Waiting for the Moon

I read this at apronstrings' blog. Just so beautiful!
That is how I feel about mother's day, I did not forget the pain, but my heart has been healed (not completely yet)by my daughter. I hope that all of you that so familiar with the pain can someday experience the healing. I'll be thinking about you this weekend
Waiting for the Moon

My friend called today

tears in her voice

Her period started

and her dreams for a new baby are postponed

yet another month.


I hold my infant to my breast

eager mouth tugging and pulling

little hands patting and stroking.


My eyes well up with tears.


How many days turned to months turned to years

did I kneel and weep

pressing my hands to my empty womb

rocking on my heels

pleading with cruel fate

"send me a living child?"


My womb wept bright blood tears

as I felt my youth slip away

moon after moon

cycle after cycle

month after month

year after long year


My grief was indescribable

unendurable

mourning a child not yet conceived

only wished for, dreamed of, prayed for.

And then later, mourning the children conceived

but lost in pain and blood and tears.


Moon months, cycle songs, lovemaking, babylonging.

These are the things that defined my young womanhood.

eight years of eternal emptiness

years defined by the Moon


By blood


By hope and by tears.

II

I have not missed those cycles

the moon rising within

the blood that defined my loss and failure.


My life has now become an hourly measure

and rather than by a lunar month

I am

defined by nursing

by a small demanding mouth

by the fullness of my breast

by rich sweet milk that drips from me

and flows life and love to my child.


I will not (cannot) forget, though,

the years my womb wept blood tears,

the months the shards

of grief began as my period started...

Lactating now, my body moves to another vision

another Time.


The moon tides no longer control me

I am bound to the Earth, to the small body

of another, to a warm mouth in the night that nuzzles

and seeks and heals my tattered soul

and pieces my heart together.


Pergonal and modern medicine gave me a child,

but the child at my breast Healed my infertility.


by Kathryn Miller Ridiman

first published in Midwifery Tod