parenting between integrity & the mess
on sorrel as a heart tonic for disastrous times
I didn’t become a parent until our child was a year old and I decided to quit my job. I fretted and blustered, wracked with worry about inadequacy in all aspects of my life—as a partner, a parent, a worker, an artist, a self, as someone in the imperial core. My mind whipped around inside a constantly pacing body, never truly holding anything in full. The grief insists upon itself; inciting a deluge of shame, unspoken words, muddled mirroring. Instead of presence, I punish myself and resent everyone else. I became a parent and tumbled into a state of perpetual confusion, consumed by sensible fears that could have been overridden by instinct. Unable to make time for things as small as showers and as large as friendships, jobs, and values. One will do anything to deny their own instinct; and, in that struggle to return to instinct, we parse through all our inheritance, moving through the rubble to (hopefully) find the pieces we want our descendants to have.
early july
i quit my job last week. it’s too hot to take my baby out, but we must leave the house. they are alive! with four teeth learning to be kissed. learning to be close, too close when it’s this hot out. learning to turn back far less than they used to, needing fewer head nods, fewer hands braced for a fall. they tumble hard at the museum. they are tender, but meant for survival. they fall asleep on my back now, again, finally. they shake their head but still grasp bottle caps, plastic wrappers & other people’s food to their mouth, with a giggle & a smile. crawling with dirt on their pants, lint in their afro, bubbles and avocado on their face.
people at the playground call them a boy, people at the playground call them a girl. i say they are a baby. they are standing up out of babyhood & the playground is too hot. the sun beams down & burns the blue, soft ground so it has no give. they are quick to sob and just as quick to settle.
my baby touches strangers with no fear and no permission. they do not yet worry about how their expressions are perceived.
My co-parent drinks hibiscus and red raspberry. Holding and toning their interior, these two plants are known for their astringency, this puckering and drying for when one is feeling leaky and unhinged. Hibiscus is traditionally used in formulas for the summer, with an ability to cool hot, inflamed moments while nourishing the heart. Hibiscus, or choublak jamaica sorrel bissap kerkede is also famous in christmas sorrel, a spiced and spiked drink full of sweet, earthy, sharp warmth. Hold this dynamism of summer cooling muddled with warming herbs, like all that comes with holding someone who occupies your whole world.
Rage and fear have become my most authentic emotions—caves that I’ve explored but rushed through to get to the light, never settling into darkness.1 The fear masks and silences the inevitable rage. I want to tell everyone that this is the singular most severing experience I’ve ever had. I want to tell everyone I never thought I’d be so much like a man until I had a baby and couldn’t fathom what to do with myself.
They transform, excavating these tender parts (read: raw, fragile, darkened and exposed all at once). All the kindness is reserved for this soft, warm, bright person. We bifurcate ourselves, compartmentalize and overanalyze so we don’t spill over, though we spill over anyway.
We say for months on end that the point is to make raising children in the U.S. so isolating to prevent our participation in anything beyond the singular family unit and its survival. We pass the phrase, the thought, the realization, back and forth in each other’s voices with no one us to hear us.
early august
my baby took their first steps, bit by bit, side to side. with more time together, they arch their back over my knee. they sit in my lap. they open the cabinets to pull out pans, foil, and empty yogurt containers (they put the lids back this morning).
i miss harvesting chamomile in the heat of june, walking the same land that changes hour by hour, imperceptibly. i don’t yet know all her names, but lament the loss regardless. she’s still here, still there, still holding the world in her small petals.
Tend to the heart: pumping blood through channels (not breaking) strengthening or weakening as muscles do. Hibiscus is known to reduce blood pressure and act as a cardiac tonic.2 Its astringency dries dampness and is indicated for diarrhea, toning the reproductive organs, tending to sore throats, and the like. Akin to rosehips—its unrelated cousin—it has vitamin C to offer support to the immune system. Despite its red-purple hue, it quells the fires, offering our hearts steadiness and solace. It can regulate the blood sugar by ushering digestion forward and enhancing insulin sensitivity and/or secretion.3 In truth, this plant knows to quell the spirit of inflammation—a perpetual and systemic threat to our bodies. In doing this, it may have an impact on the nervous system (neuro-degeneration) by reducing oxidative stress on the brain, specifically indicated in the accumulation of iron in the brain.4 Tend to the heart and touch everything else, our shadowy and whimpering selves, our joyful spirits; our steadfast, bold and revolutionary imaginations.
