Dear Postpartum Mama,

I owe you an apology.

I’m set up in a way that has dishonored you. I took away most of your rights a long time ago, but I have all but eliminated any reference points for your critical passage and initiation into motherhood.

What once was a very sacred and powerful initiation supported by elders and your entire community is now a chop-shop of mama-making.

The traditions and cultures that taught you how to prepare for becoming a mother and held you after you gave birth are gone. I systematically destroyed them.

In its place, I put an abusive and racist field of medicine called obstetrics.

I have discredited the grandmothers who knew what herbs and foods you needed, and the kind of love you so needed as you made this incredible and dangerous passage.

I have replaced the warmth and comfort of home based care with medicalized, sterile and sometimes hostile hospital care.

Instead of coming to you, I’ve made you go to all of your care, putting a large burden square upon your already worn and tired shoulders.

I haven’t honored your fragility in any of this. I’ve dismissed your pain — psychological, emotional and physical, more times than I can count.

I’ve had little shame for all of the pain and distress I have caused you.

I have done nothing to educate the men in your lives about your true needs.

I’ve told you that the best thing you could do postpartum is lose all of your baby weight immediately and return to looking sexually attractive again.

I’ve asked you to do the impossible: Mother with a perennial smile on your face while you suffer silently.

In creating a pressure cooker of emotional upset, I’ve encouraged you to turn against some of your biggest allies in the process of becoming a mother — other mothers. I’ve stood by while I watched you destroy each other.

I am probably almost 100% responsible for postpartum depletion, complications post birthing, traumatic births, generational gut biome degradation, urinary incontinence, low supply, immune system failures, autoimmune conditions, malnourishment, postpartum mental illness, and the profound isolation and loneliness you feel.

I’ve turned motherhood into a Hallmark holiday with a card, foot massage and a salutary brunch. In honoring on one special day, I’ve relieved the collective guilt that comes from dishonoring you every other day of the year.

And, in focusing on having you look pretty and happy on your wedding day, I’ve ignored the absolutely critical social responsibility I’ve had to teach you how to parent and raise a child in this complicated world.

Perhaps most difficult of all, I’ve told you in no uncertain terms that you can no longer trust your instincts. What you know as a mother about your own children instinctually or intuitively is routinely dismissed or derided as fluff while I’ve pointed you towards trusting paid professionals who often do not even know much more than your child’s name and date of birth.

I have made you think that you know nothing about mothering, and then I have removed almost anyone that would have given you information on it from a non-professional, non medical point of origination.

Over and over again, I have insulted, disregarded, dismissed, or silenced you.

Beyond apologizing, I have never even acknowledged that I have done any of the above.

I have created such a twisted and warped environment for you to become a mother in that you have had to assume you are the one who is failing, crazy and incomplete.

I took advantage of old patriarchal narratives that painted women as hysterical and let you think that about yourself.

And for those of you that actually had the nerve to sit up or stand up and complain or point out any of this unfairness or deficits, I ignored you. And then, I made your motherhood even more difficult.

And for those of you who are actually finding your way despite all of these hurdles, I am impressed. You are doing something that is nearly impossible.

I would apologize, but let’s face it, I am not committed to making any of the changes to address any of the above injustices or imbalances so any apology I would make would be entirely hollow and worthless.

The least I could do is not offer you that slap in the face too.

Sincerely,

Modernity

P.S. Just so we are clear, if you ask to admit to any of these atrocities later on, I’ll deny I ever admitted to any of them and tell you that you are crazy and hormonal.