Book of Mother Mother: A photo essay of my journal archive
/// 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.
Book of Mother Mother
A photo essay of my journal archive
by Mother Mother Binahkaye Joy
“What if these stories that I’ve preserved are not even for me to look at? What if my children, my grandchildren, my great-grandchildren are going to comb through my stories and piece this stuff together? What if my labor is to gather them, and keep them in a place where they can be found some generations forward. What if the processing of it, and deciphering of it is going to be in the next century, in the next millennium…”
Mother Mother Binahkaye Joy
I have over 20 years worth of journals. These are most of them, but not all of them.
Not pictured are the journals in boxes in my mother’s garage.
Also not pictured, journals that were destroyed or thrown away, because I didn't think I could bear to revisit their contents.
Also not pictured, millions of bytes of photos, videos, voice recordings from my digital archive.
Our stories are our wealth. And we inherit our mothers stories.
Each journal is a collection of moments, of stories. Some I cherish. Some make me cringe. Some make me time travel. Some make me dream.
My body holds all of my stories. The journals are placeholders for memories that might otherwise fade with time.
These books, these volumes of my life have followed me everywhere I go. I have been sure to preserve them, to treasure them. More and more I wonder, “what will happen to my stories if all these journals go away?”
In some of these pages, in some of these lines, I don’t even recognize myself. But I know it was me. I know my handwriting.
Some of these I have not opened in over a decade. What will it take to look through it all? Is that really my labor to do?
I have remembered myself in such deliberate and remarkable ways. Will something come from all of this? I think so. I feel so.
My stories are a comfort. They are a resource. They are mine.
