Wednesday’s Bloom at 524 weeks: A sure pulse of something bright and unruly within
/// multitudinous mothering entity /// A mother who moves through the world and navigates spaces while attached to or in close, physical proximity of her children. Italicized words expanded on in the Glossary.
Wednesday’s Bloom at 524 weeks
A sure pulse of something bright and unruly within
by Mother Mother Binahkaye Joy
Bloom holding his baby sister, Luminous Glory
For Mama DD— thank you for your faith in me, and for always encouraging me to keep telling my stories
When your first, earth-born child reaches his 10th birthday, you will have been a visible, birthing mother for well over 500 weeks. I started counting the weeks when Bloom was 8 weeks old, and I have been counting ever since. All of my calendars note the number of weeks each munchkin is on their respective day of the week. So far I have given birth on a Wednesday, a Friday, a Saturday, a Monday, and most recently, a Sunday.
Once upon a time I wrote a weekly essay about my discoveries as a mother in a series called Wednesday’s Bloom. It was housed on an old blog space, Be(come)ing Binahkaye, that I developed and poured into during my inaugural new mommy years. I kept the rhythm of Wednesday’s Bloom going for almost a year and a half, but when I was a few months from birthing my second born, Wonder, my momentum shifted, and sharing my stories in that way no longer felt fully nourishing to me. I started dreaming into new creations, welcoming larger unknowns.
I’ve never been afraid to walk away from something beautiful that I’ve created so that something else could have a chance to be realized. The Wednesday’s Bloom essays have mostly sat undisturbed by the passage of time or by my inevitable evolutions as a mother. I have not gone back to edit anything or tidy up the writing to reflect my maturity as a mother. The stories are a quiet archive of the beginning stages of my life as a multitudinous mothering entity. I feel it’s important to leave them raw and untouched, so I can really see myself as I was back then, so that I can trace what has faded, and what has remained, and what come to be.
On occasion I have revisited the Wednesday’s Bloom entries when someone would post a comment or reach out to me about a story they read and how it impacted their understanding of their motherself. Sometimes I would roughly sketch out a book compilation, and imagine gathering the essays into a complete volume. I have recently come back to this idea, and something delightful is stirring as I resume—in the softest sense of the word—this weekly-ish practice.
All this time since writing that last Wednesday’s Bloom piece—more than 8 years ago now— life has been swirling. Children have been born and have been growing bigger and louder by the minute. I’ve birthed new spaces for sharing and creating, penned hundreds of thousands of words on new blogs, initiated myself into the priestess path, seeded a congregation, begun building a sanctuary for mothers, become a Mother Mother.
Bloom turning 10 has sparked something anew: I’m curious what my Wednesdays Bloom ritual will look like today, with all that I am as a mother of 5 and as a multitudinous mothering entity. For the last few weeks, just trying to reflect on how to capture the many dimensions and layers of a decade of Bloom has had me drafting invisible paragraphs in my mind—and so here I am again, attempting to wrap more words and more meaning around the most obvious and most elusive matter of my days, my mothering labors. I ask myself, even as I consciously make this admission to the world, is that even possible?
Bloom’s 10th birthday is a sweet, tender, and magical milestone to celebrate as a family, and for myself as a mother. His birth marks my transition from invisible mother to visible mother. He is my first baby, after many other starseeds set out on their way to becoming human in my womb, to reach this mighty reality we share on Earth. I always sit with that knowing—and it’s especially potent when his birthday nears. I sit with so much gratitude, with so much honoring of my saltwaters, of my blood, of my labors, of my griefs and my hopes. Every life that could have been matters deeply to me. Every birth, seen and unseen, brought us here.
Bloom’s 10th birthday is also a messy, leaky, dizzying, achy time as his birthday comes just 2 weeks after giving birth to my 5th baby. Bloom is overly anxious that I be well enough to come downstairs and celebrate his big day. My brain is so foggy with birth, and I’m trying to coordinate something special for him amidst the full labors of just being with a newborn and tending to my own healing. I worry that the simple moments of togetherness as a new family of 7, and the small celebrations we do at home because I am not yet leaving the house, won’t feel like enough for him. But that evening as I’m standing at the stove slicing the pound cake for a makeshift strawberry shortcake, he tells me something that settles my mommy-heart: “I know you think this isn’t my best birthday, but it is!” He kept saying the best gift was being with his family.
A multitude of life happens in 10 years. When you arrive there, at the 10th year, you might just be starting to look back over the many days, hours, seconds that brought you into this now, gathering the memories that have accumulated and survived, however true or distorted, this far with you. You might just be identifying the honest language that will help you weave your wild and long-winding stories together for yourself, and your children, and their children’s children. You might feel a sure pulse of something bright and unruly within and yet to be named, but that which will be revealed once you decide to do the work, once you set out on your way.
This is where I am.
Luminous Glory getting loved up on by all her big brothers, Revelation, Wonder, and Bloom in the early morning circus on Mommy’s bed. Unseen on the other side of the room, big sister Jubilee who is still sleeping.
Wednesday’s Bloom: Moments in Motherhood is Mother Mother’s weekly-ish, textual experiment in capturing moments from her mothering journeys in 1000 words (or thereabouts)…
Originally birthed when her first born was 8 weeks old, the first iteration of Wednesday’s Bloom: Textual Portraits of a New Mommy lived for about a year and a half in another blog space, and then Mother Mother let the series rest for more than 8 years before beginning this second iteration, Wednesday’s Bloom: Moments in Motherhood, here inside of Notes On My Life As A Multitudinous Mothering Entity. Journey inside Mother Mother’s process of revisiting and archiving the first volume of Wednesday’s Bloom as an emerging constellation in Mother Mother’s Reading Room. Read on to try out Mother Mother’s Seeds & Sprouts practice inspired by her labors of crafting this week’s post.
Seeds & Sprouts
The Difference of a Decade
Seed Prompt
A seed prompt is a short activity that initiates multiple openings for continuing exploration. This is designed to be something you can do in 5-10 minutes.
Make two columns on a page and number them each 1 to 10.
Label the first column “All that fades away” and the second column “All that comes to be.”
In the first column list 10 things/people/realities that have not been a part of your life for 10 or more years now.
In the second column list 10 things/people/realities that have bloomed and emerged inside your life within the last 10 years, even if it’s as recently as this last year.
Sprout Practice
A sprout practice is an opportunity to expand on whatever most stirred within your heart during the seed prompt. Save this practice for when your time is soft and you can take your time being with the discovery.
Pick one column to begin with, and pick one thing from that column to sit with, write about, or explore through your preferred creative medium.
For things on the “all that fades away” list, the questions to be with are:
How did you feel when this thing/person/reality first left you?
What did the space it/they left behind reveal to you?
What has grown in its/their place since then?
For things on the “all that comes to be” list, the questions to sit with are:
What did my life look like before this thing/person/reality came to be?
How has it/their presence changed your life?
How do you imagine your relationship with it/them will be 10 years from now?
Revisit this expanded practice daily, or as often as nourishes you, or until you’ve meaningfully sat with each thing in both lists and discovered something new or generative about yourself, your life, or your creations.
