Category Archives: Uncategorized

50

March 31, 2024Uncategorized50, acceptance, birthdays, crises, death, despair, dread, entitlement, feelings, grief, illness, letting go, modernity, presence, releaseAerin

I am now 50 years old.

Things have not unfolded the way I planned or would have liked for this “big” birthday. The gifts I am receiving include hard lessons in surrendering control, expectation and entitlement. I see how the values of our smooth, shiny, superficial western modernity have left me wildly ill-equipped to navigate the grief and pain of this world (a world steeped in the very same value-systems, cosmovisions and ontologies). Over the past week, I’ve been offered repeated opportunities to abide with profound sadness and a sense of existential dread that just will not go away. Let’s face it: the fantasies of being separate, individualized cogs in the productivity machine of late-stage capitalism are crumbling; the illusions we’ve been led to believe about what constitutes success and what leads to happiness are rapidly disintegrating. To be passing into menopause and experiencing the emotional and hormonal storms of this life-stage at the same time that the world is facing such violent upheaval, destruction, rage and oppression is almost too much for my system to handle. I’m on the brink of a huge rupture. Or maybe I’m already in it.

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La Sirena: Union of Eros & Grief

July 20, 2023Uncategorized#eros #pleasure #grief #merpeople #sirena #descent #grief #mermaid #lineages #grace #water #myth #resistance #protectionAerin

On the Winter Solstice last December, I pulled an archetype card for the coming year. I was buoyed by the image that appeared to me: that of the mysterious and sensuous Siren. Kim Krans, creatrix of the deck writes: “…the Siren calls and the world spins. What we thought we wanted pales in comparison to the sweet allure of her song… She eats rules.” With the sighting of the mythic mermaid, I had the thought that my year would be filled with delicious, intimate explorations that would allow me to deepen the connection I’ve been cultivating with pleasure and sexuality for the past few years. But overall, in these past months, this has not been the case. I’ve mostly been in survival mode, dragging myself through the days, selling strollers, diapers and baby clothes to new parents and wondering, once again, what my life is even for.

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Ain’t No Normal

June 25, 2023Uncategorizedcomparison, cripculture, dead babies, disability, hyper-capability, motherhood, normality, stillbirthAerin

“Ain’t No Normal” was written for an online event/exploration in January, 2023 called What are We? as part of the Brave New Works festival. A group of friends came together to explore how disability and impairment are entangled with the construction of the ideal ‘human’. Learn more about the ongoing explorations and inquiries in the crip-queer landscape here. What follows is an edited version of the original piece.

My dear friends, I hate to break it to y’all but there ain’t no such thing as “normal.” If I turn the kaleidoscope of perception and begin relating with myself, other people and the other-than-human through this belief-lens, I destabilize one of the basic fundaments of ableism. I undermine its very logic: that there is some ideal human form that we should all be trying to squeeze ourselves into; that I have to smooth out and cover up my strange, rough edges or discombobulated mind. This also reminds me that there ain’t no “normal” way that I gotta talk about ableism or disability.

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Tears Are Our Medicine

November 28, 2022Uncategorizedcrying, Day of the Dead, emotion, expression, grief, porosity, shame, tearsAerin

“I see you’re frustrated when I cry
I’m finding out how sacred as time goes by
Process, purify
I am lighter, much lighter

Look at my eyes and cry with me…
Let it all out, it’s meant to be
Tears are our medicine…

I see you’re frustrated
Yeah, you don’t cry
You’re finding out how sacred as time goes by
Process… purify
You’ll feel lighter, much lighter

Look at my eyes and cry with me…
Let it all out, it’s meant to be
Tears are our medicine”

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We’re All Going to Die

August 13, 2022Uncategorizedaging, avoidance, death, defense, drama, emotions, family, feelings, parents, victim-consciousness, victimhoodAerin

Yes. We are all going to die.

What happens in you when you read those words? Take a moment. Yes, right now. Take a moment right now to notice how the sentence lands in your body, in your heart. Where does your mind go? How does it actually make you feel?

