love by any means necessary*

on pulling up mothering by its roots

Because it’s therapeutic, I weeded my garden beds for Mother’s Day. Getting at the roots of the weeds left dirt beneath my nails. Angela Davis says this is radical's definition: to pull something up by its roots.

But what is it called when the pulling is forced upon you?

Celebrating Mother’s Day in the same month your mothering was put on trial is a special kind of gaslighting. (Reader, don’t worry, I signed a plea deal.) 

The initial petition to appear in court did not list my child’s father.

It is Mother’s Day and I am in the process of “voluntarily” terminating my parental rights so my child can get the care they need, care our mental health system will not provide them if they have a mother. 

I am pulling my mothering up by its roots.

I am not the only mother who’s carried mace in her own home. I am writing these and all the words I’ve yet to write about motherhood for her and for me.

We talk of unconditional love as if we know the conditions under which our love will be tested. We don’t. Because that’s what privilege is—having to be told something terrible is true for others because the terrible thing isn’t true for you. It is yet unimaginable. Until it isn’t. Until you sit in the psych ward / juvenile detention / court room.

We have twisted mothering to mean I will love you at the expense of myself. This is not love; it is martyrdom. 

I will love you by any means necessary is different, radical. Radical love means I will love you with a mother’s love when mothering has been terminated. I will love you by giving up my legal right to love you. By any means necessary, even when the necessary feels like violence against the future.

I will love you with a radical love, I will pull up these roots if it means you get to live. 

*this line is from the dedication of Revolutionary Mothering: Love on the Front Lines, edited by Alexis Pauline Gumbs, China Martens, and Mai’a Williams