La Mama Vida

selections from Brenda Montaño’s Zines with sol

photography by Cate Clother

from La Mama Vida: Re-Membering Motherhood

Mothering is for everyone. Mothering is not for everyone. It is a choice. No one should be limited in their ability to define mothering. Your biological sex does not determine it. Your biological connection to the child, to the living entity, does not determine it. 

Vengo de madera fina

Mi mami Nini had curly, wild hair and her nails were always painted but chipped. Her whole body shook when she laughed. While mi apa was away, working in Chicago or Los Angeles, she, en Mexico, saved enough money and bought a house for her family, an act of disobedience in los ojos machismo. Her first child died when he was six months old and she was only sixteen. His picture still hangs in her home, a black and white image of a little boy wearing a white suit for his baptism. He is like a ghost stuck inside a frame, a smiling spirit.

Mi mama Chayo’s hands are big and strong. Her skin is flawless, as soft to the touch as are the lips of your favorite lover. She’s loved only one man for her entire life, the father of her thirteen children. His absence and abuses never broke her completely; her ability to survive through and above them is the motivation that guides her descendents to love so deeply, even in pain, even in fear.

My grandmothers collectively bore twenty-two pregnancies in their lifetimes. All children were carried in their matriz and passed through their bodies to enter the world in which we live.

In order to survive, they separated their children, some of whom were raised for some time by another family member. Three of their twenty-two children did not live long and were returned back to la tierra from which they came.

I’ve never asked mi amas how this experience was for them, to be separated from their children, to bury their children. Is there a vacant room in their heart-home, with a light still waiting to be turned on? Or, when they buried their seeds, did they love the tree that bloomed from it?

I discovered I was carrying life at the end of November, 2015. Immediately I was astounded by this gift of creation. I felt honored that I, along with my partner, in an act of love, were able to form a living spirit, a floating energetic force that carries our entire ancestral forces.

In tears, I prayed to my alter, to the images of my Mama Nini and mi tia Anadelia, giving them thanks that I was blessed to follow their legacies–ser mama, ser mujer.

Above their photos sits two Mexica gods: Coatlicue y Mictlantecuhtli.

Coatlicue is the mother of the Earth, who gave birth to all celestial elements. And yet in her story her four hundred children decapitated her, then turned on one another; they were thrown into pieces across the sky and earth to become the world as we see and know it now. She represents the devouring mother, in whom the womb and the grave exist. Mictlantecuhtli, god of death, ruler of Mictlan, the deepest layer of the underworld; almost all souls that pass meet him at the end of their journey.

Even in this moment of life creation, 

I was reminded of the inevitability of death. 

Like the fire that destroys in order to regenerate the land,

the two opposing elements are synched with one another.

As I prayed I felt the fear my ancestors must have experienced, the pain 

of the unknown. In this grandiose moment I felt afraid that I would lose 

the life inside of me, lose it like they lost their own.

In what cave would I choose to dwell? 

Would I embrace the darkness or 

would I hide in the shadows, uncertain and disconnected?

And then I remembered their laughter, defiant sounds amidst a silent 

place of chaos. Mi Mama Nini, spirit guiding me;

Mi Mama Chayo, energy felt across 400 miles.

A warm sensation began to consume me. 

It began in my heart, and was pushed by its beats into my bloodstream, 

into my lungs, my liver, my intestines, mi matriz. 

Mi matriz is where he floated, my future son, mi Soliah. 

His existence radiated a light into the darkness.

My womb is a ceremonial site. 

And in this moment, a site of self-determination.

from People Power is My Super Power

Wind

Before you walked

Before you spoke

Before you ate

You were a fish

swimming in your mama’s waters

A guppy

dreaming, eating

kicking in the 

current

growing round

Brown skin

corazon de melon

ready to be born.

Out you came

your head

winning

nostrils

showing

mouth O

en grito

You exhaled

let out the waters

woooooossshhhhh

You inhaled

ssssssssssss

air spiraling

Gifts of the trees

Did you know that?

Your breath is

a gift from

the trees

So swat away

the dirty smoke

made by

too many

cars

airplanes

trains

Tell it ‘go away

leave my favorite gift

alone.’

For now you can speak

You can breathe

Letting out the waters

woooooossshhhhh

Letting in the

ssssssssssss

Earth

Our ancestors danced

Feet bare

On carpets made of sand

To beats made by hand

The earth rose

Summoned by their

movement

Clouds like twisters

Enclosed the circle

Protecting 

the spirits

Who spin

jump

laugh

Rising 

       up up up.

Dirt fills the nostrils

Fills the lungs up

Nourishes

the same as 

Beans, yams, greens

& fruit do.

Today we dance

on concrete floors

in shiny laced sneakers

on heels that hurt

But earth still

hears our song

feels our rhythm

sees our bodies

Remembers us

moving, moving, moving

Always moving to

the beat.

from Birth Workers of Color

from Look Inside the Cages: Stories of Family Separation in American History

When I Heard the Children Cry

I hit the stop button when I heard the 

children cry.

I took a deep breath and contemplated

Whether I should listen to what is called a

news story but what is really

a documentation of inconsolable violence.

I chose not to.

Instead I shut my phone’s screen off, moved

to the dining table and continued having my

breakfast as I watched

my son eat strawberries and yogurt.

What have we become when we have 

the power to choose when we face reality?

I’d like to think this is a coping mechanism

because if we forever faced the horrors this

country has performed and continues to

perform on the bodies of people of color then

we may find ourselves in a state of paralysis.

But whether we look away or look on

sometimes, if seeing is not accompanied with 

an action beyond typing words on a screen

then we are paralyzed regardless.

I found the courage to see the images, hear the

audio and read the words that are currently 

enraging thousands of people across the world.

I shed genuine tears of sadness, of disgust, of

pain like so many of you all did as well.

Many of us hold body memories of forced

separation passed onto us from our ancestors.

Our stomachs turn like our mothers’ did when

their children were torn from their arms on the

auction blocks, forced into “Indian schools”

or left behind in another country because

they wouldn’t be allowed into the United States.

Many of us know this pain well because we

feel it every day with the murders of our

brothers and sons by police and with the 

imprisonment of our mothers and sisters.

Maybe we look away so as to attempt

to not relive these memories.

But memories are forever alive so long as

they are not forgotten.

So even if we look away, the pain of these

realities are inescapable.

We all feel it. Our children feel it.

The trees feel it.

Spirits of the past, present and future feel it.

It manifests into illness—cancer, addiction,

abuse, environmental destruction, violence.

We must prevent this illness from spreading

and heal the gashes that are being forced

open again and again because of ignorance, 

lack of empathy, selfishness and a power

system run on profit and white-hetero 

hegemony.

For many this may begin by not looking

away. Trump’s momentary position in power

has opened the eyes of the colorblind, the 

comfortable middle class liberals and the

melanin-denying assimilationists.

That’s good. It’s a start.

But for the rest, for the wretched of the earth,

these heinous acts are repetitions of a history

not told in schools. And so it is in the present 

moment that we must change how we act,

what we do for work, how we move from day

to day, how we interact with one another, so

that we challenge the common, never ending

narrative of the weeping black/brown child.

Hold our babies close. Smile with them.

Tell them you love them.

Remember their joy is resistance

to what's been prescribed.