Here I have to give full credit to my ex (my wife, The Pragmatist, in the book; we got divorced just after the narrative ends). She is a dancer and we had always made her pursuit of her art a high priority in our life choices; when I began writing after our daughter was born, she was very encouraging of my need to pursue my own creativity. So she allowed me the time, when we could find it (that eternal caveat), to get a lot of the initial writing done.

The end result of your observations often drew a laugh from me as I read, for the candor, for the all-too-familiar equations and resultant equivocations you managed to nail. How did you come by the humor?

Honestly, I think I was in a state of extremely heightened anxiety, as the crumbling state of my marriage added to all the (very real) eco-concerns I talk about in the book. I was sublimating that other life anxiety into the environmental stuff, so it was really pretty extreme. And that kind of crazy anxiety is… well, funny, when you cop to it (and even funnier when you exaggerate it). I find humor in glimpsing the dark edges of life, when they aren’t sucking me all the way over the edge. So the book tries to ride that line.

Once my ex really took off and the anxiety slid into real depression, I was scared that taking antidepressants would take away too much anxiety and make me unable to write. I get all earnest and that’s just so… earnest (i.e. boring). Of course, once I realized that crying constantly wasn’t really helping me find the humor in life either, I caved. Thank god. My next book will be about getting off those pills, and the humor is in that story too, but it sure is harder to draw out.

I loved the way you gave “personality profile” names for your children that weren’t their actual names: Bright Eyes, the Percussionist, Mowgli. How did you navigate writing about your children, thinking about them reading the book later, etc.?

I definitely want to preserve my kids’ privacy as much as I can, within the larger template of broadcasting the details of their lives to the whole world. I want them to feel in control of their own life narrative, so renaming them as characters allows both them and other people to perceive a little distance between my actual real-life kids and their book selves. I don’t post photos of their faces and you can’t tag me in photos on Facebook (unless they ONCE AGAIN changed all my default settings when I wasn’t paying attention) because people will tag my name with a photo of my child and I just don’t like having their images attached to any real name. It’s perhaps my Luddite side, or maybe I’m a closet libertarian, but I want them to make their own conscious choices about exposure and privacy. As long as I can write whatever I want to write. So, the names, I feel, both illuminate the kids and obscure them a bit. (They love them, too, especially Mowgli.)

How did you balance motherhood, working, and writing? Any words of advice for writing mothers?

Yikes. I hate that I’m about to say this, but, well, I’m just too lame to come up with something more original and it’s actually true (if unbearably trite): my word of advice is “balance.” I have to continually rearticulate my priorities to myself and others, so I can remember that for me (and I know this isn’t the right order for everyone), the kids come first, my nursing career second, and the writing is third. Which is not to say that I haven’t thrown our lives into complete chaos for the last few months so I could bring this book into the world; it’s just that if getting the next marketing task done would mean I’m not available to help with homework, it’s the marketing task that doesn’t get done.

And I’m way behind on my blogging, but I’m going on a bunch of field trips this spring that are taking me far from my laptop. For me, having clear priorities lets me deal with the day-to-day when I’m feeling like I should be doing lots more to give the book its wings, and instead I’m playing catch. I interviewed one publicist and when I got off the phone with her, I just KNEW that she would make me a famous writer, but I also knew I would have about ten stress-related health conditions when we got there. So I hired a more low-key consultant who helps me but who doesn’t really understand Twitter any better than I do, which is just fine, since she takes pressure off of me instead of adding it on.

That all said, if I had it to do over, I would have taken a leave of absence from work for a couple of months (if I could have afforded it) and filled my deep freeze with easy meals or frozen pizza and hired a housekeeper and an assistant. The book launch is not the time to be pinching pennies—it’s more of a break open that piggybank and give it all you’ve got moment.

When in your process of writing the book did you realize you were writing a book? How long from start to finish and what were you the most surprised to learn as you went through the process?

Let’s see, the youngest was born just as I turned 38, and I started writing a few weeks later. It was on my 40th birthday that I admitted to myself and a few of my closest friends that I wanted to turn it into a book. And the book launched the week of my 44th birthday, as the “baby” turned 6. There were several non-productive post-divorce depression months and almost a year of waiting for my editor to have time to get to my manuscript (my brilliant and wonderful all superlative editor—it was worth the delay). Most surprising to me was simply that I was actually doing it—I barely even finished any of my college papers. So I was pretty thrilled to see myself having matured enough to follow such a big project through to completion.

In your Q and A session in Sebastopol at Copperfield’s last week, you mentioned that this book chronicles a very specific time in your life when the tighter domestic orbit of the household with three children underfoot heightened a sense of helplessness and anxiety about the world the children would inherit. You mentioned a current book project as well as an action-oriented blog. Would you share that blog link with us and talk a bit about how A million tiny things propelled you towards your second book project and your current philosophies?

Um, I also think I said I hate blogging and am not very good at it (reference above where I say I’m behind). But I do it, some. Here are the links: A million tiny things and A School Garden Year

The Million Tiny Things blog follows my meandering thoughts in general about parenting, the environment, activism (check last August’s posts for my arrest photos), and sustainability in all the various senses of the word. The school garden blog was really intended to connect parents to our school garden program and what we do there, but that’s the blog which will inform the next book as it will be about how all those moments of composting and craziness are what pulled me back into the land of the living.

As for the change in my focus, writing A Million Tiny Things helped me articulate and observe that particular batch of anxieties, and then not have to hold them so tightly. I also think it’s a natural evolution for mothers to emerge into a wider sphere as their children do, so I think it’s just a normal progression for me to be more focused on the bigger picture now. Systemic solutions, ho!

But on the way to the larger picture, I need to stop and look at the process of grieving and pain that has led me there. The first book was written as an act of service to other moms who might be feeling crazy like me and could use some company in that craziness. Then, when I was getting divorced, I immersed myself in other people’s divorce narratives as means of finding that kind of company for myself. I hope to offer my story into that library of healing possibilities; how we can connect our hopes for the earth and our children with our hopes for ourselves in a very concrete way. So some other mom who is bereft and suicidal can feel she’s not alone there, and that there’s a way out.

Any mentors you wish to share with us, or suggestions for further reading?

Oooh, yes. I adore Laurie Wagner, who teaches in-person in the Bay Area and also online. When I was just dipping my toe in the water of the writing thing, she had me write a list of what I wanted to write about, and that list could probably serve as a table of contents for the book. That reminds me, I need to get in touch with her as I think her particular style of pushing you into the truth of your story will be essential to getting me past the initial difficulties of writing a book about depression. Her site: 27 powers.

And for writing about motherhood and the environment, Sandra Steingraber’s Raising Elijah is my favorite. She doesn’t fritter away her energy on non-productive anxiety like I do.

Full-time nurse, part-time environmentalist, and all-the-time mother, Kenna Lee lives in Sebastopol, California, with her three semi-feral children and several domesticated animals. Her book, A Million Tiny Things: a mother’s urgent search for hope in a changing climate (Mole’s Hill Press, 2012) is available now through your local independent bookseller; for more information, visit her website.

Sunday, March 9

I thought the process of bleeding away my second pregnancy was over.  Dressed in dark jeans, wedge heels, and a fitted black v-neck that exposed the freckled skin of my chest, I bounded down the stairs in my mother’s house, surprised at the easy flight of my feet over carpet.  I can do this, I thought to myself.  I can be happy. 

But then, as I hopped down to the final stair, a clot of blood plummeted from somewhere inside me, stopping just before it escaped my body.  This isn’t over yet.  I felt my body reel back against the momentum of acceptance I had been trying to build.  My belly hung heavy, throbbing, and empty. 

With thick red threatening the fresh denim that hugged my hips, I froze at the bottom of the stairs facing a framed collage of photos from my wedding day.  I pleaded with my husband’s dimples, his squinting, cloudy eyes.  When can I leave this behind?

Then from my left I heard a deep, primitive yowl.  I turned to find the tiger eyes of my mom’s large ginger cat peering at me from his lowered head.  His whiskers extended towards me as he tracked the scent of blood. 

Thursday, March 6, morning

Having called the doctor, my sister, and Blake, I replaced a heavy, red maxi-pad with a weightless, white one.  I changed from blood-stained grey cotton into fresh, black lycra pants.  Then I waited.  For my sister.  For the doctor.  For Blake.  For the news.  But I already knew.  Nothing so small could survive this. 

