More often than I would like, I am afraid. Afraid for my children’s health. Afraid of who they will grow up to be, because I don’t always handle my own emotions well. Afraid for their safety in Mozambique. Afraid of how living at two ends of the world — as if only partly belonging to […]
English version
I Like Being a Mom
I don’t particularly like children. I’m not the kind of person who comes over to someone’s house and immediately picks up their baby. It’s not in my nature to sit down with a bunch of preschoolers I don’t know and read them books. Little boys who deliberately mimicked me and seemed to take pleasure in […]
The best
God found me twice. The first time, I was a teenager who had no idea why she existed. The second time, I was a young woman who thought she finally knew—until her fiancé died. God met me in my darkest days. With thoughts that were impossible to silence. Without the strength to keep living. With […]
Called
I didn’t want to go. Whenever I thought about traveling alone to Africa, I felt an overwhelming knot of anxiety deep in my stomach. I kept telling myself that I didn’t have to do it. That if the thought filled me with dread, I could simply let it go. But that wasn’t the kind of […]
Slowly
Everything is done in a hurry. Even I shower in a hurry. Perhaps that habit began because I didn’t want a sleeping baby—always one of them, for the past six years—to wake up and cry for too long while I was in the bathroom. That’s why I feel such relief now that I’ve consciously begun […]
I am calmness
I am calmness. He poured a bottle of honey down the sink. I am calmness. He lay on top of his younger baby brother and then covered his head with a blanket. I am calmness. He put the block in the olive oil his older brother had poured on his plate. And the older brother […]
Me—A Mother
A few weeks after giving birth, I opened my little makeup bag and took out two small wooden boxes. One is decorated with two geese wearing blue bows around their necks. The other bears an image of the Archeress—the famous statue from Polish town Bydgoszcz. For years, I’ve kept a few precious things inside them—things […]
Analog
I’m a little afraid. I’ve been trying to understand that fear—to name it, define it, look for where it comes from instead of drowning it out with noise. I’m a little afraid to put my phone down and simply be present. That fear surprised me when I decided that tomorrow I’d leave my phone in […]
Right at the Beginning
While in Mozambique babies are still sometimes born in the bush or at home (without a midwife), it has taken me four weeks—and the help of several kind people—to prepare a place, tiny clothes, and what we believe we’ll need for our third little boy. And now I feel at peace. The hospital bag is […]
Not I
How tiring it is, what the world talks about today. I, I, I, and always I. My needs. How I feel. What I’m missing. How to take care of myself. A narrative. It’s easy to succumb to it. It’s easy to justify it. And it’s easy to desire it. Because, of course, it’s about me. […]