What the earth is teaching me

& how I'm using this knowledge to do this work

I was gardening when I heard the hawk’s shrill call, & watched as it veered and dipped to avoid a small bird that chased after it. The bird was a fraction of the hawk’s size. It was on a mission. 

Perhaps that hawk got too close to its nest. Perhaps that hawk was infringing on the bird’s space.  

As I weed & mow, I think about the reproductive rights protests happening around the country, the ways the police are responding with aggression and violence.

I think about those small birds willing to take on the hawks who mess with them & their young.

There’s a nest under the deck stairs. The small mama bird darts away so quickly, I haven’t yet identified it, but if I crane my neck, I can see the baby birds, their little beaks, their bellies rising & falling with each breath. 

The garden is coming along. The green & yellow string bean plants have come up. Buds dot the stems. The tomato and pepper plants are sprouting; the cucumbers have bright yellow flowers, the zucchini are stretching their huge leaves. The sunflowers are tall & the strawberry plant birthed a single berry. It was bright red yesterday so I picked it, sliced it in four & shared it with my family. It was tart and delicious.

The wild corner of the garden is tall with milkweed. I love to watch the butterflies, moths and bees feast. The rose vine has climbed the fence, the hydrangea & Pride of Rochester bushes. Dozens of small, pink roses line the east and north side of the garden. The grape vine is curled around everything. It’s even grabbed onto & is climbing a branch from a nearby maple.

We keep going, planting, reaching, holding on to faith, & doing what we can. 

We take on entities much bigger than us. Little bird vs the hawk. David and Goliath. 

I’m praying a lot. Humming and chanting as I toil the soil & prepare for Saturday’s Write Your Abortion Story class. 

I ask the earth spirits & ancestors to help & hold me as I work with folks who’ve come to me for guidance in writing their hard stories, their abortion stories.

***

An eagle has been circling in the canopy for days. I always hear her first, high pitched, rhythmic cries that echo off the mountain and through the trees. Some days she flies low enough that I can see her feathers, a mix of rust, brown, black. I went out in search of her earlier this week. She was perched on a branch by the pond. The moment our eyes met, I stopped and held my breath. It lasted just a few seconds. A lifetime. 

Her eyes are wells of the deepest black, surrounded by a circle of white feathers. She was so close, I could see their detail, small and wispy.

Her stare was intense. She was looking into me.  

Then she turned, extended her wings, a span of five or six feet, and she swooped down and up, out of sight. She called as she soared off, as if to say: I’ll stay close. I’ve been hearing her for days.

---

My mother says that God made the earth and everything in it for humans. I think that possessive, colonizing mentality is what got us in trouble in the first place. It’s where the recklessness with nature and domination over the land starts. 

The earth doesn’t “belong” to humans any more than it belongs to that eagle whose eyes penetrated right through me. 

How dare we vain humans think this earth belongs just to us? 

I sat on the deck this morning to watch and listen. I feel so blessed to be here, on this land that I steward, that I work with and through, that I hope to share with community one day. 

Yes, we bought this land, my wife and I. But I don’t think it “belongs” to us, per se. If anything, we belong to it. We listen, watch, do what it asks of us. It’s why I didn’t plant in the soil last year. I followed indigenous practices which dictate that when you arrive to a place, your job is to let the land teach you. When the garden called me to it this spring, I listened. It was time for me to put my hands in the soil. She was gifting me, not the other way around.

I hope to honor her the same way she does me. 

She’s been holding me as I prepare for the Write Your Abortion Story Class, which, if I’m honest, I’m nervous about. Spirit called me to create and facilitate it. Of that I am certain. I’ve been preparing all week. 

I know how hard it is to write these stories. I know because I wrote mine. I know that I cried as I wrote it. I remembered the girl I was in an abusive relationship who didn’t feel she had agency; who was so traumatized and in pain, but was doing the best she could. I carried a lot of shame for a long time. I don’t anymore. I did what I had to do. I have never regretted it. But it took me time and deliberate healing work to get here. Part of that healing meant writing the story. Writing it over and over again in journals. Examining it, examining the girl I was, her motives, her trauma. 

