Browsing Tag

acceptance

Guest Posts, Beating Fear with a Stick, Child Birth

The Value of Surrender

March 29, 2021
surgery

By Courtney Kubovcik

I remember the moment when I realized it was inevitable: the cesarean was going to happen, whether I liked it or not. If I could rewind 24 hours from that moment, I’d watch this scenario play out before me:

“Two centimeters,” the nurse said poignantly.

I let out a low, barely audible groan in exhaustion.

“You’re kidding me,” I said, my voice cracking.

I had left the hospital at one centimeter Friday evening after a two-day failed induction. Before my induction failed, I didn’t even realize that was a thing. I figured if you were induced, you went to the hospital and left with a baby. Evidently, I was wrong.

Now, midday on day three of the fresh attempt to evict the human that had taken over my midsection, the contractions were finally regular, for hours and hours on end it seemed.

While the contractions were regular, I—it turned out—was not. Most women will dilate when they are pumped full of obscene amounts of Pitocin, but not me.

I am stubborn, and my assumption is that this stubbornness travels deep into my biology. I imagine each of my uterine molecules laughing at the artificial hormones hissing, “You’re not one of us.”

My obstetrician was a face-talker. He stood two damn inches from my face the entire time he spoke. His breath smelled like peppermints as he peered at me.

He spoke in a way that conveyed that he knew that whatever he was going to say, I was going to fight.

“You don’t have to keep doing this.” He paused. “We can do the surgery, and you can meet your baby.”

The tears flowed, freely and openly. No, I insisted. We would keep going.

Three days and only two centimeters. Defeat hung heavy in the air. My salty tears drowned me in my despair.

From that moment, it would be another 24 hours until I would meet my son.

Even after I dilated a full 10 centimeters nearing the end of the following day, the face-talker said that he doubted my ability to deliver the baby safely.

“You’re too weak,” he said. “The baby isn’t descending properly.”

He was right: I was too weak to fight any longer. Finally, I consented to the surgery.

Instead of having a surgery that likely would have been textbook earlier in my labor, I had a recovery riddled with complications. Afterward, I felt like I had been hit by a god damn train. I hemorrhaged post-cesarean and could have lost my life. Thankfully, a couple of quick-acting nurses and a few blood transfusions saved me.

Beyond the hemorrhaging, I developed an infection that could have killed my son but luckily only got to me. After battling a dangerously high fever (104˚ F), I dealt with immobilizing edema from being pumped full of artificial hormones for four days.

How many times had I done this? Resisted something to the point of self-destruction. I had allowed my fear of the surgery to completely cripple me. Only after four days of labor and absolute exhaustion did I finally consent to the surgery that was likely inevitable from the beginning.

I refused to listen to my body. I fought against every indicator that told me I needed to stop. I forced it to comply, forced it to bend to my will. 10 centimeters, I would accept no less.

Except bodies don’t work like that, and mine had knowledge that my mind did not: my baby was sunny-side up. If born naturally, he would like likely gotten dangerously stuck or tore me irrevocably. I didn’t know this at the time, but my body did.

In a world where we are told to constantly force ourselves and our bodies to do what we feel it should, I am here to remind you of the value of surrendering. Fighting against the natural course of life, with its ups and downs, causes more harm than the actual ups and downs.

Instead of riding the wave through this down moment in my life, I fought it tooth and nail. This behavior did not end with this moment, and it took many more moments for me to see the truth: life can never “go as planned” because life is not promised.

It was in this truth that I found the freedom to roll with the punches, to take life as it comes, and to live each day with purpose and gratitude. With this insight, I now live my life knowing that both times of grit and moments of surrender come together to create a beautiful and fulfilling life.

Neither grit nor surrender is more valuable than the other. Life calls for different purposes at different moments. The real value lies in the discernment of when to utilize each. That comes with time, with practice, and with patience for yourself and others.

It was a hard lesson to learn, and one I’m lucky to have survived. The feeling of something has got to give is one that I have learned to pay attention to because often, it is a feeling that accompanies transformational moments in my life. I hope you too can begin to the see the value in letting go and in surrendering.

Courtney Kubovcik is a licensed social worker, transformational healing coach, activist, writer, wife, and mother. As a practitioner, Courtney uses embodiment techniques and integrative approaches on her mission to help men and women re-connect with their bodies and align with their souls. Courtney has a passion for social justice and has been serving vulnerable populations for nearly a decade. Without exception, Courtney believes that ALL people are worthy of health and abundance, and that we ALL have the potential for healing within ourselves.

