mothers
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Rumpus Original Fiction: She Hated the Child
She didn’t want anything to change. She understood it would be easier if she loved the child. But she did not want to love it.
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Mothering Our Children and Ourselves: Molly Caro May’s Body Full of Stars
As May moves through what she now calls her “postpartum challenge,” she does not return to her old self, but instead becomes someone new.
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Promises
[A]fter Jonah died, I quit making promises to my children because I break them. They forgive me. But I fail to offer that grace to myself. So, I don’t make promises.
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Splintered Doors
This journey is ongoing. But I know this: my daughter will never have to break down a door.
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I Can’t Shake the Guru Bhagwan
In 1979, my mother decided she wanted to join Bhagwan’s ashram in Pune, India.
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Living in the Fulcrum: A Conversation with Mary H.K. Choi
Mary H.K. Choi discusses her debut YA novel, Emergency Contact, her versatile writing career, and writing diverse Korean-American characters.
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Rumpus Original Poetry: Three Poems by Jennifer Givhan
Good thing we hadn’t held the chrysalid funeral yet. The two butterflies emerged. Damaged wings but reborn.
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Effacement of the Mother
When I came home from war, I felt relief. Now that I’m home after childbirth, I’m still waiting for relief. War ends. Motherhood does not.
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The Thread: Goddesses and Monsters
Let’s take the women in our lives, and the women who came before us, off the pedestals but also, out of the graves of irrelevancy.
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The Color of Discipline
The violence inflicted by black parents onto their children was born out of both love and a deep, abiding fear for that child’s ability to survive the American caste system that devalues black life.
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The Depths We Don’t Have Words For: Sally Bliumis-Dunn’s Echolocation
[R]eading these poems feels like looking down into deep water, being able to see only so far and no farther.
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The Emotion of the Moment: Talking with Terese Marie Mailhot
Terese Marie Mailhot discusses her debut memoir, Heart Berries, crafting trauma on the page, and her views on motherhood after writing her memoir.