Illustration Credit: Chantal Jahchan
One of the most endearing things about being human is that when we have a pivotal experience, it becomes the benchmark and metaphor for everything that follows. Motherhood has given me a new lens, and I now, often tiresomely, see nearly everything through it.
Parenthood has made certain questions unavoidable. Teaching a small child that other beings have interior lives, emotional and physical, is intimate, tedious work. It happens in fragments: explaining why someone cried, why an animal recoiled, why harm does not disappear just because it wasn’t intended.
