Tuesday, October 31, 2006

Guiltless maternity

"The arrival of the child, on the other hand, leads the mother into the labyrinths of an experience that, without the child, she would only rarely encounter: love for an other. Not for herself, nor for an identical being, and still less for another person with whom ‘I’ fuse (love or sexual passion). But the slow, difficult apprenticeship in attentiveness, gentleness, forgetting oneself. The ability to succeed in this path without masochism and without annhilating one’s affective, intellectual and professional personality – such would be the stakes to be won through guiltless maternity. It then becomes a creation in the strongest sense of the term. For this moment, utopian?"

Julia Kristeva Women's Time

3 comments:

  1. Thank you for this timely reminder! Whilst I waddle around (37 weeks and so OVER it all), this passage triggers the long suppressed memory of the joy of bringing a little one home, the overwelming fear/love/terror and determination you feel. Jman is 6 in 7 days time, has been a long time between nappies in this household, but where does the time go?

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  2. Thanks Penn, that is a beautiful description of that journey - it's still a suprising thing to read other ppl's words and find that our feet have walked the same path, b/c at times that road seems so alone. xxx

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  3. Whew, timely. I'm currently reading Margaret Atwood's 'The Handmaid's Tale'.

    Oy.

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