Profiles

One of the messages I hope people take away from my book is that it’s never too late to do this.

“She realized now that drudgery let her feel sorry for herself. It defined her. Without martyrdom, she had nothing, was nothing.”

Each of these examples illustrate how inadequate the “pro-life” and “pro-choice” language is to our realities.

I’ve been trying to figure out the question “who was my mom before me?” for most of my conscious life.

A huge part of healing my postpartum anxiety was learning how to be alone again in small, intentional ways.

Sometimes we have to find our own way through with whatever we have in front of us.

With a father who had very little but love to give, I understood love was the essential ingredient.

Distance is something to pay attention to—in a relationship to people and places, in the person sitting next to you, in your own self. 

Do I really know my country anymore? Did I ever know my country? Arguably, no, because the experience of living in America is so different across regions and races. 

Crystallizing all those fleeting details in a poem was a way to hold onto them—and really, to preserve my daughter’s babyhood. I was constantly stockpiling images in a not-so-secret attempt to stop time.

Motherhood is so much work—beautiful work, but still relentless work. It’s not a cosmic reward. It’s not a moral badge. It’s not something you “deserve.” It’s a full-body undertaking that eclipses you, rebuilds you, then asks for more.