About Me — Ashley Riley
“Write hard and clear about what hurts,” said Ernest Hemingway. In order to tell you about myself, I need to tell you what hurts me most to write about.
My life changed forever the day my son was born in July 2017, and for different reasons than you may initially assume. A part of me died when I gave birth to my son, a dream that I held within my heart, and I can tell you for certain that it will never be reborn.
It is the thing I want to write about most, but also fear the most writing about. It is an agony that is firmly implanted in my soul, for which I have treated with endless therapies, medications and meditations.
After sixty hours of un-medicated labor, my son’s heart rate began to rapidly decline. I was rushed to the OR for an emergency c-section. The completely natural birth I had wanted so badly, that I had put countless time and effort into preparing for, would never happen.
I imagined birthing him in a tub of warm water surrounded by my midwife and doulas, bringing his naked body onto my chest, and crying with joy and relief. Instead, he was born on an operating table, surrounded by strangers, and I suffered a massive panic attack mere moments after I first saw him. I laid there while the surgeons had me wide open, shaking uncontrollably and unable to breath. I had no idea what was happening. I thought for sure that I was dying. In my mind, the hours that followed are no more than fragmented pieces of time.
I struggle with the fact that my birth was traumatic. How could something meant to be so beautiful leave me with such deep wounds?
The trauma was inescapable. I saw it every time I looked into my son’s eyes. Every time I noticed the scar across my abdomen. I re-lived the birth in my mind every hour of every day, sometimes even allowing myself to become immersed in imagining a completely different birth entirely. My mind wanted so desperately to experience the natural birth I thought I should have had.
I blamed myself for everything I felt that my body did wrong. It transformed into a testament of my womanhood, one which I felt had made me worthless. It destroyed beliefs I long held about myself, that I could get through anything and control any situation if I simply prepared enough for it. I felt I had failed as a mom, and failed my son.
So, why write about this for my About Me story? Surely I could have shared dozens of other details about my life that did not involve so much affliction and guilt. I most certainly could have chosen an easier topic to write about. But if we only write about the things that make us feel good, and left out the pain that makes us survivors, then what would be the point of writing at all?
Grief has shaped me into the person I am with contour and precision. I love my son with every ounce of stardust that exists within my body. Although I wish I could have made his earth-side arrival a less bumpy ride for the both of us, I would do it all again just to bring him here to me.
It is the juxtaposition of tremendous pain followed by boundless love, or perhaps the experience of both at the same time, that makes me who I am. And it is the reason, above all else, that I have shared it with you now. To quote the great Margaret Atwood, who puts it quite succinctly, “In the end, we’ll all become stories.”
Ashley Riley is a video creator, writer, and stay-at-home wife and mother. She has earned a Bachelor’s in political science and a Master’s in social policy. She films and edits videos capturing life and family in the Pacific Northwest, which you can subscribe to here.
