journal 12: aversions

Sunday, November 23rd, 2025

I found out you existed when you were the size of a sesame seed.

And then a dark night followed and it was a long one. Not without light, or at the very least the promise of light because that was always you. But the kind of darkness that overwhelmed. The kind of darkness that I was forced to adapt to, to surrender to lest I fight against it and find that it is stronger. The kind of darkness people don’t like to talk about.

They want to hear about your light and my light from you and because of you. They want to be soothed that you are my purpose and the reason for my wholeness, while in private, I contend with the fracturing it takes to bring you here. They want to be reminded that creation is magic and I am reminded that some creation is dark magic.

Measured in millimetres and buried deep inside my multitudes in a sesame seed that contains your own. You are growing each second in the rich loom of my internal darkness and you are beautiful. I now feel you flutter and this is pure joy, but the past few months haven’t only been joy and I know you understand because you are perfect in a place where there is no light. Together, we grow and we grow, towards the light.

* * *

July 30th, 2025

I preferred summer out west. I resented coming back to live in a stifling city. Chapters closing, new ones just opening.

Things shifting, changing. Moving. There’s a humid stickiness to it all but maybe that’s the heat wave. Or the newness of these experiences. I am in the “learning space”. I am proud of myself for trying. For moving in the direction of big dreams because they are possible. The how is unknown. But the what is.

August 7th, 2025

My period was supposed to start on Monday. Now it’s Thursday night.

The moon is almost full outside. In two days it will be. How quickly life moves and changes. I feel in the centre of it.

August 8th, 2025

I can’t wait to build a home with Taylor. Stone, gardens. Fireplaces. Wood floors, the older kind. Space for our two desks, mine for writing and editing photos. Taylor’s for writing and binding books and making prints. I’m inspired by home. I also need to feel inspired by my home. A sort of reciprocal love, the best kind, the kind I’ve learned to want and to let myself desire. To need. And I am finding that we must ask for what we need- I guess, first learn what it is and then have the courage to ask. All the while, growing and healing so that we may hold it with care when we find it. So that we may also become it ourselves.

Home. Family. Big dreams unfolding and we stand ready. Nervous and ready, shedding the still-small worries that we won’t handle it or sustain it or be lovingly prepared for it. But we are and we will. These times are simple and exciting.

August 18th, 2025

I am pregnant. Six weeks and one day. Almost a week since the test, a week of truly knowing.

This whole early stage feels precarious, out of our control almost completely. Surrender. The ultimate example. At least I try to remember that as I feel my boobs for aches and check the toilet paper when I wipe.

August 25th, 2025

Woke up early this morning, but just remained laying there, still tired, still hoping to fall back asleep.

Abundance is all we have, the illusion of control stingy. I am the source. I have incredible love right here, such a tremendous amount that anything outside has felt small. That has been a heartbreak but this morning I saw it as power. I am love. I am growing more right now, seven weeks and one day.

September 16th, 2025

It is the morning after my 34rd birthday and I am writing to the sounds of the river. He brought me somewhere I could journal.

The last few weeks have been a whirlwind. Nausea, fatigue. Emotions up and down, a shipping container of cardboard boxes and a road trip across the country. Blue plastic barf bags. We are together now, for good. And he has booked us a hotel by the water and trees with sun and peaches on the dock. A wood fire. A nice dinner out that I could barely eat. I ask him to bring me many things, but right now he unwinds and reddens in the sauna. I’m happy he has this time for himself. And I, with the crickets. And one speckled frog in the grass.

In this next season I submit to my body after so many years in the comfort of my busy mind. I still crave things, reliable things like routines, old comforts, my daily cup of tea. My new body says NO. Loudly. I have no choice but to yield. Unrelenting nausea does that. I have no choice but to rest. Take vitamins. The sheer inability to override my body with the power of my mind. It takes the lead, and I submit.

This includes a redefining of what I consider “my best”. How often lately I have felt lacking. Too tired, too nauseous to shine. Meals untouched. Low mood. Many naps while Taylor drove on alone. I confront the fears that I am enough, that I am still lovely. Can I sink down into these weeks of need and be met there, without judgement and with love?

That is my 34. Of the body. Of imperfection. Of wholeness at “less than”. Of human. Of flaws and love. Of acceptance. Of forgiveness. The discomfort of embracing all of this after years of striving. The ease of being that follows.

September 18th, 2025

First Trimester Aversions

-a cup of tea, tragic

-anything too sweet, except when I want a hot chocolate from the café

-many meats, eating meat on its own, also fish

-drinking water too quickly (vomit)

-long fingernails (especially my own)

-exhaust, smoke, pollution

-much of social media; ads, influencing, selling, commercialism, arguments online

-texting

-reading, the written word on a page

-almost anything in the mornings

-the lumps in my kefir yogurt

-walking outside; currently very apartment-bound; the outside city is repulsive

-chores are Herculean efforts: cat litter, dishes, the vacuum, cooking anything

Cravings

-ice water, flavoured with lime or lemon (I only used to like room temp.)

