Category: Motherhood

have mercy.

On By ©️K.T. 2025In agraria, barn swallows, birds, Death, dirt road chronicles, dying, Earthling, fauna, Free Palestine, Funerary, funerary portraiture, Gaza, Genocide, holocaust, july, kill lists, kin, Life and Death, maternity, mortality, Mother, Mother God, Motherhood, ornithology, outer rural, Palestine, ruralia, threshold, wildlife, ZionismLeave a comment

in mid-July, the summer-resident barn swallows who had successfully raised and launched four fledglings by June 23rd, 2025, attempted to raise a second brood;

while i am not absolutely sure if it was the same set of parents or another in the barn swallow community that utilized the nest — as there is a collective of more than a dozen swallows that visits and assists in feeding sometimes too — it is most likely they are the same parent pair;

this is the second summer the barn swallows have nested here in my barn — using last year’s well-constructed nest which they attached to one of the joists like a balcony cantilevered on a Chicago highrise;

i began leaving the overhead barn door open when i first noticed them circling and investigating the barn a few years back; and i was thrilled last year when they began construction of their nest — they were so very welcomed and wanted here — i now know to leave the barn door raised from mid May through July to give them access.

the first brood of four swallows,
not quite fledged, but stretching their wings in the safety of the barn, June 2025
Continue reading “have mercy.” →

Mother’s Day: also a day for the children of mothers

On By ©️K.T. 2025In biographical, Crone, exposition, Home, maiden, Mother, Mother's Day, Motherhood, WomenfolkLeave a comment

motherhood and childhood are complex, complicated and heart-expanding, heart-breaking and heart-full journeys — but mostly elusive destinations, in our rose-colored or cracked rearview mirrors /

today is an exceptional day for revisiting motherhood, childhood and mother-child relationships //

Mothers’ Day, for many mothers and children often feels unbearable from physical loss or heavy with physical absence; it may be pregnant with disappointment, misunderstandings, unrealistic or unmet expectations; reminiscent of failures, judgment and estrangement;— or worse, it may be painful with the memory or ongoing experience of neglect, abuse, betrayal or disownment ///

these golden beings that we, mothers, carry and birth from our bodies and raise up with our arms and hearts into a world that is too often, dark and heavy /

mothers were once golden beings too //

mothers can be|come dark and heavy worlds too ///

Continue reading “Mother’s Day: also a day for the children of mothers” →

phenology II

On By ©️K.T. 2025In autobiographical, autumn, being, biographical, climate, Climate Chaos, Climate Collapse, Crone, crone chronicles, Crone Consciousness, Cronehood, Death, Earth hospice, empire, Gaza, Genocide, Hospice, israel, kill lists, kinship, Lament, Lamentations, land, Land Back, Mother, Mother God, Motherhood, mourning, Palestine, phenology, photograph, photography, Poem, poet, poetry, Resistance, Revolution, Samsara, War, ZionismLeave a comment

lilacs re-leaf, re-bloom
in October
hummingbird moths feed,

common lilacs [Syringa vulgaris]
— not cultivars —
in unprecedented re-leaf and re-bloom
October 12, 2024


and simultaneously,

She’s un-be-coming a human be-ing

She’s destined to,

we’re destined to, too


no
need to
tell me, explain
what’s happening

as constant witness,

as constant, remote witness to slaughter,

as constant gardener,

as constant tender,

as constant daughter,


i see.

i recognize.

i know,

Continue reading “phenology II” →

Becky

On By ©️K.T. 2025In Chicago, childhood, friendship, lake michigan, Motherhood, Poem, Prose, summer, time, true things, womenLeave a comment

she insisted we roll the car windows down
while the a/c was cranking
and she just kept it cranking

in her mid 90s silvery Saturn sedan,
second-hand from her parents,
three little boys crammed in the back seat
a baby girl not yet in her belly,
as we drove down the Kennedy, then the Dan Ryan, heading to the Skyway
for our weekly day-trip
to the southwest Michigan coast

our cooler stuffed with tarragon chicken salad sandwiches for us, fried chicken drumsticks for them, at least two pounds of black cherries, pickles, diet cokes, limes, and capri-suns — the box of white cheddar cheez-its hardly ever made it all the way to the Warren Dunes on the ride from Chicago

for the Lake, the beach, the inlet hike to the clay pit,
the Dune climb, always hoping for some gentle, yellow-flag waves, and the long, eastern time-zone Sun’set over platinum blue water

perplexed, delighted by this novelness, by her unconvention:

a/c on our skin — and summer air blowing in our hair?

