The Frozen River

by Ariel Lawhon

Labor may render every woman a novice, but pregnancy renders every woman a child. Scared. Vulnerable. Ill. Exhausted. Frail. A pregnant woman is, in most ways, a helpless woman.

isn’t fair. This is what runs through my mind over and over like a dog chasing its tail. It isn’t fair.

I love that the second-to-last phrase mentioned in her diary is the one she wrote most often, for it exemplifies the last three years of my own life as I have attempted to write her story. I have been at home. Me too, Martha. Me too.