I used to think I wrote because there was something I wanted to say. Then I thought, “I will continue to write because I have not yet said what I wanted to say”; but I know now I continue to write because I have not yet heard what I have been listening to.
—Mary Ruefle
Dear Reader of Half Baked,
Two Octobers ago, I was staring down at a positive pregnancy test.
One October ago, I was gingerly pulling up the metaphorical blinds; a stranger in a strange land, finally stepping out. My first autumn as a mom was the most delicious, precious time— it was in the fall when we really began to settle in with one another. We were in-sync, I was more confident, but we were still lingering in that super sweet space of sleepy, fourth-trimester closeness.
This October, my girl is running down hills, sliding down slides, twirling, dancing, shouting, hugging, pouncing, blowing kisses. As for me, I have found an unanticipated contentment, and (will I regret using this word?)— ease? —in motherhood. My body no longer remembers when she was inside of me, and somehow, as was promised, we have found a new rhythm as a family, we all shower on a regular basis, and we learned how to feed ourselves again.
When we become moms, we enter into this brand new culture of parenthood, most of us having to learn its language and customs on the fly as we map our way through. Terms and phrases like baby-led weaning, frenectomy, Haakaa, round ligament, kangaroo care, Babinski reflex, bleb, Onbuhimo, diastasis, asyncliticism, paced bottlefeeding magically became a part of my vocabulary. Now, I am a whiz at swaddling, I actually understand my breast pump, I can change a diaper one-handed in a hurricane, I’ve added thousands of catchy off-the-cuff songs and lullabies to my repertoire, my daughter nurses while doing a downward dog while making cow sounds, and I find subject matter on lactogenesis, cosleeping, tongue ties and induction to be kind of riveting. Go figure.
I feel as though I have lived at least a dozen lives just in the past year.
I will never be able to fully wrap my mind around how many different people I have been, in this one body.
How many places I’ve inhabited, in this one house.
With matrescence comes a natural questioning and review of one’s identities, and people like to talk about how becoming a mom muddies the waters of Self, how it becomes difficult to locate who you are anymore. This felt true to me at one point, but from where I sit now, motherhood doesn’t feel like a loss of Self. Each stage of my daughter’s development brings with it a different phase of me, both of us slowly unfurling, shapeshifting into newness. New sleep habits, new clothes, new words, new hair, new teeth, new joke, new song, new tired, new challenge, new joy. We do this beautiful, intuitive, ever-changing dance, constantly readjusting to one another on the fly. All of it feels like an infinite Becoming, it continues to move me closer to who I am, to my inherent me-ness. At the risk of sounding overly-romantic, Self seems to burn brighter and clearer with each passing month.
If you’re new here— welcome. I’m Berlin, I’ve been mom-ing for 17 months now. I do lactation counseling and teach yoga. I’m wrapping up certifications for becoming a birth doula and childbirth educator. And, I write this little newsletter.
It has been one year since I wrote my first Substack post, about finding out I was pregnant and jumping in with two feet. When I started this project, my daughter was 4 months old.
I write for a number of reasons. I wanted to put words to the paradoxical mix of tenderness and ambivalence that I was feeling, especially the unsavory stuff that no one seemed to talk about. I was also full of fresh rage about the way pregnant and birthing women are treated in the U.S., and in need of processing my own birth. Having a daughter makes me want to be all of the things I was waiting to be— brave, outspoken, a writer, among others. Most of all, the rush of creative energy that came with my daughter’s arrival caught me off guard. It needed a place to go, and I developed a bizarre compulsion to write near-constantly and share my intimate thoughts and feelings with strangers on the internet.
Very off-brand for me.
I really had every intention of writing this in chronological order, but as I continued on with this project, I quickly found that this invisible structure I’d created for myself was asking to be dissolved. I’d often find that some other pesky idea was fluttering around into my awareness and it would butt in front of everything else that was “supposed to” come fist in the queue—this happened with the dog, cornered, windows, blink, molars and mom rage— and I would have no choice but to follow that thread of inspiration first. I am still trying to play catch-up, like I can’t write about the present without vindicating the past. Instead of writing about
how my daughter scatters strawflowers gleefully throughout the house,
how my daughter hugs the pumpkins on the stoop every morning,
how I traveled to New Mexico without her and my hands felt stupid and empty and useless,
how weird it is to truly, fully comprehend your grandparents as your parents’ parents instead of just your grandparents, and the implications of that,
or how, for several days a month, my body lights up and begs me to be pregnant again,
—I continue to work backwards, trying to finish what I started. I cling to the past, desperately gathering up the bits and pieces of my pregnancy and all of the details of my birth so that I can remember everything. I have essays in my drafts about my third trimester, about each phase of my birth, about how my midwife failed us, about how I stared into a soapy bowl of pump parts sobbing because I had no idea how to clean them or put them back together, about love and apathy and how wrong it feels to be depressed in the summertime, about gestational diabetes, the posture of new motherhood, getting my period back, attachment, having a blessingway at 1 year postpartum… the list goes on.
