At Home, Arlington, Massachusetts
Coming off of the pill is fucking horrible. Needless to say, today was not good. It literally feels like every hormonal onslaught I've avoided for the last four years is crashing in upon me. I knew that being on the pill was regulating my hormones – it was apparent from the get go that I was one of the women whose hormones were regulated on the pill rather than sent whacko. But now it means everything is going ape shit on me. I haven’t felt this type of weepy apathy in years. It feels like everything inside of me was first ratcheted up to 1,000 and then abruptly turned off. First I was angry and stressed for most of the day. Literally everything went wrong with registration for my summer directed study course that could go wrong. Forms hadn't been turned in correctly, administrators didn't reply to emails with information, and other administrators would only tell me what I needed to know after I sent them multiple emails and left two voice messages. Then when it finally got figured out, I just turned into a big ball of tears and I've been crying for the last two hours. I forgot what it feels like to want to hide from yourself. That's the worst of it. That's the worst part of PMS – the almost maddening desire to get away from yourself, to escape from yourself. The feeling that somewhere, outside of yourself, you know that it's ok. But for now, you are your own worst prison. A ball of furry, shame, or sorrow, interchangeably surrounding your best held dreams and decimating them before your eyes. And what's worse – you know you will not stay your enemy. You know that once that release comes, all will be right. But nothing, nothing you do in the moment can bring that physical, animal sense of release. Only blood will do so. Just hold on to then and then the chemical balance will come, and you will know when it does come. Until then, only Jesus.
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At Home, Arlington, Massachusetts
Today is a big day for Nation family reproductive history. This is my first day off of the pill. I've been trying to write about the end of using the pill for a few days now, but I just haven't been able to do so until now. It honestly just didn't really register until last night when I went to set my alarm for this morning. I didn't set my 9:00am alarm for the pill and though I haven't set it for a week every month for the last four years, this was what caused the reality to really hit home. I don't intend to really ever set that alarm again. An era of my reproductive life has concluded. Birth control is a funny thing and I've been thinking about it a lot recently. I am deeply thankful for its invention and thankful that I live in a time and age in which I have the option of easily separating sex from procreation for a time. Granted, it does mean that I have been constantly tempted to view those things as fundamentally separated and fundamentally in my control, but I also have had the opportunity to learn the lesson of surrendering my will to God. I get to choose to step into a new role, following the Lord as I do so. This thing – motherhood – is not my own story. I belong to the bigger story of Eve – the story which involves helping and suffering, adoption and heirs, waiting and promises, the Bride and childbirth. I don't get to choose whether I face a reckoning with this story. I live in a time and place in which the world is constantly trying to trick me into thinking that I can escape this story if I want to, that I can wrest this story into being my own, and mine alone. But all women everywhere will stand face to face with their potential, abandoned, lost, or gained motherhood at some point and decide how to engage this story that has always been bigger than our small individual selves. Lord, I am small and I am usually pretty afraid of this story that you have spun into motion. And most days I think that by expelling a baby from my womb, I will inevitably expel my brains along with it. But I am trying, really trying to believe that the story you created is not a harmful story for my person. That you did not make me second rate. That by being a mother, I will not be losing everything you have created me to be. That you have created me to be a self and a mother, and that I do not need to be a mother to be a self. And ultimately, that motherhood was not intended to be a destructive force that shuts down a woman's gifts, talents, and strengths, but rather something that can be wondrous. (Image by Erik Cleves Kristensen, "Mother painting.") Athenaeum, Boston, Massachusetts
I love the Athenaeum. I love spending days here, lost in the silence and the coating of whispered sounds that tingles my skin and soothes my mind. I love losing myself in the world of my thesis, fellowshipping with my sad, beautiful sisters across the centuries who desired usefulness for their Creator and gave themselves up for it. They feel like my friends, their voices so clear and challenging. They were platinum – priceless and hard. I love being able to pick books off the endless shelves and find delight in them. Tonight I picked up a book of five hundred self-portraits and I could look at it all evening long. I love being able to walk out the door to grab lunch or dinner, and a coffee. I love the rain against the huge windows and I love the lights on Park Street. I love the romance of this place. As I sit here enjoying my little pool of warm lamplight spreading across my wooden table, I sorrow over the reality that once I start having children, all of this will go away. The silence, the mental space, the communion with women across the centuries, the freedom, the romance. I no longer struggle to want to have those children that will take all of this away from me, but I still find myself mourning the inevitable. Will I keep my mind? Will this world of thought that I have been building and growing