Then, last fall, Aracelis Girmay invited me to submit to an anthology she was working on. I knew exactly what I needed to write, and I finally felt ready. So I penned the essay I’d been writing for 27 years. It’s titled “1994”. Here’s an excerpt: 

When I think about the year 1994, I hear a line on loop in my head from Pete Rock and CL Smooth’s “They Reminisce Over You”: “Irresponsible, plain not thinking…” 

I was 18, a freshman at Columbia University, in love with a drug dealer from uptown. 

I met him when I was 12. He was 20, one of the guys that hung out on the corner of the block where my grandmother lived. I passed by that corner every chance I got. I made sure when I did, my long hair was neat, half up, half down; shirt fitted against my budding breasts, pants hugging my ass. I batted my lashes. Pursed my lips. I was so hungry for attention, and those guys were more than willing to quench that hunger. They commented on how beautiful I was, what a nice body I had. “Que nena tan linda.” 

I was also rageful in that adolescent angst way that happens as a result of trauma. I didn’t hesitate to sneer, “Get the fuck away from me” if they got too close. One grabbed my hand and I shoved him away, “Don’t fuckin touch me.” They said I had that Brooklyn stank attitude. I didn’t care. But I still wanted them to want me. 

Then there was him. Bottle bottom glasses, missing front tooth, deep, scratchy voice. He didn’t get too close. Knew he’d get a hard glare and a “véteme de allí.” He’d always smile and say, “Hi, Vanessa.” I’d roll my eyes and keep on walking, but I couldn’t hide the pull at the corners of my lips. I was pleased by his worship of me. 

I was walking by their huddle one day, the summer after my freshman year in boarding school. Being away on my own made me even more ravenous for attention, but I played it off better, or so I thought. I didn’t see him coming. 

He put his lips close to my ear. Whispered: “You’re gonna be mine one day.” I pushed him away. Said: “You wish.” He laughed and watched me saunter away. 

I was 14. He was 22. 

When I was 16, he got me like he said he would. He was 24…

It was the second semester of my freshman year at Columbia University, and I was living in campus housing. He stayed with me every night. On the morning after Valentine’s Day, I snuck out of the twin bed we shared to go to the student health center, conveniently located on the ground floor of my dorm. 

“The pregnancy test is positive,” the nurse said in a deadpan tone that shocked me more than the news. I couldn’t stop staring at her wrist, so thin and fragile, it looked like it belonged to a child. She handed me a pamphlet and said as she walked out, “You can find resources in there. Good luck.” I looked down at what she’d handed me. “So you’re pregnant…” stared at me in large, bold font. 

I miscarried days later. It was too easy. I didn’t learn my lesson. 

When I went back to the health center in April, the nurse looked up at me after scanning my chart. “It says here you were pregnant in February.” She stared at me over the glasses she had perched on the tip of her thin nose. She held my chart in one hand and a pen in the other. I imagined the pen poised over the note on my first pregnancy.

I stared at the white walls, the counter with its jars of cotton balls and tongue compressors, the box of sterile gloves. 

“You’re pregnant again,” she said when she came back into the room. The door wasn’t fully closed behind her. It felt like she was spitting the words at me. I hopped off the examination table. The tissue paper stuck to the back of my legs and ripped. I made to leave with it still stuck to my thighs. She reached down and pulled it off. 

“Here,” she passed me the “So you’re pregnant” pamphlet. “Do you still have it from last time?” I snatched it from her and left. 

There was no question for me that I couldn’t have a kid. When my mother found out I was with him, she flipped out. Yanked me by my hair. Punished me by denying me her love. She was right about him. He was trash. But I didn’t want to see that then. I felt so alone, I didn’t tell anyone but him. 

I had to do some shady shit to pay for the abortion. He said he didn’t have it. When he showed up with brand new Versace glasses, I said nothing. 

***

I think of a quote from Chris Abani’s TED Talk “On Humanity”:

…what I've come to learn is that the world is never saved in grand messianic gestures, but in the simple accumulation of gentle, soft, almost invisible acts of compassion, everyday acts of compassion. In South Africa, they have a phrase called Ubuntu. Ubuntu comes out of a philosophy that says, the only way for me to be human is for you to reflect my humanity back at me... 

Let’s keep reflecting.

---

If you have an abortion story you want to write, and need a safe, gentle place to do write it, join me on Saturday, July 2nd, 11am-1pm eastern. I can hold space for you. I can guide you to write this story that is echoing in your insides. Email me: writingourlivesworkshop@gmail.com. 

Wishing you blessings of healing and abundance, 

V