I crawled into the living room and lined the seat of the recliner with a tan towel before climbing in.  Then I covered myself with the quilted patchwork of pink and blue calico my grandmother made for my high school graduation.  When I closed my eyes, I pictured Blake, driving home from work after receiving my call: “Can you come home?  Something’s wrong . . . Erin’s taking me to the doctor.”  His response had been simple—“I’ll be there soon.”  He didn’t ask any questions or make me say, Blake, I’m losing the baby.  He just came.  He couldn’t have known what was wrong, still, I imagined his eyes following the painted white border of the interstate over hills, around curves, and beyond the horizon, squinting toward a place in the future where everything will be all right, seeing that place like he always does, even when I don’t believe it exists.

When I felt my two-year old son squirming up under the thin weight of the quilt, I discouraged him, saying “Mommy feels sick.  George, please . . .” Then I gave in, slid my hands around his chest, feeling the ridges of his rib cage as I guided him up unto my lap.  He squeezed out from beneath the blue floral border, nestled his blonde head against my shoulder, and raised his thick-lashed brown eyes to meet mine.  Forcing a giggle, he said, “See mommy, we are happy.”  As I drank in his expression—his dark eyelashes, raised eyebrows, lips pressed into a smile—I knew he was right.  But I couldn’t admit it yet, so I closed my eyes and watched spots of light dance behind my eyelids.  I envisioned the black, plastic bag slouched beside the dresser in my bedroom.  I remembered what was inside: maternity clothes, still dangling price tags.  I told myself, We have George.  It will happen again.  And even if it doesn’t . . . we have him.  I closed my eyes and rested against his small strength. 

Thursday, March 6, afternoon

By the time I heard the words—“we can’t detect a heartbeat”—I had already begun to move from mourning to acceptance.  Maybe this is best, I told myself.  Maybe something was wrong with the baby. 

I lay back against a stiff mattress, abdomen exposed, eyes closed.  I imagined George sleeping over Blake’s shoulder in the waiting room outside, his body ironing wrinkles into his dad’s button-up plaid.  I summoned the soft static of Blake’s fingertips circling the surface of my skin to replace the hospital sheets scratching my lower back, the hot weight of George’s sleeping body to protect me from the cold air that poured from a vent overhead.  I tried to imagine away the steel and ceramic, machines and measurement, but the slather of thick gel, the shocking cold of plastic, and the smell of sterilization grounded me there.  Eventually, the even voice of an ultrasound technician, barely audible above the hum and click of technology, commanded my attention.  “The fetus stopped growing at about five weeks.” 

Five weeks.  I inhaled the reality, felt it echo in a hollow space at the base of my throat. 

I heard the crackling static of the black and white monitor to my right and couldn’t help but look.  Its glow reminded me of my first ultrasound and the pixilated image of George’s fingers flexing across the screen, but this time I saw no hope, no miracle there.  Only fuzzy, grey flecks spitting shadows. 

When I closed my eyes to the eerie darkness of the room, my mind traveled backwards.  Five weeks.  Was the baby was still alive those nights in February, when I fell asleep under the weight of my Shakespeare anthology, when I worried that I couldn’t keep up with work, school, and pregnancy?  When I finally started dreaming about a baby girl with my dark eyes and Blake’s wide grin, was I picking out names for a lifeless child? Then as my memory moved forward, I remembered the muscle-wrenching that I shrugged off as morning sickness, the relief I had felt that my breasts weren’t swelling so much this time.  Maybe my body had been preparing me all along. 

Still, I doubted myself, wondering, Was it my fault somehow?  Should I have known something was wrong?  Then a whispered thought: Would it have mattered if I did? 

Ever since I had seen the cotton fibers of a pregnancy test swell, watched a pair of pink lines sweep across a plastic window, I had been telling myself that it was the second baby, that I was under a lot of stress with graduate school, and that it just didn’t feel the same.  Now I began to wonder, had it ever seemed real?  My stomach fluttered.

Saturday, March 8

For two days after the miscarriage, I perched in a nest of blankets and pillows, pressing a heating pad into my stomach as my body anchored me in loss.  As long as I had to sit still, muscles twisting around a void inside my abdomen, it was impossible to move on.  While my head moved back and forth to maintain the steady rocking of the recliner, my thoughts rolled between acceptance and guilt.  I fixed my eyes on the tan walls, striped curtains, and shadowed blinds of my living room.  I fixed my mind on facts and statistics.  Seventy percent of women who miscarry go on to have normal, healthy pregnancies.  Now, with early home pregnancy tests, we detect pregnancy so soon—before, women probably didn’t know when they lost early pregnancies.  I returned to the idea that something must have been wrong.  Maybe this was never a viable pregnancy.  Still I asked myself, shouldn’t I feel sadder?  What kind of a woman, what kind of mother, am I?

When Blake talked to his boss, his end of the conversation comforted me:  “No, actually, she’s doing all right, really good, I think . . . but you know, this happens sometimes, and really, we’ll be fine.”  It made me believe he understood, that he wouldn’t blame me for being ready to move on.  But when my own phone rang, I ignored it, trusting that my sister would tell anyone that needed to know, not wanting to convince anyone that I was fine, doing well even, not wanting them to know that my only wish was for the cramping and bleeding to end. 

You should feel sadder.  Mourn longer, I told myself.  It had only been a few days and I already felt myself wanting to move out of my chair and leave this loss behind.  I remembered my friend, Angie[1].  It was the first week of our Intro to Graduate Studies class, when we knew each other only from in-class introductions and a few minutes of casual conversation, when she scooted her chair around the corner of the table that stretched the entire length of the classroom and asked, “So, how old is George?”

“He’s almost two.”

“That’s great,” she smiled.  “Tom and I want to have children, but we lost our first baby.” 

Her voice quivered and she lowered her eyes, but she went on to explain that after the miscarriage and after beginning graduate school, she wasn’t sure when she would be ready to try again.  I felt uneasy about the personal conversation I had just shared with a near stranger, guilty about having shared stories about my son—his love of books, baseball, and trains—with a woman who wanted but had been unable to experience motherhood.

But now our roles had reversed: Angie was five months pregnant, and I couldn’t help but wonder if now, when I returned to work and met Angie in the hall, she would feel ashamed of her pregnancy, the way it might remind me of what I had lost.  I wanted her to know that the promise of her bulging belly wouldn’t bother me, but I knew I couldn’t explain.  I was afraid to discuss it because I feared my eyes and voice would betray my secret—that I didn’t feel like crying, that I really thought it was better this way. 

Tuesday, March 11

            It’s Tuesday, and I’m back at work.  On my desk, I discover a bulky manila envelope—sealed, no name written on it.  I pry open the metal fingers, tear back a layer of yellow, paper skin, and tip the envelope over my desk.  Out falls a lavender book.  On the cover, above the fringe of a plaid baby blanket, the title reads:  When Your Baby Dies: Through Miscarriage or Stillbirth.  A green sticky note matching the book’s soft colors carries a message from Angie. “Here is a little book that may or may not be of some use to you.  May God comfort you in your time of grief.” 

I don’t cry.  I don’t smile.  I don’t open the book.  I tuck it back into its envelope, seal it up again, and slide it under a pile of scratch paper and junk mail in my desk.  Closing the cold metal drawer, I pause to think about Angie.  Even now, five months into her second pregnancy, she mourns the loss of her first one.  Only five days have passed since my miscarriage, and I no longer think of the pregnancy I have lost as my second pregnancy.  I have erased it.  This one doesn’t seem to count.  I’ve only had one. 

It must have been different for her, I think.  She didn’t have another child to give her hope, to make her believe it could happen again, to console her in case it didn’t.  I try to imagine the desperation I would have felt if this had been my first pregnancy, but I can’t.  Maybe she needed a book to give her hope, needed to talk about it, needed to remember the baby she never knew, but I don’t.  I have George.  George, whose heartbeat echoed through a Doppler monitor, making my skin tingle months before I ever heard him cry or saw his lips opening in an awkward smile.  I can’t equate the loss of a pregnancy to his life, this emptiness to his presence.  I don’t need a book to tell me the difference.  Without opening the pages of the book or acknowledging Angie’s carefully chosen words, I wrap a fleece scarf around my neck, button out the cold, and race to class feeling convinced that no one understands, that everyone expects me to be broken, that no one believes I can be happy with what I have.

            Not until almost a year has passed, not until I have begun to write about the experience of losing a baby will I open my drawer, notice the corner of the manila envelope hidden beneath a pile of junk, and pull it out.  When I slide the book out and begin to turn its thick, waxy pages, I will find a series of prayers and stories meant to encourage and comfort me.  And I will be glad I waited to open it.

            The book outlines the “painful clichés” people fall back on when trying to comfort women after a miscarriage; these clichés—it’s for the better, there was probably something wrong, you can always have another—are the things that continue to comfort me.  The things I continue to believe. 

