Mother's Day 2013-A Miracle

 

                              Mother's Day

1) You lose your mother to cancer and other disease.
2) You want babies and can't have them. 
3) You get cancer and think you'll really never have them.
4) Post-chemo: you have a baby.
5) You want more babies and cannot. 
6) You look back in love and awe at your mother's political and activist work. 
7) You become your mother and try to save the world. 
8) You feel: Gratitude and grace for the gift of motherhood. 
Amen.


 It's a fraught day for many, a joyous one for others.

I know, first hand, both the immense pleasure of being a mom, and the intense pain of wanting to be one and not being able to.  I also know the angst of losing a mom, the challenges of working full time and parenting, and the difficulties of raising a child alone.

It's a complex role, motherhood.

First, I lost my mom, too young.  That's a complicated story.  She was a complex person, married to a very difficult man.   It took many years for me to come to grips with her greatness.  I always saw her as weak and fallen, but now I see her differently.  I see her as a victim of her time.  I see her as a hero. That's the story of the book I'm writing.

And then there's the challenges of being a mother myself.

For years, I wanted to be a mother.  I mean really, really wanted to be a mother.  It was an obsessive desire.   I wanted to have five or six kids: With Six You Get Eggroll, The Waltons, Yours Mine and Ours. 

It didn't seem to be in the cards for me.   Yes, I was of the generation of women that wanted to work and have a family--but it wasn't my career that got in the way, I just didn't seem to fall in love with "traditional" marriage or child-friendly guys. They were artists, actors, dancers, hippies, and free spirits who saw the nuclear family as confining, repressive, anti-happiness.

So, for years, I watched, with intense envy and sadness, other women get pregnant, give birth, and do it again and again.  Everywhere I went, there seemed to be women with babies, toddlers, and pregnant women.  My friends all had kids.  Not just one, but several.

It was torture.

The sight of a stroller, a mother nursing, children in the playground with their moms, made me weep. I hated hated hated baby showers, dreaded the invitations, the cards, the excited calls from friends and their words: "I'm pregnant!"  I would try to sound happy and supportive, but inside, my heart was breaking.  'All I ever wanted was kids,' I thought,  'Why couldn't it be me?'

The man I loved through my late twenties and thirties "wasn't ready and wanted to wait to have kids."  I waited for him to change his mind, to feel at ease.  My partner poo-pooed the "nonsense" I told him about the decline in fertility rates in women as they age.  He thought medical statistics "were all in the mind." 

The years went by and the clock ticked. 

Then, in my mid-thirties, I got cancer and faced an onslaught of intensive chemotherapy treatments.  Chemotherapy, my physicians said, might very possibly render me permanently infertile.  I was bereft and upset with myself.  Why had  I hung out waiting for someone else to make up his mind, when having children was so vital to me?  Now I might never have biological children of my own, now I might die and never experience motherhood at all. 

There was no time for freezing eggs.  I needed chemo right away.

Out of guilt, and possibly a sudden waking up to the sacredness and fragility of life due to my life-threatening disease, my partner then promised to have a baby with me when I was healthy enough to try. 

Two years later, we tried to get pregnant.  Nothing happened.  Then after much help from an excellent reproductive endocrinologist, I became pregnant and gave birth to a beautiful, healthy girl.  At last, I was a mom.

She was and is my miracle.

Yet.  Even though I finally had a child,  I still ached for more.  So, I tried and tried, but I could not conceive again.  I went through several years of giving myself shots of hormones daily, of multiple surgeries and treatments and various drugs.  No luck.  Every month, I went through a dramatic cycle of hope and disappointment that took a heavy emotional toll.  Finally, I ran out of steam and stopped trying.  I was too exhausted to go through the adoption route.

The grieving and longing for more children passed in time.  Today, my heart is full with joy and gratitude for all that I have.  My girl amazes me more and more each day with her kindness, intelligence, grace, vision, and generosity.

My relationship with my own mother has evolved over the years as well.  Growing up, my feelings about Mom were fraught.  When she lived, I saw her as the beaten-down woman of an abusive husband.  I wanted Mom to be strong, to get out and save herself.

Now, twenty years after Mom's death, through researching her life in more detail for my book, I discovered that she was an important environmental and peace activist.   She put her own body on the line to save the lives of many.

I have also come to understand the complexities of motherhood in a patriarchal world.  It's not easy to leave an abusive relationship, and it was more difficult in my mom's lifetime.   Fingers pointed at women when men misbehaved or when marriages failed.  Women were supposed to keep everyone else happy.  Adrienne Rich explained it all as a kind of altruistic self-sacrifice. Yes, we still have to be very careful not to fall into the trap of mommy and women blame.  I was guilty of mother-blame myself when Mom lived.

I now see how deeply and positively Mom influenced me in a myriad of ways.  For Mom's sake, I wish she could have put feminism into practice in her marriage, yet I no longer blame her for not being able to do so.

On a very positive note,  I have come to follow Mom's path as an activist who works to protect all children from the polluting of our earth. 

So. Now.

Every day I thank my mother for giving birth to me, and for teaching me the value of working on activist causes for the good of the earth and all living beings.

Every day I look at my daughter with amazement and feel immense gratitude for the gift of motherhood and all that it teaches me.

