In the beginning there was a womb. There were hands of the carrier holding you close. She celebrated your existence because he begged for you to be. In the beginning, she was worried you would not survive so she changed her life to ensure your safe passage.
In the beginning, her body did not know you. It did not know what to do with you. It read his strands of DNA carried through her body and felt the enemy. Her body was smart. He absolutely was a foreign invader out for conquering. But you were the collateral, attacked in lieu of. The by-product of two mismatching sets of chromosomes. The hands that held wanted you to come into this world, but the womb that homes did not.
This is the story of your beginning. You have heard it throughout the years. As a mother, you understand the need to share your birth story. Your being the birth you gave, not the birth you experienced. No one really talks about that birth, do they? But moms of all status find comradery in the telling of their labor. So you heard your mother tell the story of her body rejecting her fetus. You. Her body rejecting you. The immune system attacking the cells forming you.
At no point did she say you were unwanted. But she said her body attacked you, the foreign entity. Which sounds a lot like “unwanted.” And it was the precursor to the next event in your young lives. He took a phone cord and attempted to snuff the life right out of her, for you.
But this story is her story. It is not your story. You were there. The screaming mouths, violence and chaos setting a stage for your life. But how could you have known the meaning of this? Besides her fear oozing into your pores, as did her anger, rage, contempt. Maybe this is why the two of you spent your lives bucking against one another.
As a society, we have learned so much about the mind and how it matters. We know now that the carrier’s psyche bleeds into the embryo. They sync together Earthside, and whatever the result of that tethering, life long Mommy Issues.
Here we are. Thirty years later. Still combating and weaponizing our body as if that is the solution to all things. It’s not. Her pain is not your pain. Her story does not need to cause you pain. She never meant for it too. It was simply the tapestry of her growing up. Let it go. Be okay with how you are, as you are right now.
Cerebral Thunder 