-fruit

-boxed macaroni

-the chip trucks along the Trans-Canada Highway

-cold sheets

-“I wish I was a horse in a field” I said out the open window on our road trip

-nature, quiet, a cool breeze

-sleep

It feels like a biological blessing for sure- any pregnancy is one giant feat. But I can’t connect to the joy right now. Sometimes it doesn’t even feel real. Physically, sure. the nausea reminds me. But conceptually? A little baby growing inside?

I loved being me and I loved living in this body every day. What a gift to be able to say that.

But I didn’t want to give that up, to be replaced by a me I don’t like and a body that is achey and nauseous and exhausted and listless.

Call it grief- longing for what was without being able to feel what will be. For a great chapter closing. For a beautiful bond with self.

How to grieve and to love, and to give grace in the unfolding. I am so lucky to have loved the life I must slowly let go of.

September 23rd, 2025

It is the middle of the night and a few sips of water stay down. The lemon pulp gathering at the bottom of the glass provides a life-saving acidity.

We have made a habit of ignoring women’s suffering. Or simply accepting it as part of the process. The ultimate self-sacrificial duty.

I could open myself up and show them the darkness of this experience so far. The grief. They will flinch and furrow their brows and remind me of the joy, the baby at the end of it. But I speak of right now. The way my spirit dampened seemingly overnight. My mind fogged and my heart grew heavy. The way I have only wanted to lay in the cool cotton sheets of my apartment. Outings in any form are one of my many aversions. The way my interests have changed. My little routines and little joys no longer appeal to me. Some quite literally make me sick. My world has shrunk, my bright beautiful world.

They tell me that I will forget about it and want to do this again. A second, maybe a third time. So much of this process apparently rests on my ability to compartmentalize and repress, to fit this small suffering into the grander framework of larger sacrifices. To be quiet about the weight of the load I’ve been expected to carry. I don’t ever want to be called a superwoman. It will mean that I’ve been burnt out.

This self-annihilating rite of passage. The “first trimester trenches”.

A post in the gross expanse of social media showed a smiling woman who was grateful that a baby “changed her whole life”. “Isn’t that the point!?” the caption read. The comments were full of women agreeing enthusiastically, responding with sarcastic humour.
“Oh nooooo I’m a new person!”
“My whole life gained purpose, how horrible!!!”
I feel happy for them, but I cannot find myself in any of it. What if I wasn’t craving an entire life change? What if I’m not ready or willing or able to leave myself behind? What if I love her deeply, have relished her existence, already grieve her supposed departure? What if I had found my purpose and still feel deeply, richly, achingly connected to that purpose and now it is suggested that I replace it with a new one and be okay with it? Joyful even. “Are you so excited!?”

I am scared of the self-sacrifice baked into the institution of motherhood. I say institution the same way I say the institution of marriage to differentiate the thing from the social construct of the thing. In my past dating life, women would apply their narrow definitions and insist, “Well, that’s just marriage!” Or similarly, “Well, that’s just men!” I would respond, fine!!! If you are right, then I don’t want it. I feel the same way about motherhood and its comments about what is normal or expected. I have to believe that there is a way to do this that speaks to me and the baby’s father as individuals, as well as the family unit we are building. I have to believe that I can retain my passions and hobbies and purpose in the same way that he will be permitted (and encouraged to…). I have to believe that there isn’t one story of motherhood, the single story of service that I’ve been fed and that I can write my own. I have to believe this because when I waver, the fear sets in. The fear that I’ve signed up for an institution that wants to erase me.

This self of mine isn’t so disposable, so eager to be replaced. It is sacred and beating and begging to live, to go through this journey and others as part of a full existence. The hope in me sees this new chapter as breathing life instead of bringing death. Not extinguishing, but evolving. I’ve taken so much away, but what remains is unkillable. Now, I add. To transform is to expand.

When a woman’s soul is suffering and struggling under the weight of its own transformation, stop asking her to let it die. Stop insisting that it’s normal she leave it behind and with a smile, embrace something new, something self-effacing in the service of others. Instead, help her connect with it again, likely in a new way. Nourish this connection. This too is sacred life force. It is not just the one I can grow in my womb, but the one I have already brought to life and watched blossom over the years. I have been a creative soul long before I created a child. Please be gentle with this information when I speak about it. Help me. See me. Encourage me to find my way back to myself. Hold my hand in the dark.

It might be in flux, but it is indestructible. It is the beating heart, the blood, the centre of the unfolding. It is my life force through which I give, not that I deplete in order to give.

It is what I grow in the same body as my baby.

(The very last entry in the last few pages of that plum-purple journal)

September 30th, 2025

At the farmhouse one last time. Sarah sold it. And it’s the last day of September. Yellow-leaved golden September. With deep blue cloudless skies. And a breeze that picked up overnight. It signals change and deeper autumn.

Taylor and I celebrated our one-year anniversary. He got me a balm for my belly which will really begin growing in a few weeks. And a pendant, a morning glory. “Affection. Resilience. Gratitude”.

This morning I vomited twice already, but oddly enough, the nausea has subsided. It used to be entirely consuming. But yesterday was a good day. This period of life as good and bad days, reduced and focused in on itself. Small wins. Meals that sit well. Bursts of energy, in between long expanses of rest and tiredness and forgiveness.

Today we will go out for lunch. And walk up the road towards a view where we can see the house from the top. He has written a poem. Cinnamon rolls soften in the oven. Then, very likely, a nap.