dissipate like the morning dew? It feels too tenuous to remain – like it will disperse in an instant. Right now all of my thoughts, all of my ideas float with me throughout the day. But it seems hardly likely that they will be able to collect around me when there are other people connected to my being, my reality. The mists of thought will vanish, and in the light I'll look down to find a pack of little faces clinging to me for life, requiring me to die so that they can live. They will be my parasites and I will love them. Lord Jesus, please help me to love them. Please enable me to delight in them, to find sublime joy in what will be required of me to give up for their sake. But please, Lord, please also don’t let all of this go away. Please, let me keep some small corner of mist. Let me retreat there every so often. Please don't take my mind away. At Home, Arlington, Massachusetts
Well, I've started reading Taking Charge of Your Fertility. Which is terrifying. WHY do all of these women's health guides always feel like they think they have to romanticize the female bodily experience in order to make us women interested in it? Just be a medical guide, don't try to tell me all of the reasons why I should distrust the medical establishment because they disdain the natural processes and a woman's body. It is exciting, though. Here we go. The lid is about to be taken off of Pandora's box. I do think that we need to wait one month longer before we start trying. I really want to start after the next round, but if I got pregnant right away (and even though it's a big if, it's still an if), I would be due mid-December and that seems crazily difficult to swing with graduation. I guess I could make it work? But one month more isn't going to hurt anyone. Trey found out today that he has been accepted at Brown. Still waiting to hear from Harvard, but at least we know he has Brown. The day has been full of so many thoughts, mostly just thankfulness, but it also puts a lot of my plans and thoughts almost into motion. I am really, incredibly excited for this next stage. I'm excited for where it seems God is leading us, and I am excited for the changes they entail for me, too. I have good work ahead of me: the work of bearing children, the work of mothering, the work of editing, and maybe the work of ministry in the church. Right now, I have really hard work to get my thesis finished, and it is incredibly hard. In the future I hope to have more hard work on a dissertation to do (I discovered an exciting UK option at Birmingham this morning!), but that's for the future. I don't need to prove anything to anyone – I just need to think the thoughts I like to think and see if anyone out there wants to hear them. And in the interim, I'm excited for the hard work of trying to be a mother. At Home, Arlington, Massachusetts
Trey and I just had sex and I knew in an instant that I wanted to start trying to get pregnant sooner than we had been planning. We thought through it all and the end of March is the earliest I could get pregnant without risk of giving birth at the end of my fall semester. So we're going for it. After this round of birth control, I'll only have one more round left. Bah. It feels good. At Home, Arlington, Massachusetts Yesterday I made the mistake of clicking through on an article somebody posted on Facebook. It was some kind of photo editorial celebrating birth. I should have known that all it consisted of was pictures of women heaving and crying in labor – and lots and lots of blood and grey babies. My immediate reaction was revulsion. I've never been good at gore, but what I really reacted to was how these pictures portrayed the women. The photos were being celebrated as empowering and beautiful, but really it just showed their subjects’ pain. Their faces were often obscured, too, in favor of highlighting their bodies, and the result was that it highlighted the way these women's bodies had turned into ovens of life. It's not a bad thing that women's bodies bloat and grow in order to create something. But in the attempt to capture intimate moments of birth, these pictures somehow portrayed women as nothing more than crying conduits. There was no glory for these women. Lots of tenderness, but nothing transcendent. It was the most animalistic I've ever seen women portrayed. Peter Singer is a gross, gross man, but I think he's on to something when he says that humans and animals are most like each other in suffering. Humanity was not destined to suffer and when we do, we demonstrate that which is most carnal about our existence. Though many women want to glorify the birthing process, it seems to me that the pain involved - the wrecking of the female body it entails - is not a sign of glory, but a reminder that in our rejection of our creator the mark of God's image in even something as glorious as childbirth has been horribly disfigured. Pain is not transcendent. Pain does not make something meaningful. Mothers sacrifice much to give birth to their children, but in that sacrifice itself there isn't hope. Like everything else that is painful in this world, it too can be a monotonous and wearisome reminder of the "banality of evil." That being said, last night was the most I've felt a "maternal longing" in years. I'm ready. It's February and we plan to go off birth control in May. I have to admit that since Christmas, I've been really bad at remembering my birth control. I keep forgetting to refill it and I've been worse at taking it on time than ever before. We've been doubling up the protection since I started school full time, so I don't think there's any chance my slip-ups could result in getting pregnant. But I think subconsciously my brain knows that it's close to no longer thinking about little pills and it’s just slowly letting go of things. Right before I went to bed, I had to search for a stock photo of a baby for a blog post for