Mothering At the End of the World (as we know it)

I write these first sentences sitting on a rock overlooking Echo Lake in the Sierra Nevada Mountains on a sunny June afternoon. As I hiked through the gnarled juniper, Sugar Pines, and tall granite peaks it popped into my head that my birthday is drawing near. Along with that, my mother’s birthing day. As I walked, I began to brainstorm some kind of offering to thank her for bringing me earthside. 

That thread of thought landed me in a recent memory: 

Just a few days prior to leaving for the Sierras I had arrived for a first postpartum visit with a new mother and her 5 day old baby. I was greeted by a weeping mama: a common occurrence in my profession. We sat down together on the sofa and she told me that as wildly and unbelievably in love with her little one she was, every time she looked at her she couldn’t stop thinking about all the similarly aged babies in Gaza who were dead, dying, starving, orphaned. She looked at me and asked, “What have I done?” Not because she missed the freedoms, ease, or autonomy of her life as a maiden, but because she feared for her little girl’s future, and the future of the earth that sustains her. Had she made a terrible decision to bring an innocent life into this suffering world? 

Although these questions are not new - remember the first noble truth of Buddhism, a 2,500 year old religion, is that suffering is an inevitable part of the human experience - they’ve been, I imagine, more at the forefront of birthing people’s minds than ever before. And, unlike 2,500 years ago, people are changing their reproductive behaviors because of these questions. 

As someone whose career revolves around procreation —and who hopes to welcome a baby of my own in the not-so-distant future— I have thought long and hard about what it means to invite new life onto this planet. Is it right? Is it ethical? Is it… totally messed up? And, after much pondering, I have decided that, not only is it okay, it’s necessary. 

There is nothing more hopeful than having a baby. What could be more radical than raising that baby in a way that promotes the values so many of us are fighting for?

Having children in this day and age is not just about creating family units or about taking the next logical step in the journey of one’s adult life. It’s about creating generations of resistance; literally birthing the change we wish to see in the world. When little ones are raised in alignment with their biology and the laws of the natural world, entire generations are kinder, gentler, more compassionate. 

To change the course of this world, to bring about a more peaceful era, we need brave activists marching in the streets, people calling senators, communities writing letters, celebrities making speeches, friends talking to friends. But, we also need birthgivers who make the unbelievably scary and brave choice to bring new life into this world because that new life might be one of the ones that saves this planet, or one of the ones that gets to enjoy its salvation. 

As I hiked along the lake and took in its clear waters, felt the breeze on my cheek, listened to the chattering of birds above me and thought about the suffering in this world, the radical hope of birth, and my own upcoming birthday, I realized that in addition to all of this, one of the most important reasons I continue to dream of one day holding a baby in my arms is that I would choose this. 

I would choose, again and again, to feel the sun warm my skin and the sting of salt water in my eyes, to see the beauty of a lupine scattered hillside and to smell fresh mountain air. To feel the security of my mother’s arms wrapped around me.   

I would even choose the itch of a mosquito bite, the pain of a rolled ankle, the nausea of heartbreak, the dizziness of seeing the suffering of so many beings playing out both on the sidewalk outside my home and in the newspaper on my front steps. 

Because, as Mary Oliver reminds us, 

it is a serious thing / just to be alive on this fresh morning / in this broken world.