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This past year has been remarkable, in the best and worst of ways. (Her)oics Anthology is a collection of essays by women about the lived pandemic experience. Documenting the experiences of women both on the front lines and in their private lives, this book is an important record of the power, strength and ingenuity of women. 

Pick up a copy at Bookshop.org or Amazon.

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Anti-racist resources, because silence is not an option

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Click here for all things Jen

Guest Posts, Autism

Don’t Panic, I’m Only Autistic; or Welcome to Autism Acceptance Month

April 16, 2019
autism

By Susanna Donato

Just over a year ago, on March 23, I was diagnosed with autism. By now, I’ve shared that information with many people in my life, including family, friends, and colleagues. Some of them, when I’ve explained, have said something along the lines of, “Oh! Yeah, you’re a little different, but I thought that was just a Susanna thing!”

Still, even though I don’t think “coming out” as autistic—sharing what’s essentially a medical diagnosis—is an obligation, I’m starting to feel a little lily-livered about posting resources and information and commenting on other people’s posts without sharing the reason I’m doing so or my perspective.

I’ve been reluctant to “go public” mainly because I don’t want people to judge me. When I told one friend, he took a step back and asked if I was OK.

I’m OK. I’m definitely OK. Autism isn’t contagious. It isn’t a deteriorating condition. And there are so many people like me. While the stereotype of autism may still be a boy with verbal and/or intellectual challenges—and don’t get me wrong, those individuals absolutely are present and deserve the same rights as anyone!—half or more have IQs that are average to above average, sometimes way above average. (Though non-speaking doesn’t mean non-communicative.) Lots of us are women, and a bunch are nonbinary or identify in other ways. And all of us, God willing, grow up and become adults. Continue Reading…

Guest Posts, Self Image, Writing & The Body

Claiming the Right to Cherish My Body

March 8, 2019
cherish

By Signe E. Land

Soaking in the tub on Christmas Eve, I studied my naked body. My two sons were on a trip with their father, and I live by myself, so I had plenty of time to reflect on the noticeable weight I had gained after a recent surgery. My breasts had grown larger and were pleasantly round with a fullness they hadn’t had for a very long time.  My stomach and sides had grown thicker too.  I considered some pros and cons of the weight gain. Pro: my butt was rounder, not as flat.  Con: my butt was not as perky.  Pro: my breasts were larger, pleasingly heavy when I weighed them in my hand.  Con: I had a little pot-bellied tummy.  Pro: I felt surprisingly more grounded in my body.  Con: I had to buy new jeans.

In the past, I had always abdicated judgement of my body to others.

Now single, for the first time I was the only one experiencing my body; I was the only one who would decide if the changes were good or bad, ugly or beautiful. In the past, partners had taught me that a fit, trim body was acceptable and loveable, though they had said they would love me “even if” I gained weight, whatever that meant. Judgment of my body was for others, including my mother, for whom my body had never been quite right: for her, I had always been too heavy or too thin. Now, as I considered my new curves and softness, I was surprised at the lack of horror and shame I had always felt before when I had gained weight.

As I considered my new body, a word popped into my mind along with a question: Cherish.  Do I cherish my body? Continue Reading…

Guest Posts, Self Image, Self Love

Love Is A Hell Of A Drug

September 20, 2018
love

By Jasmine Sims

You fell in love with the word long ago. You watched the movies and figured out that was something you wanted. You didn’t realize that you had, early on, fallen into an addiction that you’d spend your life looking for.

You looked for it in the eyes of your father. Prided yourself in being daddy’s little girl. You lived for his laugh and nod of approval like an addict. The mere acknowledgment of your presence and masquerade of acceptance was enough of a hit to keep you pushing until the next time. You didn’t know you were the daughter of a drug addict, because he hid it so well that you didn’t realize when you visited his friends and left you in the car you were at a crack house. Continue Reading…

Guest Posts, love

How to Love Everyone in 8 Simple Steps

May 29, 2017
mother

By Michelle Riddell

“Simple, but not easy…” –The Big Book

Step 1: Love yourself. Love your strengths, love your flaws, love your effort when you fail and your giant streak of procrastination. Love your body at its fattest, its sickest, its weakest. Love your worst decisions, your selfish twenties, your break-ups and divorces. Love thirteen-year-old you whom nobody else could; love addicted you, promiscuous you, you at rock bottom. Love pregnant you, anxious you, infertile you—and do it so fiercely that self-protection is reflexive.

