cw: pregnancy loss

Part I: The Blood

Years ago, the doctors had called it “manageable” like my pain was a passing inconvenience instead of the thing that kept me doubled over for several days each month. I remember leaving their cold, sterile offices filled with masked acceptance. A fate that seemingly forced me to surrender to the war I battled with my womb. Endometriosis: a thief that does her dirty work whether it’s day or night. The beast that has beat my womanhood into the same mud that birthed me. The gatekeeper that stands amid a cemetery, guarding each version of myself that’s been laid to rest by monthly massacres.

Quite frankly, I have always entertained the idea of being someone’s mother. Of laboring with my birth team. Of bringing forth a life from a vessel that knows death like the night knows silence. But I always knew.

Today, the doctors confirmed my intuition. What was once a visit filled with demanding dismissals and silenced symptoms carries a different tone now. These words wade through

doctors’ tongues with warning. No longer do I receive the clipped “it’s probably just stress” or the rehearsed “some women just have painful cycles.” This time, their voices falter and ache in

slow motion, as if they’re speaking over a grave they helped dig. The fluorescent lights hum above the doctor and I while she explains with practiced empathy that my endometriosis has advanced. I drift away, still able to grasp onto enough words to remain present with this blue-eyed woman.

She says: “Your endometriosis has advanced, and the scar tissue has spread. Your chances of conceiving are thin.”

I hear: “You’re 28 with a vessel that is traditionally a high commodity. This damaged machine might not adequately produce sufficient goods, if any. We can try to fix it so your machine can work the way it’s designed to. But the chances of working properly are low.”

Her eyes, once glassy with indifference, are suddenly sharp with urgency. Not for my pain, though. Not even for the years I’ve spent doubled over and unheard. Na, they are urgent now

because “it’s time”. Because in her eyes, a woman’s worth sharpens only when tied to her ability to deliver children. I wonder who taught her that.

The hours following can only be described as a blur. Like them pictures where it look like spirit(s) be roaming away from and around its muse. Off guards.

I acted out on behaviors where memory became both irrelevant and relevant. I called home in more ways than one, hoping, searching for answers that some folks may or not have. My digits

dialed.

“I’m coming home to pack some things.”

“I’m coming home to unpack some things.”

Part II: Of the Covenant

I take the longer route home, allowing the cityscape to become a faded memory of the past. The northern Florida sun anchors its beam into the bolts and rocks of the earth, cranking shadows across the red clay with every twist and bend of its narrow roads. My rural hometown always smells like working folks. Like someone probably everywhere is laboring to bring forth fruit, tending to the lands in some way, shape, form or fashion. It’s the type of scent that carries a message which speaks to the soul breathing behind the nostril. I don’t get much of that connection in the city. Too much reception.

A gathering of folks dance in somebody’s backyard where smoke from iron and gold grills create an army of airy arms transcending into the ethers like skyscrapers in the city. At least here, the air doesn’t suffocate me. Back in the streets of Atlanta concrete, I had cemented my life in other people. Forgetting to give myself some breathing room. Just like the air, the city didn’t see me. It had only seen what I was expected to be: competent, organized, a body that can achieve and

produce, a future wife, a potential mother.

I grip the steering wheel tighter, flicking my signal light on at the exact moment my phone dings. There’s only one person I want to talk to right now.

When I turn into Miss Ora’s driveway, her home welcomes me with a hug that rubs your back. Tucked and snuggled underneath blankets of Spanish Moss stands a residence, wrapped in rich

purple clapboard siding weathered to a soft lavender in some spots. The roof’s slate tiles shimmer in the shade, appearing in the light like fish scales whenever the wind shifts. And beaming on the wide, wooden porch near the steps is a painted, handmade sign that simply reads: Ora’s Home & Birth Center.

Ms. Ora meets me at the door before my hand reaches the screen. She isn’t tall, but she’s steady in a way that quiets the noise around her. We ain’t kin by name or veins, but by spirit. She took me in like a prayer half-finished, whispering me into her keeping. Mama transitioned some months after I was born. Ms. Ora was the one who caught me, fed me, and prayed me through it. Said she couldn’t let a baby she birthed go unloved. This became my shelter in the storm. “You’re back,” says Ms. Ora, rubbing her healing hands on my back. Her scarf-wrapped hair frames a face that’s seen too much to waste time on pretense. “They telling you how to be a woman, again?”

I nod without words, looking down at my hands wishing desperately for a steaming cup of tea to replace my palm’s vacancy.

Inside, the house smells of pine, rosemary, and jasmine. There is no mistaking that this house is a woman’s work. Jars of herbs line the windowsills, catching light while housing pieces of a bloom trapped in glass. Somewhere in the back, I can hear murmur of women’s voices, laughter threading through the rooms. It’s just like the sanctuary I remember. A place where bodies are honored, choices respected, and kinship is birthed through unconventional canals. We find a way

with each other, still.

