Becky arched her neck back, tilting her head toward the sky to receive her new self. She moaned with pleasure.
“The name I’m receiving is ...” she said. She took one more deep breath in and out. “Aurora.”
It was a name she’d never mentioned before. Britt believed it really had just come to her in that moment.
“Aurora,” Rainbow repeated.
“Aurora,” Rainbow and Britt said in unison.
“Aurora,” the three of them said.
They continued breathing and humming.
“Dear Britt, what is the name that Spirit is giving you?” Rainbow asked.
Britt knew that she was supposed to receive a name spontaneously, in that moment. But she’d known for years what her name would be when this time came. She exhaled and inhaled, acting as if she was still receiving the name. She rocked back and forth as she’d seen so many others do. Then she let out one big breath and said:
“Angeni.”
If Rainbow or Becky recognized the name from years ago, they didn’t let on.
“Angeni,” Rainbow repeated.
“Angeni,” Rainbow and Becky said in unison.
“Angeni,” the three of them said.
Chapter 20
Sasha
Each morning when Sasha woke up to find herself in Angeni Luna’s house, she was disoriented. What was she still doing here? She’d take in her surroundings, the baby next to her, the forest outside her window. Each morning, she wondered if this would be the day she would finally talk to Angeni about Daphne. But then the day would begin, and there would be new curiosities, new insights into this woman and her strange world, that would pull Sasha’s mind in new directions.
She’d created the Nurture Mother account page on a whim, another way to poke the bear that was Angeni Luna. She figured she could also use this little social experiment in her dissertation, which was taking shape in her head as she immersed herself in Angeni Luna’s cult of intensive mothering.
Constantly sacrificing yourself for your child isn’t showing your child love; it’s showing your child that women’s needs don’t matter.
That had been her first post, paired with a caption explaining how the goal of this account was to free women from the shackles of the pressures and expectations of intensive mothering.
The goal of this page is to assure you that your children can thrive without you completely sacrificing yourself to the cause of motherhood. We believe that self-care IS childcare.
She received a flurry of positive responses and understood more about the dopamine hit Angeni Luna felt on a daily basis.
Here’s to women having full lives. Motherhood is one slice of the pie. There are so many other slices
The fact that there’s no such thing as “intensive fatherhood” tells you all you need to know about what’s behind this mothering-as-everything BS
Trying to be the perfect mom is a futile pursuit. Leads to so many mental breakdowns. We need to embrace good enough
She’d been posting daily since that first post. On the day Angeni posted her tone-deaf response to the Cincinnati school shooting—god, this woman was an idiot—Sasha put up two posts:
You are not a bad mother if you send your children to school. Children need independence and space for growth. So do you.
The answer to gun violence in schools is not morehomeschooling. The answer is more gun control.
The comments rolled in. She began accumulating followers at a faster pace. She had more than ten thousand now. She kept thinking about Daphne, how she would have become one of the Angeni Luna mothers. They would have had sisterly debates about it. Sasha would have given anything to squabble with Daphne again.
She thought of Daphne constantly—upon waking and getting her bearings in the morning, at random moments throughout the day, before falling asleep at night. When Angeni had made chili the other day, just the smell had made Sasha have to excuse herself to cry in her room. All those bowls of chili Daphne had made for Sasha over the years. She’d never properly thanked her sister. She could not stop thinking about this—all the things she’d never get to say.