This is, perhaps, one of the only real truths in this world. Yet, somehow, I am just beginning to turn toward my own death in an honest way. My mortality has been some sort of an implicit companion throughout my life: an entity I know is present but that I rarely really acknowledge or honor. It appears that now is a good moment to do that. And it would seem a very apt time in the story of our planet and our species to do the same on a collective level.
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Baby Hate and Other Non-Pretty Thoughts

May 12, 2022Uncategorizedanger, comparison, compersion, counting, emotion, envy, families, hatred, hospicing modernity, infertility, jealousy, miscarriage, moms, motherhood, perinatal death, pregnancy, rage, stillbirth, tabooAerin

I like to count things. Over the past four years and a half years I’ve become quite skilled at counting babies. I count months: “Oh, someone else had a living baby! During which month would he have been conceived?” I count weeks: “How many weeks would it have been since our last baby was born (if she had lived)?” I count days: “When I took that pregnancy test, how many days had passed since my period?” There’s something about counting that soothes my anxious mind; a mundane distraction from our troubled world.

Now, let me count the number of times I’ve attempted to start writing this post: 5. The number of pages I’ve written below (without really saying anything at all): 3. The number of times I’ve had challenging thoughts about pregnant women, babies or mothers in general: innumerable.

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Homecoming

February 16, 2022Uncategorizedexile, expression, grief, harm, partnership, protection, vulnability, writingAerin

I cry easily these days. My heart fills and overflows when I least expect it. I find tears streaming down my cheeks when songs I listened to the day after Rafa’s death come up on the collective playlist; when I read some random paragraph in a book that touches me in a certain way; when I am simply witnessing a near stranger lingering with love and intention over the candle on their birthday cake. Something about this yellow leaf floating slowly down toward the pond right now stirs a mixture of melancholy, acceptance, peacefulness and finality in me. It seems only fitting for these times we are living in. There’s a whiff of the “end of days” in the air. Can you smell it?

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Shame in the Throat

July 30, 2021Uncategorizedage, brokenness, longing, marriage, menopause, miscarriage, pregnancy, shameAerin

Leer este post en español.

Anyone else feeling utterly exhausted these days? It feels like the state of our world and the deep and troubling complexities of life (in nearly every sphere of my existence) are wearing me down, moment by moment. I’ve found myself recently describing my state of being as “flat,” blah,” “without a spark.” In Spanish, one might say sin ganas.

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Vergüenza en la garganta

July 30, 2021Uncategorizedage, brokenness, longing, marriage, menopause, miscarriage, pregnancy, shameAerin

Read this post in English.

¿Alguien más se siente totalmente agotado estos días? Parece que el estado de nuestro mundo y las profundas y preocupantes complejidades de la vida (en casi todas las esferas de mi existencia) me están desgastando, momento a momento. Últimamente me he encontrado describiendo mi estado de ánimo como “plano”, soso”, “sin chispa”… tal vez diría totalmente “sin ganas”.

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Don’t Make Waves: Disappointment and Discomfort

April 11, 2021Uncategorizeddisappointment, discomfort, embarassment, emotions, family, Mormonism, perfectionism, shame, stillbirth, white womenAerin

I probably haven’t told you that I’m taking clown classes. Well, they’re not really classes, it’s more like a practice space where we get to know our inner clowns better. All of us have clowns within and I’ve seen how mine has so much to teach me! In one of our sessions we played with natural objects like dried flowers, bark and plants. We worked in pairs: one person pretended to be the object and as their clown partner interacted (sometimes in rude and curious ways) with the leaves or flowers, we imagined that our bodies were being manipulated in the same way. My natural object was a little succulent in an oversized coffee cup. It’s a fragile little guy and as I moved and touched it, many of its little leaf-nubs fell to the floor. Even wearing the hat and red nose of my curmudgeon clown, I soon found it impossible to be present in the exercise; I was obsessed with picking up the fallen pieces of the plant. It was unimaginable for me to leave that mess on the floor; even though, obviously, I could have cleaned it up later.

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In the Name of Rafa

A space of grief and gratitude.