I spent the past seven years slowly siphoning myself off from community. Retreating into myself because I was afraid of who I was in front of everyone else—afraid of how angry I was, afraid of how much I wanted, afraid to be wrong. I can’t seem to take the mask off, so I left, trailing into shame. I can’t get past the wall guarding my softness.
december
my baby is walking freely, with very cold hands in a perpetually cold and dry house. they constantly ask for “chip” and “chee” (cheese). we snuggle at night, abating their cries to go back to sleep. they (attempt to) sweep, place books on selves, clamber up to the couch, wiping their nose or picking up small pieces of rice. anything dropped on the sidewalk receives the prompt acknowledgement (uh oh!), increasing in volume the further we walk away from a dropped cracker, rice cake, clementine, until one of us picks it up and puts it in our pockets (now a dark entryway of crumbs). they hold hands when we cross the street together, arms all the way up and feet shuffling to keep up with our monstrously long legs (I’m 5’2”).
after seeing 18 months worth of photos of my baby, my mom says with a sense of awe, “what amazes me is how much space they are able to take up!” i describe how they are becoming more of who they are, and she says that they sound like me.
their hands get bigger, they giggle. they whirl around the room to vivaldi, sitting at their table, scribbling as we write, reading at every opportunity (on the potty). they sit immediately upon waking and exclaim: more!
i am desperate for a job, but when i’m working, i disappear. money is the distraction, a critical disruption in the experience of living. i walk through the slush and feel gratitude that my child is experiencing snow.
my child is in school, constantly sick, learning, reaffirming who they are. sensitive, cheerful, social, talkative, kind, and brilliant. when i say my child is the most tender being i know, i mean it.
the medicine
Can we return to our new selves? The selves that are forever changed by our conditions, seeping out like resin from the pine.
We tend to our ailing baby, white rags strewn about the house. We ply our constantly depleted systems with a plethora of pink and purple syrups. Elderberry. Rosehips and elecampane. Everything is sweet, sweet.
This month, I make a syrup in honor of Caribbean traditions. Researching the history of Christmas sorrel, I want to create space for sharpness, deep warmth in these sweet concoctions.5
Of the mallow family, traversing from Sudan to Iran to Ayiti to Jamaica to India.6 Cousin to okra (which flowers for one night only, then fruits), hibiscus cools the waters. Ginger and cinnamon move the fire forward, heat into our hearts and digestive systems. To tie it all together, Schisandra attends to the liver, to bouts of anxiety, to remind us of our whole and full selves.
I want to make something that supports my capacity to build—we have a tendency to think of different parts of ourselves as separate. But, my immune system is not separate from my digestive system, not separate from my skin, not separate from my liver or heart.
A child teaches you that wellness is holistic, it cannot exist when we must survive from a place of reaction (a shape all too familiar to me). They teach you to reckon with truths you must sing. “I can no longer just survive!” I repeat. This kind of living imprints, marks and molds us—break the pattern.
I want to make something that is sweet, but something else too. Something that resists a sense of permanence, containing infinity. Sometimes, I lose sight of all these little moments because everything else creeps in to dominate. These severe dominations extend beyond the family and boomerang back to our most intimate spaces—no home is immune. The saccharine only masks the little (or big) shadows and intricacies. I want something to unleash them.
Can we move beyond the things we whisper to ourselves at midnight, little promises we’re afraid to keep, into the sustained action we come face-to-face with in the dawn?Can we be unbound, moving in non-liner but purposeful direction like the flows of our heart, the winding rivers and creeks, the nerves mapping their way across our terrains?
I cannot dam anger or fear, the more I try to control them and compartmentalize, the more surreptitiously they seep through. Knowing these emotions grants permission for other ways of feeling to emerge. Imperfectly, without any semblance of tidiness, I make a pathway for the fullness of feeling that I see and respect in my little world bursting their way to fervent existence.
I recently finished Ursula K. LeGuin’s The Tombs of Atuan in the Earthsea series. There’s something about this touch and go movement that mirrors the approach to the Labryinth.
Tori Hudson, “Hibiscus, Hawthorn, and the Heart,” Natural Medicine Journal, April 20, 2022, https://www.naturalmedicinejournal.com/journal/hibiscus-hawthorn-and-heart.
Ali Almajid et al., “Exploring the Health Benefits and Therapeutic Potential of Roselle (Hibiscus Sabdariffa) in Human Studies: A Comprehensive Review,” PMC PubMed Central, November 23, 2023, https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10676230/#abstract1.
Manoj Kumar Mishra et al., “A Distinct Hibiscus Sabdariffa Extract Prevents Iron Neurotoxicity, a Driver of Multiple Sclerosis Pathology,” Cells, January 27, 2022, https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8834068/.
The recipe and plant study for this syrup can be found in an upcoming paid post on this substack to acknowledge the labor gone into creating the write up. If the price is inaccessible once it comes out, send me a message.
Andrés Triana Solórzano, “Plant of the Month: Hibiscus - JSTOR Daily,” JSTOR Daily, April 28, 2023, https://daily.jstor.org/plant-of-the-month-hibiscus/.