Make money doing the work you believe in
It’s taken me a moment to sink slowly into the deep blue of this gorgeous piece by Mary Beth Rew Hicks in Orion Magazine :
So much about it was familiar, some of it new and wildly wild. As women, we are likely each familiar with cold, clinical approaches to our health, and that’s even when we’re believed (if we are) about our own bodies. I loved learning in the last decade that female whales go through menopause. Here’s the bit that I felt in my gut, or rather, my long-time dysfunctional womb:
I was pregnant, and then I wasn’t pregnant anymore. I could only check the box beside miscarriage in the sense that the pregnancy ended before it really started. I could only check the box beside abortion in the sense that my body wouldn’t expel my undeveloped embryo without help.
I’ve had a (spontaneous) abortion just like that and wrote about it (the story I’ve pinned to my profile named for a Sufjan Stevens’ song - That Was the Worst Christmas Ever, if you’re curious or inclined.)
Like Mary Beth, I’ve also freed myself from an unsupportive relationship. (Sometimes neglect is its own special form of spousal abuse. I was invisible for years.)
In her piece, I admire her questionnaire framework and the way Mary Beth filters deeper meaning from standard scientific analysis like a baleen. She helps readers question the intent and purpose of these forms we’ve all filled out as women, one time or another. The hidden design and often the bias of their insistent scrutiny upon our lives.
But neither humans nor whales can be so summarily reduced to statistics. We are individuals with singular responses to our reproductive paths and experiences. We will surface for breath as long as we can because often the only alternative is to sink and drown.
Thank you for this exquisite inquiry, Mary Beth!
PS there’s a bowhead whale in this photograph I made while in the Arctic. Can you see her? (Kalaallit Nunaat, August 2016.)
