Featured Story: Dayna Reader Chalif

 
when i became pregnant with my first child, i was working as a psychotherapist at a substance abuse recovery program for women. many of the women i was working with had lost their children to the foster care system, or to family members. others still had legal custody of their children, but they had caused serious harm to their children (physically and emotionally) and to the mother-child relationship through their behavior and addiction. even if a client did not have children of her own, every woman there was somebody's daughter, and those were some seriously complicated relationships as well.

as my belly started to grow, some of the women began to notice. one day as i was teaching some kind of class, somebody asked me point blank if i was pregnant and i told them that i was. something happened from that point on that was so unexpected and really touching for me.

the women began calling my baby "our baby." some would lovingly pat my belly as i walked by and ask "how's our baby doing?" others would get down close and whisper things to my belly, their hopes and dreams for "our baby." what you have to understand is that some of these women were really tough. many had spent time in the state penitentiary, almost all had spent countless nights on the street, many had prostituted themselves for drugs. but there wasn't one who wasn't sweet and loving towards "our baby" and protective of me (case in point, they smoked cigarettes around each other and even around their own kids, but if i walked up while someone was smoking and she didn't put the cigarette out immediately, she'd inevitably get a smack from another woman and a "hey, put that out! it's bad for our baby!") .

they had made mistakes with their own children they knew they could never correct, and their own mothers had abused and neglected them when they were young. and yet, they looked at me, saw a healthy woman in a solid relationship (this they assumed, as i didn't talk about my partner at all) about to bring a baby into the world, and they fell in love with my baby and rejoiced in my growing belly nearly as much as i did.

i believe my pregnancy was healing for a lot of those women. it certainly was a catalyst for helping them bring up topics of being mothered and mothering that i don't think would have arisen otherwise. and all that attention to my belly? i thought it would bother me, but it didn't at all. each time my belly was touched, i pictured my baby receiving all that good energy, all the hopes and dreams of these women, and i knew it was a good thing.