To love and hate his breathe
 the breathe that destroyed joyful parts of me

That same breathe created beautiful life
and my maddened nights

That breathe created her first crawl, first step
and my tear stroked nights

Her young breathe will never know the pain
of what was our past

To pray his needle will never take his breathe so far away
that we can never reach

We can never reach you there
it's to far away

9 Months Later

Wow. It's really been 8 months since I've been on this thing.. What a crazy ride.

Last time I blogged Maddox was not even a month and I was still reeling from the fact that her father showed up to her birth strung out. Hardest thing I've ever gone through.

In many ways I'm still recovering from that. I was being prepped for my c-section and at the same time having to wake up Cody so he wasn't not knodding out in front of the doctors. Then hours after my c-section I had to find a way to get up so I could change Max's diapers cause he was passed out on the couch in the hospital room... Sounds knarly, and it was.. But that crazy thing is, I was happier in those moments then ever. It began my journey with me and Max. Just me and that little girl.. Crazy ma and all.

It's been a tough ride, but such a beautiful one. Just me and her.

In many ways I can't believe I've made it the way I have through all of this. But god damn, that lil girl rocks my world.

The funny thing is, I don't feel in any way I'm struggling. I'm actually creating the life I want to live. I want to climb, dance and do yoga. So I'm actually creating a way to do that. I also want my daughter to experience the life I could have never dreamed of. We may be broke as fuck but she has a mom who will neeeeever give up on her and never stop fighting for her. Plus the beautiful thing about being a radical ma is that we have a support group that is a million times strong. We have an army of friends and lovers who would scoop us up and support us even if they could not support themselves. What other subculture has that to rely upon?!

We're gonna make it. And we're gonna make it cause I'm not settling for mediocrity and don't you do it yourself. There's always a million if, andsss orrr.... Butss, at the end of the day, for all we know, we only live once. Take care of the ones closest to you and then take care of yourself. Take risks, step out. It's seriously possible. The only thing stopping you from dreaming big is your thinking. And that's a little machine inside your head, its easily reconditioned.. Just take some risks :)

"Ain't Got No/I've Got Life"

For 10 months I have been absolutely consumed with the day Maddox would arrive- if the world would have crumbled around me I would have cared less as long as she was still safe in my womb. I can't explain it to you, but nothing mattered but the fetus growing inside of me and the day our life would begin. She is here now, 3 weeks old and I literally cannot put words to her. She is more beautiful than I ever could have imagined and in my heart I feel that truth more than any before. I cannot imagine a world without her. I am overcome by such love for her that it scares me. Its a love that truly moves me to tears and love that is indescribable. I finally have felt the strength of a love that people will give their life for, a love people create revolutions for. I feel she has always been here, always been inside of me somewhere. Today I believe she was what pulled me through drunken motorcycle accidents and living with no regard for the importance of my life. When all I wanted was to be left cloaked in a drunken oblivion she was somewhere within me giving me a reason to hold on.

To have someone to live and create beauty for leaves me with a sense of serenity. Life is very simple today but more important than ever. Changing a diaper and feeding her, rocking her and singing to her, talking to her and smiling at her consume every moment of my day and night. There is so much going on in these utterly simple moments. To know that how I choose to love and raise her can so greatly impact her whole life is such a beautifully empowering feeling. She will not have to know the depression I have held onto since my earliest childhood memories. She can be one less human who spends their days in therapy or getting obliterated to run from a sordid and painful childhood or past. That she can be one woman raised from a bed of feminist values and surrounded by healthy relationships is my commitment and promise to my daughter.

Leaves me with a lot less room to be a fuck up. Its not about me anymore.
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But I've been afraid to write these past couple of weeks. I've been afraid to write because I've been dealing with a good amount of sadness and loneliness on top of all these new feelings. I've been afraid to admit that even though the love of my daughter is the most powerful and beautiful emotion I've ever felt I've also been hurting as well. I've already begun the mommy guilt thing. I thought that there should be no sadness accompanying my daughters birth or the days following. But that is so so unrealistic. I remembered a few days ago that what allowed me to begin to actually heal from the breakup with Max's father was that for the first time in my life I decided to own and feel the pain instead of run from it or live in it. So there is no use in pretending I'm superwoman now. I've got to admit, being a single mother is some tough fucking business. Hormonally, emotionally, physically. But whats amazing is I've realized I don't have to be floating in bliss to be empowered or to be absolutely head over heels in love.
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I ended up having Maddox via c-section and I've been silently grieving the shattered illusion of how I envisioned her birth to be. I dreamt for 9 months about having her vaginally, I wanted to grunt and scream and sweat and cry, I wanted her to be handed to me after seeing her umbilical cord cut, I wanted to have a mirror and see her crown, I wanted to feel her birth. Instead, I was whisked to a room that literally looked like something out of a sci-fi movie, it was so bright and cold and foreign that the room and doctors caused me to shake and cry uncontrollably.

