Stephanie

“At the moment of giving birth to a child, is the mother separate from the child? You should study not only that you become a mother when your child is born, but also that you become a child.”
― Dogen Zenji

“I am talking about something more than just the gauzy circle of life. Sure, you're older now and one day you're going to die, but before that, you have to *die*. Your child has arrived and the battle has been joined. It is the battle to the death of your ego. The demise of your selfishness and impatience. The end of your idle distractions and carelessness. The decline and fall of Numero Uno. Or so you must pray, because in this contest, you must lose or lose quickly. Pray that you will never bear the shattered consequences of winning when your child's safety, trust, and happiness are the casualties.”
― Karen Maezen Miller, Momma Zen: Walking the Crooked Path of Motherhood

“When you go into labor you see that you are not the captain of the ship. You are the ship. There is no captain. There are only the waves.”
― Karen Maezen Miller, Momma Zen: Walking the Crooked Path of Motherhood

“It takes a lot of time, focus and energy to realize the enormity of being the ocean with your very own tide every month. However, by honoring the demands of bleeding, our blood gives something in return. The crazed bitch from irritation hell recedes. In her place arises a side of ourselves with whom we may not—at first—be comfortable. She is a vulnerable, highly perceptive genius who can ponder a given issue and take her world by storm. When we’re quiet and bleeding, we stumble upon the solutions to dilemmas that’ve been bugging us all month. Inspiration hits and moments of epiphany rumba ‘across de tundra of our senses. In this mode of existence one does not feel antipathy towards a bodily ritual so profoundly and routinely reinforces our cuntpower.”
― Inga Muscio, Cunt: A Declaration of Independence