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May 10Liked by Tracy Clark-Flory

Even the bare description of how lonely and not intimate it can be to live with a spouse hit me hard. I remember that feeling- like I was forever moving from box to box- each one a role that I performed- wife, mother, daughter, coworker, friend….each box held the version others wanted but none held the totality of me and I had no idea how to fix that.

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Oof. I feel the ache of it just reading your words. Thanks for sharing.

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May 9Liked by Tracy Clark-Flory

“Without a child I could dance across the sexism of my era,” she says, “whereas becoming a mother shoved my face right down into it.” I think a version of this several times a week.

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I remember one of my first post-birth mom groups as a very aha moment. I thought I’d already had all my ahas. Boy was I wrong.

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So many aha's since then, and they keep coming!

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May 10Liked by Tracy Clark-Flory

“Cultural norms trap the protagonist of All Fours in the performance of wife and mother; she is stuck in the “dangerous lie” of making herself comprehendible to her husband. Her dilemma is that all those glittering pieces of glass create a sense of fracture and contradiction, as opposed to richness and multiplicity.” Wow. So often I’ve felt that the work that comes after motherhood is integration: integrating all my different selves into one.

This sounds amazing, going on top of my wishlist of books to read!

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YES. So well put. Something I’ve been thinking about a lot!

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