mammals, maternity, maia

last weekend, after my birthday, i started thinking about the then upcoming full moon (on the 12th of may). i only recently made the connection between me being a may baby and the goddess maia: the month of may is named after maia, whose name means mother or nurse in latin, and it feels so lovely to find out this little fact and to reconnect with older ways of being and of storytelling and meaning making.

i was born in the month of the mother’s moon, so maybe i was always working my way towards creating motherlore. in 1988, i was born on the cusp between the waning gibbous and the waning crescent: i was born waning, and it feels like i can never be satisfied; i am always wanting fuller, always wanting more from life. it’s hard not to feel understood by these moon patterns, to find poetry in them, to feel connected to something bigger.

i've been quiet on here since submissions closed as any spare minute before my holiday this last week has been spent working through them, and there are still many to go (so don’t fret if you haven’t heard back yet). the workshop ‘writing maternity as a mammal’ with

Alice Kinsella

took place on my birthday (a little gift to myself!) and, as someone on the session said, motherhood involves doing things in bits. perhaps this isn’t the most poetic or profound sentence but it really struck me. doing things in bits isn’t how i would usually work or create, but i am trying my best to accept this new way of being and it applies to motherlore magazine too, a project that has to be done in bits or it would not exist at all (so bear with me while i get the next issue ready…).

during the workshop, alice said that writing about motherhood is almost like an act of translation and i think that’s why, until recently, i have tended to write poetry. metaphor in poetry has helped me translate my experience of motherhood into words while creative non-fiction/prose felt inaccessible, both due to the doing things in bits nature of motherhood and the need for a larger narrative in a novel while motherhood to me just feels like ongoingness. i didn’t know how to show the intensity and extremes of motherhood without resorting to poetry, little moments or snatches distilled into a neat, metaphorical poem.

in prose, i always resort to telling, it feels like there’s so much to tell about motherhood, things that i was never told (referring in the above to ‘show don’t tell’, creative writing 101). this makes me think of the maintenance work of motherhood, work that disappears as soon as it is done (wiping a nose, tidying toys, changing nappies/diapers), so that there’s nothing to show for the day and yet so much happened — physically and existentially — and if you told someone about it it just wouldn’t convey the all-encompassing allness of it all, and even if you described it in detail in order to try and show the reader, wouldn’t it just be a boring read? yet it’s life-changing work, creating and nurturing life, both the mother’s and child’s. so how do you show the nuances and the intricacies and the magic, how do you translate that into words? and hasn’t it all been said already?

either way, i am leaning into doing this now, as i tentatively move away from poetry. returning to milk by alice kinsella helps and a ghost in the throat by doireann ní ghríofa is another great book along these lines, as well as hark by

Alice Vincent

– three very different motherhood books in prose. because we all have our different focuses and we all have a personal mother story to tell, whether of our own mother, our own motherhood or all the mothering of mother nature, and all that comes in between (continually reminding myself of this fact as the writing anxiety creeps in).

my holiday last week was filled with pain that made it hard to enjoy (a holiday with kids is not really my idea of a holiday anyway…): at my paid library job i can rest, but being with toddlers for 10 days straight means a lot of lifting, carrying and bending and, since birth, i have begun to experience bad lower back pain, often around the time of my period. this time, it spread up my left side and down my left leg as well as there was very little time to rest or meet my own needs on holiday.

when i experience pain like this, at night i turn my body over and i recall the last months of pregnancy: the planned, structured turn of the body in order to change positions in bed — no longer a swift, automatic roll but a centring around the heavy bump, a placing of limbs, a gradual adjustment, an adaptation. my body felt no longer mine, but unfamiliar, strange, heavy and awkward. i had to use my mind to move my body. i had to consciously offer it new choreography and, 2.5 years postpartum now, when my back hurts at night, i feel restricted again. though my body remembers its mammalian work, its adaptations during the third trimester, i must think the rolling movement through before i do it, it does not come naturally: my body communicates to my mind through pain, my mind tends to my body, because it’s hard not be in the body during extreme pain.

i spent most of my life trying to control my body, seeing it as separate from my mind, but i can’t stop thinking about alice’s thoughts (during the workshop) on the forced embodiment of pregnancy and labour (i am speaking about this here as that is my journey into becoming a mother, but by no means the only one): how the body, its hormones, affect the mind and mental health, something those who menstruate may be familiar with at varying degrees during their cycle too, of course. i don’t know why i needed someone to say it in the simple words in bold above for it to click, so that i could continue to unravel the mind/body separation that i have practiced most of my life.

if only i had the time to sit down and write about it properly. like motherhood, the thoughts in this post are a bit scattered, but i am sending them out anyway in the hopes that they reach those who need them. but i also want to say thanks for your digital presence and community, because there's reciprocity at work here. i would not have made time to write any of this today otherwise 💚