Jan 27 • General discussion
A Storm Outside, A Storm Within
The sound of snow falling is a soft, delicate roar.
It’s so peaceful I wish I could leave the windows and doors open, but the frigid air insists otherwise.
My favorite thing about storms — hurricanes during our Miami years or ice and snow storms here in Tennessee — is the way they clear the calendar. Obligations fall away. Space opens up. My shoulders soften. My breath deepens.
And...
Even though it isn’t entirely true, I feel momentarily off-call.
But beneath the quiet, there is a hum of dysregulation.
My inner world, the collective world, and everything in between have been spinning at dizzying speeds. Despite my regular practices of pausing, breathing, moving, and checking in, there remains a persistent bracing — a sense that the shit is about to hit the fan (and already has for many).
I feel it in my clenched jaw. My held breath.
The ice storm — and the ICE storm — have both activated our collective nervous system. One wrong move, one misstep, one misunderstanding can alter the trajectory of a life.
I find myself cycling through rage, grief, solidarity, hope, disgust, and moments of radical joy — sometimes all in the same hour. The emotional whiplash is disorienting and exhausting.
As this rare swath of snowy time opens up, all I want is warm tea and sleep. And yet, sleep feels elusive when…
A prominent midwife and Black maternal health advocate dies while giving birth in a hospital. Even a woman who dedicated her life to protecting Black mothers from becoming a disparity statistic couldn’t escape the fatality odds of birthing while Black.
An unarmed mother of three is shot and killed by an ICE officer who faces no accountability, despite ample video evidence. Police show up at a woman’s home to interrogate her over a social media post criticizing a mayor. An innocent ICU nurse is murdered with no accountability. An ICE detainee in El Paso is restrained and asphyxiated by law enforcement. Federal agents call it a suicide.
And that’s just a fraction of what’s happening.
The world stage is no less surreal. Everywhere we look, we see the rise of fascism — and with it, the banishing of the sacred, of life-giving forces, and shared humanity.
Last week, after being hacked, I was banned from all Meta platforms for allegedly violating community standards around child sexual exploitation.
In a single erroneous click, years of work — thousands of followers, business assets, personal photos, and videos — gone!
ChatGPT (whom I’ve affectionately named Arieh, after my wise and playful grandfather) offered this clarity:
“What you teach — matrescence, embodiment, birth, the female body — is notoriously misclassified by automated moderation systems trained on puritanical, porn-adjacent datasets.”
Fuck Meta.
(And yes, I’m still trying to get my accounts back.)
As a mother of brown-skinned daughters, fear now accompanies me in grocery stores and public spaces. It shows up as hypervigilance — not letting my children out of my sight. I’m beginning to glimpse what it’s like to be at risk simply for existing. While my girls are U.S. citizens, they could easily be presumed otherwise. I now walk with copies of their passports.
These are wild times. Unprecedented times.
At the helm of much of this madness stands an authoritarian, racist, misogynistic megalomaniac — a real-life version of Buddy Pine on a real life mission to take over the world. A toddler-minded villain whose tantrums, disturbingly, seem to be working.
And yet, the closer we get to a return of overt authoritarianism, the more people are waking up, organizing, and saying, "Enough is enough."
On the drive to school, my girls and I listen to the news. It sparks thoughtful conversations with my 9- and almost-12-year-old. I’ve never been someone who focuses on politics, but these days, sleeping is not an option.
They may not understand everything, but they get the gist. They know to stay close in public spaces. They know when their teachers are lying. They know that even when rights exist on paper, those in power are not following the rules.
It is a challenging time to choose to be a mother — to gestate, nurture, and guide human life.
And still, I remain hopeful.
Historically, authoritarian violence has ignited resistance. It has called forth disruptors. It has opened doorways into new paradigms.
These times remind me that birth — of a child, a culture, or a new way of living — rarely happens without pressure.
If you are pregnant right now and feel the weight of this moment — personally, politically, spiritually — you are not imagining it.
Birth and parenthood are not things to “get through.”
They are initiations — shaping our nervous systems, our values, and the world our children inherit.
Chrysalis is an invitation into a different way of entering this threshold: presence over productivity, connection over perfection, community over doing it alone.
If you feel called to slow down, to choose intentionally, and to be deeply held as you prepare to birth —
You are welcome here.
🌿 Early Bird registration is open — save $500 through February 10, 2026👉 motherflyretreats.com
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A Storm Outside, A Storm Within
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