Step 2: Love your parents. Love what they gave you—be it twenty-three unmated chromosomes or the bounty of a happy and secure life. Love them whether they abandoned you, adopted you, or stayed and made it worse; love what they sacrificed for you, or took from you, or promised disingenuously. Love them because they’re frail and old and can’t hurt you ever again. Love them because they died before you had the chance to make things right. Love them because they’re here right now, supporting you as always. Continue Reading…

Guest Posts, Self Image, Self Love, Young Voices

Born To Be Bald

June 8, 2016
acceptance

Note from Jen Pastiloff, founder of The Manifest-Station. This is part of our Young Voices Series for Girl Power: You Are Enough. We are always looking for more writing from YOU! Make sure you follow us on instagram at @GirlPowerYouAreEnough and on Facebook here.

By Addie Newcombe

Many people have never heard of Alopecia Areata. It means you don’t have any hair. So the obvious million-dollar question comes up over and over again: if you could have your hair back, would you?

Many women answer yes, and that’s fine. But I offer a resounding NO! I do not want my hair back. Ever!

Yes, this puts me at odds with a lot of bald women, including the four profiled for a piece in the “Fashion and Style” section of the New York Times. They all wish they had their hair back because the emotional discomfort of being bald has not yet subsided—washing their insecurities clean.

Alopecia Areata is an autoimmune disease that attacks the hair follicles. It made me completely bald at the ripe old age of…six. That was fifteen years ago. Out of the 6.6 million people in the United States who have the disease, I have only met two people without hair—well, three including myself, but I’m still meeting parts of who I am. Not experiencing others with the disease has been extremely alienating. In a country with over 6.6 million people with my similarity, how have I only met TWO? Maybe I am wildly unaware of other people’s baldness or they are wearing hairpieces that are so life-like that I just don’t notice. I don’t think that is a bad thing, though. Anonymity is so hard to come by when you’re so physically different. Continue Reading…

Guest Posts, Binders, Yoga

The Gift of Breathing

April 4, 2016
yoga

By Kirsten Palladino

Rainy Sunday mornings are right for praising life with yoga. My first session of the season is going resplendently well. My body isn’t arguing with me as I thought it might—a dedicated yoga class hasn’t been on the calendar in 10 years. A twin pregnancy and decadent, indulgent food in a metropolitan city as a restaurant editor have enabled me to eat recklessly.

Through death and abandonment, my original family of four shrank to one in the course of just a few years. I have grief-gobbled myself into a puffy caterpillar form, minus the legs. Finally, I’ve earned the mockery of the high school girls calling me an elephant, a quarter-century too late.

But my body is strong and limber today, giving me what I need. Hips opened wide after delivering two darling boys in one night—finally, I birthed a living child; full healing lungs breathe in deeply instead of screaming and gasping after a 15-year childhood stint of sucking on the cancer sticks (family legacy).

As we move through our positions, I hear my therapist’s words in my head: “Inhale deeply through your nose as if you’re trying to smell freshly baked chocolate chip cookies. Then breathe out of your mouth so strongly as if you’re trying to blow out birthday candles across the room.” In. Out. Mindful breathing. Here we go. Continue Reading…

courage, Guest Posts, Self Image, Truth, writing

Ghosts

February 28, 2016

By Helena Montanez

The thing is, you don’t have to be told that certain things are for white people.

You just know it. Or at least believe it, in the way you believe other seemingly simple and absolute truths.

The sun will rise and set every day. Queerness is for white people. The sky is blue. Only white people can be mentally ill (and normally in the form of depression, or, say, something that can be used in court to explain why a man shouldn’t be held fully responsible for his decision to shoot up a public place). The world is a sphere. White people need more thrills from life, so they mess around with ridiculous stunts like skydiving, and/or the occult.

The reality of these things aren’t as simple; there are all sorts of factors that come into play to create them, such as gravity, lack of proper representation, and the like.

Still, none of that changes the fact that I, as a queer poc with social anxiety who happens to be interested in otherworldly things, am what shouldn’t exist, what some might even go so far as to claim doesn’t exist, because I’m probably making it up, trying to be as “other” as I can be. There’s a limit to how different a person can naturally be from what is the traditional norm before it’s labeled as a ploy for attention, and the bar for that limit is quite often set impossibly low.

