I feel like this is an obvious answer, but having a small child enforces a lot of “doing service instead of the stuff that plays to my strengths.” I’m not exactly tempering my love of my strengths intentionally, it just feels like a natural side effect of baby care.
Re: calling back to oneself — the example that comes to mind is rather literal. I happened to live alone when the Covid lockdowns hit, and on the whole I did an adequate job of taking care of myself. But one afternoon I was stressed and wasting time online to distract myself, blowing off plans to call my mom in the process. But a couple hours after we’d planned to chat, my mom called anyway just to make sure I was okay, and that was enough to get me to get off the internet, drink some water, eat something, etc. She didn’t tell me to stop wasting time, wasn’t even mad, but just hearing someone else’s voice helped shake off the increasingly-unenjoyable-but-hard-to-quit scrolling.
I was commenting to a friend the other day how I've learned so much from my two cats. Especially my very friendly very chomky cat, Yum Yum. She naps! She cuddles! She is 100% unabashedly herself! I sometimes get trapped in the idea that I need to *do* something to be lovable. But Yum Yum is living proof that that is a tremendous lie. And I've gotten much better at taking little breaks during the work day, not feeling guilty about them, and giving her lots of belly rubs. She is a frequent guest on my work calls and will often sleep on my arm or keyboard (or both) as if to say, "rest!". There is nothing I need to do, no limit I need to push through, in order to be worthy of being here and being my full self.
Aug 6, 2023·edited Aug 6, 2023Liked by Leah Libresco Sargeant
Two quotes about words:
"It was only the dumb instinctive wisdom of the beast who licks his hurt companion to comfort him, and yet in that wisdom Ged saw something akin to his own power, something that went as deep as wizardry. From that time forth he believed that the wise man is one who never sets himself apart from other living things, whether they have speech or not" (ch. 5).
"In the world under the sun, and in the other world that has no sun, there is much that has nothing to do with men and men’s speech, and there are powers beyond our power. But magic, true magic, is worked only by those beings who speak the Hardic tongue of Earthsea, or the Old Speech from which it grew. That is the language dragons speak, and the language Segoy spoke who made the islands of the world" (Kurremkarmerruk, ch. 3).
In this fictional world, words are more meaningful, more real, than they are in the real world. In Earthsea, the map underlies the territory. There are other powers, but speech is fundamental.
I recently read an article with this quote from author Cormac McCarthy, reflecting on Jung:
"We are caught in the appreciations of things by endowing them with names, but the nature of the world is nonverbal, has nothing to do with words at all."
When I was in labor with my first baby, I discovered that the naturally laboring brain directs its concentration away from forming speech, in favor of doing other more pressing matters.
And after my baby was born, I was pained to realize how few words have been written through the ages to describe the desires and joys of motherhood. There's a satisfying feeling of primal "rightness" that I've read and heard nothing about.
Talking, writing, or reading about even something as popular as sex is only partially relatable to real sex, and writing about birth and motherhood leaves far more out. Even writing about exercise, a less intense experience, seems to barely describe it. These and many other physical parts of life are just hard to put their qualities into words.
Or maybe the English canon is unusually deficient in these areas, for reasons? Or maybe something about sex and mothering and exercise too, not only birth, kind of switches our brain away from wanting to pin it down with words even if we could? I don't know, but it bothers me.
For not being Earthsea, where reality is actually built on words, we seem give words a lot of weight - especially these days, since books, and the internet, and large language models.
Not long after becoming a mother, I watched a movie that changed my life: Seder-Masochism, a humorous criticism by the filmmaker of the patriarchal elements in her own Jewish tradition, focusing on the book of Exodus. It's a beautiful animated film that takes songs from various sources. The prehistoric Mother Goddess is featured, who at one point sings this song about words:
Seeing how much healing Ged experienced because of physical contact with his otak, Hoeg, I recalled my indignance that none of Ged's friends were allowed to visit Ged during the nine months of his convalescence, and Vetch and Hoeg weren't allowed to return to the Great House where Ged was for an additional six months after that. Probably this was a precaution against the shadow attacking them. But how much good could Hoeg, especially, have done Ged earlier? Probably a lot.
It reminds me of how newborns who were struggling to breathe used to have their cord cut early and be taken away from their mothers, across the room, for oxygen. Whereas the evidence now shows that such newborns have better outcomes if they are given oxygen in their natural habitat, skin-to-skin on their mother's chest, cord still attached until the baby gets all their blood back. Many (not all) hospitals now facilitate this by putting the oxygen mask on a rolling cart they bring to the bedside, rather than at a station across the room.
Thank you for this post. I love the voices of the women you quote!
This brought to mind part of a quote from GK Chesterton "Every man must descend into the flesh to meet mankind.” As an end-of-life doula I experience the necessity of time, physical presence, and attention to both body and spirit—what a person is working on beneath the surface while seemingly doing nothing. Similar in many ways to time when my infant children were sleeping. Thank you for your work.
Oh, I’ve just read your essay on first things and it is so powerful! I missed it and am so glad you link to it here, and that you are asking this question . I so love the term “cloister of the home”. 🙏🏻
I feel like this is an obvious answer, but having a small child enforces a lot of “doing service instead of the stuff that plays to my strengths.” I’m not exactly tempering my love of my strengths intentionally, it just feels like a natural side effect of baby care.
