A Prism of Insights and Knowledge
There were dreary nights and overcast skies but the clouds cleared on a bright blue day. Four years ago I could not imagine her. In four months, I will not need to. The past, present, and future is kindled in my belly. If a miracle of the universe is housed in this body, why then is the pregnant woman missing from the annals of philosophy history? Is our experience not a site of spiritual and scientific wonder? Could it be that male-dominated societies want pregnancy but not the insights and knowledge of the women who make it possible?
Watercolor painting of Gefülte Feüer Lilia (lily) from the book “Blumenbuch” created by Magdalena Rosina Funck in 1692.
Pregnancy as Physical and Organic
For the first time my uterus has contained a life inside of it. My blood volume is growing. My hair and fingernails are growing. My hips have widened significantly, fat has accumulated everywhere but most notably in my thighs, and apparently my abdominal muscles are separating to make space for the baby. I am biology in motion. I am also embodied wisdom in action because there are no explicit instructions relayed to my brain. My reproductive system is acting on its own, just as your immune system fights diseases without your knowledge.
My mind has always resided in my body, despite the world’s efforts to thwart me. I am present and aware while I dance, hike, run, and sing. I know this is not the case for all women but, for me, life has been an embodied experience despite the passport I hold to the land of the abstract. I give credit to my culture and upbringing, and to my roots.
In Indian culture we walk barefoot in the home and eat with our hands. We sit criss-cross on the ground while relaxing or singing, and each time I sit down I notice the pressure of the earth against the bumps in my ankles. I notice how my hips need to stretch to accommodate the seated position. Every Sunday I oil my hair with coconut oil and, if I’m lucky, a family member does this for me. Fingers have been rubbing my scalp and yanking my lengthy, black hair for a long time. I burn incense every day and the smell excites my nose. I eat food that contains tang, umami, and heat, all of which stimulate my tongue. I adorn my wrists with gold bangles and my nose and ears shine with gold hoops. I can feel them when I move around; bangles which clang when I type or run my fingers through my niece’s hair, and earrings that press against my upper cheeks when I wear headphones. I could sooner separate from my body than I could separate from my Indianness or woman-ness. I am all of it, all at once.
This connection I feel to my body was ruptured during my first trimester. I survived day-to-day, but to do that I needed to survive, day-by-day. I took naps on our blue couch in a sun-soaked living room, praying to fall asleep before I drowned in another wave of nausea. While my body screamed for food, I wanted nothing. I had no desire to eat. I wanted to sleep my woes away. Then came the weight. Black bean burgers, cheese quesadillas, bowls of cheerios, Greek yogurt with fruit and honey, bags of Hot Cheetos, boxes of donuts, slices of pizza, plates of pasta with red sauce, and deli sandwiches paraded into my mouth like a Thanksgiving Day float. My insatiable hunger was unforgiving to my physique and slapped on layers of fat all over my body, like slabs of clay on a human-sized figurine. My knees and ankles protested but they had no say in the matter as I made them march daily for forty minutes. My knees and ankles were soon joined by my lower back. They threatened to go on strike but I negotiated better hours. Just as I had won over my joints, my gums began to bleed unexpectedly and my bladder learned to sing gleefully at midnight, 2AM, and 4AM. As I scrambled to regain control of my organs, my hypothalamus decided to hit the gas on my libido.
I had gone from a woman in charge of her body to a woman at its mercy.
Watercolor painting of Spanish Clover by Magdalena Rosina Funck in 1692.
Pregnancy as Metaphysical
For most, the term “philosopher” conjures the image of a wizened, bearded man. Plato, Aristotle, Socrates, Voltaire, Sartre, Nietzsche, or Karl Marx. My exposure to Eastern philosophy conjures images of Confucius, Siddhartha Gautama, Swami Vivekananda, and Rabindranath Tagore. Up until today I worshipped them. I know of some women philosophers, such as Simone de Beauvoir, but let’s be real — philosophy is a field entirely shaped by men.
And yet!
And yet none of these men have carried life or given birth. The notion that they, and they alone, might penetrate the mysteries of human knowledge and existence without having experienced pregnancy is laughable. If metaphysics, a branch of philosophy that studies the fundamental nature of reality, examines the relationship between the mind and the body, how in the bloody hell would this field consider itself complete without the contributions of women who have carried human life?
In our twenty week ultrasound the sonographer at the University of California San Francisco hospital showed us an x-ray image of our daughter, sleeping in my belly. You could see her tiny heart beating in her tiny frame. In the 1997 movie “Contact” Jodie Foster floats in space and looks down on earth and whispers “they should have sent a poet”. I personally did not need to go to outer space to say that.
Naturally we pregnant women do not understand what is happening to us. I have no clue where this baby came from, just as I have no clue where my grandfather went when he passed away this year. Birth and death remains a mystery even to those most proximate. However, the experience of conceiving, carrying, and delivering a baby is as information-rich and transformational as any spiritual revelation or epiphany a male scholar may have had.
Can I dismiss 2,500 years of philosophical history because almost none of it was conceived of or written by women who have experienced pregnancy? Where is that knowledge, I want to know. Where is the knowledge on what it means to sacrifice one’s own body and sanity and yet still to have hope, joy, fear, and grief? Pregnancy is relearning what it means to breathe, as the organs inside you expand and squeeze your lungs. Pregnancy is the art of secrecy for the first three months. You pretend to be the same and yet you are being remade from the inside. Pregnancy is nothing less than a new plane of human existence, so I want to trace just one feeling from the plane.
The feeling is grief.
Grief is a new feeling for me. The tip of the grief is for my own mother. During my first trimester I was so averse to the smell of Indian food that my husband was only allowed to cook while I was gone and with all the windows and front door open. In her first trimester, my mother cooked, cleaned, and hosted guests all the while vomiting out back. She was twenty-four or twenty-five at the time.
