With no judgment – none from me in my postpartum messy soul and, none from anyone else… Because no one else knew… Well, in that condition 🤦🏽‍♀️ I drove during my c-section prohibition.

Only God got me home safe.

I went to church, arriving 5 minutes after the first service ended; that’s how I chose to rebel against Doctor’s orders.

Single moms “rebel,” because they have no partners to help.

Moms with other kids “rebel,” because there are needs beyond New Baby’s. Bedrest isn’t an option, and the helpful nurses and helpful drugs don’t come home with her from the hospital. Let me be clear ☝🏾 Mom Rebels are not 🙅🏽‍♀️the people rifling through Medela pump 🤱🏽kits for their nipple tops for personal use or financial gain 🤦🏽‍♀️🙍🏽‍♀️

I became a Mom Rebel, because I had a deadline to wellness: Hubby had ✌🏾 weeks before he had to return to work. The span between the end of Hubby’s parental leave and my due date was an incubation period during which I decided: You must force yourself from larva to full butterfly 🦋 . Your wings can be a little wet, but you have to be ready.

And that resignation meant to me: Straddle. A healing person shouldn’t straddle – that is, between Healing and Business As Usual. But I couldn’t be needy of anything when he returned to work for our family either, could I?

This thinking made me refuse to push nurse call lights so I would have to do…whatever…alone. I refused to use the bars in the powder room to leverage my weight… Because there are no such bars in our bath; I wouldn’t have that help, and I didn’t want to teach myself to rely on temporary help.

But…I’m a milky, sweaty mess. My emotions are mercury, racing through me without boundaries or alarms. I slide from one to another without warning. And I can’t make my family and friends into appendages of my actual body; so, what I want to get done and will to be done…are just frustrating dreams drowning in the impotence that comes with physical limitations.

As I said, I’m a mess. My family dynamics are a mess. It’s falling apart. But I believe it will grow back up – into a New Order of Family.

Here, too – between what my eyes tell me and the future for which faith gives me hope – is another painful straddle.

Now faith is the conviction concerning those things that are in hope, as if it were these things in action, and the revelation of those things that are unseen…

Hebrews 11:1 (Aramaic Bible in Plain English.)