Behind the Mask
A friend who’s read my recent blog posts emailed last week to kindly ask if I was going through post-partum depression and to offer her support if I was. By the end of the day, I knew why her question
Sweat-Soaked Surrender
In the hundred days since my daughter’s birth, there have been times when the sleep snatched from her perpetually hungry lips is not enough, making it a struggle to apply the balm of her smiles to my exhaustion and not
Nothing Like a Mother’s Love
Two nights ago, after nursing my child into a milk coma, I pulled on my thickest socks and softest pajamas, smeared my swollen neck with Vicks VapoRub, and the smell of camphor brought tears to my post-birth eyes. Six weeks
Between Art & Love
I took a literature class in college overseen by a wonderfully eccentric professor with a puffed black bun and a coffee cup coordinating with her rhinestone spectacles who believed that diverging from the syllabus but remaining on topic with what it
Smorgasbord Mommy
Before my daughter’s birth, I was determined never to become that mom. You know, the one who forces neighbors within a twenty-mile radius to keep the pediatrician’s number on speed dial and who requires a second medical opinion when defining
Stargazing
Sitting up at night with my infant child, my feet rocking the glider on their own, plots begin to stir and thicken as characters bob to the surface in the sleepy cauldron of my mind. Tomorrow, I think, swaddling my
Sendimentality: Celebrating Life’s Layers
Since my daughter Adelaide’s birth three weeks ago, I have never been more aware of the sediment of years composing my life. I felt the tectonic shifting of these layers as I slipped a picture of our newborn over the
A Harvest Bounty of Her Own
Running parallel to our lane are six rows of tiny saplings my husband just planted. Their naked branches are easily bent by the wind sweeping across our valley, making it hard to imagine the harvest bounty they will one day