An Ode to this Body

PMDD is agony. It is made even more agonising by the lack of real scientific curiosity about it. All of the strategies I have found to cope have been developed by women who got tired of waiting for someone to save them, and who realised that maybe noone ever will. So they delved into the unknown depths of their bodies and their psyches and stitched together wisdom from allopathy, homeopathy and everything in-between. It’s not a science but it is enough. The only catch is that fellow PMDD warriors have to be willing to stay in our bodies. Especially when it is the least comfortable place in which to live. We have to stay, quiet and restive, listening to the responses to all the efforts we put into feeling some relief.

A strange blessing slipped in with the curse of medical misogyny. For now, it will have to do.… Read More An Ode to this Body

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The Choice

I’ll be honest: since I became a mom myself, I have found that Mother’s Day is not my fave. It stands as an annual reminder of how little has changed for mothers, and how they are still expected to hold up half the sky without support, taking comfort only in flowers and cards and burnt toast. Don’t get me wrong – I love being a mom. My children are the loves of my various lives. But I am acutely aware of all of the ways in which motherhood comes eas(ier) to me because of my privilege. And, in spite of that, it is still enormously difficult.… Read More The Choice

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Mother-Friendly

Maybe it’s the spirit of tough love tacitly encouraged by the BFHI. Maybe it’s the health system still recovering from the damage wrought by COVID-19. In this story, I saw a little bit of my own lonely, isolated moments of motherhood reflected. A combination of a system that assumes there is a singular way to teach mothers to feed their children, and a society that expects so much of mothers and asks that we bear the burden of tasks in private, in silence. … Read More Mother-Friendly

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On Working Without Guarantees and the Necessary Grief of Change Work

As esoteric as this all seems, it is much easier than a world in which we are tallying workshops held, and numbers of attendees, and spend on office stationery. It brings to bear the truth that those of us committed to development work know: this is heart work. We are in it because we are or want desperately to be helpers. Our hearts are in it. It makes sense that there will be heartache and grief involved. By facing this, and being honest with ourselves and one another, we perhaps give ourselves a real shot at being part of radical change.… Read More On Working Without Guarantees and the Necessary Grief of Change Work

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An Edible Woman

Silohouetted person looking up at night sky

The rich tapestry conjured up by the term ‘star stuff’ is lost in the pieces, and along with it, the nuance and complexity that make this life worth living after all. As a mother – or a child becoming a woman with children – my saving grace has been finding spaces in which to explore the nuance without guilt or caveat. The rooms I am most comfortable in are the ones in which I can gather all of myself together and share it with other whole mothers. Other spaces – the ones that require me to show up as just my breastfeeding journey, or my birth story, or my unalloyed delight at every moment of my children’s existence – are deeply uncomfortable at best, downright hostile at most. But the hardest rooms are the ones in which I am alone with the contradictions of motherhood. … Read More An Edible Woman

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