When I heard that the Supreme Court had overturned Roe v. Wade, I had just tuned into NPR for the first time in months. Thanks to some clerk in the SCOTUS office, many of us had had the chance to prepare and process the devastation prior to the ruling. But even when you know something bad is going to happen, it still hurts when it happens.
Over the following weeks, I tried to write what might be a relevant post for readers of Engaging Fatherhood. I began with the low-hanging fruit: criticism and frustration at a broken system (perhaps best left to the reunited Rage Against the Machine).
When the fire began to cool, intellect took over. I teased and logicked apart all the ways that overturning Roe v. Wade set us back as a society and what that might represent to the rest of the world; researched the distance and cost of abortions in the presentfuture, including through Brigid Alliance, a full-service abortion travel agency; railed against the religous ideology that might lead a person to make abortion illegal, despite plenty of humans being on earth already (I grew up Roman Catholic, so the ‘more humans at any cost’ indoctrination lives within me, starved as it may be).
Out of that mess, the questions that stuck for me were:
What happens for a child when their birth was unwanted by their parents? and,
Do more humans need to experience that particular brand of suffering?
These are questions for which we have answers. When we look at early childhood development, especially through an attachment lens, it becomes clear that a human’s first few years on earth are deeply influential on who they become, how they live, what kind of relationships they cultivate with the world around them, and how they treat others.
When a baby is born into a family that doesn’t want or isn’t ready to become a family, the baby picks up on all the feelings that might come through the parent(s), especially in the long and difficult days of early parenthood: resentment, anger, shame, regret. The physical manifestations of these feelings, as well as any other unprocessed trauma that the parent(s) may be carrying, can and often do have a devastating impact on the development—and life—of a child.
I’ve touched on these things in previous posts not just because of the last twenty-plus years of research and studies into attachment and developmental trauma, complex PTSD, and how to work with these phenomena, but because, at 35, I still work with the aftermath of a turbulent first few years on this planet, even having devoted the last decade to healing trauma, re-wiring my brain, and re-connecting to the world, through consistent somatic therapy, psychedelic work, and men’s work.
During one of the conversations that led me toward wanting to heal, my father revealed that the pregnancy that resulted in my arrival had been an ‘accident.’ Midway through their college years, my parents lacked the support, knowledge, self-awareness and life experience to bring little ones into the world in a good way. I feel a lot of sadness about that, and so much compassion for them. They were doing their best, like so many of us.
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I’ve been thinking about what might have happened for my parentsnotparents, had my birth not bound them together as and when it did. Would she have experienced less abuse in her life? Would he have learned to tame or channel the violence within him in healthier ways, earlier than he did? Would they have found better partners for each other, lived easier lives?
These are questions for which I have—and need—no answers. It just makes me think about the folks whom this Supreme Court decision will affect, and how much harm—and beauty, because we must hold the whole spectrum of possibility—may result.
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Our son is five-and-a-half months right now. I perceive that the world is in an ever-increasing state of crisis, and there’s a scared part of me that wants to protect him from humans in positions of excessive power, strategize for the recession, and brace for the compound impacts of climate change—
and the most important thing I did yesterday was to lie on the floor next to him as he chewed on the toy moose my mum sent from Alaska, and watch him whack his newly-discovered hands at the clutch ball hanging from the colorful, textureful activity center, itself a gift from my dear friend, Alf. I am surrounded by gifts. Gratitude continues to level me daily.
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Rather than doing more (like writing for Engaging Fatherhood), I am finding that I just need to share these moments with my son, to take joy in listening to him babble his way toward speech as we walk with Quyana to the park every morning, and to hold his little hands and little feet and feel the pain of his head bopping against my sternum as he turns his head to look up at me.
One of the most important practices I have ever learned was a simple acknoweldgment of what is mine, and what is not mine. I do not need to hold the world at bay, or at all, right now. I do not need to protect him from things that are not actively threatening him. My work right now is here. All he needs in these precious early moments of life is his mama, sleep, a clean diaper, and me.
And in holding the full spectrum of possibility - it is decidedly a beautiful thing that YOU, unchosen as the pregnancy may have been, EXIST! And I’m still glad your mom had choice, (to some degree) and chose to bring you forth!