Ashlee Wells Jackson & daughter Nova Emery, 4th Trimester Bodies Project
I think I forgot what being inspired felt like. Or ...no. I think I just forgot that I had a pilot light ablaze in my heart - and this past weekend, my heart nearly burst with such an intensity that I feel like someone took two hands and just shoved me right off a cliff.
Is that dramatic?
I'm one of the lucky few who was able to participate in Ashlee Wells Jackson's 4th Trimester Bodies Project. In the weeks and months leading up to my photo shoot, I felt an incredibly strong pull - like being a part of this movement was somehow already intrinsically a part of who I so desperately want to become, and who I already seem to have morphed into being; but now that I've done it, since having sat in a room with Ashlee Wells Jackson and her colleague Laura Weetzie Wilson and spilled out my story, shed tears, griped, questioned, and marveled, now I just feel like I'm about to explode. Like something within me woke up that I'm confident has been passed out, splayed on the floor for nearly a decade.
I'm fantasizing about doing something that makes a difference - something that feels like it matters - something that'll remind me that I matter. Joining with the women out there, the mothers, who advocate for pregnant and birthing women, and for mothers both new and seasoned. If only I had some sort of direction - I don't know what to do.
I'm 31. Almost but not quite 32. I hate that I feel like I'm wasting my days and my years; that outside of my life as a wife and a mother I'm not doing anything to make anybody's life better or richer, and that my heart feels like a raisin.
Why am I not doing that which makes me feel alive?
Join the army of brave and beautiful women supporting Ashlee & Laura in their efforts to normalize and celebrate motherhood and the changes that our bodies undergo as a result of pregnancy, childbirth and breastfeeding.
Visit them on Facebook, on Twitter, or on Instagram at @4thtribodies.
