journal 13: the middle
Sunday, December 14th, 2025
The second trimester. The “golden period” to some. The one in the middle.
I felt better and I grew, in both size and strength. Vitality returned and the debilitating nausea ceased. So did the depressive moods. And yet, a profound change had taken place and I came to realize that it was, that it needed to be, forever different.
I have been fierce about my healing journey and living life on my terms, terms that are not dictated by childhood or by early circumstances. And yet, that fierceness has grown even more rabid since becoming pregnant with this baby. The burden of creation rests on the maker. My baby did not ask for this and I feel an immense responsibility to examine the kinds of stories they are being born into. I feel adamant that those stories be expansive.
…which, le sigh, begins with me. I must practice what I preach, model what I value. Motherhood, from pregnancy to birth and beyond, is potentially the most vulnerable phase of a woman’s life. It requires that I need and that I rely upon- there is PHYSICALLY no other option, even IF I found a way to intellectualize my way around it. And when I was forced to be needy, I discovered it uncomfortable and also downright scary.
My stories have been filled with beautiful idealisms and romantic tales like the rescue fantasy. They have also been accompanied by a rigid criteria for how I may be worthy of such beauty coming true. Quite frankly, I am way too exhausted to continue to participate. Or to care.
Instead, I am inspired by giving up. Turns out, when I “do less”, I am at my best! When I drop the striving, the human woman left behind is beautiful. She loves a simple pleasure. She forgives and does not fear her mistake. And she appreciates kindnesses. She cries when she feels in pain, but trusts that it is not final. And she laughs with a big joy that she knows is also fleeting.
Over morning coffee, Taylor and I agreed that we had been riding the rollercoaster together, encouraging each other on these emotional highs and lows when we should have been noticing the beauty of the middle. The place where these ups and downs intersect and also live together, in harmony. We had exhausted each other and this baby had exhausted us even further (without even being born yet!). And so it was the second trimester where we forfeited perfection for wholeness and striving for the beautiful surrender. I got off the ride and took a nap. He learned a new song on the guitar. And we began to write a new story for our baby.
* * *
October 10th, 2025
It was the toughest of slogs, August and September. Physically- not even demanding, more like all-consuming. And the challenge of becoming someone new. I needed to be needy. I still do and will further on in this process, during and after birth. And for the rest of my life as a human who needs.
My output is shrinking and my need for rest insatiable. I am quite still, quite content to stay put. I feel joy at being on bed, or in bed. And all of this makes me feel annoying! Because I can’t “contribute”. Because I’m not really fun. Because I am no longer all of those things that made me feel valuable as a person who will be loved by having value.
The feeling, the very concept of wholeness is being remedied, by showing our limited capacity and accepting it instead of trying to maximize and optimize. Instead, to rest. To lay in it. And stay there.
October 27th, 2025
I’ve been thinking a lot about bad women. How little it takes to be considered one. How they’re my favourite.
I want to walk around in the autumn mud in wellies and white and wool. I want to scream into the sopping piles of leaves. I want to be bold with my belly which grows and hardens more now. I am 16 weeks and started feeling a subtle rounding last week. Something will burst forth in this time, I feel it. It’s resentment for what this has meant for women for so long, but it’s power in choosing a different path now. The fact that I am able to choose. Being a downright unpalatable woman and a lovely mother. Being so full of self and self-expression at the same time as the ultimate selfless nurturing. The strength in this creation, this innate ability. How grotesque it is to live outside of what is considered pleasant, “feminine”. No, we are power.
November 4th, 2025
At lunch my father referred to me as a perfectionist child. I apparently didn’t want to participate in anything unless I knew I’d be good at it. He has a point. I am still anxious, not in trying new things, but in functioning at a certain level. A high level. An unsustainable level. I believe this is in my nature- my mind always thinking, always analyzing. I see and notice so much. It feels powerful sometimes and other times, I wish I had the power to turn it on and off.
At the same time, it has also been in my nurture. My childhood. The stakes were incredibly high, survival-level high. Getting it “right” meant avoiding pain and moving towards something that felt like love. Right now I reach into my body and I hug that anxious child after each mistake. Together we build courage to face the over-thinking. Together we breathe through, and reject, the shame of our maternal lineage.
“What if I fail? What if I’m not good enough at it?”
Then you’re human. And perhaps you’ll have fun trying. Perhaps you will want to try again.
November 27th, 2025
I need to say no today and go silent. Take the day off being the manager, professional and personal.
The tulips we bought for Sesame (nickname holding strong) are fully open and bending this way and that. The chaotic individualism of a tulip’s growth. Meandering in their reaching. I can see their yellow middles. Their whimsical curves. One unopened bud. That’s little Sesame.
Fluttering inside, bond deepening. Belly growing.
My former one-woman show. I do something different now, for this baby. For us. For me, in this body carrying this blessing and burden. The burden being responsibility, which is also a blessing.
December 6th, 2025
We got the keys to our Tudor apartment yesterday morning, December 5th. Two metal keys on the original wood mantel. It feels like home already, a comforting space, even without the heat on and without any furniture (yet). The relief of having a landing pad secured, Sesame’s first home. That feeling of safety cannot be understated. It is ultimate gratitude. And it arrived with a calm- after all of the worry and the rejection and the striving to prove ourselves as reliable tenants. This arrived with an ease, with an exhale, which is often how these things happen, in alignment.
I am feeling tired, as usual, but some days feel heavier than others. More recently I am tired of being so affected by Taylor, by others. This sounds opposite of deep connection, but I actually think it’s in service of it. I’m tired of the utter devastation, the low lows, that are only remedied by the highest of highs.
Is this the intimidating newness of the next chapter? Am I finally and lovingly tired enough of myself to shift? I take off the rose-coloured glasses that allowed me to soar to the highest hopes, only to fall and crash when reality wasn’t/is never as beautiful. Because it’s not. But it can be, in its own way.
I still sit in my chair, with my cup of tea and feel grateful for the moment. Those who know me call me “romantic” for a reason. Taylor still sets out my toothbrush on the sink when I feel too exhausted and have fallen asleep on the couch. I find it the next morning after his attempts to coax me to bed fail. This beauty doesn’t erase the growing pains, but it doesn’t need to. Both exist in a dance, endlessly bound.
Perhaps it felt like I had to erase, escape and feel no more pain in order to call my life beautiful. The vision of this utopia without ruined birthdays and fights at Christmastime and weeknights spent crying myself to sleep before school. I have escaped that pain, but the child in me still feels like she has been running, threatened by any hurt, any mistake, any flaw that might mean I have chosen poorly and will end up back there. She is scared stiff when she ought to be dancing.
Do the joys and the pains have to mean so much? Do I have to care this much? It used to mean survival, but now it can just mean life. Can I simply dance to the unique melodies of the ups and the downs? Both equally beautiful.
We are at our best in the middle,
where contentment and presence live.
We’ve divorced ourselves from the highs of validation and from the lows of rejection. We can release our art and speak from the middle which is alignment. Can I do less? And realize the gift of my life is my utmost gratitude in the moment that contains all. I have been ignoring my own vocation to endlessly strive, in fear. I have been ignoring this urging that I surrender, in love.
My daughter is the invitation into this transformation, for the world does not need another cautionary tale of the woman who was taught to toil. In its place, the story of the woman who grew so large, filled up with every single thing that she is, in every corner, in every inch, in every peak and valley, and out into a world unafraid to embrace something as big as she who dares to be whole.
