The Ave Prayer Book for Catholic Mothers
I wrote a prayer for Recovery from Childbirth for Ave Maria Press’ new book The Ave Prayer Book For Catholic Mothers. Use my promo code to get a discount and free shipping. The code is: STARESINIC. You can buy the book here.
My prayer is for recovery from childbirth. I wrote it last November, when I was three months postpartum and in a very dark place. I was struggling with a depression that was entangled with a hatred of my own body as a woman and as a postpartum mother.
But, through the mysterious workings of the Holy Spirit, this prayer happened. And I think it saved me in a lot of ways.
This prayer is about finding the Image Dei and the presence of each member of the Trinity in my body, as a bleeding, lactating, recovering postpartum woman and mother.
When I wrote this, it was the first time in a long time that I was able to speak the truths I seemed to have believed about every other person except myself, even though I desperately wanted to believe: that I — a woman and a mother — am made in God’s image and likeness, that I am created good, and that I am held in existence by Love itself.
This prayer was the start of many gradual movements away from that dark, isolated realm where my beliefs hung about me like distant, out of reach stars that barely illumined my world, and toward a place where I now am able to cradle these truths about myself and about humanity in my hand like a candle, lit by the Maker of Light himself.
I moved from — as I understand St. John Henry Newman to have described it — notional assent to real asset about what it means for a woman and a mother to be made in the image and likeness of God.
And I think this is an assent that God wants for each one of us today, too. Whether you are a mother or not.
I am so grateful to be contributing to this project. To learn more about the many lovely contributers and prayers featured in Ave Maria Press’ The Ave Prayer Book for Catholic Mothers, click here.