I’m stuck on one line Maggie Nelson wrote on page 37.
“I cannot hold my baby at the same time as I write.”
This is something that I feared when I became pregnant, when I decided I wanted to have children. I wanted more than one before I had one; but having one has made me realize that, mentally, I cannot handle more than one. And I think it is because of this sentiment I share with Nelson.
I cannot be a proper mother while being myself.
Nelson references her quote of D. W. Winnicott that echoes how I felt with “I had nearly four decades to become myself before experimenting with my obliteration.”
I don’t think I had that. I think I was still striving to find who I was before I had my child, while I was pregnant, and even after he was born.
Women struggle with identity in ways that men will not understand. We have feminists telling us to be ourselves, to make our own decisions, to do what we will, to find our own truth of life. We have the patriarchy telling us to be good and start a family while we can, before complications arise from age, before whatever. Before we’re whole. Be a mother before you’re human.
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