Birmingham Rep will be the venue for Fertility Fest – the first event of its kind in the UK.  Produced by Jessica Hepburn and Gabby Vautier, it will bring together 20 writers, visual artists, theatre-makers, film-directors and composers alongside some of the country’s foremost fertility experts.

We will be talking about, and sharing art around, the diagnosis of infertility, IVF, donation, surrogacy, the male experience, egg freezing, involuntary childlessness and alternative routes to parenthood.

I will be crying

I will be there (speaking at 11.30am).  I think it’s highly unlikely I will manage to be there without crying. (I say that to prepare myself as much as anybody else.)

Other people might want to talk about the effects of fertility science on future generations and how far as a society are we prepared to go in our pursuit of parenthood. I want to be there because I want to stand in the same space as people whose deep longing to have children remains unfulfilled.   Grieving is inevitable.  There is no escaping that. But whatever else we feel, we do not need to feel alone.

• Book tickets for Birmingham’s Fertility Fest, which includes a performance of The Quiet House by Gareth Farr.
• Book tickets for London’s Fertility Fest on Saturday, 11 June 2016.

Day 26

One day I shall look back at this time

At the waiting

And the counting

And the bleeding

And the longing

The trying

And the not-trying

The loving

And forgiving

And I will say that it made sense.

I know the time will come again

When my womb will be holding

The secret hope,

The possibility of miracle;

Origins so awesome

That only God can know.

But today my vulva

Is tender-lipped

Heralding blood.

And today is the day

I have to live

Right now

Learning to embrace

My own body and grieving dreams

With the fierce

Unconditional

Over-whelming

Mother’s love

That is present

That is ready

That is now.

Jo Ind

If you are a photographer, I have no doubt photographs are indeed the most important part.  I imagine chefs feel the wedding breakfast is the bit that matters most.  But I am a writer.  And so for me it was the words over which I agonised as I wrote the service, for the most part, myself.

That was fifteen years ago today. The calligrapher Ewan Clayton  wrote our words on a document (pictured in part above) which everybody signed. And Rosie Miles, our poet-in-residence, wrote this poem  as she sat among  the congregation on the day.

The words I give to you

To say I want to make a life with you

Will be the best that I can find:

They will be fit to purpose,

They will make love happen,

They will include,

They will speak of your God who is my God,

They will be words we can both indwell,

They will dance with desire and delight,

They will be all the colours of the rainbow,

They will be full of children and chaos and tulips and purple and lilac splendour.

The words I give to you

To say I want to make a life with you

Will be the very best:

They are all I have,

They are all I am;

Here are my words,

Here is my heart.

Rosie Miles

20 April 2001

One day I shall look back at this time

At the waiting

And the counting

And the bleeding

And the longing

The trying

And the not-trying

The loving

And forgiving

And I will say that it made sense.

I know the time will come again

When my womb will be holding

The secret hope,

The possibility of miracle,

Origins so awesome

That only God can know.

But today my vulva

Is tender-lipped

Heralding blood.

And today is the day

I have to live

Right now

Learning to embrace

My own body and grieving dreams

With the fierce

Unconditional

Over-whelming

Mother’s love

That is present

That is ready

That is now.

Midlife can be a time of loss, grief and anxiety about identity, greying hair and creaky knees.  It can also be an invitation to find a new way of being, one that is richer, deeper and more gleamingly radiant than what has gone before.

To celebrate being fifty, I made a Fifty Shades of Gold booklet, pictured above, exploring this journey, which I gave to my friends. I made a Fifty Shades of Gold website too.

Now I have been invited to speak on Fifty Shades of Gold at two beautiful venues in Birmingham. I’d be delighted if you would  join me.
 
 

Birmingham Cathedral, Thursday, 13 March:  5.30 for 6pm

Jake Lever‘s awesome work, The Blue and the Dim and the Gold will be on display in Birmingham Cathedral from 28 February to 11 April. In the evening on Thursday, 13 March I will use this installation as a source for reflection on midlife, spirituality and change. The talk will include time for quiet and discussion.  You get to see the work in all its awesome glory and have the chance to ask questions.  It’s Fifty Shades of Gold in the flesh – well, in the paint and gold, in the case of the artwork.

Entrance fee: £4

Booking: recommended but not necessary – 0121 262 1840 or enquiries@birminghamcathedral.com

Google maps: Birmingham Cathedral

Winterbourne House & Garden, Tuesday 18 March: 12.30-1.30pm

I am delighted to be speaking at the gem that is Winterbourne House & Garden as part of Birmingham University’s Arts & Science Festival, in partnership with Writing West Midlands.  Jake’s work will be at the Cathedral so I will be showing it in a different way – using digital images showing detail that can sometimes be missed. I’ll be using poetry and Jungian literature to explore the golden years euphemistically known as middle age. This will probably be a bit more literary and a bit less quiety than then gig at Birmingham Cathedral.

