Conception by Jey Johnson

So, there is this constant battle between myself and the idea of planning my children. The first one wasn't planned nor did I ever want to have children to plan for, but shit God has a funny way of making you do what he wants with just a little New Testament love, because the Old Testament God was a savage to his core wiping out whole cities and town for being disobedient. 

I  am realizing on this journey of conception for my next child that it has to start in the mind. That willing it for myself and really desire that. Sometimes as I feel caught between influence and my own strong willed mind of what I  actually want. No, this doesn't mean I  don't want a baby because I genuinely do, but this does mean up until now I  was clueless into the struggle of conception for many women. I  literally thought because of my birth rite as a black women I  would never face the fear of this desire to conceive not become a reality and I suffer from no infertilities issues and the fear of pulling out the pregnancy test and it being negative has overcome the joy of positivity. That before now I  prayed for a negative test and did the Lord if you spare me one more time I  won't do it again, knowing I was lying like a con man on the subway in New York City. 

To discuss this with my home girls is to get the pretty text messages of encouragement and not know how to communicate that those were nice but not enough for my anxiety and fear of being a black woman giving birth again had come to consume my thoughts about this planned parenthood thing that I  thought was only reserved for white women who looked like Standford wives whose husband cheated on the weekends with the neighbor. 

And as I  thought again my mind tends to wonder if we have the joy in just planning our pregnancies. Not a family because I  think as black women we dream the biggest dreams, but when we thought about it did you go through tedious process of the observation of your body. These days I  have become somewhat more aware of my body. I  have observed the way she moves like a river or small stream depending on my mood. I  realize how years of bodying up emotional anger had weighed on my bodies ability to release itself in the most intimate way with my partner while we doing the nasty. I  realize in order to receive what the Good Lord had for me I had to not just be present, but listen to my body and not being in control. 

For this black girl that is hard. So on the road of conception I  am the most open I've ever been and for me thats a scary place, but a place I  need to be in right in order to receive not just a baby, but what I  have planned.