I Matter Too

America worships children. 

Parenthood is a religion with its own symbols, texts, and rites. The adoration of a protruding stomach, a dog-eared copy of What To Expect When You're Expecting, baptism by potty training. We warn other drivers of our babies on board as we move toward monuments built for children, stuffed full of entertainment or education or endless (unnecessary) consumer supplies. Then we drag our hours to the alter to be sacrificed for play dates, extracurricular activities, and child-centered vacations.

Parents are a body continually devoured, week after tiresome week.

Yet America generally ignores mothers. 

Judged for not having children as well as having too many, women are pushed out of the hospital 48 hours after pushing out a new life, still bloody and battered. While fathers return to old responsibilities, mothers take one of two paths: Devote the minutes of the day to enriching play and early learning for which they have no training, or work like they're not parents and parent like they don't work. 

Whether drowning in their child in suburban isolation, or employed to fund daycare bills the size of mortgage payments, women are still expected to wash laundry more days than not. To answer why and where is my and watch this. To perpetually put others first. Everything that is not related to family is put in a box on a shelf in a very deep closet, to be pulled out 20 years later if ever.

Personal aspirations be damned.

Mothers have metaphorically surrendered their lives to children since the dawn of time. This is not new. But only recently have states begun voting to give up a mother's temporal life for a child, without irony -- they'd rather we both die than save only the woman. The omission of care that leads to death is a lesser sin than the commission of an abortion. One is a sacred pre-person full of potential, the other is merely a mother.

Every life is precious, but every religion requires at least one martyr.

In America, what really matters on a woman is not the heart that circulates dreams through the blood, or the brain that considers a pink sunset. What matters is the womb that grows a life holier than hers, and hands that do the work of raising that life. Sewing on the buttons of a society that looks past her to the next generation.  

Motherhood is such a difficult road to travel, full of potholes and snakes, blind curves and sheer drops. 

I'm standing on the rocky shoulder holding up a hand-written sign that screams "I matter!" as people speed past and throw litter at me. 

I am told that suffering is the path to heaven.