In addition to debilitating nausea are debilitating emotions. I cry nearly every day, sometimes in the shower with my head against the shower pane. My tears are not sad but a release. Then I wonder, who comforted my mother while she cried? Likely not my now-wonderful but then-gruff father. Likely not a soul.
Lastly, I consider the disrespect I slung her way during my wise guy teenage years. Her grief then becomes my grief now.
One layer deep into the grief is a grief for all mothers and grandmothers who carry, deliver, nurse, nurture, raise, feed, wash, change, and protect babies while everyone else in the family is busy with their own interests. In Indian families the selflessness of the women makes it unclear where the needs of the child end and where the mother or grandmother begin. My grief is also for caregivers in war zones, refugee camps, slums and ghettos, or small rural towns where unemployment, food insecurity, and drugs warp life into a living hell.
Their grief becomes my grief.
For the last two years pregnant women in Gaza have looked up at the sky wondering which missile will bring a swift end to their maternal bliss. On October 7th thirty-eight children were murdered, with three of them between ages 0-3 and four of them aged 3-6. Forty-two children were abducted. Many became orphans. It is a trope for female politicians to position themselves as protectors of children. Nancy Pelosi did it. Hillary Clinton did it. Even Kamala Harris, a woman who has not had kids of her own, did it. Republican female politicians are all over this schtick. I am waiting for the role of protector to evolve from political posture to unshakeable ideal. I am waiting to find someone who centers the value of human life in their politics. My faith lay in wise women who have given birth to children. When you know what it takes to make a life you’ll think twice about taking one.
My grief ends in grieving for the loss of innocence and the preciousness of life. There is a small person inside of me who now has a heart, lungs, kidneys, a liver, a brain, and, most importantly, listening ears.
Every night before bed my father would tell me a story from the “Mahabharata” or “Ramayana”. The story of Abhimanyu from the Mahabharata haunted me as a child:
Abhimanyu was born to the [warrior prince] Arjuna and Subhadra, the sister of Lord Krishna. It is said that he learned the art of breaking into the Chakravyuha (a complex military formation) while still in his mother’s womb when Arjuna was explaining it to Subhadra. However, before Arjuna could complete his explanation, Subhadra fell asleep, leaving Abhimanyu unaware of the technique to exit the formation. This knowledge gap later played a crucial role in his fate.
The story of Abhimanyu could be a lesson on arrogance leading to downfall, but it is also a story about the responsibility of parenthood. Abhimanyu’s innocence was corrupted early and he suffered the consequences of his father’s negligence. He ends up dying, alone, in battle.
My daughter is listening to us now. I am not sure what knowledge to give her at what time. How much knowledge is too much, too soon? When I grieve for the loss of her innocence it is likely I am grieving the day I lost mine.
Watercolor painting of Sonnen Blüme (sunflower) by Magdalena Rosina Funck in 1692.
Pregnancy as Intellectual
An intellectual is considered to be a person who studies and comments on the nature of society. This would have to be a person who, to an extent, has lived in society and experienced its various facets. However, in modern American society it is often someone who has read about society more than they have traveled through it.
When I suggest that you picture an intellectual who comes to mind? Another bearded Aristotle perhaps? Or a swami, like Swami Vivekananda? Or perhaps even a poised literary woman, such as Jane Austen or Toni Morrison? But does a tired, emotional, pregnant woman come to mind? Her belly is swollen and mind is hazy. “Women’s brains actually shrink during pregnancy”, a reliable source told me. “But they do expand after birth”, I was reassured.
Just as formal education, visiting a museum, or reading a book is an intellectual experience, so is pregnancy. It is neither historically nor presently thought of in this way, but who better to observe and comment on modern society than the pregnant woman? That too, the pregnant, working woman? (She may work within the house, as my mom did.)
She is expected to do intellectual and physical labor eight to ten hours a day while hiding or belittling her condition. She returns home to a single partner but no village to comfort her. Her mother lives far away, her sister also not close by. Her aunts and female cousins thousands of miles away. Her friends are available, yes, and some call and others text, but they too are busy. Too busy to pause and organize their lives around her. Too stretched thin to give with generosity.
She accepts these terms gracefully but who better to notice the shortcomings of modern American society than her? She is overworked, alone, and carrying new life. Her community is far away, distracted, and relatively unconcerned. She wonders, is this the best we can do?
Being a working woman presents a unique set of challenges. Being a working woman who is pregnant presents an intersectional challenge. I am not proposing an entirely novel idea. Black Feminist Theory advocates for the marginalized in society to be placed at the center of our concerns because when we learn how to protect and uplift the vulnerable, we protect and uplift us all.
All pregnant women carry with them great knowledge on the nature of modern American society, be it about the healthcare system, the safety and stewardship of new life, and the busyness and fracture of a capitalist society.
Above all, we notice where society shows us care. We especially notice where that care is missing.
A Prism of Insights and Knowledge
Pregnancy is difficult, a blessing, heart-wrenching, life-affirming, and tumultuous. I cried when I felt my daughter kick for the first time, and I cried at my desk at 7AM when all I wanted to do was vomit and sleep but my team did not know I was pregnant and there were deadlines to meet.
I knew pregnancy would be deeply physical and spiritual, but I was wrong to assume it would not be intellectual. Pregnancy deserves philosophical study. Not by means of microscopic examination or through sterile poking and prodding in a lecture hall. It should be gently held in the fingers and turned in the light, like a sparkling diamond. After all, it is the product of women who have compressed coal into a prism of insights and knowledge.
*This article is being reproduced with permission. See the original article on Substack.
*The opinions of contributing writers are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of We Are One Humanity. Submissions offering differing or alternative views are welcome
