Welcome to Mother Love Letters
Nurturing words and shared experiences about the highs and lows of pregnancy and motherhood.
Dear Reader,
When I was a little girl, I didn’t have big feelings about getting married and having babies. I envisioned a life full of uninhibited adventure, surrounded by family, writing stories under twinkly midnight lights racing the sunrise. I wanted a cup full of collected stars for a reading lamp. I wanted a map that led to secret time portals. I wanted to see everything. I wanted to feel everything. I wanted to be everything. I believed that life should not be lived in a straight line. That time actually moves in circles. That I would run wildly, spinning around and around until I could outrun the Earth. I tried to outrun the Earth. But I soon realized I was tethered to another by a line impossible to break, tied together long before I unspooled my own. On July 4, 2018, I collided with my now husband and the world exploded into glittery stardust. And on August 12, 2023, two parallel lines rearranged my being and I became a new person. Getting married and having babies became my cup full of stars. My secret time portal. My infinite circle of love. The greatest adventure. It now consumes my writing. But transformation is as violent as it is sublime. It is terrifying and isolating and all-consuming. And that is why I must share these experiences with you. So we can feel them all together in these lines.
The Essence of Mother Love Letters
Mother Love Letters is about matrescence. About the highs and lows of pregnancy and motherhood. While the experiences I am writing about are my own, I hope they feel shared and that you can feel comforted and validated in your own transformations. These newsletters are reminders that we’re all in it together. Those of us wanting to become pregnant. Those of us supporting our loved ones who are already pregnant. Those of us holding our best friends’ hands in the depths of postpartum. Those of us who have multiple children. Those of us who don’t want any children, or can’t have children. There are so many nuances to our bodies and the lives they may or may not birth. I want to explore those nuances. And I will be there with you in the highest of highs and lowest of lows. The messy and the miraculous. Because I’m feeling them, too.
Introducing, My Messy Womb
I started Mother Love Letters as a way to process my own feelings about entering pregnancy and motherhood. After navigating a litany of health concerns, a miscarriage, and a tumultuous first half of my current pregnancy, I felt isolated and without adequate resources to make sense of the radical changes happening to me. I write to cope and process. I share what I write to connect so that we can try to make sense of it all.
With this email newsletter, I aim to be your word doula. I want you to feel less alone. I don’t want you to feel that your experiences are invalidated like mine were - by strangers, by medical providers, by acquaintances, and even by some friends and family. I want us to embrace each other wholly. I want us to honor our bodies and the beautifully complex stories we birth from living in them. If you’re a mother, dreaming of motherhood, healing in motherhood, or simply trying to figure out whatever shape motherhood takes (you might not even like the word ‘motherhood’), these words are for you.
Love Letters In Queue
My words will fall into your hands primarily in the forms of essays and poetry (prose and lyrical are my preferred styles). Some days are reserved for raging rants; others for a big word-hug that says, “You are incredible and you are doing everything you can and you are not alone.” Things that have been on my mind lately that will be shared in the coming weeks:
Managing others’ opinions when my hormones are raging.
The weight of expectations about the first ultrasound.
Despising the term “bounce back.”
The debilitating nature of the first trimester.
Managing anxiety during pregnancy.
Mourning a miscarriage.
Pregnancy after pregnancy loss.
What the heck is the deal with the lack of paid leave?
Learning about life in the womb one day at a time.
How to support a friend who miscarries.
The tiresome act of explaining decisions.
Holding two hearts at once.
I am here to write about all of it because there is nothing more disconcerting than the fear of talking frankly about the very thing that put us all here in the first place. I hope that in the coming months, I will be able to include others’ stories in this newsletter to share more about our diverse experiences. I hope to one day interview healthcare providers, mental health advocates, doulas, and postpartum experts. I hope that this newsletter grows so big that it reaches every person who needs it.
Beyond Love Letters
If you have access to the Substack app or website, I’ll be introducing community chats soon so that we can connect with each other about our experiences. We hear “It takes a village!” relentlessly when we’re pregnant. I feel that village can be an online community as well.
Prompts for creative writing will be sent occasionally for those wanting to write about their own experiences but aren’t sure where to start. I’ll provide guidance on starting a journal, establishing a writing routine, and offering free-write topics to help you get inspired.
Writers are readers and readers are writers. We’re one and the same! I’ll be sharing reading lists about the topics discussed in this newsletter to share other perspectives about matrescence, our healthcare system in the U.S., and ideas to make life better for parents and children.
And of course, I’m so excited to share extra poems with you that have been hiding away in secret folders on my computer. These are mostly more vulnerable, longer pieces I’ve been calling “Body Love Letters.” Physical transformation during matrescence is what so much of society “sees” and I have not enjoyed the rhetoric about my body so early in this process. I share these poems to soothe and comfort; to give love to our physical beings that are enduring marathon-level energy to create life and heal from traumas while fending off unwarranted and misguided attacks.
I don’t have any expectations about what this newsletter will become. I have no intention to tell you what to do or how to feel. I simply want to be here for you by showing up, writing with honesty, and letting love lead. My words are yours to become whatever you make of them. And I am so glad that you are here with me.
Xo,
Violet Carol
Beautiful I’m crying now😍 grateful to be a part of the community you created
Ahhh I can’t wait! You are amazing 🤩