the taboo revelations of a Married Mother

image

when I had my son, the world burst into colour.

there were hundreds of colours before, but then there were thousands, and they were so much brighter. my world got deeper. scarier. realer. magnified and at the same time, all encompassing.

and I love being a mother. I love the caring and nurturing and laughing and watching and the surreal nature of creating life with a person you love. looking at them, amazed, as they grow into a person, smelling their hair when they sit on your lap, and the wonderfully absurd notion that you used to have all the time in the world and then gave it up. but it still exists, out there, somewhere, in a different timeline.

it’s the realest I have ever felt, being a mother. in my skin and my hair and chipped nail polish. I love this season of my life. it’s a Spring, with flowers dotted throughout tree branches like gifts of ruby amongst the green. it still gets bitterly cold, biting at my neck like a sharp knife, but then it’s here again; that new warmth. holding you in joy.

no matter what is going on, a flower will always hold you in joy.

so then I have my husband, who recently, I have been really listening to and what he needs. he listens to me all the time. he holds me all the time, and a boat must sway to survive the waves.

my husband and I have deep sensual sex; not always often, but consistently. he combs my hair with his fingers when we go to sleep, and he cooks nourishing meals. he cooked two weeks worth of healing food right before I gave birth. he devotes servitude to me in love. and I do the same.

I have a theory that your man should be your fantasy. when I met josh, he was a young, English man with a posh accent and thick James Dean hair. strong jawline. broad. Levi jeans. slumming it with the greek daughter of immigrants. he was my fantasy; one of them anyway.

image

I love taking care of house. not all the time - sometimes I scream, I need more help! the push and pull of man and woman living together is a battle. gear up, but soften quick and often.

josh takes our son out on a cold winter morning and I stay inside, next to the heater, folding washing, listening to Taylor Swift all too well ten minute version. I sing out loud to myself, meditative in the gentle folding of little clothes. I change the sheets and use my arms high above my head to flick the sheets straight. it’s hard work, domestic work. it’s physical and never ending. so I’m present with it; the exhale of the sheets settling on the bed is an alive moment.

domestic duties is not all I do.

I write poetry and film and type these love letters and lift weights and go for walks and have sex and buy clothes and get stuck in an internet hole looking up Sabrina carpenter’s exs’.

but something about caring for the ones you love with your hands. with your body. I can hold you in my arms and rock you to sleep. domestic work is grounding; it roots you back to source, back to body, back to ancestors. to employ others to do it is a disconnect. I blame the harder faster quicker world, not the civilian.

but domestic work is the bird’s call to remind us we are simply animals who eat, shit, work, and live. we tend to house. we tend to food. we tend to each other. it is a feminine space, and I don’t mean it’s woman’s work; just that it comes from the feminine principal. primordial. in all of us.

my husband is a musician. sometimes he grows his hair long and trims back a moustache and he reminds me of Russell in Almost Famous and another fantasy is activated. the fire is weaker at times, but it’s always there, as long as you tend to it.

but I’ve only been with my husband for ten years and a lifetime that does not make; just one decade, not many, and as I get older, I know I know nothing about nothing, and that liberates me as I can let it all exist.

I wake up to a shining sun. I kiss my son’s sweet cheeks. I wish for nothing. well, a bit more money. and maybe a new pair of pants? and a glowy concealer? I catch the running train of incessant want that will never end and I roll with it.

lucky I married a fantasy.

all my love xox

p.s. you can book your own personal tarot read @ tarotwithhannah111@gmail.com