In almost every chance I have been given to speak publicly about my work since becoming a mother I have mentioned the ways in which the community closest to me helped me survive the first years of motherhood. Every Stage of Becoming imagines a small universe where every person has a community to support and care for them through labor and love, through birth and loss, through choice and failure.
This Tired Body is a mother, a lover, a daughter.
Witness her story. Sit in her seat. Share in her labor.
Her home is here. It was then, it is now, and it will be.
This Tired Body is the family blood.
She is birthed and has birthed. She has failed and she has succeeded.
Her labor is a gift.
This Tired Body is the family built.
She is intimacy, and sex, and love, and care. She is so many more things than one.
Her labor is a choice.
This Tired Body is everything.
She is also nothing.
She is one thing and many things.
This Tired Body knows violence.
She knows the cost of building and becoming.
She is willing to pay that cost for you.
This Tired Body has a choice: give or take.
Sometimes she will choose both but sometimes she can only make one choice.
Neither choice is wrong.
This Tired Body offers gifts.
You will never be able to pay her back.
She knows this and still gives freely.
This Tired Body gives but will not give everything.
She is not a martyr. She will protect herself.
She will rest.
This Tired Body could be the world.
She is a picture of what might be.
She is the labor of love made manifest.”