 On top of grieving the fantasy of her birth I swore by for 9 months, I also have guilt because ultimately it was my decision to have her via c section. After days of contractions I was not dilating and she was not dropping so my doctor suggested that it would be in our best interest to go ahead with a c section and so I did. Come to find out her head was caught on a bone inside of me but despite that fact I almost have made myself feel less of a woman because I didn't even try. Now I know I am not but its taking some time to come to terms with that.
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Oh life. This is real. This is what its like to begin a new life.This is what its like to create a new life. This is what its like to begin to grow up. This is my personal journey into motherhood, its not like yours or the lady on TV or your moms or my moms. I'm learning to part with the old. I can't run from it anymore. I don't have to live in the memories of my past but I do have to accept them as my own. You know whats pretty beautiful though, I was talking to Maddox a few days ago, trying to get her to sleep and I realized that Maddox's father did help to create her beautiful life and for that he has accomplished something miraculous. Our relationship was so chaotic and ugly but from it came this beautiful girl and from her I finally have gained the courage to live. I can honestly say I wouldn't have done this any other way.

Maddox Elizabeth Turner

Maddox, my mother and I

I dreamt you up

Created you in my tears

Nights spent on tile floors hoping for escape

Days spent wandering through trash

Dirty laundry supporting my head

You were there.

It took him to get me to you

And I will forever love him for that.

Our punches and empty bottles

Rested on cardboard boxes

The only home we knew

And you were there

Trying to keep me here

Your life filled dreams

Nurtured a torn heart

You live inside me

But you created this new world

A past no longer broken

A masterpiece created with an artist who carried broken wrists

Not considered broken anymore

You dreamt me up, afterall

Creating me in your breath

Nurturing me through your growth.

36 Weeks

I haven't written anything all week. I've been fighting off my super ugly self critic now and then, but honestly I'm so damn exhausted its hard to hold onto linear and intelligent thoughts throughout the day. I'm finding creative comfort in making a baby mobile for Maddox and painting portraits of bananas all over my apartment, yep, bananas. Painting and sewing are extremely relaxing and helping me to feel as if I have accomplished something, even if the only thing I did all day was lay on the couch sewing doilies on a stuffed elephant.

The last weeks/days of pregnancy have descended upon me, and man are they ugly. At 34 weeks I made fun of the pregnant women with their tiny bumps at the park waddling along the trails as me and my massive baby-belly gracefully and easily made the 3 mile walk. A few days later I found out my baby girl was already a whooping 6 1/2 lbs. And a few days after that I suddenly woke up feeling like I, quite literally, had a bowling ball in between my legs. I tried to walk my 5 month old puppy around the block last night, and I shit you not, I had to stop and sit down on the curb 3 times to catch my breath. Reminded me that I really need to wait before patting myself on the back or just stop doing it all together.

I'm floating through these days with not to much of a thought on my mind. Strangers enthusiasm about my soon to be ending pregnancy irritate me. Good hearted birthing advice from strangers and friends irritate me and other pregnant ladies complaints about their pregnancies irritate me. So I'm accepting I'm just plain irritable these days.  A cashier today, bright eyed and with a bright smiled, exclaimed how excited I must be with my daughter's arrival fast approaching. I told her I was to physically miserable to be excited, and she seemed taken aback by my response. I should wear a shirt with some kind of warning on it for good hearted strangers and friends. And don't you worry Dont worry cashier, I'll be a good mom, I swear.

I'm giving myself a massive break these days and it helps. No self imposed fake smiles or upbeat conversations. Women do this every day all over the world, they probably do it better and have it a lot worse. But I'm giving them a break too. Not forcing myself to go anywhere I don't want to go (other than work which I must), answer any phone calls I don't want to answer, and engage in any mindless conversations I don't want to. I'm aiming towards being politely absentminded, and cleaning up whatever messes I make along the way. Afterall, as much as it may feel good at the time to yell at whatever co-worker doesn't re-stock the beer fridge at night, I still have to work with them tomorrow and after Maddox is born. So take out the frustration in the doilies and in my new found obsession with painting bananas.

I started going into labor at 35 1/2 weeks. I was 1cm dilated and having weak, but regular contractions. They gave me a couple shots of something to relax my uterus and an ambien and sent me home. I'm taking it real easy now, she needs to stay in here for at least 1 more week, when she will be considered full term. The early labor scare made me realize how not ready I really am. In all honesty, I'm as ready as one can be, but you never really feel ready for this kind of thing. I've been extremely impatient about her arrival for the past 35 weeks but after last weeks scare I'm trying to savor every lone moment I have left. Enjoying the uninterrupted painting sessions I still can have and enjoying the uninterrupted mornings were I can still wail and play the guitar (although her kicks do already control how loudly I can play).

I dream about her almost every night, she is a different form in every dream, but my love is overflowing every time I meet her in my dreams. This is the biggest test of patience I've ever been given. Just take it a moment at a time and I'm a bit closer to meeting her than I was yesterday.  

I can't control my dreams. They are whatever they want to be. I know there is a slew of theories that surround dreams and I haven't read a damn thing about them. The only thing I've ever heard that seems to hold true to me is that they are manifestation of your subconscious hopes and fears and a manipulated continuation of your waking life (even though isn't that life, afterall?)

