The headline—
I’m launching a new section here called “womb space,” where I’ll publish content relating to the womb. This will include personal essays on my own experiences, interviews, art, poetry, and usual reflections on all aspects of fertility, infertility, loss, pregnancy, birth, abortion, creativity, parenthood, and possibly more.
While I mean the literal womb, I also mean the figurative and energetic womb. These pieces, like most of what I’m writing, are about the thing and is about more than the thing. So I hope you’ll come along whatever “womb” means to you.
They’ll arrive to you just like you receive any issue of Birdseed, so no action necessary, but you can find them here over time. These pieces are shimmers of one prism, and part of a family — a constellation — so I want them to live in a collective space (a digital womb!).
Some content will be available for all subscribers; all of it will be available for paid subscribers. Thank you for your readership, and for your support of my work which means a great deal.
I welcome any feedback (comments! emails! ideas for collaborations!) and hope that you feel loved and seen, wherever you fall in this constellation. Maybe you’re a star in it, and maybe you’re scoping it from lightyears away.
The context—
For months I’ve been working on elements of exploration into vast unknowns, which are also me trying to make sense of vivid, embodied realities. For me currently, this is the postpartum experience. What I find myself generating are paintings, poems, reflections, insights, and questions for others. They are mechanisms of healing, meaning-making, sense making, and power play.
I wrote a few weeks ago about how creative the postpartum period has been for me, which has surprised me. As a lifelong reproductive rights advocate, I’ve always had a fierce and strong aversion to the idea that as women, our reproductive organs, are central to our existence. That is, I’m a person, and I happen to have a uterus. The two are independent factors. I’m not a person-with-a-uterus.
Alas.
It has startled me to recognize that some of my most creative — creatively honest and powerful — times have correlated to — nay, have been caused by — experiences with my womb. A miscarriage in early-2021 dropped me deeply in, and then the agonizing process of getting pregnant, staying pregnant, having a child, and now… existing with that child in my world. Most of this I’ve not shared about publicly.
While the feminist in me eschews any essentialist correlation between my “fertility” and my value as a creative, the philosopher in me is amazed at how pungent and fertile the womb space can be. This can be true whether you have a uterus or not; whether you have or want children or not.
The womb space can be both painfully corporeal and utterly abstract. Giving yourself over to its wild unpredictability — riddled, barren, mysterious, and fruitful all at once — can bring with it many, many gifts. Gifts are not always purely pleasurable.
On sharing—
I always wonder whether and how to share what I create. But with this topic in particular, with a shadowed and deeply personal tilt, my pause has been much greater for a few reasons:
1) privacy, obviously.
I needed or need the time I need (or my family may) to personally experience and process (even if that’s ongoing) before letting others in. But I value openness and vulnerability even and perhaps especially when it feels risky, though not dangerous, masochistic, or gratuitous (I have been there). I’ve always been that person who shares something that feels ordinary and someone confusingly responds, “Wow thank you for being so vulnerable.”
As a writer, I spent my entire career hidden behind sharp, articulations for others or opining on big issues. This period of my life has been the time when I, a lizard, have slowly rolled over from showing you my horned, hardened, though colorful back to my very soft underbelly. There is inherent trust between the sharer, me, and the receiver, you, although I know you owe me nothing.
A wise friend reminded me that the more personal it is the more universal it becomes, and I thought, OHH yes. That’s it. My vision for Birdseed all along has been to share quirky particulars of the weeds and find ways that you, dear reader, however different your life and body may be, can feel a pang and think “OHH yes” too.
2) Responsibility to others.
I take great responsibility when sharing something personal because you never know how it’s going to land, hit, trigger, or inspire another. Of course, it may not at all and that’s OK too. But this isn’t a 2004 LiveJournal, people. I care a lot about holding space as witness for others in their experiences, especially women with their experiences of womb-ness. In fact I held a virtual gathering called Womb Space earlier this year that I dream of expanding.
But how can one hold space for others via writing? I’m not sure you can, or if you can its tenuous. Words take on greater responsibility, as little typed witnesses. The right words have to hit at the right moment as something arises in the reader. It’s ephemeral.
Something can be personal but not intimate, or intimate but not personal. I’m committed to mindfulness in how I share because my ultimate hope is that it serves others or the world in any small way— as a spaceholder, catalyst, love song, truth bomb, etc.
3) Alienation from the universal.
I thought - am I that girl? Am I some lame mommy blogger (no shade LOL!) Is this going to be boring, too niche, too this or too that? Will people be annoyed, turned off, confused, pissed, etc.? First of all, WHO CARES, I know. But second of all, who cares - I mean I care! BUT.
The seismic shift I made in my creating over the past few years was to commit to creating from the inside out, rather than outside in. That is tough, phew! But my duty first is to the truth of my own experience, my own dharma. Sharing from where I sit and am planted is the best chance I have at sharing something of value for you. It’s the best chance I have at keeping myself intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually honest.
Again, see above wisdom that the more personal is the more universal. Even when I’m writing about a womb, I’m not only writing about a uterus. I invite you to think about your own womb space - your sphere of mysterious creativity that is all your own.