Entrance fee: free

Booking:  recommended but not necessary – artsandscience@contacts.bham.ac.uk 

Google maps: Winterbourne House & Garden

The grief in going up to the loft to exchange the 0-3 month old baby-grows for the 3-6 month ones, the grief of withdrawing the breast and saying: “No more,” the grief of a child’s first day in school.

It is widely accepted that many parents need to grieve when their children leave home. “Why wait til then?” I say.

I have wept over a boy becoming so bonny and chunky he has to be moved from his Moses basket into a cot, over him becoming so independent he no longer finds it necessary to curl my thumb within his hand.

I am grateful to a friend who gave me this poem when I was puzzling over why something as good and natural as a child growing up should also be so poignant.

It  is the kind of question that only a poet can answer.  What better answer than this could there be? Walking Away by C D-Lewis.

It’s a poem that has kept me steady in the shaking of living with Multiple Sclerosis too.

For copyright reasons I can’t quote it all, but there is a line that brings strength as I come to terms with leading a life that is slower than I would wish: I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Enjoy The Waking by Theodore Roethke.

Go slowly, friends.

If heaven (2)

If heaven might happen

it would look like a racecourse

full of people not horses.

Everyone would have a place to pitch their tent

and there would be lots of mud and weather.

We would all be the same as before

except our bladder functions would have dried up.

There would be a place

on the top floor of heaven

to be very quiet.

There would also be skateboarding,

bands playing underground where the average age is fourteen,

a smörgåsbord of stalls to get food.

The programme of What Is On In Heaven

would be very full.

There would be a soundtrack of eternal drumming.

The Big Drummer would slow the rhythm

so everyone could get the beat.

You would be able to sit in one corner of heaven

and watch the amazing wide sky.

In another you could listen to a man

speak clearly of how he fought for human rights

when he was alive.  You could hear

a politician, a priest, a poet, a shy stuttering actor,

a Dominican monk, a cultural commentator.

You could wonder what would have happened

— what might still happen —

if Jesus had come as a girl.

You could learn to jive or tango

(step, two, three, four).

You could do none of these things.

You could sit on the steps of heaven’s grandstand

and play monster Connect 4 with the friends

who helped you pitch your tent,

watching all the people wearing wellingtons

imprinted with smarties or jelly beans.

Ten-foot transvestite angels would waft past

blowing bubbles of ambient music.

Strangers would smile at you

and people would have brought their dogs.

There would be a Big Top and jugglers on monocycles

and all the people on the doors of heaven’s venues

checking that you were wearing heaven’s wristband

would be unfailingly cheerful.

You would marvel at their ability

to herd an impossible number of people

into a finite space.

Blessed are they who signal to others the end of the queue.

In heaven they shall be the salt of the earth.

And you would belong there – really belong there –

because heaven would not be about

keeping your doubt out

or your many questions.

In fact, if heaven might happen there will be

no certainty at all

just a community of the wounded

who are as lost as you are

eating churros dipped in chocolate

trying to sing

the intelligence of the heart.

Rosie Miles

01/09/10

It is deeper than the prayer of monastery or retreat

Softer than the quietude of chapels and libraries

Rarer than holidays

More silent than the night

More nourishing than the freshly baked bread that I devour

On my own

]]> https://joind.co.uk/no-solitude-like-home/feed/ 12 https://joind.co.uk/the-night-after-my-mother-died/ https://joind.co.uk/the-night-after-my-mother-died/#comments Mon, 08 Mar 2010 21:11:00 +0000 http://joind.co.uk/?p=412 I wrote this poem one Mothers’ Day several years after my mum had died. Recently I lost Arch, aged three, in the supermarket for about five panic-striken minutes. That experience has brought me back to this poem, re-living it, this time as the mum.

The night after my  mother died
I lay in fear.
I am a child in a supermarket
Terrified
Searching for my mum
Between the aisles.

There she is.

In the sleepless dark
I toss between the faith
She would never abandon me
And her breathless body
Growing cold
In my hands.

May it be my worship

May it be the growing of my heart and the connecting of my soul

May it be my reaching out and drawing in

May it lead me home

This post was written while on retreat at the zero carbon house, Balsall Heath, Birmingham looking at these golden hands by Jake Lever.