I remember being extremely depressed as a child and looking forward to my dreams, looking forward to these newly created friends I would be surrounded by once my head hit my pillow. They were a necessity in order to escape the reality of my parents arguments and financial poverty. And so when not dreaming I strived to continue creating this fantasy world in my waking life. I was known in grade school as the girl who always had her nose in a book. In early elementary school my morning routine was to go outside and sing to birds, pretending like I was a character in any fairytale, pretending like whatever creatures stirred around understood my song. My dad then swiftly had me tested for a list of mental illnesses because he believed their was obviously something abnormal about this child.

Years later I continued having amazingly colorful dreams, especially in the moment right before actual sleep took. Beautiful images would fill my head and I would wake up in a creative panic, feeling like I was unable to write every detail down fast enough, feeling as if I took a breath then an eraser would wipe out these creative inspirations given to me by my subconscious. This was the time in my life when I lived for art. I felt fueled by creating, creating anything. Whatever medium it manifested through, art was like breath.

Fast forward to a couple years and my dreams completely ceased. For almost 2 years I could not remember one dream. I thought it had to do with traveling. Sleeping in unfriendly fields and abandoned houses. Afterall, the porch of a grainer did not exactly bring on deep sleep.

Looking back now its interesting that the darkest times in my life held no dreams. Traveling began as an urge to explore and ended as a means to escape. I detested stability yet yearned for something that resembled it at the same time.  I created nothing for over two years. I felt dried up. Every intricate part of me that made me unique was traded in for a forty and a dirty sleeping bag. Funny how there were no dreams.

And now, nightly, my dreams are like uncontrolled fireworks. Some nights I wake up gasping for air so terrified of the nightmare that I was just engulfed in, some nights I wake up laughing and some mornings I wake up so inspired by what had just taken place that I immediately begin painting. There is no on or off switch and no filter. I have dreams filled with tears and my babies father and his new girlfriend. I have dreams where I am surfing while my daughter watches me giggling with excitement and pride.  I have dreams where my friends have opened art galleries and restaurants and I look on with admiration and inspiration. I even had a dream I gave birth to a 70 year old man. I no longer have to live for my dreams or run away from them. There are ones I don't enjoy and ones I would rather not live without. They leave me grateful and inspired and with a sense of knowing that whatever spark had died within me is now alive. I'm awake again, finally, you can turn back.

I dreaded all the childbirth classes I signed up for once me and my ex broke up. I had yet to realize how much I had internalized society's ideal of the two parent family model until I was struck with stomach wrenching nerves walking into the class. Why do I have to have tattoos and look young and be single, I thought to myself last night. I don't want all these cute older couples to judge me, judge my baby, judge my tattoos... Look at them, their nice clothes, their white smiles and manicured nails. I bet that lady is looking at my chipped black nail polish. Look how carefully that dad swaddles his baby doll...

On and on it went. I'm struck with how deeply I've allowed my own self to believe that  there lies real safety and real stability in raising a child within the model of a nuclear family/two parent household. Even despite being bombarded daily with the reality of that ideal only being a broken delusion, I'm still fighting and judging myself, having to remind myself often that single mom's do it and do it well.

My deluded beliefs on child rearing are revealing themselves to me in extremely subtle ways. In my fear of facing the other parents at the birthing class, in the way I divert looking fully into the eyes of the well-to-do parents I serve at the wine bar I work at. Don't get me wrong, most days I do walk with great pride in being single, pregnant and extremely independent. I dance in it, feeling lit up and inspired by my newly blossoming future. But the nights of judgement are there- and what really hurts when I find myself swept up in this wave of judgment is not the judgment itself but how hard I am on myself afterwards for feeling poorly. I'm realizing I've been holding myself to an extremely unrealistic standard. A standard that says I should only walk around empowered and inspired for my soon to be arriving daughter and for myself. Very, very, very unrealistic.  

So today I'm learning I really just need to be gentle with myself. I need to allow myself the room to grow and fall and slip into this new and uncomfortable role as a soon-to-be single mama. A radical single mama. A radical single mama with naked ladies tattooed on her arms and chipped black nail polish.

I assumed the moment that 2nd pink line appeared on the EPT stick that naturally so would a slew of radical feminist parenting ideals. I mean c'mon, it has taken me years to even begin to grasp the reality of sexism and its massive detrimental impact on my life as a young woman.Then even more time to find what being a feminist really meant to me, a meaning that went further than just a label but became an actual way of life. As Bell Hooks states about feminism, "[it is] a movement to end all sexist oppression."

 I was not born into a world that cradles young women and men and teaches them the beauty of their own self. I was not born into a world that teaches little girls and boys that they are not their gender stereotype. I did not wake up with feminist ideals, and I have yet to wake up with parenting ideals. It took years, and a severe case of bulimia, to find a place to grow into as an Anarcho-Feminist. And now I begin this new process of becoming a mother. A sometimes empowered, sometimes liberated, but a lot of the time extremely scared and nervous mama.

What will this mean to me? To my daughter? To our tiny yet beautiful family?

We'll just have to wait in see. But in the meantime I'm reading a lot of Ariel Gore.