Writing Prompt: The Postpartum Body

Last night, I devoured over fifty pages of Melissa Febos’ new book Body Work in preparation for an interview I’m doing with her for Electric Literature. The book is incredible. I also re-read parts of Chronology of Water by Lidia Yuknavitch, in which she writes tenderly about the still birth of her daughter.

Yuknavitch writes in the opening section of her book that after childbirth she was “ripped from vagina to rectum, sewn closed.”

I’ve been thinking a lot about women sharing their postpartum stories online as a response to the gutting of paid leave. As Jessica Grose put it, “I'm full of rage that mothers have to keep splaying our vulnerability and torn-up bodies out to the universe to get some legislators to prioritize mothers as humans in need of the barest social supports.”

My own rage at exactly this is partly why I went to these two books last night, to remind myself why we write about ourselves, even when it feels like we are just sprawling out our pain for others to see. Pain those in power already know is there, but refuse to do anything about.

Febos writes that resistance to accounts of trauma “is always in part—and sometimes nothing but—a resistance to movements of social justice.” I needed this reminder.

Often, we tell our stories to convince others of our pain, of our need, of our rights. It can feel demoralizing, begging to be seen. But we also tell our stories for each other, to remind each other what we are working for collectively, what we deserve, what we refuse, what we look like, what’s true.