The book also suggests that mothers who miscarry “view the remains” whenever possible.  View the remains.  Ask a medical professional to help search for these remains.  If no remains can be found, look at pictures of a fetus at that stage of development.  This will encourage acceptance and aid in the grieving process, the book says.  When I read this, the first thoughts that enter my mind are, I didn’t need to view the remains.  I felt each clot of blood as it escaped my body and imagined in it a small mass of tissue, an undeveloped face, limbs that would never grow.  But eventually, I will become curious and search the Internet—first for information, then for images.  I will find some form of comfort in learning that the baby that passed from my body was the size of a raisin; that its heart may never have begun to beat; that like most early miscarriages, this one probably resulted from chromosomal abnormalities.  And I will allow myself to continue believing in what others may see as painful clichés.  I will not insist that others believe them, but I will hold onto them myself. 

Only then will I reread Angie’s words—“a book that may or may not be of use to you”— and realize: we doubt ourselves enough; we have no need to start doubting each other. 

Saturday, July 12

I am leaving the screaming, splashing chaos of the public pool with my red-cheeked son hanging limp in my arms when I see Sasha, a high school friend, emerging from the bathroom.  The olive undertones of her deeply tanned skin and the waves of blonde hair that she flips onto her back remind me of cheerleading and math class.  I begin to smile.  But then her cute paisley sundress stretching over her round belly catches my eye, reminds me that I was pregnant, that I would have been that big by now, too.  I feel a throbbing sensation in my ears. 

As Sasha beams towards me, I shift George from one hip to the other, preparing my escape.  “Look at him!  He’s getting so big,” she begins.  “Yeah, he’s wiped out—the sun and all the swimming,” I explain.  “I better get him home, down for a nap.”  We say goodbye, promise to get together sometime soon, and then I set out across the park toward home, running away from something I thought I had forgotten.  Maybe too easily, hisses a voice inside my head. 

I recognize the pursuit. 

Suddenly, I find myself back at the bottom of the stairs, sense narrowed eyes upon me, see the cat with its weight balanced on thick pads of paws, whiskers tracing the scent of my loss.  For five months I have hated that cat, but this time, as I replay the scene in my mind, I watch his muscles flex as he stands from his predator’s crouch and skulks away.  This time I realize that it is not the cat, but the woman at the bottom of the stairs that terrifies me: the way she hesitates, holds herself back.  It is the woman who pursues me, seething with self doubt. 

Not today, I tell myself, and I slow my steps until I can feel the tickle of grass reaching up over my flip flops.  I concentrate on the sleepy weight of George’s head on my shoulder, his dangling limbs bouncing with each of my strides. 

As I pass the steel structures of a play area, our duplex comes into view across the street.  I notice Blake’s car in the driveway and feel myself eager to get home.  When the gleaming yellow plastic of George’s toy loader and flat bed on the front step catches my eye, I quicken my pace.  I leave the dizzying swirl of voices, the screech of swing set chains behind.  I allow myself space.  A warm breeze rustles the leaves of the cottonwood trees, George’s soft hair flutters on my cheek, and I relax.  I am happy. 

Amber Jensen is a wife, mother, teacher and writer.  She will graduate in May with a MFA in Creative Writing from the University of New Orleans’ low-residency program.  Her essays, poetry, and reviews have been published in  North Dakota Quarterly, Ellipsis, Assissi, and Terrain.org.

By eco-query I mean the kind of contortions one goes through in one’s mind with children in utero, on hip, underfoot and the future (theirs) suddenly matters, as do the choices we make as consumers: wooden toys? recycled plastic? cars that run on veggie oil? worth the choir of fighting that goes on in a smaller hybrid vs. the notorious mini-van with AC?! Lee tracks these interior monologues and more, by turns relentless and hilarious, in A Million Tiny Things. I still, however, stand behind this lovely chapter as well. Enjoy.–Tania Pryputniewicz

Year One, April                                                                     By Kenna Lee

Bright Eye’s roses are blooming, bringing the first year of her life full circle. No, they’re not on the rose bush we planted over her homebirthed placenta, California hippie-style, because said placenta is tucked half-forgotten at the back of the freezer still, languishing in typical third-child neglect. We’ll plant it someday, when we remember, when we muster up some of those elusive items that such tasks require, namely time and energy.

No, Bright Eye’s roses have come to be called that because they were blooming when I was in labor a year ago. These baseball-sized white popcorn roses are improbably right outside my bedroom window; improbable because our house is built onto a hillside, and so my bedroom looks out into the treetops on the downslope. This particular rosebush, in order to survive, has reached up through the canopy of trees to claim its ration of sunlight. In most locations, a sky-high rosebush would be wasted, its blossoms inaccessible to human enjoyment, and from the ground below one would never suspect the exultant profusion of blooms lurking above the tree limbs. But here is my window, from which I can almost reach out to pick them, and from here, one year ago, I pondered them for many hours as my contractions became less and less manageable.

I was reluctant to leave the bedroom when I was in labor, as it’s the room farthest from the neighbor’s house, the same neighbors that called the cops, suspecting some domestic disturbance, during my last, nightmarish labor, during which my repetitive, Psycho-worthy screams let everyone know that I was definitively not a strong, silent, capable baby-haver. This time, knowing that I lacked the self-discipline to endure the agonies of childbirth quietly, I hid out in the bedroom, encouraging The Pragmatist to distract the boys elsewhere. I paced the short feet of floorspace left between the king-sized family bed, now protected by a plastic sheet tucked beneath our least-cherished bedding, and the padded turquoise birthing tub set up hastily that morning after I woke with surreal surety, announcing, “We’re having a baby today, boys.” Within this cramped space, I paced, and stopped, and moaned, and stared at the roses.

As skeptical as I’ve always been of the idea that having a focal point would make the intense pain of contractions more manageable, it worked. Probably because I didn’t plan it and wasn’t trying to focus on something, I was just, well, staring at the roses. And of course, it only worked until I reached that “I can’t do this anymore” stage which was the secret code by which The Pragmatist knew to call the midwife, even though I had expressly forbidden midwife-calling until I was really quite farther along, having gotten very tired of having a midwife around during that first, 49-hour, self-esteem destroying labor.

But by the time the midwife showed up, I had mostly forgotten about those instructions, and about the roses as well, and was just trying to imagine how anyone anywhere is able to endure torture without immediately divulging any and all pertinent information. I knew then that I would never, ever be able to become a spy, because I would have told anything to anyone if it would have made the pain stop. I became unbearably self-pitying and bossy, to which The Pragmatist responded by announcing that if I ever had another baby, she would divorce me unless I got an epidural.

I bellowed and shrieked, and the boys, playing with our friend Rachel in the kitchen, dug out the industrial workman’s ear protectors I had bought them to prevent them from incurring early-onset hearing loss from The Percussionist’s drum set, and came dancing through the bedroom to show them off. “We’re going to Rachel’s house to sleep, mom,” they giggled in my panting breaks between the contractions, “because we are tired and you… you are TOO LOUD.”

“And it would just be too uncomfortable to wear these earphone things to bed,” The Percussionist explained.

Before they even completed the five-minute drive to Rachel’s house, we’d called them to turn around if they wanted to see the baby come out, as the baby was on the way any second. They got back just in time for Mowgli to state his preference to sleep and immediately do so, and for The Percussionist to see everyone gathered around the birthtub, watching me squatting in such a way as to prevent anyone from seeing or knowing that the head was coming out, except by the fact that I was clutching between my legs and ordering the midwife to “HELP ME BREATHE NOW.”

Once the velvet head slid out under my palm, and it was a sliding motion, though that particular verb fails to convey even a slight sense of how incredibly torturous the moment was, I sat back on my haunches and announced, “The head’s out,” somehow expecting someone to do something about it, you know, like deliver the rest of the baby. But I believe I had cowed them all into such submission that they all froze, waiting for their next order, so I shrugged with intense frustration, and thinking, “for god’s sake, MUST I do everything myself?” I pulled my daughter out of me and up into my arms.

So tiny (at 8 lb, 6 oz the smallest of the three), she nestled there, wet-warm and cheesy, head out of the water, while I suddenly shed the shattering terror of laboring and embraced the more tender terror of motherhood again. The pain behind me, I could stop fighting, lay down my arms, and surrender to the awe of her first breath of air. Not the most articulate person during times of great stress, I kept breathlessly repeating, “I’m so happy. I’m so happy,” over and over, as if I needed convincing of it.

