After a traumatic childbirth with my first child, I learned the hard way that society celebrates motherhood with an abundance of baby showers, gender reveals, and first birthday parties but offers few opportunities to process the grief and loss which motherhood can also bring.

Healing The Wounds of Motherhood

A one or two day workshop and retreat

My first childbirth experience was far from the miraculous experience celebrated in our culture but, in a society that fixates on the wonders of motherhood, I had little space to heal it. Almost twenty years later, little has changed.

When we regard Postpartum Depression as an illness or hormonal imbalance to be cured, rather than a natural reaction to losing one’s freedom and identity — when we tell mothers who experience difficult birth experiences to focus on their healthy infants rather than their own trauma — and when we ignore the impact of giving birth in a nation where white OB-GYNs, midwives and doulas are as racist and biased as everyone else, and maternal mortality rates for Black mothers are terrifying, we compound the unspoken wounds of motherhood with inattention and injustice.

In this storytelling retreat for mothers, I offer a nurturing and confidential environment where mothers (especially those who don’t consider themselves writers) can explore those experiences of mothering that have gone unsaid or unheard, as well as those which they’ve felt forbidden from expressing at all. There will be beautiful stories, but also stories which are difficult to share.

When a storyteller reveals deep truths, she has the power to heal herself and her audience. When the storyteller is a mother, that healing can benefit the mothers and mothers to be who listen now, and the generations of mothers and children to come.