In fact, a common consequence of this is the person in question doubting themselves and their diagnoses, sometimes believing that they’re just making it all up, that it’s all in their head (though, of course, the nature of mental illnesses is that it too lives in the mind). These sorts of doubts can be difficult to rid yourself of, even in a span of years, and especially when you can’t see yourself, in people like you, in the media.

I think that’s why I was determined to go on a school trip to take a ghost tour in Virginia City.

It was a good trip, all in all. I’d always been interested in history, and Virginia City is full of that, both good and bad, and readily apparent in the old buildings that line the streets, the boardwalks lined over the partially collapsed tunnels that run underneath the city. You could feel it in the air as we walked from place to place, as the tour guides told us stories of people and times gone by, as they asked ghosts to appear and make their presences known. Still, something about it all bothered me slightly.

The reason why didn’t hit me until later on. Maybe it’s ridiculous, but I’ve always believed in ghosts, or if not ghosts specifically, then at least some sort of entity, whatever you’d like to call it. And more than that, I believe that though they don’t have the same physical form, they’ve still got some semblance of being, and are deserving of respect (of course, there are evil spirits out there as well, but without knowledge of their stories or how they ended up that way, I’m more inclined to feel pity or sympathy towards them, even if they might feel that is worse).

I felt that certain people didn’t always show the proper respect towards the ghosts. In particular, in one part of the city there was allegedly the spirit of a young girl, and they didn’t necessarily act as if she were just that, a child, albeit a ghostly one.

It occurred to me that the ghosts and I have a few things in common, on a few basic levels: we’re not always treated like people, don’t always command respect, and though our reasons for being unable to tell our own stories differ, we often have to rely on others who aren’t like us to do so.

I’ve wanted to be a writer for some time now, despite the fact that I don’t know very many Mexican American authors, and even because of that. And during the tour, I felt a strong urge to learn more about the stories of the people who’d lived and died in that city, and to share their stories with more people, perhaps to bring some of them some sense of justice that they didn’t get to have in life. In the end, I suppose, my wish is the same in both cases: to give a voice to the largely voiceless.

Helen Montanez is an aspiring writer, currently a junior at Sierra Nevada College working towards a bachelor’s degree in English, and well on her way in achieving her goal of ascension to “local strange cat lady” status.

 

March 13 NYC! A 90 minute class for women, girls and non-gender conforming folks (we encourage teens 16 and up) and all levels that will combine flow yoga, meditation, empowerment exercises, connection and maybe, just maybe, a dance party. This will be a class to remind you that you are enough and that you are a badass. It will be fun and empowering and you need no yoga experience: just be a human being. Let’s get into our bodies and move! Be warned: This will be more than just a basic asana class. It will be a soul-shifting, eye-opening, life-changing experience. Come see why Jen Pastiloff travels around the world and sells out every workshop she does in every city. This will be her last class before she has her baby so sign up soon. Follow her on instagram at @jenpastiloff and @girlpoweryouareenough. Jen is also doing her signature Manifestation workshop in NY at Pure Yoga Saturday March 5th which you can sign up for here as well (click pic.)

March 13 NYC! A 90 minute class for women, girls and non-gender conforming folks (we encourage teens 16 and up) and all levels that will combine flow yoga, meditation, empowerment exercises, connection and maybe, just maybe, a dance party. This will be a class to remind you that you are enough and that you are a badass. It will be fun and empowering and you need no yoga experience: just be a human being. Let’s get into our bodies and move! Be warned: This will be more than just a basic asana class. It will be a soul-shifting, eye-opening, life-changing experience. Come see why Jen Pastiloff travels around the world and sells out every workshop she does in every city. This will be her last class before she has her baby so sign up soon. Follow her on instagram at @jenpastiloff and @girlpoweryouareenough.
Jen is also doing her signature Manifestation workshop in NY at Pure Yoga Saturday March 5th which you can sign up for here as well (click pic.)

 

Join Jen Pastiloff in Tuscany Sep 17-24, 2016. There are 5 spaces left. Email barbara@jenniferpastiloff.com asap. More info here. Must email first to sign up.

