I resemble myself, roughly, in this photo. Or at least I look like I’m keeping it together. Posing for the camera proudly, loose smoke alarm wires and paint and messy couch and all, in my Abortion on Our Own Terms tee. Hamming. Goofin’, as my Kansas-born partner would say. I look like I’m doing ok.
Well. I’m not.
Though—of course and as always—I have a lot of joy in my life and in my communities; though an extension order was granted in the (bogus bullshit) Mifepristone lawsuit, buying us some extra time (until tomorrow, February 24th, at the earliest) to keep prescribing Mife & Miso together for medication abortion patients; though I have the wild privilege of working with some of the most wonderful abortion providers (and the additional wild privilege of handing an ARC of my book to the midwife who has provided my own abortion care and also facilitated my first pregnancy, closing a circle of a brutal and beautiful year of my life)—despite it all. I’m off. I’m exhausted. I’m terrified. I’m worn out. I’m moving slowly and forgetting things. I’m grieving yet another loss.
Mife & Miso are the drugs I took to initiate my own abortion, and—though I ultimately needed an in-clinic aspiration to complete it—they will forever be the duo that carried me over a threshold, yet another bisection of my life into before and after (with, as always, a whole lot of during). A large-scale loss of legal Mifepristone usage would have devastating ripple effects through pregnant populations, as it’s prescribed not only as the first step of a medication abortion protocol, but also for miscarriage management and pregnancy loss. This ruling will hurt.
Many people I know and love are in pain right now, or describe themselves as tired, as sad, as checked out from their work, as phoning it in to their lives, as, succinctly: “off.”
Are you off, too?
In a winter of abortion access, a winter of trust in our leaders at every level (starting within our movements and the organizations tasked with Doing the Right Thing), and a literal winter—we’re getting buried, friends. In snow, in bad news, in paperwork, in childcare, in bills, in uncertainty.
You don’t have to claw your way out from under all of this right this second. You don’t have to give more, do more, than you’re giving and doing. You don’t have to be “on.” There is more than one setting for a reason.
I haven’t been writing much lately, and when I have it’s been largely about this chronic heartbreak, this mourning and fatigue — for TIME, for Electric Literature, for Jezebel (though that one’s infused with lots of joy and hope and optimism, too). I haven’t been taking great care of myself or my belongings, my home, my body. I haven’t been practicing what I preach, when I talk to the people I’m supporting through their abortions and tell them to seek out, nurture, and protect the parts of their days that feel good, to prioritize rest and play and fun.
So: I’m leaning into my “off” switch. In the interest of pulling only
the levers I can pull—and the levers that feel light enough to pull, in this season of overwhelm and exhaustion—I’m going to get up tomorrow and help some patients get their health care, and I might try to eat healthy food and drink enough water and ease up on the caffeine and alcohol. I’m going to spend time with my family, and I might do enough to be the kind of parent and partner I want to be. I’m going to work on an application for a grant that might allow me to get to work on my next book, but I might not finish it.
Tomorrow, Mifepristone, a perfectly safe and vitally necessary medicine, might be federally banned. A judge might sentence pregnant people across the country to suffering, injury, hardship, death.
We will do what we can do to keep each other alive and well, and that might be a whole hell of a lot. Tomorrow might not be the day we can do much of it at all, though. And that won’t feel ok. But tomorrow will end, and another day of pulling the levers we can pull will start. New levers will appear to us. Heavy or jammed levers will become looser and lighter from the accumulated days and weeks and years of our efforts, our painful and difficult and thankless days of pulling and pulling at them. Our arms will feel stronger.
Someday you will be “on” again. And so will I.