The Pragmatist and our midwife supported me as I stood to move onto the bed for the delivery of the placenta, and I paused, towel-wrapped babe in arms, noticing with intense gratitude the treetop cascade of roses hovering just beyond the window. Even now they remind me that behind pain can lurk unfathomable beauty, just as behind the burning and fear of birthing my daughter, a great healing lay within the experience of bringing her into the world with my own hands. Something that had broken in me during my first too-long, too-scary birth was put back together by that sensation of feeling her muzzle-soft crown swell into my palm, the impossibly smooth skin bloom into her face. For days, weeks after she was born, I repeated the motion, sliding my palm over her soft hair, down her temple, and in doing so I was telling myself without even realizing it at the time: that which is broken can be healed.

It is a message she does well to bring with her, accompanied as she is by my load of eco-anxieties. Her roses are blooming again, and for her first birthday, I’ve managed to pull a few down from up high to cut for our kitchen table. On her actual birthday, as if aware that I won’t be able to remember the milestone without this coincidence, Bright Eyes takes her first reeling steps toward me, my only-yesterday newborn girl, walking. I greet this new child, this toddler, with the same words I used when I first looked into her face one year ago: “Hello, Bright Eyes. I’m so happy.” Happy, and scared shitless, but still walking forward, step by careful, brave step.

Full-time nurse, part-time environmentalist, and all-the-time mother, Kenna Lee lives in Sebastopol, California, with her three semi-feral children and several domesticated animals. Her book, A Million Tiny Things: a mother’s urgent search for hope in a changing climate (Mole’s Hill Press, 2012) is available now through your local independent bookseller; for more information, visit her website.

I’m proud to say we are nearing the final week of Mother, Writer, Mentor’s first ever on-line writing workshop, To the Cradle and Beyond, Excavating the Poetry of Motherhood. We will be offering this course again throughout the year (please check the website for our latest classes). Our next two on-line writing workshops include:

Sexy Mommy Stories: Writing Romance Back Into Motherhood

Instructor: Jessica Powers

Dates: April 9-April 30

Who says romance is over just because of baby spit up, dirty diapers, sleepless nights, and breastfeeding? This workshop is for writers who want to write romance and love stories about and for mothers. We will cover the basics of fiction-plot, characters, and theme-for beginning writers and probe deeper for writers with more experience. We will consider the necessary elements for a good romance story and reclaim motherhood as an arena for romance, sex, and, yes!, eroticism. Sign up here.

Excavating and Writing The Poetry of Fatherhood

Instructor: Tania Pryputniewicz

Dates: April 30- May 25

You’ve watched the wife’s body transform before your eyes, witnessed first-hand her incremental emotional, psychological and spiritual migration to places you may or may not be able, though willing, to follow. Your own metamorphosis, while less physically apparent, is in actuality no less arduous or multi-layered. Or you and your partner have gone through longer gestations: reams of applications, false leads, interviews and further scrutiny while attempting to adopt. Or you’ve chosen not to father, but find the words of your own father coursing through your mind. Join this on-line poetry class for a chance to mine poetry of the past as well as contemporary poems (including those we’ve published at The Fertile Source) for structural and thematic inspiration towards the writing of a new crop of poems reflecting the continuum of experiences that comprise fatherhood. Sign up here.

It was the first time in their marriage that they had been apart.  Natalie had gone with her best friend from high school days and beyond, to Ibiza Spain.

When Natalie came back, she looked great.  Really great.  She had a fantastic tan.

But no tan lines.

“Don’t even think about it, Billy.  There were no men there.  We found this really private beach and went for it.”

“Does Pam have tan lines?”

“I can have her come over and you can look for yourself.”

“Let me think about that.”

“Better yet, check this out.”

She went over to her computer, plugged her camera in, and pulled up some photos of a magnificent shore, lapped by foamy whitecaps emerging gracefully from a turquoise sea.  Sure enough, there were no men.  There was one amazing shot of Natalie and Pam laying side by side on a beach blanket wearing only sunglasses and tanning lotion.  His imagination had fallen far short of how beautiful Pam’s body was. 

Natalie caught him staring, mouth agape, eyebrows arched in wonder.

“The sand is so white.”

“Right.  Like you were looking at the sand.  Hey!  I just got an excellent idea.”

She stood him up, got around behind him and playfully pushed him into the bedroom, not that he offered much resistance.

She proved for the next several days to be insatiable. 

“Good grief, Natalie.  What did they feed you there on Ibiza?”

“Dreams, Billy.  Dreams.”

Of course, they both had their work schedules.  But it seemed at least for those first few days after her return, Natalie managed to avoid any professional commitments in the evening and was there for him, ready and able to make love as often as was physically possible.

She had to catch up at work Saturday during the day but they had a phenomenal evening.  Sunday they actually had slept in a bit, the consequence of being up half of the previous night pursuing carnal bliss. 

Natalie woke first and looked at him.  Eventually his eyes opened and she cuddled up to him, placing her lips teasingly against his ear and whispered.

“Happy Valentines Day.”

“Hmm.  That’s right.  I forgot.  You got back on Valentines Day.”

“There’s something else, Billy.”

“What’s that?”

“I want a baby.”

“I think the stores are open today.  We can go after breakfast.”

“I’m not kidding.”

She wasn’t. 

They talked about it over brunch at Anna’s, as they then walked through town afterwards, during the drive through along the Hudson River and Hudson Highlands State Park, and finally that evening at home over dinner.  Billy did the cooking and proudly served a blackened dish he claimed was genuine Livorno-style lasagna, and a circular cardboard-like object which was supposed to be Sicilian pizza.

There was no doubt that they both wanted to have children.  The whole question was timing.  That they didn’t seem to agree on.

“I’m too young to be a father, Natalie.”

“No you’re not.”

“I’m only twenty two.”

“A perfect age.  You’re young, energetic, yet mature, established.”

“Like I’m going to be some burnt out shell of a human being at 25 or 28, a moneyless bum sleeping in a dumpster behind Home Depot.”

“If it’s a boy, you can name him.  If it’s a girl, I want to call her Lilith.”

That had a familiar ring.  Wasn’t Lilith some Amazon queen his mom was telling him about?  Or was she a biblical terrorist that had all of the kings in a tizzy?

“Lilith.  Lovely name.  If it’s a boy, I want to call him Chairman Mao.”

Natalie laughed and jumped on top of him and proceeded to nearly cause heart failure by tickling him so relentlessly.  It was obvious she was not going to stop without a commitment.

“So are we on, papa Billy?  Are we going to make a baby?  Are we?  Are we?”

“Ha ha ha ha . . . if you don’t stop tickling me . . . ha ha ha . . . I’ll be dead . . . ha ha ha . . . and that’ll be . . . ha ha ha ha . . . please . . . ha ha ha . . . I’ll do anything . . . ha ha ha . . . just stop . . . ha ha ha . . .”

“So that’s a yes?”

“Yes . . . ha ha ha . . . yes, Natalie.”

And they went to work.

At making a baby from scratch, that is.

Should have been simple.  But it eventually turned out to be hard work.   Very hard work.

It has confounded some of the best medical minds of the 21^st Century, why fertility rates have been gradually declining over the past fifty years.  Those from three generations back claim ^___ obviously exaggerating, of course ^___ that back in those days, post-World War II, and on into the featureless 50s, getting pregnant was supposedly easier than catching a head cold.  Teens seemed especially at risk.  Schoolgirls were cautioned about sitting too close to boys for fear that sperm would somehow leap forth, magically pass through clothing and skin, and home in on the cowering uterus like some precision-guided weapon, resulting in unwanted pregnancies.

Then came the 60s.  A measurable decrease in fertility rates among both males and females started around the same time that the Beatles and the British invasion of pop musicians took over the radio airwaves, and has continued to this day.  Egg production in women is still off, miscarriages continue to increase, sperm counts are down.

No connection could be established between the music of John Lennon and Paul McCartney, the Kinks, the Rolling Stones, Herman’s Hermits and the other British bands, and the inability of couples to make babies back then or now.

So what precipitated the subtle but steady decline in fertility rates?  Was it the cancelation of the Ed Sullivan Show?  The unrequited romancing of the apparently still virginal Annette Funicello by any number of viable suitors on the Mickey Mouse Club?  Chubby Checker and the twist?  Lingering physiological effects from the hoola-hoop craze of the 50s?  Radiation from the spaceships landing in Nebraska and Indiana abducting illiterate corn farmers and road-weary truck drivers?

The plausible connection turned out to be the enormous numbers of chemicals, artificial substances, plastics, and man-made pollutants which were slowly introduced starting in the 50s but were dramatically increased in both quantity and variety during the 60s, and are being increasingly used today.  These include food additives and preservatives, pesticides and herbicides, fertilizers, cosmetic chemicals, over-the-counter and prescription drugs, household cleaners, detergents and dry cleaning fluids, auto exhaust and industry pollution, industrial solvents such as acetone and trichlorethylene, the new generation of paints and varnishes, carpet and furniture fire and stain retardants, synthetic fabrics and clothing treatments, dioxyn, PVCs, plastic food and beverage containers, even monosodium glutamate, on and on the list goes. 

