I haven’t written anything since returning from Alaska in June, which coincided with some big news landing in my lap. 4 days after returning to JFK, I realized my period hadn’t come 😮 I woke up on Wednesday, June 26th, rolled over to my partner, Wayne, and asked him to go get a pregnancy test.
Since January we’d been open to the idea of getting pregnant. We weren’t tracking my ovulation with real intensity, but we were generally aware of when we’d have better chances and we were letting things come as they may.
When that second blue line appeared clear as day, I ran out of the bathroom and into the kitchen where Wayne was preparing sweet potato hash and eggs. When he went to get the test, he’d also grabbed a bag of groceries to make a big breakfast—I think part of him was anticipating the need to feed me a good meal. That has always been one of my favorite things about Wayne—the way he nurtures—always making sure I’m well fed, well slept, well cared for.
He knew the result instantly by the huge grin across my face. We both started laughing, hysterical and feeling high from the news that we had created life.
After a delicious breakfast I put on my linen blue two-piece wrap skirt and shirt that I’d sewn that spring and took a moment to look at myself in the mirror. I felt the urge to take in myself in, to see what the news of motherhood looked like across my face. To have a mental snapshot of myself as maiden.
The next month and a half I wasn’t prepared for. At about 6 weeks pregnant the first wave of nausea hit. 7 days later I spent a Sunday throwing up 20 times, not being able to keep as much as a sip of water in my system. The next day I got an IV to replace fluids because I was so dehydrated.
By week 10 the nausea and vomiting mostly subsided. If I didn’t get a good night of sleep, or if I didn’t eat enough with my vitamins I might end up in bed again all day, but for the most part I could see the fog starting to clear.
I was scrolling on Instagram the other day when I saw this portrait of Georgia O’Keefe by Yousuf Karsh with a quote overlaid, that summed up my summer.
While the news of the pregnancy was such a high, there were weeks this summer that were incredibly low. July was hot and humid and in our little apartment and the only reprieve was the window AC unit in our bedroom, so I spent most days in the bedroom, curled into a ball with a bucket at the bedside and the tv remote in hand. I craved going outside, putting my feet in the grass, but the 15 minute walk to the park and the 4th floor walk up amounted to a journey, that most days, I didn’t have the gusto for.
This wasn’t the summer I’d waited all winter for.
I felt like I was living in some sort of nauseous, fever dream. All the days blended into each other. The hardest part of the first trimester was not sharing the news while simultaneously feeling awful. I was living in limbo—canceling plans with the excuse that “I must have caught something.” Telling my weekly writing group that I was dealing with “body challenges” that were preventing me from engaging fully. The truth was I was watching hours of the Olympics everyday and eating saltines between running to the bathroom.
The more and more uncomfortable I became, the more Wayne and I started considering how we might create more ease and comfort for the duration of the pregnancy and postpartum. We’d been flirting with the idea of moving to California since going for my cousin’s wedding in January.
Truth is, ever since our first visit to California, Wayne has been asking me why we don’t live there. He grew up in NYC and unlike people who move here from all over the world to chase their dreams, he was born in NYC and doesn’t necessarily see the same shine—more often feeling the strain of impersonal interactions, the rats, the foul smells, the crowded trains and rising apartment costs.
Of course, once I shared the news with my family they also were curious to know if we’d stay in New York. At first, I felt completely unsure. I thought perhaps we could keep our apartment and go stay with my parents for a bit to feel it out and get through the rest of the first trimester. But as I started getting sicker and as I thought about having a baby in my—albeit charming—but moldy, roach infested, pre-war-1 bedroom it was becoming more and more clear that even if we wanted to be in NY, we wouldn’t want to be in that particular apartment.
Packing up our life and leaving New York was a no brainer for Wayne, but for me, it was a more complicated decision. There is so much about the city that intoxicates me. Unlike him, I had my sights set on living in the city since I was a little girl. First, dreaming of going to Julliard and becoming a professional ballerina, eventually shifting gears towards a life as a writer after realizing my internally rotated hips wouldn’t land me a spot center stage.
I fell further in love with New York through James Baldwin’s eyes in, Another Country, and through Frank O’Hara’s, Lunch Poems, fantasizing about the day I would ride the train uptown, watch lovers stroll through Central Park.
New York represented a world that was nothing like where I came from and I wanted to taste every ounce of it. When I decided to take the leap it was based on intuition that this was the next best step. I’d only come to the city for 7 days in the fall of 2018, and my gut paired with that trip confirmed that NY had to be my next chapter.
