Space, Hunger, and Mothering

To those waiting in the wings.

Originally published November 15th 2023 and the prayer remains same…

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For the last few months, I’ve been insatiable. I eat three meals a day plus snacks, haven’t really changed my activity level, and within 10-15 minutes of finishing eating my stomach feels empty. I’ll often try to ignore it— I just ate, and I’m utterly exhausted from having to deal with all of the tasks of feeding myself. I live alone. I’m single. Go to the grocery store, pick items, bring them home, unpack them, get hungry, put together a meal, eat the meal, do all of the dishes. Three times a day times infinity. Like damn, it’s a lot.

When I sense deeper, a non-food related hunger I am constantly aware of is skin hunger. I have been on one hell of a ride the past year and half, and often, not having another body to co-regulate with has been extremely painful. I made the decision a while ago that I will be a mother. Sometimes it feels like a rather audacious claim when one is single and in their mid-30s. In orienting to that, in being in devotion to that, much space has come into my life. There isn’t room for anything else, especially any relationship that isn’t in service to that mission.

I’ve offered up my Self and my life to the Dharma. It’s choiceless. Whenever I try, through applied personal effort, to make a thing happen (generally out of some ego-driven fear of scarcity) it crumbles in my hands. Every. Single. Time. Instead, it’s surrender. It’s waiting to respond rather than initiating.

Most days, there comes a moment when I simply cannot anymore. 

How will I fill the rest of the day? What do you mean I have to do the same all over again tomorrow?

Sometimes it’s at 7:17am after I’ve finished my coffee. 

Today, it’s at 2:35pm. This morning I went to Zumba, read some of a book about Mary Magdalene, then sat in a 90 min Zoom lecture by my teacher about connecting to spiritual guidance. Now I’m just laying here. I am bleeding, but this transcends monthly cycles. Rough life, I know. Too much of anything becomes poison after a while: even time, even space, even silence, even solitude.

As soon as I feel the urge to actually whine about this, versus simply being with it, it’s an instant choir of 10,000 grandmothers assuring me that soon enough— and for, like, a straight decade—there will be a tiny human in my arms and lap 24/7. “So just relax, dear one, and soak up the silence.” the ancestors offer me.

This seemingly endless well of skin hunger is likely one of my greatest superpowers as a mother. Everyone will get what they need: contact naps, co-sleeping, that primordial skin to skin attachment bond that is foundational to creating secure attachment and a robust nervous system in babies. I’m aware it’s quite a thing that some moms get “touched out.” Too much touch. Too many hands. Never enough support. But what if the needs were congruent? I know there is a proverb in nearly every language that goes something like “never talk about the parent you will be until you actually become a parent.” Though I do wonder what it would be like if more folks thought deeply and often about what kind of parent they would be before they actually became parents.

I am trying to look at it as if I am filling my cup. Overflowing my cup. Canning all of the vegetables of these feelings for when there is a baby always on my body. For when there is a baby on my body, another beloved child asking for a snack, and my dear life partner is trying to get some work done so he can’t help out at this moment, and I just wish for a moment of being alone. Of peace and quiet. That then, I will be able to close my eyes and summon these endless days. In this sweet little home in the desert. No one depending on me for anything, let alone to sustain their life. I could go out and hike for the next 6 hours and not miss a thing. I don’t know what I’m going to have for dinner yet, and that’s okay, because it’s just me that I’ll be feeding. I slept well last night. I’ll sleep well again tonight, alone, in my bed, filled with love because I am in it.

I am living days I will pray for.

Collecting enough of these long, lazy, lonely mornings, afternoons, and evenings to be damn sure that while I barley understand the question of “Do I want to be a mother?” I know, for certain, the answer is Y E S.

In these long, quiet nows, I find myself already missing them. These beings I’ll spend so much time with. I’m aching for them. Each of them, separately. All of them, collectively. I wonder and pray and know they are feeling the same about me. I sense them all around, near the perimeter. Knowing that they know when the time will be ripe to come together in the flesh.

My prayer and my promise to them, to my family, is to be fully present as much as possible. With an open heart and an open mind, a vessel of Divine love. That the ancestors and Dark Goddess are already there, preparing the space and setting the container. I will be able to show up with great depths because I will be stewarding these little ones in partnership with the ancient ones. I’m more ready than I’ve ever been, and I become more ready every day.

Taking in these moments, knowing that a future me is praying for them— the solitude. The quiet. The lack of obligations.

So I am here, praying for that future filled with beloveds, and holding the vision that that version of self will know that was exactly what I am praying for now. 

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