ElementalMom

Yesterday, I received an email forward simultaneously from both of my favorite Jessicas in the world. They were pointing me towards a woman who had a bunch of frozen milk to donate to some worthy baby, and they both thought of Halima.

I pounced, and immediately sent the woman, Gal, an email asking for the milk on Halima’s behalf. And then went and read her blog, Growing Inside. For a while. And then I sat and held Aurora and cried (I’m actually crying again just typing this out now).

Gal’s baby girl, Tikva, passed away at 8 weeks old. That’s how old Aurora will be on Friday. And Gal has been pumping all 8 weeks, not knowing if she was going to be able to feed Tikva or not, and wanting to keep her supply going. So there are now three huge ice chests of milk for Halima, and Willa, another baby whose mother cannot nurse her for medical reasons. They are Tikva’s milk sisters, as Aurora is Halima’s.

Women are so strong, so tough. They go through so much just to keep the species going. I am struck by the fact that these little girls are all of different ethnicities and religions. At some place in the world, the men of each of their heritages are trying to kill each other. And here in the Bay Area, women, mothers are coming together in a heartbeat to nurture our young in the best way we possibly can, and take joy in the connections we can make.

Hope, apparently, and love, come through breastmilk.

Tags: milk siblings

I just heard a few minutes ago that Cindy Sheehan has resigned from the peace movement. This blog on Daily Kos explains why.

I don’t even know where to begin. I have watched her get attacked over and over, in increasingly ridiculous, harsh, and anatomically impossible ways, all for saying that a mother’s grief trumps a politician’s greed. Well it appears today, the bad guys have won. Cindy will no longer speak for mothers.

I am devastated by this.

I cannot imagine what it must be like to send off a living boy full of ideals about what he’s doing, and receive back a telegram telling you that your baby is gone forever. And to have the President who sent him off to die refer to you as “Mom” while your grief is still raw (does it ever get unraw? Ever? I can’t imagine that it would.) Maybe Cindy escallated, but maybe, just maybe, that man in the white house could have talked to her. Just once. Maybe he could have answered the question about what noble cause Casey died for. How hard would that have been to do? It’s not like he was constrained to tell the truth; he could have said anything. But in the end, for whatever reasons, he would not face her.

Personally, I arrived at the same conclusion Cindy did, but I did it years ago. This America is not the America I was raised to believe in. The Federalist Papers didn’t address the unchecked greed, the viciousness, the stupidity, I see around me. When my husband resisted voting because it was pointless, I encouraged him to come with me, to make it a family outing. And then George W. Bush turned that into a complete farce. Who won the election? Who knows? Not us, any more.

Where will my family end up? I have no idea, but I know it isn’t here, and I believe in my heart that while staying and trying to inspire change from within is a noble sentiment, I, like Cindy, figured out a little while back that this empire needs to topple; it cannot be fixed, not with all our might. And if this nation is going to be as violent, as vitriolic, and as hateful to the grief of a mother as it has been to Cindy, I have to ask if it’s worth being saved at all. And I find myself being very, very sad that the conclusion I come to, is “no”.

I do not think Cindy started out to be a voice of mothers, but to me, that’s what she ended up being. A mother who stood the hell up and fought the senseless death of her beloved child in a stupid war. I hope to God that I will have the same grace, the same strength, the same courage of coviction, and the same spark, that Cindy Sheehan has, should the time ever come when I am tested as harshly as she has been tested.

Thank you, Cindy Sheehan. You’ll never read these words, but I want them out there, to try to counteract, just a little, all the hate you’ve had to soak up. You have been a beacon to me, of what it can mean to be a mother of boys, and I will admire you forever.

My blog is in danger of becoming an endless video review. But one of my homeschooling mommy buddies sent me this link, which as its background music, has a version of Cat Stevens’ Peace Train that I hadn’t heard before.

http://www.lucasgray.com/video/peacetrain.html

Someday, it’s going to come.