This man-made inhibition of the natural reproductive process has spawned a fertility industry ^___ both specialists within the ranks of the conventional AMA-approved health service providers and those working in naturopathic and other alternative treatment environments ^___ raking in far in excess of a billion dollars a year.

Of course, Billy and Natalie weren’t aware of any of this when the decided they would try to get her pregnant.  They just did what they normally did, with a little more focused effort the five or six days that were midway between her periods.

Away they went doing what came naturally for three months or so.  Understandably they were both rather surprised when their energetic efforts produced no results in the embryo manufacturing department.

At first, their lack of success was taken with a lightheartedness, both of them assuming it was an anomaly which would soon pass.

“Maybe you’re firing blanks, Billy.”

“I’m definitely firing something.”

“You are definitely hitting the target.”

“Practice makes perfect.”

As the weeks and months passed, however, the whole subject became charged, more and more the trigger for arguments or tears. 

“You don’t want a baby.  That’s it, isn’t it Billy?”

“Natalie.  Of course I do.  I said I did.  But whether I do or not, it’s not like I’m holding back.  You can see for yourself that I’m doing my job.”

“Then how come I’m not pregnant?”

“How should I know?  Maybe you fried your uterus in Ibiza.  Maybe you got sand in the works.  Don’t point the finger at me.”

“Billy.  Please stop bringing up my trip like it was some negative thing.  It wasn’t.  It was a very good thing.  It got me to a good place.  It got me to where I am now.”

“Frustrated.  Angry with me.  Yeh, that’s just great.”

Natalie’s eyes turned red and started to pool, as her lower lip quivered slightly.

“Billy.  I’m sorry.  I’m not mad at you.  I know it’s not your fault.”

Actually, it didn’t appear to be either of their faults.  The doctors couldn’t find anything awry.  None of the five fertility specialists they had consulted, stretching from the Hudson Valley to New York City. 

Billy’s sperm count appeared normal, in fact, better than normal.  The quality of the sperm appeared fine.  No two-headed mutants, none with tails missing, none suffering from lethargy or lack of swimming skills, no union organizers urging a sperm walkout or sitdown strike. 

Likewise, Natalie checked out.  She was ovulating like clockwork, producing the approved and recommended number of eggs, there were no blocked Fallopian tubes, no cross winds, no feminist demonstrations or marches going on in there.

The experts were stumped.

Of course, they had a solution.  A very expensive solution.  With no guarantees.

This was a multi-phased program of hormone doping, fertility drugs, taking his sperm and concentrating it to increase its statistical effectiveness, and further closing the statistical hit-miss gap by either inserting the sperm into her fallopian tubes or removing one of her eggs and performing in vitro insemination then replanting the fertilized egg in her uterus.

It was all so scientific and calculating but unscientifically unpredictable.  They could end up with twins, octuplets, or a swaddling bundle of air.  Who was to say.  The doctors couldn’t.

Billy and Natalie could see the five-figure bill for services coming from miles away.

Monetary issues aside, they couldn’t imagine turning over what should be the natural unfolding of the miracle of life, to a bunch of lab coats surrounded by stainless steel tables, test tubes, oscilliscopes, pipettes, ultrasound scans, Petri dishes, electronic imaging equipment, electrophoresis separators, and whatever else the medicine men would drag out of their expensive bag of tricks.  It was about as romantic as changing the motherboard or putting more RAM in a computer.

They decided at least for now, to continue their reproductive Olympiad, which despite the growing anxiety and tension introduced by their absorption and obsession with getting her pregnant, they both still thoroughly enjoyed.  At the same time, they would try to increase the prospects of babymaking in their lovemaking by introducing some less-expensive, hopefully effective alternative assistance.

Their bedroom stand now included a vaginal thermometer, homeopathic medicine, and a small glass dish of opaque pink fertility stones.  Both Billy and Natalie were taking specially formulated vitamin/mineral/herb supplements, respectively designed to fortify the male and female reproductive systems ^___ his was called Inseminator Rejuvenator and hers Motherhood In A Bottle.   

One day Billy pulled up on their computer a page from a website which was trumpeting the efficacy of various crystals, and showed it to Natalie.

The Shiva Lingham Stone is from the sacred Narmada River in Onkar Mandhata, one of India’s seven holy sites. Villagers gather this unique Crypto-crystalline quartz from shallow river beds.  In Tantra, the shape embodies masculine energy, dynamic expression and knowledge. The markings named Yoni (sacred sanskrit word for vulva), depicts the feminine energy, wisdom and intuition. Together, the female energy arouses the masculine urge to create. As such, the Tantric Lingham unifies the dualistic (male female) world into harmonious balance.  Place a Shiva Lingham in the Relationships/Marriage area of your home to increase fertility and to bring you closer to your partner.

“Well, there’s the solution to our problem if I ever saw it.”

Though they laughed about it, the true extent of their desperation was evident when they immediately ordered one.  When it arrived Air Express, it was given a guest-of-honor place in the center of the headboard shelf of their bed, next to a faux-ancient scroll containing a Sanscrit fertility mantra they obtained from a local store, with a name printed in gold leaf on the front window, which only a few months ago they used to make fun of . . .

Things New Age:  Your One-Stop Enlightenment Shop

They also went out of their way to eat healthy.  More salads.  Less fat.  More fish.  Less meat.  They eliminated wine with their meals and never ordered cocktails when they went out with their friends.  Five times a day, Natalie was drinking an unpleasant-tasting herbal tea consisting of Chasteberry, Red Raspberry Leaf, and Nettle.  Billy had virtually eliminated coffee from his diet since he read that there were studies suggesting that coffee had deleterious effects on sperm production.  He switched to vitamin C-enhanced peppermint tea.

Unfortunately, none of this seemed to work.  The only ones who seemed to benefit were the manufacturers and outlets who pocketed seemingly exorbitant profits for a lot of worthless crap, which they used to generate and hawk new, promising, pricier, but at the end of the day, equally worthless crap.

By August, they were exhausted.  It wasn’t the sex but rather the anticipation, disappointment, the regiment and monotony of the “fertility rites” they had created, the evident futility, and last but not least, the heat.  Whether it was global warming or just a anomalous seasonal shift, the end of the summer was turning out to be a scorcher.

They lay in bed, sweating and sweltering, panting like dogs in the desert, after a pleasurable but nonetheless draining session of lovemaking, during which they often thought more about whether his sperm and her egg were going to end their Cold War standoff and finally get together, than to abandoning themselves to the carnal ecstasy of their union.

When the end of Natalie’s most recent menstrual cycle again declared that she was not pregnant, an announcement signed in blood, Billy tried to make light of it.

“Maybe we should just get a dog.”

“I’m not having sex with a dog.”

“I meant for me.”

“You want to have sex with a dog?  I feel a little threatened.”

“Dogs are man’s best friend.  No one ever said that about babies.”

“Wait!  We’ll get two dogs.  A male and a female.  And watch them.  Maybe we’re doing something wrong.”

“I don’t think my ego could handle it.  What if they got it right the first time?”

“Ohmigod!  You’re right.  I’d have to kill the bitch.”

“I’d have the vet remove his balls.  That’d show him!”

They laughed but their laughter was hollow.  Hollow to the point of melancholy.

And though neither of them said anything, each invisibly was waving the tearful white flag of resignation.  An impregnable sense of hopelessness had slowly but surely sunk in.  This was the first failure of their relationship, the first tangible setback of any importance.

They never officially gave up.  Thus, they never discussed a next step, either adoption or designing their lives together around childlessness.  They never acknowledged they might be entering a next phase.  A phase without a baby of their own making.

They clung to some thin, frail thread of optimism.  After all, there were countless stories of couples trying and trying again over years, even decades, then finally producing the long-desired child.  Billy and Natalie had many years ahead of them.  The waiting and trying and trying again theoretically could define them as a couple, as it had many other couples.

But they both somehow knew this wasn’t going to happen.

Something had changed.  They both sensed it.

The baby thing was over and done.

And what about them?

Was it over?

No.

Practice makes perfect.

In all things.

“Baby Fever”, an excerpt from the full length novel The Man Who Loved Too Much, originally appeared in the American online and print magazine Down In The Dirt in July 2010.
 