I honor my child.

I honor my mother.

Today, when I'm feeling any (mothering) grief, helping to take care of our mother earth is the best medicine of all.

Thanks, Mom.

Civil Disobedience and Love: Sandra Steingraber Puts Her Body On the Line

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Imagine what we mothers could do if we brought that spirit of loud, uncompromising, creative defiance to the necessary project of dismantling the fossil fuel industry and emancipating renewable energy, which is its hostage? Imagine hundreds and hundreds of mothers peacefully blockading the infrastructure projects of the fossil fuel industry, day after day. Imagine us, all unafraid, filling jails across the land. Imagine the press conferences we would give upon our release. Imagine us living up to our children’s belief in us as superheroes. —Sandra Steingraber

On April 24, Sandra Steingraber completed her 15-day prison sentence for “acting out” peacefully against the violation of our bodies and the earth by corporate polluters and environmental exploiters—in this case, the gas and hydro-fracking industry.

Sandra is my hero.

Sandra, like me, is a mother, cancer survivor, writer and activist. Her books, Living Downstream,Raising Elijah and Having Faith  contribute greatly to my thinking, writing and teaching.

Like Sandra, I know firsthand how the polluting of this planet causes unnecessary and horrific suffering for present and future beings.  And, like Sandra, I am frustrated about how little has changed for the better over the years, despite copious evidence she and other scientists have compiled that points to the links between toxic pollution and cancer, neurological disorders,asthma and other disease. A myriad of health problems such as these and others abound from the lack of environmental regulations in the U.S.  Also, like Sandra, as a mother, I worry about what the future holds in these environmentally degraded times for all children present and future. These days, protecting our children takes on a whole new meaning. So much is out of our control, and the stakes are crazy.

Every day, citizens breath, eat, drink and encounter toxic materials without their knowledge, consent or will. We need a Safe Chemicals Act, among other things. We’re in the midst of a climate crisis that’s spiraling out of control and scientific predictions are dire. We’re running out of clean water. We’ve got tons of radioactive waste that lasts for thousands of years, and no safe place exists so far to store these hazardous materials. Pollinating insects are vanishing. Crucial sea life is beingdestroyed. “Even life itself seems to be running out,” Michael Moyer and Carrie Stors write inScientific American, “as biologists warn that we are in the midst of a global extinction event comparable to the throes of dinosaurs.” Things are bad, really bad, and future generations will bear a terrible burden for our hubris, negligence and greed.

From writing and speaking to civil action: What led Sandra to land in jail? I think that like a lot of us moms and cancer survivors who work on these issues, she’s had it. Unlike many (or most, I should say), however, Sandra truly has the courage of her convictions.

In recent years, gas companies began plans to drill, or hydro-frack, in upstate New York near Sandra’s  home. As a biologist, she researched what fracking upstate would mean for her community and beyond. Sandra decided to take the gas industry on directly, so she’s been marching, speaking, stumping, testifying, campaigning, writing and doing everything in her power to stop fracking from taking place in New York. Steingraber even gave away her $100,000 Teresa Heinz prize to New York State anti-fracking groups.  Instead of putting this money into a college fund for her kids, she gave the award away to save the earth and all of our children. “This is my kids’ college fund,” she told me. “The earth we live on.”

So when Inergy Storage and Transportation planned to use Seneca Lake, located near her home, as a dump for fracking waste (propane, butane and methane), Sandra put her body on the line.  She and others performed a peaceful act of civil disobedience by ‘blockading’ the gate of Inergy’s gas compressor facility on the lake.

Sandra was arrested for trespassing.

At her sentencing, Sandra said to the judge: “In my field of environmental health, the word trespass has meaning. Toxic trespass refers to involuntary human exposure to a chemical or other pollutant. It is a contamination without consent … It is my belief, as a biologist, that Inergy is guilty of toxic trespass.”

While in prison, Sandra wrote a series of powerful letters to the world about her act of civil disobedience.  She wrote and drew upon the tradition of Thoreau, Gandhi, Parks and King. You cannot read her letters without being deeply moved.

In her final letter from jail, Sandra calls on all mothers to join her in a movement of environmental civil disobedience. We are in an “environmental crisis” she writes, that “requires our urgent attention. And by attention, I mean sustained political action, not intermittent, private worrying.” We are running out of time. If we really care about our children’s future, instead of carting our kids to soccer games and SAT prep classes, we need to participate in a “civil-rights … uprising.”

I cannot stop reading and rereading this extraordinary letter. I cannot stop imagining speaking face-to-face with Sandra and saying, “tell me precisely what to do and I’ll do it.”

Sandra provides compelling reasons to follow her call.  She’s singing out for a peaceful, creative and joyful mother’s revolution.  It happened before and it worked: They were the mothers of Women Strike For Peace (my own mom was one of them) and they helped stop above-ground nuclear test bombing in the U.S. in 1963. I believe we will do it again.

Welcome Home, Sandra Steingraber.

We stand with you.

We hear you.

You will prevail.

Crossposted from Ms. Magazine Blog.

Photo of Sandra Steingraber courtesy of Flickr user SteveHarbula under Creative Commons 2.0.