Sandy Jorgenson

Death, we know because it’s drilled into us from an early age, is a natural part of life.

When I check on our daughter before heading to bed myself, I have to do a quick scan around her full-size bed just to locate her. She is almost never remotely close to where she started out. But she is almost always upside down, head jammed up against the wall or her footboard, stuffed animals scattered like confetti all around her.

Childbirth isn’t kidding around. Here are eight special gifts that your blessed body bestows upon you to say thanks for turning it into a baby-making machine.

Whether this is news to you, seemingly irrelevant to you, or deeply personal to your experience, this truth remains that statistically speaking, one in every four pregnancies will end in miscarriage. Some of you are vaguely familiar with this, many of you have suffered this loss yourselves, and the likelihood is high that almost all of you know someone who’s lost a child in utero, whether or not they’ve ever spoken publicl about it.

Welcome to #RavsWriters, an opportunity for you to get to know some of the outstanding human beings who fervently type to make Ravishly the awesome place it is. ​

So, women, I’m talking to you — give yourself permission to love every inch of you. Honor your body, and meet it where it is. To those of you who’ve given birth: you’re forever changed. Relinquish the idea that you need to get your body back to looking the way it did before your baby was born.

When a bereaved mother is left alone, how deep into the recesses of her mind does she wander? Does she surface for air? Does she want to come out at all?

Life is hard work, and I think we all know this with varying degrees of certainty. It’s grueling, it’s relentless, it’s at times unforgiving, and it is always a damn hustle. So if you want a piece of coffee cake, get that cake, girl.

...[O]ur very responsibility is to equip them with everything they need before we shove them out of the nest and watch their wings spread far and wide... But what, then, is left for us?

This article is the second in a two-part series.