I’ll probably still write about that stuff. The trouble is, the chaotic, emotional windstorm that spurred me into starting this project has quieted. The out-of-character, can’t-keep-my-mouth-shut-ness has quieted. I’m not depressed anymore; actually, I am so consumed by joy now that it is exceedingly difficult to remember the cataclysm of postpartum. I have been swallowed whole by my daughter’s existence, contentedly drowning in her sea of love. Each phase of her growth is somehow sweeter than the last. The farther away I get, the more faded the details become; the opalescent haze that covered the first several months burnt off by the big, sunny love of early toddlerhood. My messy notes and the millions of photos prove that it all did happen— the breakdowns, the aching exhaustion, the hot tears, the silence, the snuggly nap marathons, the uncertainty— but in many ways (and surely by nature’s design) it feels like it was all just one sleepy dream. Forcing myself to write backwards isn’t really working right now. I’m paying too much attention. I’ve oriented myself towards the present. I want to look forward.
Nothing holds a mirror up to oneself quite like a personal writing practice. As I’ve stayed with the Great Vulnerability Experiment that is this newsletter, I have seen my own patterns and blind spots reflected back at me, which is good medicine but sometimes hard to swallow. A repetition emerges, and it spills light onto all of my habits— both in my writing and thought processes— to which, even with all the therapy and yoga and meditation and quiet walks with self, I’d been ignorant. It makes me want to be a better person, a better writer.
I didn’t start writing this for you. I started writing this for me. Like many literary adventures, this project is morphing into something different than what I had initially envisioned. I didn’t really expect anyone to come along for the ride— but I’m glad you’re here. Your readership keeps me from writing lazily. You hold me accountable to my writing practice; you make me tidy it up, organize my thoughts, explore and parse out my opinions, and when I do write lazily, I feel it deeply. And, many of you have reminded me I’m not alone.
It has been peculiar and illuminating to experience how different a piece of writing can feel from when it is just mine, to when it goes out quietly into the world. In the past, I have shied away from my own opinions, as if being opinionated could make me ‘bad,’ as if sharing my own thoughts and experiences automatically negates someone else’s thoughts and experiences. I am interested in embracing them now. I am also interested in holding the paradox. When you set out to write something, especially if your aim is to prove something or share some thought or opinion, the writing of it will make you question it. This is good and healthy, I think, and this is important to me — to avoid narrow-mindedness, to embrace prismatic thinking. What I am not interested in is tribalism, dogmatic thinking, hurting anyone, or partaking in the “mommy wars;” however, I do feel pretty passionately about things like natural birth, the sanctity of the mother-baby dyad, healthy attachment, breastfeeding— and I like writing about that stuff. Even so, I can write about why I wanted to have an unmedicated birth and empathize with your decision to have an epidural. I can write about why I wasn’t interested in prenatal testing and also fully understand your choice to have it done.
I like making people comfortable. I teach yoga, I’ve worked in hospitality for most of my life, so this has always been my job: to be kind, to be accepting, and to make sure you feel very, very comfortable. As a bartender, I have listened to people tell me all about why they believe this country is falling apart, why their wife is leaving them, about their trip to Italy, about the deer they shot, the documentary they’re making, why Republicans suck, why Democrats suck, why the meal they are eating sucks. I have listened to people tell me horrible, traumatic stories as a neurofeedback technician in a mental health practice. I have listened to my students share deeply personal parts of their lives with me. I have listened to my friends bemoan their workplace struggles, lament about guys they’re dating, something shitty their mom said to them. I am the listener for just about every single person in my family. I have done so. much. listening.
And you know what?
I love listening.
I would 1000% rather listen than speak. My inclination towards caregiving and comfort-making is not performative, it is hardwired into my psyche. It is a deeply ingrained part of my personality. I like to see all sides of the story, to empathize, to listen, to make space, to genuinely give a shit about what you’re thinking and feeling. The only problem is that, with all that listening, biting my tongue started to become so natural that I felt like I had become literally incapable of using it. It’s uncomfortable and foreign to me to share things that might make other people uncomfortable, but it has felt sort of important to explore that discomfort and to quit moving through the world like I am one big walking apology.
So, I continue asking myself who I am writing for. Is this still just for me? Is it for you? Can it be for all of us, and still be honest and real? I don’t know. I think that when we try to be for everyone, it often results in dull writing, lacking soul and spunk. On the other hand, I also think of the old is it true/is it necessary/is it kind thing, and wonder if writing this is of benefit to anyone at all, other than myself. Even if this were true, I wonder if it is okay to have something that only benefits myself. I wonder how this project ties into fostering community, or if it can. Maybe I don’t need to worry about your comfort at all.
