Period of Bliss

Reading these lines by Alice Walker oddly enough reminded me of becoming pregnant with J.

Creation is really a sustained period of bliss — even though the subject can still be very sad. Because there’s the triumph of coming through and understanding that you have, and that you did it the way only you could do it — you didn’t do it the way somebody told you to do it, you did it just the way you had to do it. And that is what makes us us.

I was transitioning from a state of imagined happiness to a reality which was a sadder one. Coming to terms with big decisions that would follow her birth - in a sense the end of the creative cycle. My need for motherhood was stronger than anything else I have experienced before or since that time. It was to be (and has been) the life force that would sustain me no matter what happened. The conventional wisdom would have been to not embark on such a journey when the fabric of my marriage was fraying so rapidly but as Walker says - I did it just the way I had to do it. And that is what makes me, me.