savagemama

This last month my little girl has done some traveling, first to see her grandparents in the South then to my husband’s childhood home in the high desert of Central Oregon. Without really meaning to we’ve found ourselves taking her to all of the places we carry with us even though we barely know we do.

Taking Eliza to the South was like placing the last piece of a puzzle and allowed me to bring her home to Montana feeling much closer to where I grew up. She will not know the South as her own but she’ll know it as me just as I know the scent of sage and juniper as Seth. She’s helping me reconfigure home. And somehow that is comforting. [more]

In my group of friends there is no other subject like birth that can bring to the surface joy and fear, regret and judgment. We women take the births of our children seriously and to have someone sit in judgment of our experience is insulting. I often find that women are still sorting through their own birth expereinces years after their children are born trying to make sense of it all. So it’s no wonder that when we sit around someone’s living room wine glass in hand retelling these stories, we feel some need to justify our choices if not to each other, to ourselves. [more]

Growing up, I always thought I would have children. I have a brother and a sister who are much younger than I am and a boatload of cousins. Our family is tight-knit in our own southern, love-my-neck kind of way. When I looked at my life I always saw the sticky hands, curly hair and bare feet of babies. A miscarriage two summers ago forced me to look at the years ahead differently and I wasn’t very comfortable with what I saw.

One thing no one tells you about pregnancy is that the minute you find out you are pregnant your life changes. Whether you mean to or not, you begin to make plans. And when that being you are carrying falls away, it takes a while to untie the plans you’ve worked into a nice, neat bundle, to make the shift back to being one person moving through the world. And most often, in our culture, we do this untying alone. [more]