Motherhood: The Exhibit of Loss

When a Mother Loses Her Pink but Is Still Asked to Fill the Lines with Color

I have been nothing more than an overlooked display of nothing anyone’s interested in buying. I’m more blank canvas, than blank canvas. My water container is an ugly brown from all my attempts at painting a life worth living: deep blues of midnight dives, hoping to find peace in other people’s stories; moss greens of envy, watching baby after baby go home with their families; canary yellows of songs I’ve tried to sing to drown out my sobs. But what can we do? What any artist does, I suppose. Pull a seat up in front of the canvas and stare. Look around at all the attempts before this one and hope we come to a place where we are comfortable stopping. This window for my viewing holds the loudest emptiness I’ve ever felt—the last memory of myself fighting to not be an unacknowledged speck.

My ears know no tune that makes my heart swell anymore. Beats sound too much like monitors, and lyrics echo the million voices I’ve been forced to listen to. In my heart are folders labeled where my memories should be stored, but nothing’s there. File cabinets of men I’ve loved now marked Thank God they got away when they did. Another remember that I was never the lucky one. I’ve never seen such orderly disorganization—just another reflection of my nature to pretend. Maybe I was in the flood of escaping, mistaking my body for a foreign place as hands that only knew my ailments entered and searched for answers they’d never find. I left myself on the bathroom floor with my dignity. Remnants of me are stuck in the grout of the tile, walked over by the new tenants of the home where I was supposed to start my family.

Pieces of my identity flushed out with every new infusion. One poke of I just need to take a peek drowned my security. 120 mls of watching a million women take care of my baby washed away my purpose. Sixty ounces of I don’t know’s took my sanity too.

And I hear my momma demanding happiness and remember she was just a girl too, passing on her lessons of survival the best way she could. But I don’t own boots with straps, so I pull myself up by reminders dressed as demands for gratitude I’ve known my whole life. I smile, unsure of how it looks anymore. Thinking if I remember to brush my teeth before rushing out the house to the coldest hell I’ve ever known. My baby now has the sparkle in my eye that I had before our separation, and I’m grateful for that. My arrival is dreadful until I see it, but it reflects my biggest failure and underlines my uncertainty about going after what I thought would add to my joy. How could I give it and take it away from myself?

Us mommas, we give so much and take so little for ourselves, watching fathers coast by. We turn trenches in royal territories and turn crumbs into complete nutrients, yet we remain malnourished and without a sense of home.

I wish those I’ve met knew I didn’t always have dark circles, sunken eyes, and grade-C attempts at clothing myself. My posture, once militant in my distress, is now the curvature of my back—a shield to the weapons formed against me that are prospering. There just isn’t enough concealer to cover my battle scars. But I’ve learned new techniques and tried. The new faces I paint on look like the women who didn’t have choices—whose best option was to stay silent, cook, and breed. And in my condition, I can’t even do that. My silence equals malpractice, my stove hasn’t been touched in months, and my hopes and dreams birth miracles my body is too weak to carry. My tears turn my masterpiece of a face abstract—the kind of art I look at and wonder who would buy.

This is the loss in motherhood I couldn’t have been prepared for. To hell with the twinkle lights and birthing pools and playlists I never got to finish. To hell with raising our children together when the hospital has my family in shackles and can’t seem to sell us to the highest bidder.

I wish I was brave enough to invite others to sit silently with their white canvas alongside mine. Then maybe mine wouldn’t seem so bland—so far away from who I used to be. For now, I am Mother in the display, sitting in front of an easel with an untouched canvas, praying I walk past and it all comes flooding back to me.

Thank you for taking the time to read and share this space with me. If you want to follow my journey through motherhood and life in the NICU, join me on Instagram and TikTok (@herblackhand). Your support means the world—if you'd like to help further, consider tipping here. Every bit of love and encouragement keeps me going!