Ms. Ora walks over to her stove and lifts a cast-iron kettle. She pours some liquid gold into a mason jar mug and glides across the room, dancing with the steamy spirits around her. How does she always know? She doesn’t immediately straighten her spine after bending down to set my mug on the table. In fact, she leans in closer and places her hands over mine. “Guh, you been

measuring yourself by somebody else’s blueprint. Let this tea teach you how to strengthen that confidence. I can help you work through the rest.”

We make agreements for the guardians of the home to watch and cool my tea while Ms. Ora leads me toward the back of the house. On our short journey, we travel through a museum of a hallway. A tunnel of told stories that might otherwise go unnoticed or unheard if not for keepers of cultural memory like Ms. Ora. Photographs line the walls: babies wrapped in blankets, mothers smiling, chillum leaning into their elders, women who had arrived broken, lost, or afraid and left transformed.

As we near the gathering room, sunlight slants through lace curtains, illuminating the space alive with women and guhs of all ages. Some sit on the floor stretching their hips as wide as the heart pine planks beneath them. Some cradle newborns like protectors of life’s best gems. Some hold hands in quiet circles, some laugh over herbal teas and baked bread. Some have children. Some have none. Yet, every single one of them belongs here in a room that speaks in layers. It says, “I’m rich, not with finery, but with endurance.” It tells stories of times when life was held at its rawest moments of laboring cries, whispered prayers, and laughter loud enough to compete with our Florida cicadas. It’s a room that has seen blood, sweat, and spirit all emerge from a womb with divinity. If these walls could talk.

Kendrick, Ms. Ora’s niece, brings her attention away from what appears to be a story circle and aims a smile in our direction. The soft curve of her grin feels like a hymn hummed under breath

with tunes that carry both ache and redemption. We both return the favor, a small exchange that says more than words can manage. Kendrick has that kind of ease about her, too. The kind that fills a room without asking for permission.

“Feels familiar, don’t it?” she says, eyes shining like she’s looking through time. “This kind of love ain’t about blood. It’s about who holds you when the world forgets how to. We been choosing each other since the beginning, guh. That’s the kind of family that lasts.”

I study Ms. Ora and wonder if the sight of Kendrick prompted her to speak. If watching her fold those linens reminds her of all the grief and loss they’ve had to rinch clean and dry slow. Kendrick moves with the patience of someone who’s learned that healing isn’t quick work. Her fingers find rhythm in the fabric, pressing corners sharp, smoothing edges flat. This the kind of woman-work that leaves your hands raw but your heart steady. Maybe those folds carry the weight of memory, the practice of making order out of what’s been undone. I imagine Ms. Ora watching her through the years, teaching her not just how to tend to others, but how to gather her own pieces while smoothing out the creases life left behind. Ms. Ora’s eyes follow her, soft and certain the way one might look at a child and a mirror the same.

In my youth, I remember how Ms. Ora would say she delivered half this town. Maybe that’s true. But, she never brags about the part where she kept so many of us alive after the birthing. Me and

Kendrick are living proof of that.

My mama transitioned from this world in a whisper, a soft undoing that came weeks after I took my first breath. Postpartum depression, they said. Though, nobody in our neck of the woods had the words for it back then. Folks just said she couldn’t handle it no more. That she’d gone quiet. That she couldn’t find her way back to herself. By the time I was two, I was living under Ms. Ora’s roof, cradled by her steady hands and that humming voice that could hold grief by the boatload.

Kendrick had already been there long before me. She was grade-school age then, sharp-tongued and wide-eyed with laughter cutting through the house like sunlight. Her mama, who was also Ms. Ora’s best friend, slipped from this world in the same instant Kendrick entered it. A delicate passing of one life to another. And her daddy, well, he became a ghost long before Kendrick

could muster enough body and flesh for a photoshoot. He slid clean out the picture like this fraction of a frame wasn’t his, too.

Two babies without mothers. Two stories born from the same ache. Ms. Ora delivered us both into this world, then raised us as her own. The thing is, she never called herself a mother. Said

she wasn’t raising children, she was tending to souls. Some days there’d be a twinkle in her eye that told you to believe her.

Kendrick and I grew up like two patches in a quilt. Stitched from different cloths, yet woven with the same thread. She chased men who bruised more than they built, convinced that to give birth

to herself, she had to damn near give her life for it. I chased degrees and promises, moving through life with attachments while my body exhaled small protests until the fight became a

battle unfit. She wanted to be wanted. I wanted to be admired. Ultimately, we both got what we went looking for. That is, until life stubbornly revealed how narrow those paths really are.

Watching all these women and guhs care for each other around me, I am reminded of a truth I’ve carried since I was small. Ms. Ora has always held this space. A circle that doesn’t depend on

biology, obligation, or expectation. It finally reckons with me that Ms. Ora has built something most folks spend lifetimes chasing. Belonging. A house full of kin with shared blood, even if only through battle.

Ms. Ora draws a deep, eager inhale with her chest rising like a secret just under the surface. For a heartbeat, her eyes close and the room seems to hold its breath with her. Everyone caught in the

quiet hum of something just out of reach. Suddenly she laughs softly, a sound both warm and knowing. Almost childlike.