John Rachel has a B. A. in Philosophy, has traveled extensively, is a songwriter and music producer, and a left-of-left liberal.  Prompted by the trauma of graduating high school and having to leave his beloved city of Detroit to attend university, the development his social skills and world view were arrested at about age 18.  This affliction figures prominently in all of his creative work.  He is author of four full-length novels, From Thailand With Love, The Man Who Loved Too Much, 11-11-11 and recently 12-12-12.  He considers his home to be Japan but has been traveling in Indonesia, the Philippines and Taiwan as he completed his latest novel, 12-12-12.  He is now working on a non-fiction book about his travels over the past six years called Leaving On A Jet Plane.

Back then, Nancy told me she envisioned putting her mandala work into book format. I’m so thrilled to be able to host some of Nancy’s words on the mandala process itself, as well as a sample of some of the images that appear in her book, “Birth Mandala: The Power of Visioning for Childbirth,” mingled with the words of the women who created the mandalas. I should also disclose that while I lost my original mandala in our last move, an early version of it appears in Nancy’s book. So lovely to see the fruits of your labor, Nancy, and to share them here. –Tania Pryputniewicz

Nancy Describes the Birth Mandala Method:

Nancy Burns

“Birth Mandala: The Power Of Visioning For Childbirth” is a unique and creative method to prepare for childbirth. The subtitle of the Birth Mandala book is truly the essence of this method of preparing for childbirth and should not be overlooked. The Power of Visioning is the ability to reveal personal strengths and weaknesses that influence the outcome of birth.

Just as the body knows how to breathe, digest and excrete food and perform all of its functions without the conscious mind directing it, the same is true for birthing. The body is naturally programmed to release the hormones necessary to begin labor and to produce milk to feed the baby, it does not need the conscious mind to tell it what to do. Then what gets in the way of the body doing what it knows how to do?

One of the greatest influences is a woman’s perception of labor and birth. Beliefs about childbirth formed by what we have seen, read or heard produce feelings of either fear or trust in oneself and in the process of birth. Beliefs affect emotions, and emotions trigger the body to release chemicals that support either a state of relaxation, or stimulation and constriction.

There is a chapter in the book entitled I’ll Believe It When I See It, I’ll See It When I Believe It. In this chapter there are exercises to identify limiting beliefs that could interfere with the birth you want and to change them to supportive beliefs. To envision the best birth possible, some questions to explore are: What do I need to release? What strengths do I need to embrace? What do I need to shed to allow myself to be fully empowered? What am I needing to allow myself to be fully empowered? What does it mean to be empowered? This is a very personal and important question to contemplate. The purpose and intention of the book is for all women to be able to experience a deep connection with themselves, where trust and faith replace doubt and fear.

So, what is visioning and how does it support birth? Visioning is a process that allows clarification for what you are wanting. We generally focus on what we don’t want to happen or when we focus on what we do want it is too abstract a concept to produce the desired effects. Imagine walking into a restaurant and telling the waitperson all the foods you don’t want to eat? It is impossible for the server to get you what you do want to eat.

Or, imagine being in a restaurant that has a list of soups and you really want to eat some soup. If you say I want soup they are still unable to get you what you want. In the same way, being as specific and clear as possible helps you to get the desired results. To say I want to be relaxed is going in the right direction, however, relaxed is very abstract. For the body consciousness to know what relaxed means to you, it is important to describe the concept of relaxation in concrete terms by using your five senses: what would you be seeing if you are relaxed, what would you be saying to yourself or hearing from others; what sensations would you be feeling in your body?

I offer an example in the book from a client that was concerned about her mother being present during the birth of her baby. She said she regresses to a child around her mother. I asked her what she wanted? “To feel strong and in my power”, she responded. I then guided her to envision what that would look like, what she would be seeing that is different from what she is fearing. And guess what, that’s exactly what she was able to deliver (no pun intended!).

The process of visualization is then used to support the new beliefs and vision for childbirth. Visualization is like mentally role playing. Visualizing what you are wanting further imprints the vision into the subconscious mind and keeps the vision alive. There is a chapter in the book that guides a visualization of labor and birth. I also created a CD that is a visualization of birth that can be ordered. This is where the mandala for birth comes in. The process of creating a mandala for birth draws from both the conscious mind (goals and desires) and the unconscious mind (information that may not be available to the conscious mind). A mandala for birth is a visual representation of the positive birth experience you envision. It further clarifies what you want and acts as a reminder to help stay focused on your desired outcome.

Interview with Nancy Burns:

What was the seed or prompting for your work using mandalas to support women’s experience of birth?

At the time, I was co-facilitating a Sacred Wisdom Support Group for Mamas-To- Be with a midwife friend. We incorporated her knowledge of midwifery and birth with my knowledge from counseling psychology for birth. We were using art as a medium for their expression of various topics about birth. The idea for making a mandala for birth came when I was meditating. The idea of making a birth mandala began by having a visual image of a 10 centimeter circle to support 1st stage of labor. The mandala expanded to include a woman’s vision for birth through the use of images, shapes, words, colors.

How have you seen images in the mandalas of the women you work with translating into, or empowering, their experience of giving birth or how they view themselves?

This question would best be answered by the women themselves. The following are some birth mandalas and quotes from the women:

APRIL’S MANDALA

“Birth unfolds as a butterfly signifying metamorphosis, flowers opening up towards the light, owls wise and all knowing , signifying the relationship of the internal and external worlds/heavenly and earthly worlds. The inner goddess spirit that is in all women can soar and I draw upon her endless energy to bring new life into the world. The dancer of flamenco is there to remind me that birthing is a dance, as is all of life, and to remember my passion and flirtation for and with life.”

STACY’S MANDALA

STACY’S REFLECTIONS ON HER MANDALA

“The relationship between creating life and creating art really manifested for me during the mandala project. Both take intention, mindfulness, love and patience. Verbalizing my intention helped me tofocus my creative energy and thoughts. Nature, especially water, represents the flow of life in me and around me and through me. The shell represents the sacred spiral and the path the baby will take to leave my womb. Purple is a powerful feminine energy color and the nesting flowers give birth to a perfect moon-like orb, representing my baby. The moon cycle on the bottom mirrors the opening of my cervix during labor and birth. Two spirit guides, the dove and the Virgin Mary surround me, reminding me that my higher power is always present, loving and supporting me. A golden halo-like semi-circle encircles where my head should be. It symbolizes the holiness of living in the present, which can happen when I remove my head as the barrier to surrender.

The gift was working through my mental barriers and fears to create the reality I desire for my birth experience. I intend to use my mandala to focus on what I do want: balance, centeredness, confi dence, peace, rather than what I don’t want to happen.

STACY’S REFLECTIONS AFTER BIRTH

“The birth mandala has a special place in my heart and birth story. It is such a beautiful journey. The birth mandala has been very grounding. Upon completing it, the mandala was hung in my bedroom with a beautiful scarf around it. I really wanted to create a sacred place to honor my intentions for the birth of my child. The theme of my mandala was surrender, and it was in full alignment with this pregnancy. ….The mandala was a constant source of gentle and loving reminders that I was not in control of this birth and to surrender to the moment…

…Throughout the labor I used it to ground myself in the rhythmic waves of tension and release. I envisioned my baby spiraling out of my body and into the water, just as I depicted in the mandala. I felt the presence of the Holy Spirit as life was being brought forth from my body and the warm maternal love of the Creator – symbols of which I had included in my mandala. A little past midnight on July 25, 2009, my daughter slid out of my womb, up through the water and onto my belly. Hazel stared at us with wide eyes and amazement and I knew I had just been part of a miracle.”

AMY’S MANDALA

Amy's Mandala

“When I was creating this birth mandala, I felt like I was giving myself courage and strength I never knew possible. I am more confident after this experience. I feel peace and a connection with my baby that is so deep and beautiful. I am now ready for an amazing, healthy and safe birth experience.

AMY’S REFELCTIONS AFTER THE BIRTH:
The mandala helped me go into my center and set intentions around the type of birth I wanted. I looked at it during my labor. I felt powerful and strong, just like I did when I was creating the mandala at the workshop.”

Nancy, in your role as a counselor in the birthing field for many years, what would you say are the primary concerns you’ve witnessed women wrestling with?

This is an interesting and important question and has taught me not to make assumptions. I thought for sure the issue of pain would be predominant, but women were expressing other issues of concern like: fears around single parenting, the addition of a baby interfering in the couple relationship, and financial issues. All of these concerns are so personal and important to be addressed, accepted and come to terms with. I included a chapter on Reframing Pain because my own personal experiences and the feedback from women who used self-hypnosis and other tools to have a non-medicated birth was very empowering and satisfying.

What has been the most surprising, rewarding aspect of running these workshops and writing the book?