I had no idea what would unfold for me there. When I moved to Brooklyn, I didn’t feel comfortable identifying as an artist or a writer. I didn’t feel like I had any creative community around me and I desperately craved female friendship that felt grounded, honest, invested in each other’s mutual growth. NY provided a launch pad for me in ways that I couldn’t have predicted. In the last 5 years:
~ I led multiple community art making projects
~ I lived through the pandemic in the epicenter and wrote more poems than at any other time in my life
~ I was a leader in multiple community organizing efforts around the Black Lives Matter movement
~ I met a woman who would become of the best friends I’ve ever had and a handful of other humans who I now can’t imagine life without
~ I started writing a memoir
~ I participated in my first group show for visual art
~ I won a poetry contest and performed poems regularly at Brooklyn Poets
~ I wrote 2 original songs on the guitar and performed one of them in front of a room of 50+ people
~ I travelled solo to Ireland
~ I ran community for a large coworking brand in NYC
~ I quit my job and took a chance on myself and my freelance career
~ I started a monthly supper club with a dear friend
~ I became an art consultant
~ I curated 2 solo art exhibitions for fellow NY artists, one of which we sold every single painting on view
~ I started teaching yoga again
~ I met the man who would become the father of my child ❤️
Too many gifts to count. It clear to me why it’s difficult to imagine walking away.
But that’s the thing, as I step through this threshold it doesn’t feel like my, “Goodbye To All That” moment. Maybe it’s because I thought I was going to leave NY once before and ended up coming back 2 weeks later. Or maybe it’s because I have such a strong community here and Wayne’s family is here, that I know we’ll be back on a regular basis, but this feels more like a “see you later.”
The truth is, I don’t know what the future will hold. I don’t know where we will want to be in a year or two, but as I prepare to journey into motherhood, that intuition that led me to NY almost 6 years ago is back and it’s urging me towards an environment that is slow, supportive, close to nature and family, one where my needs can be met with a little less effort.
Historically, The West has always been seen as a land of opportunity and in this moment it’s felt like all the right doors have been opening to lead us back to California. So I decided to trust my gut. I feel like Wayne and I have our eyes closed, hands grasped tightly together as we jump into an unknown that feels as scary as it does exciting—both in terms of parenthood and relocation.
We landed a little over a week ago and we are taking our time getting settled. Instead of rushing to get our own place, we decided to move in with my parents on their 2 acre plot of land. Living with parents again gives me plenty of anxiety (love you Mom & Dad!) AND I am genuinely looking forward to having them as I become a mother, to deepening the bond between Wayne and them, to being closer to the land and the sunshine, to slowing down, to inviting my friends to come and see the place where I grew up, to engaging with my creative practices while the baby continues to grow in my belly, and preparing my body, mind, and spirit to receive this little human into my life in 6 months.
As I closed out my time in the city (for now!) I am happy to say it’s felt like I finally got a taste of that sweet NY summer. We had a farewell party at our block’s annual block party the Saturday before we left. Friends came and showered us with love and food and gifts. We cooled off in the fire hydrant and were totally WOW’ed by the magician (I never thought I’d say that). Afterward, I sang my heart out at karaoke. The next day, I swam in the ocean with one of my dearest friends—the water warm like it only gets in August.
Two friends and I held a community natural dye workshop in the days before I left. We used Blackberry, Mugwort, cabbage, coffee, Virginia Creeper, Onion skins, Goldenrod, Japanese Maple leaves, Dahlia, Coreopsis, and Cosmos to create dye baths and experiment with the pounding method.
And a final ritual, I sat with my closest girlfriends around a fire and burned my journals that spanned from 6th grade to 2023. As I was packing up my apartment and preparing to lug this box of journals across the US a 3rd time, I felt the need to release both the physical and emotional weight. There was a time when I could never imagine losing those memories and accounts of my life, but I had arrived somewhere else, where I had the realization that the whole point of journaling for me, was the process.
I didn’t feel a need to hang on to what was in those pages any longer and I had a deep trust that I would hold with me what I needed to remember. As lightening lit the sky overhead, it was cathartic to have my beloveds read snippets of passages to me from my past and to watch the pages burn together. Old habits, old hurts, learnings, yearnings, love letters to myself and my friends going up in flames, a sort of offering to the sky.
As the rain increased and eventually snuffed out the fire, I walked away feeling held by this circle of friends and affirmed that through all the years, relationships, and places I have been and lived, I have changed and somehow I have always been the same.
Call it essence, core, true self—whatever it is—as I sit with my next season, I have peace knowing that I will approach each challenge these new chapters bring, as myself. Trusting that my center will hold, as it always has. Trusting I will find a way that is uniquely mine.
More to come,
Jasmine