Continue reading “Becky” →

proof of life | awkward family fotos

On By ©️K.T. 2025In baby bird food recipe, birds, childhood, Crone, Crone Consciousness, Cronehood, Earthling, earthlings, grandmother, july, june, ki, kin, maternity, Mother, Motherhood, Poem, poet, poetry, postpartum, son, starling, summer, women, WomenfolkLeave a comment

a suspension

of borrowed time & life

recipe and method for feeding a baby starling

recipe:

one-half of a medium-boiled large egg, super finely diced 

3-4 sardines canned in water, with all the bones and skin, gingerly rinsed under a thin stream of tap water, to remove excess salt, laid atop a paper towel 
to passively drain the water,
then, finely chopped 

mash sardines and egg together,
then slowly add up to 1 teaspoon of unsweetened organic apple sauce,
 
the mash should be integrated and mostly smooth
but not too wet or runny


store in sealed glass container refrigerated for no more than 2.5 days

(increase to whole boiled egg and full can of sardines and extra applesauce — and increase mash chunkiness as bird grows)

to feed: 

fill a plastic drinking straw with the food,
by pumping the straw up and down into the mash with suction

warm the filled straw in hand while wearing a disposable glove to bring the mash close to room temperature 

gently but quickly eject tubes/ribbons of mash into baby bird’s mouth as she gapes for food - like toothpaste on toothbrush almost; it’s daunting at first; she is so demanding! so loud! so urgent! 
so hungry!

she will stop gaping when full

wash straw and reuse 
(DQ & Five Guys straws are wide, flexible and work best)

repeat feeding every half hour, then eventually every hour or so, about 300 times over the course of next three weeks

to thrive:

during that time create and whistle to her a short, 3-4 note, unique song to recognize your voice 

love her, talk to her, 
encourage her, comfort her, 
and hold her, carry her outside to see the world she will soon enter

also during that time: bring her small worms, slugs and insects to taste and/or eat / you will need to manually reduce them to be digestible for her, at first

then teach her to forage and hunt for them herself; she will use her beak as a shovel to unearth them and poke at and sever them with her beak;
watch her back while she’s busy doing this - be her wingman!

she will teach herself to bathe and sun, fluff, dry and preen 

one day she will hop, sputter-fly into the grass, into the garden; into the bramble or tall grasses 

then, she will fly and soar - high into the trees, beyond your reach, sight or protection 

you will worry about predators and bird bullies, weather, machines, injury and hunger

you will listen for her voice
and whistle and call for her

sometimes you will hear her;
but she will always hear you; she knows your face, form, voice and song

she will still come home for supplemental feeding

she will still come home to sleep in her nest box inside the barn overnight because being a baby bird alone in the world - is exhausting 

being a mother bird, even moreso 

she will come back, again and again.

she is just pure joy.
she is pure trust.

you are so lucky to have experienced her first weeks of life 

you rescued her; but she has restored you, in fact.

please know,
always remember, and never forget:

every bird you see, every wild mammal you see, they all initially survived because of a very devoted mother
Continue reading “proof of life | awkward family fotos” →

Sylvia Dickinson Edgar Anne Hughes

On By ©️K.T. 2025In birds, bucolia, Crone, Crone Consciousness, Cronehood, dirt road chronicles, Earthling, earthlings, fauna, Gnostic, julia gordon-bramer, ki, kin, metaphysical, Mother, Motherhood, mystic, outer rural, plath, Poem, poet, poetry, Proof of Life, Psychic, ruralia, Survival, sylvia plath, ted hughes, the occult sylvia plath, time, witch, witchery, witching, women, WomenfolkLeave a comment
Star — the starling, on the evening of July 7, 2024

every poet should know the company of a wild bird, at least once

i recently binged the biography:

