For the moms

Poetry as community + compassion

Photo by Akram Huseyn on Unsplash

Hi friends,

I hope you are taking care of yourselves, turning your face toward the sun and tending to your heart when you can.

I come bearing poems. Poems as emotional nourishment. Poems as compassion. Poems as love. I like to imagine setting a picnic for all of you and placing one on each of your plates.

The truth is, poems are powerful. They are little windows to the self. Little invitations to shared understanding. And while I can’t physically travel to you all and place poems at your seats, I can offer something I’ve made with a lot of care:

✨ A HISTORY OF HOLDING: BOOK CLUB + JOURNALING GUIDE ✨

• What is it? A free guide of 15 open-ended questions created to help you reflect, connect, and feel a little less alone.

• How to use it: Bring it to a book club. Share it with a friend over tea. Use it as gentle journaling prompts on your own.

• A few example questions:

  • The mother in these pages is tired and deeply alive, overwhelmed and overflowing, longing for freedom and aching to stay close. Did a particular poem make you feel less alone in the contradictions of mothering? Which one and why?

  • In Telltale Signs (50), the speaker reframes the physical marks of motherhood as evidence of love rather than loss. In what ways did this poem challenge or affirm how you think about the body after motherhood?

  • The poem Word Bank for the Baby Blue(s) (37) exposes the irony of calling something so serious “the baby blues,” suggesting that language can soften —or even silence—what is actually being experienced. What feels misrepresented or too lightly named in conversations about motherhood?

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True to myself, I spent entirely too long creating this guide. I blame it partly on perfectionism, partly on parenthood, and mostly on caring a lot about this offering.

I wrote this book because I longed for poems that reflected the beautiful, brutal, messy truth of motherhood. I hope these poems—and these questions—can be small portals into compassion and community.

If you are hosting a book club or circle related to A History of Holding, I’d be honored to join you online or in person. Feel free to reach out at allisonmwriting@gmail.com.

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A small poem to leave you with—

Set it all down
even if just for a moment. 
Open your palms, fingers 
stretched wide enough
to release their white-knuckle grip.

You can lay your vigilance down.
It is safe for you to close your eyes 
and let your shoulders fall, 
watch the worry slip 
down your arms like dew drops. 

Just for now, exhale the breath 
you are holding for everyone else. 
Inhale the stillness, let it settle 
in your belly like the promise 
of morning fog before it lifts.

Set it all down.
Even if you have to pick it up again, 
set it down for a moment 			
and float.