You're Right Where You're Supposed to Be
On Oklahoma, Aiaia, and the Simple Mending of the World
Dear you,
This one will be disjointed and tear-stained.
Today, as I’m sure you’ve seen, the state of Oklahoma passed an abortion ban which begins at fertilization—a fantastically cruel piece of legislation that is also, as of now, the nation’s most restrictive. There is nothing really to say, that hasn’t been said already (and brilliantly). Please give, in lieu of more saying, to the Roe Fund. And even better—give regularly, if you can. Set up monthly donations now, $5, $10, $40, whatever you can, as abortion funds are running dry more and more quickly these days, out of money for their desperate callers earlier and earlier in the month.
Today, I cried at work, between phone calls to our clinic’s abortion patients to answer their questions and to go over their sedation options, safety plans, their funding. The practical support they need, where their kids will be, what they’ll eat, how they feel about it all. People are terrified; and lonely; and traumatized by the increasing conditionalities placed on their humanity—and the humanity of their families, their children, their future children—by those who enact this authoritarian violence and those who do nothing about it.
Today I used a calculator to help figure out that transportation option, that motel room, that last $100 for the appointment that is legal and safe and rightly theirs. For the health care that is safer than a root canal or Tylenol. Today I truly felt the cost of existing in a body that can become pregnant—particularly when that body is not white, not well-resourced and well-housed and well-paid, not abled, not cis. Our protestors will be coming to collect tomorrow; district attorneys next year, maybe. The pain is propagating. The police are ready to tend and water it. No one is coming to save us.
But. And. Today, a woman on the phone said to me, in reference to the clinic’s burnt out, overworked, overcaffeinated, underpaid, unprotected staff: “I’m so glad I have you all.” She said, “You are all the sweetest and most gentle souls.” She said,
“I just want you to know that you are right where you’re supposed to be, honey.”
She’s right, you know, and not just about us in our scrubs and stethoscopes. She’s right about all of us who have committed ourselves—recently or otherwise—to the work of abortion support or care. To loving people who have abortions. If you’ve invited this newsletter into your inbox, that’s you. You’re right where you’re supposed to be, reading these words, giving what little you can, talking to the people in your life about abortion.
When I feel the panic rise up in me tonight I return to her words. And to the travels I am taking in my doula role, soon, to support and accompany and love the folks who need abortions in places I’ve never been. Places I don’t know. Places I fear. Places I won’t feel comfortable. Those places, too, are right where I’m supposed to be.
My partner has been reading Madeline Miller, lately, my feet in his lap as I make arrangements and write love notes and gather post-abortion care packages, full of menstrual pads and fancy little chocolates and the good colored pencils and notebooks and candles that smell like home, someone’s home if not mine. I return to Miller tonight, and on those travels. To Circe, and the lonely terrified goddess banished to Aiaia for eternity, alone—and still creating life and magic so that she may love others and be loved anyway. To her family and mine, to community and care work as the mission, the purpose, the center of life.
We would cross and recross the seas, living on my witchcraft and his carpentry, and when we came to a town a second time, the people would step out of their houses and greet us. He would patch their ships, and I would cast charms against biting flies and fevers, and we would take pleasure in the simple mending of the world.
I’ll leave, and I’ll come home again. I’ll walk the gauntlet of shouting hateful men tomorrow, and into the arms of the midwives and nurses and the still quiet joyful raucous wild-growing intimacy of our work. And I’ll be right where I’m supposed to be, like each one of my patients, and like you.
Love,
Hannah