“The Occult Sylvia Plath: The Hidden Spiritual Life of the Visionary Poet” by life-long Plath scholar Julia Gordon-Bramer

i feel fortunate this book was my introduction to Plath and her poet husband, Ted Hughes— and other significant influences in her life and poetry /

hat tip to my long-time favorite podcast: Aeon Byte Gnostic Radio — created and hosted by Miguel Conner at The Virtual Alexandria for interviewing Gordon-Bramer, because, for the first time ever, i was actually interested in Plath — and furthermore, i unexpectedly experienced a psychic “something” with Plath while listening to the audiobook; this “something” — i want to digest, explore – and possibly explain, in detail, in a future essay //

The Occult Sylvia Plath: The Hidden Spiritual Life of the Visionary Poet

Julia Gordon-Bramer

while i imbibed this book, i was simultaneously raising an injured and orphaned starling nestling — on an intensive feeding schedule — and during this time, i learned from the book, that Sylvia and Ted also attempted to rescue an injured and sick baby bird — but after a week, and upon determining rehabilitation was futile, they jointly and sadly euthanized the bird in their gas oven (i know. wow.) ///

Continue reading “Sylvia Dickinson Edgar Anne Hughes” →

sonlight [june 2024]

On By ©️K.T. 2025In biographical, Family, june, Mother, Motherhood, myth, Poem, poet, poetry, son, SonlightLeave a comment

what radiance i’ve possessed in your eyes
has naturally dimmed after these 30 years;
and so has yours — in mine, these last five,
if i am being truthful,
which you know me to be,
guttingly

once the solar star, now, a mere lighthouse on the other’s shore,

do you still wonder what you are?

you,
my sonlight, are still golden, burning hot and bright,


but these blue lenses of ours,

and these blue talks of ours,


reveal
we are animal, elemental,

sometimes too human, and fragile.

only, you fail to acknowledge another possibility, another cosmic continuum.

Continue reading “sonlight [june 2024]” →

sonlight [june 2014]

On By ©️K.T. 2025In biographical, childhood, june, Motherhood, relationships, son, Sonlight, threshold, timeLeave a comment

you drove away, West,

from Chicago, annoyed, yet exhilarated
while i was full of held tears,
a mother, trying to mother a boy,
on his bold edge of two decades of life

2014 was a rough
half year to June

we lost our first person to fetanyl
but he would not be [y]our last

i witnessed your grandmother’s January bitter coldness for the second time
and i still have a lasting bone chill from it

by the time you drive across the Mississippi River,
you have forgiven me
but i, you — even before you drove out of our alley,
we keep forgiving one another, me and you.

a couple of weeks later,

i am with our first, sweet dog in our Sun-filled back yard, as he is given a gentle, good death / we have shared so many firsts, but this,

i/we do without you; 17 years — ours, for sixteen — this loyal and strong dog that you chose on Mother’s Day weekend on LaSalle Street

how can it ever be a home again without you, without him

Continue reading “sonlight [june 2014]” →

sonlight [june 2004]

On By ©️K.T. 2025In biographical, childhood, Mother, Motherhood, photograph, son, Sonlight, summer, time, true things, WyomingLeave a comment

the author and her son in the Great Room of
the Old Faithful Inn, Yellowstone National Park,
Wyoming, June 2004

a lucky reservation for one night of lodging and a late dinner — made by telephone months earlier, but just barely early enough,

choosing sweaters to wear to dinner as the June Sun
finally sets / you and i match in black cotton ramie, always and still, my favorite

hungrily watching the clock, in the Great Room, nestled in the same chair by the colossal fireplace

we’d been camping the previous night, in a thunderstorm and downpour at Bridge Bay,
where we awoke to a bison’s grunting, and their immense shadow upon our tent;
we shared our griddled french toast breakfast and percolated coffee with a couple in a VW camper, who were no doubt younger than you are today in June, 2024

with our “Wildlife of Yellowstone” booklet, we identify an osprey perched above our heads in a pine tree as we pack up our camp — a first, for each of us

mudpots, fumaroles, bison herds, bison “jams”, pelicans, waterfalls, canyons, elk, towering basalt columns, sulfur, a wild river, geysers, marmots, hot springs — and Morning Glory Pool.

so many firsts, for me and you.

your shining, smiling face[s]
around that table
by candlelight

what a gift, what a day, what a dream
to share this exquisite meal with you, two,
in such a truly wild place

is this real life?

the clink of silverware
voices and laughter centered — and from every direction,

imply, “yes”.

