I just came across Ariel Levy’s story last week, and what a brave mama she us. Her story, published by The New Yorker, is her story about giving birth to her son alone on a bathroom floor in Mongolia. He was 19 weeks gestation, and he lived for a few moments in her arms.
Ariel’s story is also told in her book, The Rules Do Not Apply.
Her writing is exquisitely beautiful and heartbreaking:
But the truth is, the ten or twenty minutes I was somebody’s mother were black magic. There is no adventure I would trade them for; there is no place I would rather have seen. Sometimes, when I think about it, I still feel a dark hurt from some primal part of myself, and if I’m alone in my apartment when this happens I will hear myself making sounds that I never made before I went to Mongolia. I realize that I have turned back into a wounded witch, wailing in the forest, undone.
