I’ve been thinking about my therapist a lot these days. Because at some point, in her attempt to address my anxieties about motherhood, I remember her telling me that, in fact, being a parent was not so complicated, one has to learn to be attentive to a child’s needs and be in service of them and offer them love. Now that I am in the thick of it, I can attest to how all of this doesn’t necessarily come naturally, or, to phrase it differently, can be very challenging when you want to continue to experience your selfhood while practising a form of reverence towards your child. There are many moments when I cannot tell whether the source of a particular bodily sound is him or me. Because we sleep and wake together, we are conjoined in our consciousness. It’s so easy to martyr one’s selfhood while mothering. If you decide, from the onset, not to bother with the assertion of boundaries, for instance, and to always put your infant’s needs above yours, you’re already on the path to losing your subjectivity. This is why having thoughts, allowing them to enter your brain and to play with them as you nurse, change diapers, or make ridiculous faces to encourage your baby to coo is so vital. It reminds you that you are more than just a pair of breasts, more than just a caregiver. Recognising the validity of these thoughts helps you access your emotional temperament. It helps me be a better mother.

I am able to sense when I am running low on empathy, or the moments when I need to empathise with myself more firmly, and the instances when I really need a time-out and should ask my partner to take over. Balancing having thoughts with mediating my will is not always easy. I have found it less frustrating when I follow our child’s cues and facilitate his needs rather than impose upon him my desires and my will.

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At the gynaecologist’s dispensary the other day I saw my empty uterus. It felt like a loop had closed, considering last year, in early June, it was at her office that I saw our child in embryonic form, his nascent heart beating with a rhythm entirely its own. It was a moment of elation to see him stirring inside me—all future, all possibility. I’ve been thinking a lot about the uterus as a site of female subjectivity, past, present, future, lost and marginalised. It’s part of my ongoing research. It’s the one notional space all humans that have ever been born have inhabited. I’ve been thinking about what that means. Is the uterus the only meaningful notional homeland, so expandable, its contours capable of shapeshifting, its lining an invitation to host life? 

Deliberating on the life and times of Everywoman, Rosalyn D’Mello is a reputable art critic and the author of A Handbook For My Lover. She tweets @RosaParx
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