Continue reading “sonlight [june 2004]” →

Easter

On By ©️K.T. 2025In Crone, Crone Consciousness, Cronehood, Easter, Essay, exposition, Gnosis, Mother, Motherhood, OuroborosLeave a comment

a version of this foto essay was first published

April 2019

Spring is life.

A mother rabbit birthed at least three bunnies in a niche of the house – enclosed on three sides with only a northern mossy exposure – mostly safe and hidden from owls, hawks and coyotes. They nibble on young dandelion and clover leaves. They are joy.

My one and only baby’s very first Easter and Spring. A surprise of daffodils under a white oak tree at our first house and home on Grace Street in Chicago. Mother, son, full of grace.

I don’t know where the stuffed white rabbit with pink, acrylic eyes and pink, satin ears came from — exactly. But I’ve had it forever, before memory, so I pretend that it was presented to the baby girl born in late October, just before Halloween. Or gifted to the baby girl on her first Easter. Or won for the toddler girl at her first carnival.

Before I was a mother to a boy, I — an only child — was a teenaged auntie to a beautiful boy named +Tony+ [Giovanni Anthony Martinez] born in Spring 1986. I learned from him that I might become a mother to a son one day even though I was sure I was meant only to be a mother to a daughter. And that, was a wonderful revelation.

Continue reading “Easter” →
Featured

House and Lineage of Mary

On By ©️K.T. 2025In Christ, Christmas, Christmas Eve, Christos, Gnosis, Gnostic, Mary, Mother, Mother God, MotherhoodLeave a comment 
“We are all called to be mothers of God, for God is always waiting to be born.”

— Meister Eckhart, 13th century German mystic
madonna & child stained glass
2013, Portage Park, Chicago
The Christmas narrative speaks to us beyond a phenomenal story about Mary and the Baby Jesus. It tells us about an inbreak of God's consciousness into the world. Inbreaks of the Divine require a flexible mind capable of letting go of every acquired concept of God. God gnosis is quite different from religious, historical, and any other kind of knowledge. The first emerges from within, throwing open our inner gates; the latter comes from without. 

Tau +Rosamonde Ikshvàku Miller+, 2012
Continue reading “House and Lineage of Mary” →

definition | author | proof of life:

On By ©️K.T. 2025In author, Crone, Cronehood, Earthling, Gnostic, Her, ki, kin, kinship, liminal, liminality, limineen, maiden, Mother, Motherhood, Pneumatic, Poem, poet, poetry, self portaiture, witch, WomenfolkLeave a comment

foremost Earthling, crone,
and mother to a golden boy;
nightly traveler into liminality;
mostly obeisant
to intuition & premonition;
poet, writer;
heart-sleeved,
bleeding heart pessimist;
devoted friend of crows (at last),
meadow-restorer/tender,
& long-lost sister to snakes, bats and coyotes,
deer & bluebird whisperer,
seed saver, food grower,
an admirer and propagator
of lilacs, hydrangeas,
sycamores, mulberries, pawpaws and oaks;
dna-tested kin to goldenrod, milkweed,
bison, cottonwoods, thistle and monarchs;
wader into ephemeral and glacial
lakes and deep snow;
Moon’s luminous, loyal daughter
& Sun’s prodigal, ever-questioning shadow
equally;
devout, ecstatic
desert, forest and river worshipper;
reverent of and humbly deferent to
bear, wolf, moose, elk & bighorn sheep and hummingbirds;
a mountain, canyon, valley,
prairie and beach walker;


i swam and swam and swam my way alive.