The workshops begin by creating a sacred space; women sitting together in a circle; lighting a candle and expressing their intentions. I suggest they spend the day creating their birth mandala in silence, which allows them to stay focused and dive deep within themselves. This in itself is a wonderful preparation for childbirth and is very rewarding. I trusted in my own inner guidance to offer this work. When I received positive feedback from women about how the process helped with their birth, I was not so much surprised as delighted. It was at that time that I felt inclined to put the work in a book form to reach more people than I was able. I am offering workshops for childbirth professionals to be able to offer this work to their clients in a deep and meaningful way.

Any mentors or other resources in the field of birth and female empowerment you wish to share with us?

My greatest mentor lies within myself. That is what inspired me to co-create with Constance Miles, the CD; A Pregnant Pause. In this CD women are guided to find their ‘inner midwife’ that guides them and supports them in birth. It is my belief that we all have the wisdom within, we just need to unveil societies and programming from the media to get in touch with our own inner guidance. Writing the Birth Mandala book brought a very important lesson to me that is equally important to birthing a baby, or anything we are pregnant with. Another childbirth author cited my work in her book and people were contacting me to buy my book. I became anxious about completing the book quickly. Like birth, you cannot force anything. It ends up with complications. The book taught me to have patience and trust the natural unfoldment of its birth. When I felt stuck that is when I did the Mother Nature Mandala Collage to take my time and honor the process of birthing the book:

MOTHER NATURE MANDALA COLLAGE

Nancy's Mother Nature Mandala

As far as resources, there are many books and DVD’s available to empower a positive birthing. They can be found at the end of the book.

Nancy Burns is a licensed psychotherapist in private practice in Northern California, specializing in pre and perinatal concerns. For over 30 years, she has supported pregnant and postpartum women in various capacities. She has been a doula, childbirth educator and prenatal yoga instructor. She has also been a presenter at the California Association of Midwives annual conferences.

Nancy invites you to join her for “a FREE unique evening that promises to stimulate a fresh vision of childbirth” on Friday, March 30, 2012 at 6:30 pm at Soul Shine Chiropractic – 440 So.E St., Santa Rosa, CA, and a Birth Mandala Workshop on April 20 and April 21, 2012 at the same location. For more information,  e-mail Nancy: BirthMandalas@gmail.com.

When writing about devastating moments in our lives, like miscarriages, it’s tempting to hold back. Can you talk about the process you go through as you decide what to share and how much to share?

I’ve been keeping a journal since I was a child and use it primarily to rant and grieve when I’m struggling with an issue or person. I often warn my boyfriend and kids, “If you read my journal, know I only feel that way about you sometimes.” For me, writing about something is a way to stop holding back. Memoirs that are constrained or where the narrator is removed or stoic are painful for me to read. I continually shout at the pages, “But how did you really feel!”

Readers want to relate to the struggle and the more specific the author is, the wider range of readers she’ll draw. As Jung says, “That which is most personal is most common.” Maybe some of my readers haven’t had a miscarriage, but by describing my sense of feeling like a failure, the hopelessness that I would never have what I wanted, my fear, and frustration with the medical community, I am appealing to emotions and struggles the reader has experienced.

When going through a difficult time, such as my miscarriage or divorce, I write, talk, write again, talk more, and walk a lot while contemplating and grieving the experience. The first few rounds of writing are explosive drafts. I vent and cry on the page, with the sole purpose of getting the words out and not caring if they are eloquent or make sense. All the while, I tell myself, “No one will read this, this is just for you.” I do this to get myself to be as honest and brave as possible. It takes several drafts to get there. A great exercise I learned from Natalie Goldberg is to stop midsentence and say, “What I really meant to say was…” This helps cut through some of the fear and pretenses.

All emotional writing needs time to percolate. While writing Creating a Life, I finished a draft and paused. I told myself, “You told the story, now you need to feel the story.” I gave myself a month off from writing and instead spent the time remembering and feeling that time in my life. Then, I was able to deepen my draft with more courage and willingness to reveal my emotions.

I feel I owe it to my readers to be completely honest when sharing my thoughts and feelings about a hardship. In order to be comfortable doing so, I tell myself every step of the way, “No one will read this, it’s merely for my process.”

Do you have a personal threshold where you have decided, “Okay, I won’t go there and I won’t share that”?

If I’m going to share something, I share it all the way. Until I’m ready to do that, I keep it in the draft, walk, talk stage or merely let it percolate in my brain for a while so I can formulate how and why I want to share it. I don’t share merely to titillate or shock, I share so other people can stop feeling as if they are alone. Miscarriage, rape, sex, these are topics people shy away from. Yet feeling isolated during hard times only makes people feel worse. 

You are a woman writer who specializes in memoir. You’ve written a book about becoming a mother, and taking charge of your own life as well as the birth of your first child. You also write about motherhood, divorce, parenting, and sexuality through both your columns for two Seattle area newspapers and literary journals. Who are your readers? What do you think they’re looking for from your writing? What are they plugging into and why is it important?

I was joking with a friend that my readers must think I live a tumultuous life because so much of my writing is about my struggles. In actuality, my kids are at a great age—independent enough, but still want to be with me–my writing is flowing, my partner supports yet challenges me in ways I’ve never experienced and I love the classes I’m teaching and my coaching clients. “But no one wants to hear that,” I laughed to my friend. “That’s boring.” 

I was exaggerating, but in general, my readers gravitate towards me because of my willingness to reveal myself, my flaws, and my deepest fears and insecurities. And I do so with humor. I’ve been asked several times to write an advice column, to which I shudder. I don’t want to tell people what to do, but I do hope to inspire them to make the changes in their life that they desire, yet are frightened by.  

I appeal to men and women who are in transition and thinking about what they want out of life. Although my memoir is about pregnancy, I heard from numerous men who related to the book because it’s also about creating a life for yourself. Ten years later, I’m still writing and still creating the life I want for myself. Readers like to know that’s possible, that they’re not stuck and don’t have to settle on what society, their partner, or parents told them they should do.  

Many of our readers are also writers who might want to explore publishing short things or books for e-readers. Can you talk about what prompted you to turn Creating a Life into an e-book? What’s been the response? 

Being a Luddite, I resisted making Creating a Life an ebook for over a year. I assumed my readers were grassroots people like me who wanted to hold a book in their hand, not read it on a screen. I was wrong. By making it an ebook and selling it for $2.99, I was able to reach a larger audience than I was reaching by giving readings, speaking about the book and writing about it. With an ebook, Amazon (or wherever you choose to sell it) does the marketing for me, so I don’t have to. And since the price is significantly lower than a print book, more people are willing to purchase it and give it a try.  

The response has been tremendous. It was number one in the pregnancy and motherhood section off and on for several weeks and remains in the top 100 best selling ebooks in these categories. 

Please tell us about your memoir in progress. 

After a year and several hundreds of pages, I decided my memoir needed time to percolate. I started it with the intention of it being about my divorce, but it’s ending up being about my strained relationship with my mother; my family’s struggle with addiction and denial; and falling in love and maintaining perhaps the first adult relationship I’ve had with a man. The continual growth and learning I gain from my relationship with my partner plus my mom’s cancer knocked my second and third draft sideways, until I finally told myself “You are living this memoir, you can’t write it yet.”

While I live these experiences, I am writing a guidebook for women, particularly moms, who are going through a divorce. I offer not only my own experience of navigating an amicable yet still heart-breaking divorce without lawyers, as well as references from experts, and countless of other women’s experiences. It’s light on the advice and in tone. The main message is, “Yes, this sucks at times, but ultimately, you can grow and flourish from this experience.” My story and the other women’s stories are proof of that. A mid-size press has expressed some interest and if that falls through, I’ll probably publish it as an ebook by the end of the year.

J.L. Powers

Jessica with Nesta (five months)

When sex with your husband involves thermometers, charts, and sticking your legs in the air afterwards, you know it’s no longer about your burning desire for him. It’s now all about your burning desire for a baby. I have reached that point and beyond. I have needles poked in me, chart my temperature twice a day, seek advice from a variety of specialists, follow this advice even when it entails chanting to my womb, all in hopes of seeing the two pink stripes on the EPT.

After years of waiting for my husband Jason to say the magical words, “I’m ready” and months and months of cheering “swim, little guys swim,” to his sperm mid-coital, I am finally rewarded with the pink stripes. After jumping for joy and hugging Jason, I place my hand on my belly and say, “Hello there.” The chanting has paid off and by now I am quite used to talking to my womb. I name her Sweet Pea and converse privately with her throughout the day. For now, she is mine, all mine, and I do not share news of her with anyone besides Jason.

