If only I knew then what I feel now. In my clinical practice as a psychologist, I specialized in women’s reproductive and maternal mental health long before being pregnant for over a year. Getting pregnant with my son was easy. The subsequent months of his development were filled with surprising enjoyment, international travel, and wild […]
I was so irrevocably jostled by motherhood that in the grips of a hysterical episode in my son’s third month, my husband and I questioned whether we’d made the right choice to have a child. We mothers are always joking about the funds we’ll need to save for our children’s future therapy due to our […]
It’s a black box, parenting, and even blacker when ill health complicates matters. I am not a person who relishes infinite choices, paths ahead all equally fraught and delicious. I like guidelines and known entities, maps and strategies. Parenting is, understandably, a challenge for someone like me, who wants to know what’s coming next. Even […]
I’m not mourning my old life; I’m merely coming face-to-face with what might have been if I hadn’t experienced an unintended pregnancy. All eyes in the enormous, bustling foyer of New York’s Museum of Modern Art are burning the back of my head with judgmental stares. My defiantly exhausted 2-year-old son is mightily shrieking and […]
As a mother, I try to do the right thing, and often I succeed. But sometimes I fail in ways that are hard for me to recognize. According to an article in the Washington Post, a recent study shows that parents who reinforce ideas of superiority and entitlement during the developmental stage between ages 7 and 11 […]
You’re a worthy human being who doesn’t deserve to have their blood drained by Grandpa. And if you’re sick of that shit, here’s what you can do about it. (Trigger Warning: Mentions of physical, emotional, and sexual abuse) So there’s a book from R.L. Stine’s Goosebumps series called Vampire Breath. In it, two siblings wander into their basement, somehow […]
My son has grown so accustomed to having all eventualities worked out for him that it’s working against both of us. My son is 6 and a half and I’ve only been late to pick him up from school twice. Usually, I’m early, and he emerges cheerful to find me already waiting for him on […]
Despite how counterintuitive it seems, leaning into trauma might be the very antidote to drowning in it. There is no one “right” way to feel after experiencing pregnancy loss. The trauma continuum is vast and varied. Every woman comes to this loss with different maternal hopes, reproductive histories, pregnancy fantasies, relationships with their bodies, interpersonal […]