work and it was the first time in who knows how long that all of the sudden I wanted a baby. Last Tuesday at women's Bible study, I found myself not being able to care less about all of the babies in the room. But yesterday, I helped C. into her pink coat and owl hat and all of the sudden, I was ready. I've never liked babies. I've never understood them. But I've always loved little kids. As I lay in bed falling asleep, I thought about having little kids in the house and receiving little hugs and I knew the timing was right. I will be ok if we can't get pregnant, but for now, it's just good to know that I'm ready to wrap up this stage of life and to delve into trying the next. H. and D.'s House, Chattanooga, Tennessee Parents are made for leaving behind. This is what I've been thinking about since Thanksgiving. It's been rolling around the back of my mind, but it's a thought that I've had a hard time giving traction to. During our visit to Pittsburgh, it really struck me again that I don't have to be my parents, that I can be different from them. I can be free without loving my parents any less. Connected to this realization, I thought about my own future children and how one day they will feel the same way towards me. I will never give them a perfect enough home that they should want to stay under me. They will feel as frustrated with me as I have felt at times toward my own parents. Frustration isn't even the right word, though. It's more the basic human need to differentiate oneself from those who have come before. I am not my parents, they are not me. I can't seem to find a way to express myself adequately here. My families all love each other deeply and we all want to be with each other. But there is still the issue of how the generations relate to each other. We get in each other's ways and often can't seem to understand what is truly service and blessing for the other. Parent and the child waltz around one another trying to figure out how best to love. It seems to me that at stake in so much of the parent-child dynamic is what must or should be done to maintain closeness. I want to feel closer to my parents who live far away, so I feel pressure to replicate their choices and selves in my life. We are all afraid of not feeling close to each other, because in fact we aren't "close" but live thousands of miles apart. In the end, I think more and more that what we have to accept is that parents are made to be left. Marriage is the most important relationship in a person's life – it is the only relationship where there might be some expectation of lifelong companionship. Parenting is a short-lived endeavor. It is in incubator – short, intense, and hot – and then it must be turned off. For me, I need to turn off my desire for my parents to parent me. I want to stay in the incubator, but the time to turn off the lights has long passed. That time has passed and is gone and we are no longer sharers of the same space. As I think about having children of my own, I do not need to contemplate how to keep them for the entirety of the rest of my life. I will give them life and then it will be their own. I will have Trey afterwards. Every family is nothing more than a succession of incubators, maintained and cared for by a pair of life-long friends. This should be a relief. I am not my parents; I am not my children. I am only myself. At Home, Arlington, Massachusetts It's 11:30 at night and instead of writing I should be putting in another solid hour of homework before going to bed. But I've had so many thoughts about babies swirling around my head for the last two weeks, and since I haven't given myself time to put words down so far, I figure I'm just going to have to take time away from my C.S. Lewis paper if I'm going to write before these thoughts have faded completely. Where to start... I guess I'll work backwards. Since coming home from Thanksgiving, I've had the happy realization that with the arrival of December I'm now about six months away from going off of birth control and starting what seems like the daunting process of "trying to get pregnant." It's kind of heady to think about it. It's adventurous sounding, and kind of crazy sounding. Which is sad, because shouldn't it just feel natural? It is what our bodies are naturally supposed to do. But then again, maybe God created our bodies to involve a sense of adventure. It also sounds steamy. I couldn't possibly say why, but sex to get pregnant just sounds hot. I know it could start to feel like a task, but I hope it stays exciting. Fingers crossed it's going to be fun. I am really starting to feel ready for this. I'm not ready for parenting, and I sometimes still feel like it will be the end of all I know to be good under heaven, but I'm ready for this next thing. I don't feel baby gaga, but I do feel hopeful. I don't need to be completed, and I'm not bored, but there's a sweetness to it that I'm ready to invite in and take on. While we were home in Pittsburgh, K. came to our party and brought her seven-week old daughter with her. I held her for a long time. I didn't melt and I honestly could have been just as happy talking on the other side of the room, but it was good to be there, holding her. I wish I could come up with some other word to describe it, but I can't think of anything other than "sweetness." It wasn't warm, it wasn't satisfying, it wasn't tender, it wasn’t ovary-provoking, it wasn't holy. It was just sweet. And it was happy. At Home, Arlington, Massachusetts
