@stillbecomingmama: i want to be precise about the word instantly because i think it is doing something important and i do not want it to get lost. it was not instantly in the way that good news is instant or relief after a long wait is instant, where something you were dreading turns out okay and your whole body exhales at once. it was not that kind of instant. it was more like the instant when your eyes adjust in a dark room. not a switch. not a flood of light from somewhere. just a quiet recalibration where the same dark room that was disorienting thirty seconds ago suddenly has shape and outline and you can see the edges of things. that is the kind of instant it was. nothing about my situation changed. the baby was still feeding. the hour was still 3am. the exhaustion was still the particular deep kind that lives in your bones after weeks of this. none of those things moved. what moved was my eyes. what moved was what i could see from inside the same dark room i had been sitting in. and what i could see suddenly was edges. outlines. the shape of something i had not been able to make out before. hundreds of dots. hundreds of women in their own dark rooms whose eyes had also adjusted or were adjusting right now at this same hour. the room did not get lighter. i just finally got my bearings inside it. that is what instantly means here. not rescued. just oriented. and oriented is everything when you have been sitting in the dark long enough to forget the room has edges. #postpartum #newmom #postpartumsupport #momlife #postpartumjourney