Around my tenth week of pregnancy, my back throbs intensely while I am at work. My mind flashes to Sweet Pea, but I quickly dismiss that concern. I’ve waited for her for too long to lose her now. I stretch and reposition myself, but nothing alleviates the pain. After urinating, I see bright red drops that shouldn’t be in the toilet. Panicking, I run back to my office to call my group of midwives.

“I see you’re about ten weeks along, is that correct?” the midwife asks.

“Yes,” I reply, while lying on the floor to ease the pain. She asks me to describe the feeling in my abdomen (menstrual cramps mixed with food poisoning), the amount of blood (a light period), and the lower back pain (agonizing). A long silence follows before she says the words I’m dreading hearing, “You’re miscarrying.”

“No! How can I stop it?”

“I’m afraid there’s nothing you can do. A large percentage of women miscarry in their first trimester and there’s no way to avoid it. Sometimes, it just wasn’t meant to be. Or perhaps the baby wasn’t viable. All we can do is wait and see,” she says.

I hang up the phone and burst into tears. I was patient for so long and every month when I got my period I told myself, “That’s all right. Maybe next month it will happen.” And then it finally did and I was instantly attached. I am attached. I talk to her every day, I have clothes for her, I love her.

I decide to ignore the midwife’s words and tell myself Sweet Pea will stay with me. She wants to be with me as much as I want her. This comforts me for an hour, but then the pain in my lower back becomes too great to ignore. I give up on trying to get any work done, write “Gone home sick” on the white board outside of my office, and drive home.

Once there, I leave a message for Jason and call the midwives a few more times. One of the midwives on call is optimistic about my situation and I cling to her every word. The other midwife on call has given up on Sweet Pea and after talking to her I have to crawl into bed and curl up into a fetal position. Once I’ve shed all the tears I can shed, I turn off my brain. I’m afraid thinking about bad things will give them more power and validity, so if I don’t think about the miscarriage, maybe it will go away.

Jason comes home and finds me in bed hiding under the covers. “Is there anything I can do?” he asks while rubbing my back.

“No.”

“What did the midwife say?”

“I’ve talked to a couple of them. One is really sweet and hopeful. She says I may just be spotting and that if I rest, I could stop bleeding. The other one told me to come in for a D & C.”

“What’s that?”

“They scrape my uterus.”

“Like an abortion?”

“Yeah.” I pull a blanket over myself.

“Are you going to do that?” he asks.

“No, I hung up on her.”

He asks more technical and logistical questions, but I am too tired to answer them. I know he is only trying to understand the situation, but there are no answers. All we can so is wait and see. I find waiting impossible, so I sleep and hope when I wake up I’ll realize it was all a nightmare.

A few hours later, I’m still bleeding, but not heavily. The “hopeful” midwife is pleased to hear this and says if the cramps and backache subside, it probably means I’m spotting. I am thrilled to hear this and am finally able to get out of bed. I gather two white candles and light them as a way to protect Sweet Pea. Coming from an atheist family, yet wanting to believe in something, I am forced to make up my own rituals. And candles often serve as my chalice and host.  As do the stars. I walk over to the window and say the words I’ve been chanting since I was a little girl, “Star light star bright, the first star I see tonight. I wish I may, I wish I might have this wish I wish tonight.” I close my eyes and hope for Sweet Pea to stay with me.

After another day of intermittent bleeding, and many hours spent in bed sleeping, the hopeful midwife convinces me to get my blood drawn to check my hormone levels. “It will be good to know either way,” she convinces me. I write down the directions to the after hours lab and wait in various cubicles to have my blood drawn. Once the procedure is over, I ask when I will know the results.

“Monday morning,” the technician responds.

“But that’s three days away!”

“Yup, we don’t do labs over the weekend.”

It’s the worst three days of my life. I don’t want to talk to anyone, not even my husband. I’m locked in my own despair and turmoil. When I cry, I feel guilty that I’m giving up on Sweet Pea. But how can I ignore the fact that I may lose the baby I sing to every day and can picture so clearly in my brain? I can’t, so I spend the majority of the weekend lighting candles to protect Sweet Pea and sleeping.

First thing Monday morning, I call the lab. A cheery nurse says, “Oh yeah, here’s your chart. Everything looks fine.”

“Thank God!” I race upstairs to tell Jason. We hug each other and cry. Words fail us. All we can do is smile.

I tell people at work I had the flu and no one seems to question my story. I work on the newsletter that it has taken me far too long to complete until I remember that I missed my first prenatal appointment with the midwives during the turmoil. The receptionist asks me to hold for a moment when I call the offices to reschedule. The non-hopeful midwife comes on the line and says, “Corbin, are you trying to schedule a D & C?”

 “Why would I do that?”

“Didn’t the lab call you?” she asks.

“Yeah, I called them. The nurse said everything is fine.”

Long, long pause.

“I don’t know why she would say that. I have your chart right in front of me. You’re not pregnant anymore, you miscarried.”

I stagger at her words and sit down on the floor. The room is spinning and I have to shake my head to clear it.

“No, I didn’t. I hardly bled at all and the cramps went away after a few days. I’m still pregnant. I know I am, I feel it.” Instinctively, my hand rests on my belly and I start to rub it in a circular motion. I’m sure the midwife is wrong and wish she would put the receptionist back on so I can make my damn appointment.

“No dear, you’re not. Sometimes our bodies aren’t aligned with our brains. Your brain may think you’re still pregnant, but I can tell by looking at your hormone levels, that you aren’t. Now about that D & C. You really should come in and have it soon. Otherwise you may get an infection that could…”

Click.

I hang up the phone and lie on the floor again. Once again, I tell myself she is wrong and that if I hope for it hard enough, I can still have Sweet Pea. When doubt creeps in, I stagger into my friend Jennifer’s office for reassurance. “I bled, but not that much, the nurse told me I’m fine but the midwife says no, I lost the baby, but I don’t think I did. I still feel Sweet Pea, I know she’s still with me….”

Jennifer deciphers some of my babble and calls the midwives herself. Unsatisfied by the midwives response, she decides to call my general practitioner. “If your doctor is the one who first validated your pregnancy, then she is who I should call. What’s her name?” she asks.

            I cry on Jennifer’s floor while she tries to penetrate the impenetrable medical system. No one wants to answer her questions or tell her how or why I would have been told I’m still pregnant if I’m not. Everyone refers her to someone else. After the tenth phone call, I finally let the midwife’s words sink in. “Don’t call anyone else,” I tell Jennifer. “It’s over.”

I return home again and crawl into bed. I remain there for several days, only emerging to go to work, and then returning to my bed. I refuse to have the D & C, but my body continues to bleed expelling the baby it’s own way. For weeks I am a shell of myself, doing the bare minimum at work, and avoiding all of my friends and family. People try to comfort me with, “You’ll have another baby” or “Maybe it’s for the best,” but this only angers me. I don’t want another baby, I want Sweet Pea.

After weeks of grieving and raging, I decide I have to let Sweet Pea go. I can’t live my life in bed hoping when I wake up, she’ll still be with me. She’s gone. I lost her. Pretending otherwise won’t bring her back. Nor will trying to understand what caused the miscarriage. I’ll never know and all the speculating does is make me feel bad about myself and my body. I assume it’s something that I did or that my body is a failure at baby-making. All this line of thinking does is make me want to crawl back into bed.

Once again, I seek out a ritual to help me. I gather all of the remnants that remind me of Sweet Pea and place them on my bed. The cute baby outfits I bought and the pregnancy book, I put in one pile to send to my friend Jill, who is pregnant. I pause while folding an adorably, fuzzy yellow snow suit. Instead of adding it to Jill’s pile, I hold it to my face and cry. It’s too heartbreaking letting it go, so I keep it. I don’t have to give up hope entirely, I just have to let go of Sweet Pea.

I find the nub of one of the candles I lit for Sweet Pea and the cork I saved from the champagne Jason and I drank on Valentine’s Day, the day she was conceived. I buy a hosta plant in remembrance of Sweet Pea. I dig a hole in our garden and Jason and I place the candle and cork in it and the hosta on top. We hold hands in silence for several minutes and let the tears fall. At the same time, we break the silence by saying, “Good-bye, Sweet Pea. We love you.”

“Losing Sweet Pea” is an excerpt from Corbin Lewars’ memoir, Creating a Life (Catalyst Book Press, 2010) which is now available as an ebook. Corbin’s essays have been featured in Hip Mama, Midwifery Today, Mothering, and A Wild Ride and several anthologies. She is a writing coach and instructor based in Seattle, where she lives with her two young children and a thriving hosta, which she calls Sweet Pea. To learn more about Corbin and her coaching practice visit www.corbinlewars.com.