Rock-a-stack.

“Morality, if it is to remain or become morality, must be perpetually examined, cracked, changed, made new.” 

– James Baldwin “As Much Truth As One Can Bear,” New York Times Book Review, January 14, 1962

I have been given a beautiful gift.

It is a wonderful, amazing, nourishing, loving, and life changing gift. It is everything. 

And it hurts.

I sit in my living room, enveloped in warmth. The brittle cold of February persists, yet it’s kept at bay by the walls that have sheltered me for nearly six years.  

Now, they also shelter another. 

My six-month old daughter giggles, coos, blabs, shouts, screams, and gurgles beside me, leisurely developing a relationship with her voice, her body, her surroundings, her attachments, her world. 

She plays with her favourite toy — and mine, honestly. It’s a rock-a-stack: seven plastic rings of different colours, patterns, and sizes that stack onto a plastic pole attached to a plastic base. Currently, she waves the rings around in her hands, sticks them in her mouth, and bangs them together. I stack them for her, tip them over, dump them on the ground, then restack them again.

It reminds me of the beautiful, wonderful, amazing, nourishing, loving, and life-changing gift.

Sometimes one of the smaller rings goes missing. Life goes on. I continue to stack, tip, dump, restack. Eventually I find it [them], hidden under a blanket, a toy, a piece of furniture. Life goes on. I stack, tip, dump, stack, tip, dump. 

It reminds me of the gift.

The beautiful, wonderful, amazing, nourishing, loving, and life-changing gift.

Yes, my daughter is the gift, and it’s also so much more. The experience of her is the gift, and it’s also so much more. Motherhood is the gift, and it’s also so much more. 

The gift is an opportunity. The gift is an invitation. The gift is a beginning; it’s starting over, starting again, but also so much more. 

The gift is rebirth. 

Giving birth to my daughter was an experience that rocked me to my very core. It wiped the slate of my inner world clean, yet life went on as if it hadn’t. 

It dumped my stack of rings [my values, my beliefs, my connections, my body, my needs, my emotions, my hormones, my dreams, my conditionings, my fears, my sorrows, my joys, my biases, my failures, my successes] and scattered them all over. Some even went missing. Life went on.

Postpartum has been my own internal rock-a-stack. It feels like I am constantly stacking myself up, tipping myself over, dumping myself out, reclaiming my scattered rings, grieving the lost ones, celebrating the found, then stacking myself back up. 

Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

Postpartum has not only been a journey of loving, nourishing, exploring, and observing my daughter’s mind, body, and spirit, but also my own. As my relationship with her develops, so, too, does my relationship with myself. 

Postpartum has gifted me my rock-a-stack, and my rock-a-stack is the slow, steady, cyclical journey of self liberation. It is the beautiful, wonderful, amazing, nourishing, loving, and life-changing gift. It is everything. 

And it hurts. 

Because, yes, what an unbelievable gift it is to liberate myself, but there is also much to contend with. Much to reconcile. Much to grieve for. Much to rage about. Many tears to shed. Many fists to shake.

It is harrowing. It is haunting. It is painful. It is everything.

And it hurts.

Because almost everything needs a reframe.

Because almost everything has been warped and skewed and manipulated and controlled by capitalism, colonialism, imperialism, white supremacy, and patriarchy. 

[I swear to goddexx, if you just thought to yourself something along the lines of “ugh what a bunch of buzzwords,” then you are absolutely part of the problem, absolutely not doing enough to cultivate solutions, and your existential smiting is severely overdue. Go read/listen to a fucking book.]

Because almost everything has been ruined by the societal constraints we are currently caged in and shackled to. 

So many things and so many people have been built, destroyed, rebuilt, and destroyed under the confines and oppression of those so called “buzzwords.” Myself, and my internal rock-a-stack being no exception. 

Being a person [a white, neurodivergent, queer, cisgender woman], it is imperative that I continually reframe my thoughts and actions around racist conditionings, heteronormative programmings, binary thinkings, ableist tendencies, othering proclivities, and fatphobic musings. It’s imperative that I reframe my thoughts and actions around scarcity mindset, conveniency shortcuts, mindless consumption, and productivity value.

In perpetuity. 

Those are the big rings.

The smaller rings are my identities, my traumas, my triggers, my limitations, my values, my beliefs, my emotions, my habits, my boundaries, my insecurities, my skills, my gifts, my talents, my interests, my passions, my wants, my needs, my desires, my thoughts, my spaces, my connections, my dreams, my hopes, my imaginings, my beauty, my art, my body, my self-worth, my love.

All of these need a reframe. A cyclical rebirth.

In perpetuity. 

The land demands it, the people need it, and my stellium in Capricorn requires it. 

Almost every part of me needs liberation from white conformity, white falsity, white supremacy, and white fallacy. 

So, yes, it hurts. 

And it is also – like my daughter – the most beautiful, wonderful, amazing, nourishing, loving, and life-changing gift. 

So I will slowly, steadily, cyclically liberate my rock-a-stack. I will liberate myself to help liberate the collective. So the land [stolen and commodified], the people [black and brown, latinx, indigenous, queer, trans, disabled, neurodivergent, unhoused, sex-working persons], the next generation, and all future generations are liberated from this hellhole that most of us did not make but refuse to uphold any longer. 

Yes, it hurts. 

And it’s also a beautiful, wonderful, amazing, nourishing, loving, and life-changing gift.

It is everything.