Re: calling back to oneself — the example that comes to mind is rather literal. I happened to live alone when the Covid lockdowns hit, and on the whole I did an adequate job of taking care of myself. But one afternoon I was stressed and wasting time online to distract myself, blowing off plans to call my mom in the process. But a couple hours after we’d planned to chat, my mom called anyway just to make sure I was okay, and that was enough to get me to get off the internet, drink some water, eat something, etc. She didn’t tell me to stop wasting time, wasn’t even mad, but just hearing someone else’s voice helped shake off the increasingly-unenjoyable-but-hard-to-quit scrolling.
Your story is so relatable! I’ve been there many times. :)
I was commenting to a friend the other day how I've learned so much from my two cats. Especially my very friendly very chomky cat, Yum Yum. She naps! She cuddles! She is 100% unabashedly herself! I sometimes get trapped in the idea that I need to *do* something to be lovable. But Yum Yum is living proof that that is a tremendous lie. And I've gotten much better at taking little breaks during the work day, not feeling guilty about them, and giving her lots of belly rubs. She is a frequent guest on my work calls and will often sleep on my arm or keyboard (or both) as if to say, "rest!". There is nothing I need to do, no limit I need to push through, in order to be worthy of being here and being my full self.
Two quotes about words:
"It was only the dumb instinctive wisdom of the beast who licks his hurt companion to comfort him, and yet in that wisdom Ged saw something akin to his own power, something that went as deep as wizardry. From that time forth he believed that the wise man is one who never sets himself apart from other living things, whether they have speech or not" (ch. 5).
"In the world under the sun, and in the other world that has no sun, there is much that has nothing to do with men and men’s speech, and there are powers beyond our power. But magic, true magic, is worked only by those beings who speak the Hardic tongue of Earthsea, or the Old Speech from which it grew. That is the language dragons speak, and the language Segoy spoke who made the islands of the world" (Kurremkarmerruk, ch. 3).
In this fictional world, words are more meaningful, more real, than they are in the real world. In Earthsea, the map underlies the territory. There are other powers, but speech is fundamental.
I recently read an article with this quote from author Cormac McCarthy, reflecting on Jung:
"We are caught in the appreciations of things by endowing them with names, but the nature of the world is nonverbal, has nothing to do with words at all."
https://churchlifejournal.nd.edu/articles/the-kekule-problem-what-lies-hidden-in-cormac-mccarthys-dreams/
When I was in labor with my first baby, I discovered that the naturally laboring brain directs its concentration away from forming speech, in favor of doing other more pressing matters.
And after my baby was born, I was pained to realize how few words have been written through the ages to describe the desires and joys of motherhood. There's a satisfying feeling of primal "rightness" that I've read and heard nothing about.
Talking, writing, or reading about even something as popular as sex is only partially relatable to real sex, and writing about birth and motherhood leaves far more out. Even writing about exercise, a less intense experience, seems to barely describe it. These and many other physical parts of life are just hard to put their qualities into words.
Or maybe the English canon is unusually deficient in these areas, for reasons? Or maybe something about sex and mothering and exercise too, not only birth, kind of switches our brain away from wanting to pin it down with words even if we could? I don't know, but it bothers me.
For not being Earthsea, where reality is actually built on words, we seem give words a lot of weight - especially these days, since books, and the internet, and large language models.
Not long after becoming a mother, I watched a movie that changed my life: Seder-Masochism, a humorous criticism by the filmmaker of the patriarchal elements in her own Jewish tradition, focusing on the book of Exodus. It's a beautiful animated film that takes songs from various sources. The prehistoric Mother Goddess is featured, who at one point sings this song about words:
https://vimeo.com/256005837
Seeing how much healing Ged experienced because of physical contact with his otak, Hoeg, I recalled my indignance that none of Ged's friends were allowed to visit Ged during the nine months of his convalescence, and Vetch and Hoeg weren't allowed to return to the Great House where Ged was for an additional six months after that. Probably this was a precaution against the shadow attacking them. But how much good could Hoeg, especially, have done Ged earlier? Probably a lot.
It reminds me of how newborns who were struggling to breathe used to have their cord cut early and be taken away from their mothers, across the room, for oxygen. Whereas the evidence now shows that such newborns have better outcomes if they are given oxygen in their natural habitat, skin-to-skin on their mother's chest, cord still attached until the baby gets all their blood back. Many (not all) hospitals now facilitate this by putting the oxygen mask on a rolling cart they bring to the bedside, rather than at a station across the room.
That is a great connection and a great callback to his prior convalescence.
Thank you for this post. I love the voices of the women you quote!
This brought to mind part of a quote from GK Chesterton "Every man must descend into the flesh to meet mankind.” As an end-of-life doula I experience the necessity of time, physical presence, and attention to both body and spirit—what a person is working on beneath the surface while seemingly doing nothing. Similar in many ways to time when my infant children were sleeping. Thank you for your work.
Oh, I’ve just read your essay on first things and it is so powerful! I missed it and am so glad you link to it here, and that you are asking this question . I so love the term “cloister of the home”. 🙏🏻