Browsing the "Motherhood" Tag

Adoption Stories

Promises

February 8th, 2022 | by Leah Ongiri

We open the door in the morning  It is dark and rainy like all morningsThe smell of wet earth rises like


Poetry

Why he is not my little boy

March 9th, 2021 | by Wandajune Bishop-Towle

Too tall.  Born too late, too old. His eyes—lakes of day not brown like mine. He sings too high too loud in a


Families

See Saw

December 28th, 2020 | by Jill Stukenberg

How old or what grade are your children? I have one son who turned seven in May. That was after


Families

Patchwork

May 23rd, 2018 | by Ryane Granados

I was a much better mom before I had kids. My parenting vision was a menagerie of constructed pieces embroidered


Ask A MUTHA

Ask a Mutha: More on Love

March 1st, 2018 | by Tara Dorabji

For this installment of Ask a Mutha—I asked more mothers to tell me about their hearts. To share with us how



Back to Top ↑

  • Subscribe to Mutha

    Enter your email address to subscribe to MUTHA and receive notifications of new articles by email.

    Email Frequency
  • “You’ve already told me that story,” he said. Switching gears, he asked, “Why isn’t my father around?” #breastfeeding #parenting #fuckit #protest #teenagers #sexualviolence “Over time, Anabelle learned to talk about her feelings. She said saw her birthmother in the sky. She drew a picture of grief moving through her body like water. When she had more language, she began to talk about her losses.” “I’m not sure why I read that poster and thought that it applied to other mothers, other people’s children. But it probably has something to do with the shock I felt two years later when a neurologist confidently diagnosed “Autism Spectrum Disorder” and I responded with at least twenty “What about…” type questions. I had described my dynamic, interesting, loving toddler to this doctor, and her response sounded dire and clinical. That poster was the same. All of it seemed so unfortunate.” “Someone hit the call button. No one came. Someone rushed to the nurses’ station; still no one came. The contractions, a creature, twisted my uterus, lancing its nails. I tried to breathe through them, but there was no space, no time.” “But when, one-by-one, natural disasters ransacked too many of the communities we visited, including my home-state of California, I began to spiral into a grief I didn’t know how to support. I came to realize that our climate crisis wasn’t off in some far-flung future. It was here. Now. I’d birthed two perfectly good humans, boys who wanted to set up lemonade stands and play soccer, but who would be tasked instead to worry about rising seas and firestorms.” “I have to say,” my doctor said. We were still in the OR. He seemed saddened. “There was a uterine rupture. A large one. I have only seen something like this four times in my career.” “This is the part where I am supposed to articulate that taking time for myself allows me to be a better a parent, which is true. But the compulsion to footnote derives from accepting the baseline that I should feel guilty at all for taking time for myself, which I do not. I’d meet my pals for dinner, go to a movie alone, or attend a weekend bachelorette trip even if it resulted in worse parenting. Parents deserve pleasures unattached to their children.”

© 2013-2016 Mutha Magazine



Back to Top ↑