Happy Women’s Day

On Mothers Day:

Here’s to all the WOMEN – all the women – on #MothersDay. not just mothers, but also mothers, too:

Those of us with big old moon bellies, with stretch marks, with babies – maybe all grown-up by now with babies of their own. To those of us who sooth and scold, who nurture, and challenge, who help our children grew… to those of us who balance all of everything while we dance with the angels on the head of the pin… just before we lose our shit and start saving for our kids’ therapy bills.

Here’s to those of us who sit in the abortion clinic and tell the doctor that we don’t want children. Maybe just right now, we aren’t ready. Or maybe forever. Here’s to those of us who have been ashamed and afraid and have still made that choice because we know it’s the right one even if we wish so goddamn hard we didn’t have to make that choice in the first place.

Here’s to those of us carry a child only to place them in the loving hands of others who wanted nothing more than to have a child but couldn’t. Here’s to those of us who regret and dream about that baby, and those of us who carry on with our lives.

Here’s to the egg donors, pumped up on hormones. Here’s to the surrogates who carry babies that are not theirs.

Here’s to those of us waiting for the right man – or woman – to start a family. and those of us of us who say “fuck it, I’m not waiting for anyone or anything” and show up at the sperm bank ready to take it on all by ourselves.

And here’s to those of us who have said “motherhood is not for me,” and have faced the quiet condemnation and all that bullshit side eye from a society that glorifies motherhood – that puts a big old pastel bow on something messy and unruly, and something that isn’t for everyone, but makes us feel like we should want it even if we don’t.

Here’s to those of us who open our homes to the kids that were born with crack addictions, whose bodies are warped from fetal alcohol syndrome, whose mothers left them in trash cans.

(And here’s to those mothers who made those terrible choices because God only knows what they endured throughout their miserable little lives to get them to a place where they could abuse their pregnant bodies, or abandon their tiny babies.)

Here’s to to those of us who have struggled every month, with ovulation predictor tests and blood draws and hormones and bedrest, who have have stayed up all night on the internet reading about the latest treatment, and the latest way to be able to do something that other women do so goddamn easily.

Here’s to those of us on the adoption waiting lists – praying every time the phone rings it’ll be THAT CALL – that miraculous moment when the voice on the other line says “we’ve found a baby for you.”

Here’s to those of us who fly across the world to orphanages in Siberia, in China, in Korea, in India… who hold out open arms for the first child that runs into them.

And here’s to those of us who stand with empty arms – who mewl over open graves, whose breasts still ache with muscle memory, who have survived the unthinkable, the worst thing ever, every mother’s nightmare. Here’s to those of us who keep getting up each morning after with an ache that will never, ever go away. To those of us who keep on living even when it is unbearable.

Here’s to those of us without mothers — whether we are mothers ourselves, or just getting through each day without our mother, which is never easy even when we don’t think about it.

Here’s to those of us who love our mothers and talk to them every day, or write to them, or dream about them if they’re gone.

And here’s to those of us who hate our mothers – and here’s to those of us who are hated by our daughters – whether it’s for a moment, or for a lifetime. Because we live in a messy, imperfect world and we don’t talk about it enough.

Here’s to those of us who are step mothers and take on mothering another child who love us and resent us in equal measure.

Here’s to those of us who sleep around, and those of us who die virgins and everyone in between.

Here’s to the married women, the single women, the girlfriends, the divorcees, the widows, the nuns, and the mistresses, too.

Here’s to the sisters and best friends and aunties and cousins and the strangers on the bus we never see.

Here’s to those of us who stay home and garden, and those of us who fly across the world to run board meetings.

Here’s to those of us who were born women, and never had to choose to be this way.

Here’s to those of us who WEREN’T born this way and take hormones and have endured surgeries, who are told they can’t go in the women’s bathroom, who are ridiculed, and harassed, and bullied because they were born in the wrong body, and chose to be themselves.

Here’s to all the women – all of us – our dysfunctional, wild sisterhood… with all our colors and our feathers (or our spandex and our leather) with our glitter and our glue, with our bones and skin and softness,
and with our edges, too…

Happy Womens Day. To all of you. let’s stand free and proud and left each other up as high as we can — which is infinite