“Oh, the tea!” Her glance flickers toward the kitchen, as if remembering not just the cup we’d left to cool but some other small, invisible detail that only her spirit could sense.

Part III: Is Thicker Than

In the days following, I allow the house to pull me into its rhythm. I let it cradle the parts of me I’d been ignoring for a long time. Ms. Ora guides me gently, teaching me to breathe into the ache. To press warmth against my belly with healing poultices. To sway hips in slow circles until something deep inside begins to hum. Healing, she says, is not just about removing ailments. It’s about learning how to belong again. Truthfully, I am not sure if I know how to do either. Still, I try. The pain, once sharp as glass, softens like dough beneath her hands.

Her teas carry blends of red raspberry leaf, mugwort, and ginger thick with honey. Its magic does more than ease abdominal cramps. It stitches me into the house’s heartbeat. The women come and go with laughter and hums, their care runneth over like pot liquor from a plate of greens. They all move as if they are all one body, tending to each other without question. Watching them,

I wonder if kinship was always meant to move more like vines than roots, reaching for what offers warmth and staying where it can hold.

Still, the world I left behind keeps on tugging. In the night, my phone buzzes with reminders of the life I built elsewhere. Where the deadlines, the dinner parties, the fiancé who loves the idea of family more than the labor of carrying it… they all mattered. His name glows across the screen like a firefly vibrating through the night sky. Each time I reach for the phone, my chest flutters as it resists the pull. I think my breath knows whatever it is I can’t name right now.

As the herbs work their quiet miracles by cooling the fire in my body, I gradually begin to see that I had been holding more than pain in my belly. I had made my womb a house for old ideas, obligations, and a life that’s no longer mine. Ms. Ora once said, “You can’t heal what you keep holding hostage.”

And suddenly, the revelation appears. In my body’s search for relief, my spirit has remembered belonging. The home I returned to had always been a circle of care, bound and strengthened by a covenant cultivated from devotion. And as I lay down with my palms resting over a place that remembers, I whisper into the darkness: Spirit, may the truth of this new life ease its way through

my door.

Part IV: The Waters of the Womb

The knock comes just as the morning sun stretches gold across the porch, knuckles cutting sharp against the quiet of the house. I sit on the edge of the bed with last night’s prayers still curled in my chest, pressing palms to the curve of my hips as if reminding my body where it belongs. When I open the door, he stands there sleekly in a pressed shirt and polished shoes. The air around my fiance faintly smells like cologne and city ambition, a scent vastly different from the pine and soil that cling to the earth’s core around here. His eyes glance across the old wood and

the worn brass doorknob like he’s cataloging what needs fixing. I can feel the weight of expectation pressing in with an unspoken demand to step back into the life he imagined for us. A life of polish, predictability, and the promise of children I no longer see fit in my picture.

But today, there are no masks. No rehearsed smiles. No half-truths. Today, I speak with the voice I found in the rhythm of herbs and the sway of hips and the circle of women who held me before I could even hold myself.

“So, you came home to work at a birth center?” He asked, his voice tinged with skepticism and condescension, “Helping women…babysit, essentially?”

I let the words roll out of me like subtle thunder. “It’s not babysitting,” I say firmly. “It’s a birth center. We heal. We support. We guide. We witness. And I’m a part of that. I’m remembering and

giving. Feeling alive in ways I never experienced before.”

He frowned. “So…our plans? You’re just throwing it all away? Don’t you want kids?”

I shake my head, and all the years of waiting surge through me. Dams that once held my truth back, surrender like a body in labor. Breaking waters.

“I was never meant to be just a childbearing body. I refuse to step into walls that weren’t raised for me or floors that don’t carry my weight. I love this work, this home, and the family that’s

chosen me. I don’t need anyone’s approval to honor that. You can’t expect me to return to a life that measures my muse by its womb and obedience. By how well I can mother or bend.”

He opens his mouth, then closes it. I let him leave, with each step dislodging pine straw and the comfort of his assumptions. Gravel crunches beneath tires as he hauls back to a world of straight lines and plans that would never fit this living, sacred land.

Weeks pass. I settle fully into the work. My days include:

1. assisting Ms. Ora

2. teaching herbal classes

3. holding infants

4. laughing with women and bodies of every age

Some are mothers, some are not. Some are young, some older. We cook together, celebrate together, grieve together. I watch how care multiplies. How we hold each other in ways that require nothing but intention.

I send a basket of gratitude up to Spirit. For allowing me to cultivate and carve out my own family. One that’s unconventional, sacred, chosen and resilient. I don’t need a husband or the traditional home. Right now, all I desire is to grow with my birth lands and this circle of women and guhs who each hold me close. Who show that family can be redefined in the way we nurture

and sustain one another.

McKenzie Harpe (she/her) is a scholar, writer, and birthworker shaped by the landscapes and traditions of rural Southwest Georgia. When she’s not studying reproductive and perinatal health behaviors, she’s wandering backroads, listening to the wind and the pulse of her hometown. Through birthwork and storytelling, she seeks to reimagine and preserve the sacredness of wombs, kinship, and ancestral wisdom for those who come after her.