touch.

i want to try writing some things differently.

it needs a lot of space i think.

that's why i like talking because it gives a lot of space, maybe i'll start writing things that way.

just my words now.

i am in the midst of a breakdown.

a collapse of structure. a line in some book or article i read, the (i can’t remember the word) will not hold. was it future or line or i don’t know, joan didion i think. but it is extremely relevant to where i currently reside in space, in time, in my own grief.

i have always felt pretty confident in my ability to soften. my ability to surrender to the depths of the human experience. my own human experience being the closest thing i can touch.

and let’s talk about touch. the complexity of it.

i am autistic.

i am also a survivor of extreme CSA. the trouble with these two truths existing in the same body means i cannot tell if i am afraid of touch because i am afraid of feeling all of your emotions and energies or if i am afraid because touch was always conflicting.

when my first son was born, he needed to be held 24 hours a day, by me and me only. how he cried. how he demanded my full attention. how i so desperately wanted to give him that.

i believe that as mothers we must feel safe in order to dive into the wellspring of motherhood. to fully let go and swim in the waters of creation of birth and life itself.

and safety is hard to find when you don’t know if you will eat that day or if you will sleep.

or worse, is the touch, the tenderness i offer my child, some perversion?

this is how i felt with my children. i could not distinguish if i was abusing them by cradling them.

kissing them. loving them.

writing this is hard. living it was harder.

maybe there is some information or a group or some study that has been done on motherhood in the face of CSA trauma. honestly i have never really given much space to this aspect of my life. there are so many and they are all entangled in the idea of safety.

of self.

of our relationship to mother.

my mother, my mothering, your mother.

the earth mother.

space.

give her space.

to breathe. to feel safe. to find her own rhythm.