Continue reading “definition | author | proof of life:” →

maundy thursday, daily

On By ©️K.T. 2025In exposition, Gnosis, Lent, Mother, Motherhood, NarrativeLeave a comment

mandatum novum do vobis ut diligatis invicem sicut dilexi vos

As I sat on the maple floor of my kitchen in Chicago on a Thursday evening in 2017, voluntarily polishing my son’s chukka boots for the weekend — it became a meditation on my own father, who was actually my second father, who would often offer to polish or freshen up my scuffed, dirty shoes

— first, my white Keds-knock-offs from Zayre, Venture or Jupiter — the canvas stiffened bright white, an unnatural brand new/ the scent of that liquid polish and sponge instantly conjured/ me smiling/ did I remember to say thank you? did I know (how) to?

later, when I was in high school, he would clean and polish my beloved and preciously expensive pair of Stan Smith white leather Adidas /or were they leather Tretorns? then, when I was in college and always pressed for time or conversation, I began expectantly asking if he could please polish my black heels or black boots for work – but more importantly for the weekend — he always, obliging me.

she was not quite as good at it as he was,
but she tried, and she got better, each time

Every act:

Continue reading “maundy thursday, daily” →

Lamentations of Birth and Exultations of Re-Birth: An ode of the birthed and mothered on Mother’s Day

On By ©️K.T. 2025In aeidein, Birth, Gospel of Thomas, Incarnation, Irregular Ode, Mother, Mother's Day, Motherhood, Nag Hammadi, Nag Hammadi Library, Ode, Rebirth, Reincarnation, The Thunder Perfect MindLeave a comment

Lamentation and Exultation

I am spirit
Though not pre-conceived;
I was conceived; and pro-created;
I contained knowledge, and
I was known
I did experience,
and I remembered; but
I was then birthed, and
I became human; so
I was mother’d;

I was mis-guided;
I was injured,

I was mis-judged; and
I was so scarred

I became ignorant;
I became blind
I forgot experience;

I became animal
I fell asleep and
I became unknown;

I too conceived; and
I pro-created
He too was spirit
He too contained knowledge;

I birthed him ignorance
He too was experienced;
He too remembered
I was the witness; but
I was still blind’d

I was still sleeping;
I then mother’d, and
he became human,

I then mis-guided,
I then injured,
I then mis-judged
I then so scarred;

I saw the death of one dear before me;
and then,
I remembered;
I was re-wakened,

I became un-blind’d;
I sought my [lost] knowing
I reclaimed my experience;

I forgave the mis-guidance
I so sought forgiveness;
I forgave the mis-understanding
I so sought forgiveness;
I forgave the injury
I so sought forgiveness;

I understood ignorance, and
I so sought re-knowing:

Those who are born are meant to be born;
Some who are born, though, choose to be born;
Most who are born though, have no choice to be born;
Most who are unborn; are not meant to be born
Not meant for this time; not meant for this World;
Those who have birthed, those who have fathered, have re-pro-created error;

Still there are Those who were sung into exIStence
Those are the Ones who chose to be born;
Now those who were birthed, not sung into existence, must will to re-member,
must choose to re-birth, to become re-known;

I re-membered mySelf, re-birthed mySelf
Now,
I am beginning to become re-Known.

Jesus said: “When you see one who was not born of woman, prostrate yourselves on your faces and worship him. That one is your father.” – Gospel of Thomas (15)

Jesus said, “The man old in days will not hesitate to ask a small child seven days old about the place of life, and he will live. For many who are first will become last, and they will become one and the same.” – Gospel of Thomas (4)

Jesus said, “Take heed of the living one while you are alive, lest you die and seek to see him and be unable to do so.” – Gospel of Thomas (59)

A woman from the crowd said to him, “Blessed are the womb which bore you and the breasts which nourished you.”
He said to her, “Blessed are those who have heard the word of the father and have truly kept it. For there will be days when you will say, ‘Blessed are the womb which has not conceived and the breasts which have not given milk.’ – Gospel of Thomas (79)