It dawned on me just now that I don't have much of a tendency to see children as my pride. I was thinking about past societies and how even men in those days saw offspring as a mark of their place in their world, a proud mark of their manhood. Creating children was the primary task of creation. I was thinking about these days and how much that perspective has vanished. Children are a sacrifice rather than a badge of honor. And then it occurred to me that I also operate under this assumption. But I can't figure out why. I was homeschooled, a culture in which most people at least talk as if children are the primary source of pride. I think my parents talk as if their children are their biggest accomplishments. But it's not in me somehow. Underneath it all, I didn't inherit this view of offspring and I can't figure out why. At Home, Arlington, Massachusetts
I haven't been doing so well with the whole "having kids" thing this summer. I was ok for most of the beginning of the summer. The first Greek term kept me really busy and I just didn't think much about it. But recently, I've been having a hard time. Fear is behind it. And the knowledge of the sacrifice it will take. I bought a copy of Taking Charge of Your Fertility right before we went on vacation with Daniel and Bethany. It's good I have it now, but thumbing through the book was a bad idea. It's a very graphic and very brutal reminder of what I'm about to try to do to my body. And it's a reminder of how much every aspect of it is hard work, and uncertain work. Ultimately, I set the book aside and have decided not to look at it until shortly before I'm going off of birth control. There are many women I know who would devour this book with joy. Their bodies, and bodies in general, are mysteries to be figured out and enjoyed. But I've never liked riddles and I've never been comfortable with my body, so there are two huge strikes right there. Yesterday, I was doing research for my paper for the Jonathan Edwards class I'm taking. I'm researching and writing on the women that surrounded Edwards and it's reminding me just how much I love research and how much regret I have that I didn't do grad school earlier in life. I firmly believe that God gave me everything in my 20s for good reasons, but I admit that sometimes it's hard to see those reasons. I wish now that I was ten years younger and going straight out of undergrad into a PhD track. But then, I don't really wish that, because I wouldn't be the person I am today and everything about the last ten years has given me the interests and voice I have. So that's that. But it is really hard to look at my life and the reality that my chances are so incredibly small of doing further academic work once children are in the picture and not feel some regret. The problem is that I can't escape the idea that my life will truly be over once I have kids. Trey has been concerned about this in me from the beginning of our marriage. He tells me I always talk as if having kids will be tantamount to self-immolation. I always deny that this is the case, but the closer I get to actually trying to start a family, the more I see this to be true about me. Bearing and having children seems like it will be the total negation of Hannah. And I don't want that. But I struggle to know if my rejection of it isn't just pure selfishness. I want to homeschool. I want to be with my kids. I truly truly want those things. But I also want to be more than those things, not just for myself, but for my children. There is a big world, with so many interesting things to think about, and sometimes it feels like my soul will die if I don't have space, mentally and physically, to think about anything but children. Sometimes I feel so guilty for feeling this way – most women for most of history have not worried about these things. Identity is only a problem for the privileged twenty-first century woman. If I could change myself out for someone who never thought about these things and who was certain of herself and her space and who didn't have anything more to be known about herself than the community around her, I would. But I can't do that and that's not who I am, and so I struggle. Last night, Trey and I were lying in bed. I half-jokingly reminded him that hopefully in the next year or so, he won't be the only one with access to my body. We continued to joke about it, mostly about the differences between his and little babies’ touches. And then, all of the sudden, very quickly the joke dried up as the reality that everything about my body will be destroyed in the process of becoming a mother set in. My children will literally suck their life from me and it will take its toll on me, and on my husband. The only response I have to that reality when I face it is fear. And this is where I meet up with my sisters throughout all of the ages. My struggles with identity, my regret over lost opportunities, these things set the modern generations apart from the long chorus of motherhood. But the abject fear of giving up your physical self for the creation of another physical self unifies me with all who have gone before. It is raw and it is scary, and this, I think is the real source of my struggles with motherhood. |
About the ProjectThis is a very personal project. It tracks my growth and development as I journeyed toward motherhood over the recent years. It doesn't document every experience I had, and probably neglects my more joyful and peaceful moments in the frenzy of trying to communicate my fears, anxieties, and doubts. If you are a friend or loved one, please do not let anything you read here overshadow what you know of me personally. If you are a stranger, please remember that a living and flawed person stands behind these words. To all my guests here, please understand these are not political statements and try to extend me grace, even as I share my failures and foibles - I have repented of much of what I share. I don't share this journal as an exemplar, but rather out of the desire to share my hope that entrance to motherhood does not need to be a fearful thing - despite the very real fears I have fought against. Motherhood is simply a part of life and one through which I am discovering more of myself and my God. Archives
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