compassion, dignity, humanity

A couple weeks after Declan was born I wrote down our story. The one where we waited, and labored, and birthed together. But now, we're only 3 days away from completing our first lap around the sun, and different pieces of our story are brighter and bolder-- more vivid, today.

I've managed to escape vulnerability most of my life. I bathe myself, clothe myself, and care for myself. I can pop my own zits and clip my own toenails; I feed myself with a steady hand, and use the bathroom in privacy. My mind and body are healthy, free from disability, illness, and old-age that might engender dependence on others.

I am a white woman, the daughter of an honest lawyer, and a skilled teacher. I grew up in a four-bedroom home with white bricks and green shutters, and fuchsia geraniums lining the patio each summer. I was afforded an education that led to a professional career where I am valued and respected, far from many of my brown brothers and sisters who were born in different neighborhoods with failing schools, or countries devastated by drought, famine, and war. My privilege shelters me from the indignities of hunger, poverty, and humiliation.

But my privilege and pride buried one of humanity's greatest virtues from me: compassion. 

Birth, the vehicle for all humanity, renders the mother naked, persevering through waves of intense pain, and profound vulnerability. So there I was. Standing, naked, hugging a birthing ball draped in a white sheet while the immutable surges washed over my body. My midwife, Yelena, knelt below me on the hard hospital floor, massaging my perineum, tenderly cleansing my body, and ensuring Declan's safe arrival. My nurse, Esta, steadied my legs, and washed blood from my feet. 

Four hours earlier, Yelena was a kind acquaintance, and Esta, a complete stranger, but now these women were sharing the most intimate of experiences with my family, treating me with the tenderness I've only known from my own mother-- the kind of compassion that is only understood when one human suffers and another takes on that suffering, the kind of compassion I had never known.

Since his birthday, I've spent a lot of time thinking about the uncomfortable, private parts of being a human, and why we try so hard to hide those parts from one another. How might we look more closely to see suffering and join alongside our brothers and sisters in their pain? How might we look deeper to see the suffering in strangers-- the ones who cannot bathe themselves, or clothe themselves, those who do not look like us, or cannot hide behind their privilege. And let us kneel down to relieve their pain, to wash their feet, to look upon them with compassion and dignity, and see our humanity in one another.

"The future is, most of all, in the hands of those people who recognize the other as a 'you' and themselves as part of an 'us.' We all need each other."- Pope Francis

Kristy Powell Photography

Kristy Powell Photography

hard things

People can do hard things. Women can do hard things. Mothers can do hard things. I can do hard things.

Mothers grow humans just underneath their own skin. We love our babies when they are just a dream and when they are the size of a poppy seed. We impossibly carry on after we mis-carry our child. We can do hard things.

Mothers birth children through stretching, cramping, ripping, cutting. With pain, needles, scalpels, and bravery. We can do hard things.

Mothers feed our babies with bruised and bloody breasts, day and night, and night and day. We bounce and rock and shush our newborns while we are still bleeding. We can do hard things.

Mothers worry. Not just about the next virus or scraped knee, but about our sweet daughter becoming a mean girl, or not making friends. We worry about what our worries will be in five years and 10 years. We worry that we might do something that separates us from our children once they have grown. We can do hard things.

Mothers stay at home doing the work of raising children. The unbroken, thankless, guilt-ridden, lonely, post-partum-depression-y work of raising children. We can do hard things.

Mothers work outside of our homes. Our alarm clocks howl too early and our inboxes stay open too late, our home and work responsibilities wrestle like our toddlers, and some days our pumping equipment weighs almost as heavily as our guilt. We can do hard things.

Mothering is hard. But mothers can do hard things. And in turn, our children will learn how to do hard things too.

Kristy Powell photography 

The months of Declan: six... and seven (and a half)

My good habits of cataloguing my babies' happenings has made its way to the bottom of my to-do list because life with two kids (who don't sleep through the night... or even mostly through the night), a full time job with an annual evaluation fast approaching, a do-it-yourself kitchen remodel, and an unrelenting list of things to remember for preschool is  N O  J O K E. So, in short recap: trick-or-treating in rabbit bonnets, learning to sit, crawl, and stand, meeting his aunts and uncles all the way from Kentucky to Kathmandu, celebrating birthdays and Thanksgiving with the Hogues and Christmas with the Smalls, speed crawling to the Christmas tree to pull down the lights time and time again, and on pace to be eating a whole grilled cheese by nine months just like his dad. Our darling boy loathes the snow, has never seen a power cord he doesn't want to chew, can take his sister's heat, more or less is a little koala perched on my shoulder most hours of the day, and only knows how to smile if his whole mouth is open wide.