Kartik

“Perhaps the cultural obsession with ‘natural’ birth reflects the extent of our detachment from our bodies and from the Earth. We are so disconnected from the rest of the natural world that we don’t know what ‘nature’ is: bodies failing, cuckoos pushing eggs out of nests, a weirdly small human pelvis and a big infant head, illness and disease, shit and blood, ticks and cockroaches. ‘Natural childbirth’ in the ‘natural world’ often ends in infant or maternal death. ‘Natural’ childbirth can end in clitoral tears, sepsis, rectoceles, fistulas and psychosis.”
― Lucy Jones, Matrescence: On the Metamorphosis of Pregnancy, Childbirth, and Motherhood

“Besides, as a model, Lucky was used to people taking pleasure in proving she was an idiot. It was a kind of protection against inadequacy, she assumed; if she was pretty but dumb, they could still feel superior, even a little righteous, finding, in their own lack of marketable beauty, a confirmation of their higher intelligence. But if the two weren’t causal? If it was possible to be both professionally attractive and smart? Then their own average looks served no purpose other than to disappoint, with Lucky acting as the hapless reminder. She’d found, in general, it was easier to keep her mouth shut and let people think whatever comforting thoughts they wanted about her. People seemed to hate her less that way.”
― Coco Mellors, Blue Sisters

“Sleep deprivation even impacts DNA and learning-related genes in the brain involved in memory-making. Was that why other mothers didn’t talk about the reality of early motherhood or childbirth? Because they hadn’t made the memories?”
― Lucy Jones, Matrescence: On the Metamorphosis of Pregnancy, Childbirth, and Motherhood

“Martin snorted. It shouldn’t be funny. There was nothing funny about what happened to Will, and only in his darker moods did Martin find much humor in his own predicament. But still he was laughing, and when he looked over, saw that Will was smiling, one hand over his mouth. It felt like —he couldn’t think of anything less theatrical than miracle—that they were standing here, alive, relatively well in mind and body, and laughing about everything that had happened.”
― Cat Sebastian, Two Rogues Make a Right