i used to be quite opposed to audiobooks. when i lived in germany, my ex – who had a child and a busy life – enjoyed audiobooks. at the time, i barely gave them a chance. i had time to read back then. i wasn't mothering or caregiving.
nowadays most of the reading i get done is via audiobooks, and it’s usually poetry or smaller books that i read in print form. longer print books take me months to get through because after laying in the dark putting my baby and then my toddler to bed i am heavy with sleep. without the audiobooks i would be doing very little reading and my days would still feel quite dark, like my book-empty first few years with my first, wakeful, baby and chronic insomnia, when i was coming to terms with matrescence, with the abruptness of it all, like stretchmarks on skin growing too fast, silvery thread-like ghosts marking each and every way my old life had suddenly disappeared. i was stuck for a while, stagnating. but i eventually adapted alongside the changes in my life, and i'm so glad i gave audiobooks a chance.
one of my favourite audiobooks is braiding sweetgrass by indigenous mother and writer robin wall kimmerer, also beautifully narrated by her. it's a mesmerising soak in and reacquaintance with our roots in nature.
“we spill over into the world and the world spills over into us. the earth, that first among good mothers, gives us the gift that we cannot provide ourselves... she gives what we need without being asked”
robin wall kimmerer in braiding sweetgrass: indigenous wisdom, scientific knowledge, and the teachings of plants
i don't think it's that nature, as an example of a “good mother”, is selfless and servile. instead, i read the quote above as mother earth nourishing us, because we are earth too; i read it as nature knowing what we need, because we are nature too. reminding us of this – gently bringing us back to her – is the gift.
and it's reciprocal; those being mothered rely on mothers, whoever they may be – biological mothers, society, wider family, foster parents, the sea, etc. – for the thing(s) we “cannot provide ourselves”, whether that's milk or food, a home or warmth, a voice when we cannot yet speak or, worse, are being silenced. mothers look after those more vulnerable until they – from being held in this way – become strong enough themselves to “spill over” into others. though it may be that they forever remain vulnerable in a certain aspect, they likely hold strength in other ways that this mothering brings to fruition or allows space for. by holding someone up, someone who is vulnerable in different ways to you (financially, for example, or providing aid during genocide), you loan them a strength that ripples, and so they in turn can look after someone who is vulnerable in yet a different way (a child, perhaps). this is something our governments are completely alienated from, this reciprocity, this tending and holding, our mammalian nature, our interconnectedness and our need for community rather than separation, not just for survival but so that we flourish and thrive.
below is a poem i wrote about my baby, just before creating the roots issue. the issue is full of nature and mothering and connection: moss, mycelia, ancestry, loss, tending of gardens, community, light and dark, and love love love.
earthbound by genevieve beech
i want to map the song of your mattress sounds;
a steady, breathy concert,
as i yearn for sleep
beside your fluttering body,
ripe and waiting
for your waking song,
an infinite symbiosis.
i want to map the song of our separation,
an extrication of sorts –
my body but a vessel,
your flesh my daily work.
and your cells still glimmer within me,
mysterious microchimerism!
an unexpected homecoming.
i witness your threads weave together,
as if from nothing, like
moss that grows from spores
in the dark-damp, like
the milk you tug from the wasteland
of my body.
i witness you root yourself to this life,
from the water within me –
you pulsate to being,
both ethereal and earthbound.
you are only growing grander;
a slow kind of flourish.
book recommendations:
gathering moss – robin wall kimmerer
braiding sweetgrass: indigenous wisdom, scientific knowledge, and the teachings of plants – robin wall kimmerer
Beautiful poem 💕
Motherhood brought me to audiobooks, to closed captions on TV, and to reading ebooks on my phone (and ultimately a Kindle.) I was a really strict paper book reader before. I still love physical books, but now I’m much more of a multimedia reader now. 💫