Inside This Mother

Words & Photography
by Caroline Snider



My limbs feel tired, straining under the weight of so much change. My head aching from the whiplash of contradictions it cycles through. All at once so grateful for this experience to grow new life inside me and lost in a hazy cloud of mourning what once was. My body is no longer my own, new life stretches and transforms it until my reflection is unrecognizable. My marriage like a cocoon wrapped around it changes slowly in the presence of new challenges, both doubled in its strength and weakened at its new joins.

All at once so grateful for this experience to grow new life inside me and lost in a hazy cloud of mourning what once was. 

The weight of expectation creeped in so much quicker than I thought it would. That expectation already carried on our shoulders known as womanhood, multiplying in weight as we add mother to our achievements. The world cries out for us to show grace and never open determination. To achieve the never ceasing expectations laid forth without ever looking like we tried.

We wish independence and strength for our women until they wear Mother as a title and then we expect sacrifice and sacrifice alone. Your life isn't just about you now offered in snap judgement to any personal desires, regardless of whether their importance is superficial or monumental. Are those voices someone else's or my own?

The scale creeps into figures never seen before, and the lens through which the world sees us distorts with every swell of our rounded belly. Strangers emboldened fight for their ownership of our thoughts in the aisles of grocery stores. We feel so much more a woman now and somehow less so. So many new ways to fail. So many unknowns. So much love and so much sacrifice.

I am me inside this Mother, she and I intertwined, embattled in this complicated mess. Imperfect and honest. Fearless and broken. Deliriously happy, quietly struggling, pushing aside the scars to grow in the light.

This fight is ours and although we chose it and wouldn't change it we will not be made to wear it with a mask made to please you. I am me inside this Mother, she and I intertwined, embattled in this complicated mess. Imperfect and honest. Fearless and broken. Deliriously happy, quietly struggling, pushing aside the scars to grow in the light.