Teaching My Mother How To Give Birth — Verified & Direct

The teaching is not a lecture. It is a confession. It is a daughter kneeling before her mother and saying: I see the scar. I know why you never smiled during my birth. Let me hold your hand while we remove the stitches they put in your soul.

This couplet is the thesis of the entire collection. A girl is taught about menstruation (bleeding) as a shameful secret. She is taught about the blood of defloration. She is taught about the blood of childbirth. But she is rarely taught about agency —how to push, how to demand pain relief, how to say "no." Teaching My Mother How To Give Birth

The daughter, presumably raised in the West or with access to modern reproductive education, returns to the mother to say: You did it wrong. Not because you are bad, but because you were robbed. Let me teach you that birth is a power, not a punishment. The teaching is not a lecture