Sandy Jorgenson

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

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The night I discovered that tumor on her back was essentially just like any other.

Anybody who has lived through those early days of parenthood (and let’s be totally forthright, here… those seasoned parents, too) knows e

You’d have a hell of a time if you ever dared to crawl through the recesses of a first-time mother’s brain.

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?

I know motherhood is hard. Especially new motherhood — those early days are a fog of tears, confusion, and helplessness. But I also know that yearning for something you can’t have, particularly with regard to children, is a feeling far worse. I’ve lived through the pain of childbirth, of a 3rd-degree tear, two related surgeries and a year of recovery, of postpartum depression, of miscarriage and of infertility and my god; I’d do it all over again in a heartbeat if it meant a chance to… Well, to do it all over again.

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

Why are people so mean?

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.