black children murdered by police, hearing neighbors abusing their kids, more and more houseless women and kids on the streets, and the list goes on for all the ways that personal and collective trauma has touched our lives and inadvertently impacted my relationship to my child, my self, my community.
Through the ups and downs, my entire worldview has spun around, what I’m fighting for has been disrupted, what I believe in has faded away. In an effort to find balance in this ungrounding, I’ve dove deep into study and embodiment practices, grasping on to the bits and pieces I hear that feel like unwavering truth, which has ironically been spiritual philosophies rooted in statements that are more like everlasting inquiries: “God is change” (Earthseed); “Be like water” (Emergent Strategy); “There is nothing to understand, just be” (Zen Buddhism).
As I sit here and write, texts are chiming on my phone with “Happy Mother’s Day” messages from friends and family. I am grateful for them thinking of me, of course, but I can’t help feeling a bit like an imposter at the same time as I feel like it’s not enough to be seen as a person who mothers on this one day. And while we’re at it, many of these friends, while they are not continuously and directly responsible for caring for a child (I would argue that we are all collectively responsible for the wellbeing of all children), they are involved in the activity of mothering in the way they care for their loved ones, themselves, and their creative projects.
Perhaps this is why I continue to wrestle with the title I was given when I gave birth. “Mother” feels to me more like a state of being, a verb, a principle, an everlasting question and unconditional commitment to collective care. Mama is expansive, present, faithful, gender-full, ever-changing. Mom is Earth, or as my friend Cesia shared with me recently: “tierra que camina.” Mom is stardust, and we are made of Mom.
The photo above is one that Luca took of me, in a moment when together, we were connected through creativity and joy.
Thank you for reading and joining me on my journey! One way I like to support the practice of mothering on this day is by donating to the #NationalBailout fund to #FreeBlackMamas. You can donate here –> https://www.nationalbailout.org
