Sandy Jorgenson

You'll have to excuse me while I sit myself down for one stern-ass pep talk about the importance of trusting my gut, having the courage of my convictions, and marching bodly ahead in my resove to absorb every last minute I get with my growing girl, knowing that never again will these days be upon me.

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.

Two years ago, I had a two-year-old daughter who’d never met her grandfather.

The tumult that’s been rippling through our country has me begging the question: what do we do when we feel the defeat of a woman and the rise of a monster bearing down on us?

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

I didn’t start out as a particularly easygoing person.

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?

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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.

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