The MotherVerse Blog: mothering out loud

Sally said that my knee bones stick out too far so that means I’m chicken-footed. She also said my family is dirt poor cause we got plastic wrap in the windows instead of glass, but momma said that plastic wrap costs more than glass so we actually got more money and we change the plastic […]

Leaving home to come home.
I open the door and am struck by the smell of darkness and wet concrete. It has been over a year that I have been struggling with this depression and anxiety and the smell of the evening is the smell of that struggle in some perverted way. I make my way […]

By the time I became pregnant for the second time, we had been trying for a year. My firstborn son was three-years-old. I became pregnant almost instantly with my first child so we were surprised and confused by how long it took for this next pregnancy to happen.
I knew I was pregnant at the first […]

When I was pregnant with my youngest son, my mother had a sudden medical crisis. An ulcer (we did not know she had) perforated and she was profoundly and acutely sick for much of my pregnancy.
My mother required emergency surgery and spent several weeks in ICU. My sisters and I would visit her daily and […]

I entered motherhood unknowingly and surprisingly without much previous consideration, although I was 32-years-old. My husband and I decided “let’s do it” and so it was done on the first try. When I found out I was pregnant, I was scared, disappointed, and full of regret. I couldn’t do this. I didn’t want to do […]

The fog, the rain, and my sick Sam slumbering fitfully on the sofa. I feel as though I am trapped in the movie Blade Runner sans the action. Lately I feel in between things, as though I am on pause.
I tried to meditate the other day and it became profoundly clear how addicted to distraction […]

When my oldest son was ten-days-old my father died. I was still rather dazed, sleep-deprived, healing from my C-section, and wondering how I was going to do this mama thing, when my sister called to give me the grim news.
I had found out that my dad had advanced lung cancer when I was five-months pregnant. […]

I think my family was strange while I was growing up. Unique, maybe is a better word. Unlike others, I suppose. I was always so self-conscious growing up, I never knew if it was me or my family. Did everyone’s family follow bizarre customs all their own? Did they all act as though it were […]

“What are you afraid of?”
“I am afraid I am going to die.”
“You are. But what are you afraid of?”
My friend’s perfunctory and almost cavalier response annoyed me but I intuitively knew he meant something else.
I had a mole removed. I am always having moles and radical freckles removed it seems. I grew up with suntan […]

The day I found out I was pregnant with my oldest son, I stared long at my abdomen in the mirror. Nothing was different externally yet. But still I stared hard to see if I could see some miniscule change; an expanding, a breath, a sign that something other was taking hold and taking over. […]