This is a post for my paid community, and a taster is offered for free subscribers. I’ve seen lots of criticism of this recently, and want to begin by saying I’m sorry if this feels annoying/ unfair. My reason for doing this is that I personally subscribe to substacks based on having had a taster read, so I imagine others appreciate too. Another thing is that I have a small paid community, and I feel connected in a deep way to almost every member. This feels the safest way for me to explore ideas of mothering, grief, ecologies of care and tender ways of being on this earth.
I so much appreciate all of you here, and as usual if you can’t afford a subscription but would appreciate one, reach out. I am so grateful for every one of you, and it is my paid community on here who continue to support my writing in ways I will never ever get over…
Tenderness warning: baby loss, infertility, maternal grief.
With love, always x
The summer solstice is here, and my wee summer solstice babóg isn’t, and it hurts more than any words can say.
I’ve spent a long time writing and rewriting that sentence above and to be fair, this one is really the only one that rings true enough.
The simple fact of it all is that this turning point, this beautiful and bright moment that many of us long for all year, has been a strange, unnerving thing inside of me since even before winter solstice. And it feels unfair and heavy and a myriad other things to have been due to bring a bright wee being into the world on a day of light and hope, but instead of that you are left with an ache so wild and deep it’s impossible to try, even, to name it.
And naming is at the heart of so much, for me, when it comes to grief. I want to speak the truths of my experience, no matter how they are, and saying things out loud really helps.
I want to speak about the ways that some people have shown up for me in ways I am still trying to process. I want to name this, the ways in which shock has been such a huge part of the journey of losing my baby. I want to feel like I can talk about the discourse around baby loss still feeling so strange, so much like walking on shards of glass. Early into my loss I was
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