Arrival Stories by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2022-04-05T00:00:00+00:00

A Sacred Ritual

LATHAM THOMAS

Doula and Founder of Mama Glow

When it comes to how one becomes a mother, there’s a difference between planning and preparation. In my work as a doula, families have shared their mindfully planned pregnancies—how they practiced meditation, or adjusted their lifestyle. Those are beautiful ways to come to pregnancy, but if you don’t get to conscientiously plan your journey, that doesn’t mean you’re unprepared. Our life paths prepare us. I’m now not only the mother of a son, but I’ve become a guide for other mothers and birthing people before, during, and after birth, as well as through loss. My decades of experience have taught me that there are many paths to preparation.

I was twenty-three when I became pregnant with Fulano, who is now an adult. I was a recent Columbia University grad still living in New York City. In many ways, I still needed my own parents. But I was guided through the journey by ancestral wisdom and an internal knowing that was nurtured during my childhood.

When I was four, my mother became pregnant with my younger sister. This experience of watching her body support a life planted the first seed in the lush garden of my own motherhood journey. As a four-year-old, I was the perfect height to track my mother’s growing belly. My aunt and my great-aunt were pregnant too and all due within a month of each other. These radiant Black women would talk freely about their changing bodies and my mom always welcomed me into conversations. She taught me the principles of sacred anatomy and I learned how to name and talk about my body parts. She made sure I had access to books and PBS programs that helped shape my understanding of the body. This instilled a sense of empowerment and autonomy that would inform my entire life and reproductive journey. One time in the grocery store, a woman commented, “Wow, your mom has a baby in her belly.” And I swiftly corrected her. “No, my mommy has a baby in her uterus and it’s going to come out of her vagina.”

While my mother raised me, and eventually my younger sister, as a single mother in Oakland, my father, a pilot living in Southern California, visited often. They were great co-parents. I was raised with a village; my grandparents, aunts, and uncles were also pivotal in our upbringing. My sister and I saw my grandmother every day after school. Granny always had freshly baked homemade pound cake waiting on a cake stand for us. Traditionally, Black families are matrilineal, multigenerational, and inclusive. We are not bound by the nuclear family standard; instead, we embrace village keeping, which includes caregiving from relatives and family friends. There were some people who were around so much in my childhood that I was shocked when I eventually learned they weren’t blood kin.

When I became a mother, I knew that I wanted that same sense of community for my child. The night that my partner, Nemo, and I conceived, I recognized at the very moment that something sacred took place.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.