Join Jen Pastiloff in Tuscany Sep 17-24, 2016. There are 5 spaces left. This will be her only international retreat in 2016 and is her favorite retreat of the year. Email barbara@jenniferpastiloff.com asap. More info here. Must email first to sign up.

beauty, feminism, Friendship, Gender & Sexuality, Guest Posts, love

Beauty and Bitterfruit

November 24, 2015

By Renee Gereiner

There’s something painful about living in a world where the rules have never made sense to you, where the idea of following the rules breaks your own heart, so you start making bird calls in the middle of the night, hoping someone will hear you, hoping there will be someone else out in the cold night singing.  It takes so long for it to happen so that when it finally does the other bird is old, and she presents you with a bitterfruit.  Like no one you know, she speaks, “We are not of this world.”  And you don’t question her, because she holds you in the deep brown of her eyes.

When you bite it, you become the women you always knew you were.

You sneak into parties you aren’t invited to where the beer is cheap and the women are shirtless; you drink bottles of wine in fancy restaurants standing up; you talk about film and documentaries and both the history of it and all the bullshit of what happened to old fashioned picture taking like you’re a famous photographer who has an honorary PhD at NYU; you drink your weight in wine; you stay up all night literally burning your shit in a bonfire with hippies; and you finally start making those blue nude portraits that actual professionals compare to the late Francesca Woodman.

But, of course, the bitterfruit gives you diarrhea and you end up spending afternoons over the toilet bowl, and even so, you still go back for more.  Because the calling of the bird tickles you from the base of your spine all the way down the sides of your wings until you are flying.

The bird knows shit that women wish they didn’t know. Continue Reading…

Grief, Guest Posts, healing, Intimacy, Relationships

Cripples

November 1, 2015

Note from Jen Pastiloff: This is a work of fiction. The Manifest-Station will publish fiction now, on occasion.

By Jane Eaton Hamliton

I hadn’t wanted a damn cripple on the crew to begin with.  Any damn cripple.  Not a damn cripple named Mike Pinkle or any other damn cripple, so naturally Pinkle was made my partner, orders of the co-ordinator.  We’d both come in late.  There were forty-three of us, and damn cripple Mike Pinkle was to be my partner during the Long Beach oil spill clean-up.

The first sight of that Vancouver Island beach was one hell of a thing.  I shoved my Honda stick into ‘P’ and took off out of the parking lot toward the six foot waves at a ninny-speed run, stumbling over the logs and deadwood using my hands, across all that thick white sand to the surf line.  The water was as purple and violent as a bruise.  It pounded inside my breasts and legs like some fierce man.  Oh shit, I thought.  Goddamn shit.  Water, blurring out into a flagstone sky.  I’d never seen so much damn sea at once in my life.  It excited me.  It made me want to fuck.  I was standing up to my ankles in yellow gumboots with the water sucking and smelling of muggy blood and all I wanted to do was fuck.  But then I heard my goddamn car horn blow.  I turned and remembered the cripple.  And the rake.  The pitchfork.  The industrial strength green garbage bags.  What I thought was I could use the pitchfork to kill the goddamn cripple and the industrial strength green garbage bags to dispose of his body; the rest of the crew would just figure he was a bag of oil muck.  Which thought made me remember why we were here–the oil dump off the coast of Washington State.  Now I noticed oil everywhere; broken rainbow slicks on the water to the south, clumps strangling the bulbous heads of bull kelp, even a barely recognizable dead gull to the right of my boot.  All that pretty show and all that oil–I had to hold back tears.  I was almost grateful for the diversion of the goddamn cripple in the parking lot.

Or at least I was until I had to watch that pathetic half-man haul himself into the chair I unfolded for him out of the trunk.  I couldn’t stand to look at him, so I piled him with the rake and pitchfork and the bags, which he held like they were nothing.  I dumped on a thermos of coffee for good measure.

The chair was electric.  Fancy dancy.  My idea–I’d heard he’d been in a car wreck with a drunk driver–was that he’d landed a settlement of ten mil or so.  My idea was that he was set for goddamn life.  A condo in the Bahamas.  Large screen TVs, a jacuzzi.  Big fat fucking deal.  I was supposed to feel sorry for him?

He sailed down a concrete path in the rain like some alien robot.  Then he beached in the sand.

I went around the front of his chair and yelled in his face.  My fists were going.  I said, “Listen, buster, let’s get this straight.  You better realize I don’t like you.  You’ve got no business being out here and you freaking well know it.” Continue Reading…