Some of my favorite things I’ve written in the last year have been the most hyper-personal, like the regret of leaving, the grief of staying, you look great, skullcap and peanut butter, and spiritual teachings from the sugarplum fairy. Despite the accompanying vulnerability hangovers, I never really regret writing from this raw, hormonal place. I think there is plenty of refinement and guarding and performance-making out there, and connecting over our collective, messy, honest human-ness has always been my M.O. Still, as more people join me here I do feel the call to erect some boundaries.Reactionary Feminist shared a thought-provoking piece a few days ago which speaks to this concept of the “pornography of self” in today’s digital age. How do we decide what to share and what to keep to ourselves, when the perceived closeness that comes from oversharing with the reader is so enticing? I ask myself how it feels to share photos of my daughter’s face, the darkest, cobwebbed corners of my mind, and how to protect the tenderness of those things.
The feistiness and the laser-like creative focus that I felt during most of my first year postpartum seems to have tapered off (Hormones? I ask myself, for the 124th time) and I have been feeling, for the first time in awhile… quiet. Sometimes I worry that this leveling out, this quietude, will mean I will have nothing to write about anymore. Sometimes it feels like everything has already been said; we’re all writing about the same stuff. I’ll be wrapping up a draft, and then receive a more interesting, more articulate version on the same topic in my inbox from another writer I subscribe to, who said it better than I could, and sometimes I think: what’s the point?
I’m not actually sure if I want to finish the job of writing about my pregnancy and my birth. I do, but I don’t. I have a third trimester piece sitting in my drafts. Maybe I’ll send it, maybe I won’t. The experience feels a little too far away now, and I’m afraid I won’t be able to do it justice. I felt some of that after I wrote it’s not about you —like there was more to be said, but I wasn’t “in it,” anymore, so I couldn’t share it properly. There is a specific kind of grief that comes with not being able to properly bring to form an important experience the way it deserves to be represented. It can take a long time to slough off the stickiness afterwards. I do not know if I want to tell you my whole birth story from start to finish anymore. If I do ever share it in its entirety, it’ll probably be paywalled.
There is also the question of the characters in my life, in this story. As much as I love Anne Lamott’s hot take on the subject—
“You own everything that happened to you. Tell your stories. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better.”
—I don’t really have it in me to publicly sully the names of the people who I am angry with or who let me down, even though the role they played in my story is so integral to the telling of it. Do I just leave them out and sacrifice very important, interesting aspects of the story? Do I change their names, even though their role is somewhat obvious? Maybe I just let it be, and do not write about it at all?
I only know one thing for sure, and that is that I will definitely not get better at writing if I stop writing, so I will keep writing. I love Substack, and I’m so glad to have found this experimental little corner of the internet. Writing this newsletter has been my most favorite thing. I’m so glad that you are here, too— it means so much to me that you read what I write. A special thank you to paid subscribers; it’s a real treat to get paid for my writing. As moms everywhere know, carving out time in one’s life and space in one’s brain for indulging in creation can sometimes take a different sort of effort— so I do appreciate each of you for supporting this endeavor and reminding me that my time, energy and ideas are of value.
Which posts have you enjoyed or related to? What do you want to see next from Half Baked? A new mom support group? Bite-sized breastfeeding education classes? Monthly meditation sessions? More yoga? A podcast? Do you want to be on it? Who are you?
Comments are open. You can reply to this email, too— I love hearing from you.
I thought I knew where I was taking us, but I’m not sure anymore. Maybe if I knew, it would be boring, and there would be less to write about. Maybe the place I am taking us is out of the past. Maybe I am just trying to deliver myself (and you, by proxy) into the present moment.
As always, thanks for reading.
Take good care,
Berlin
recently:
➊ Starting the morning with half-caf, and then making up for all the caffeine I wish I had in the morning by drinking more coffee throughout the day than I would have if I had just had full caf to begin with.
➋ Lots of good, old-fashioned, suburban fall fun happening over here: crunching through the leaves, baking, overpaying to go look at goats and pumpkins (and remembering how I used to live somewhere where I didn’t have to pay to look at farm animals, they just… existed. Everywhere.)
➌ Remembering how much I love this acoustic album from My Morning Jacket.
➍ Quick pep talk for writers from
:
➎
’s podcast on trad-wife-ism:
➏ On being the mess without needing to assure others that you are becoming the butterfly:
➐ If you are a writer,
is the fairy godmother mentor you’ve been looking for. So grateful I found her newsletter.➑ SOS: I need your healthy-ish slow cooker recipes!
