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Dearest daughter,

Guard your uterus in these darkening days. Gather your wits as you go into the belly of the beast. Your lifelong dream of travelling to the South has dovetailed with a moment in history. Find a rally. Don’t get shot.

Memes of fallopian tubes giving fascists the finger won’t cut it in this climate.These arcane anti-abortion laws are not concern for human life: like rape, they are about power and control. This is your coming-of-age story.

The uterus is a miraculous thing. Yes, it is. Pre-packed at birth with two million eggs, you will keep half a million of those. Only 300-500 are released in your lifetime – imagine the mystery and potential. The human egg is the largest cell in the human body – visible to the naked eye it’s the size of a grain of sand. All yours, all yours, all yours. The universe in a grain of sand.

The forward progress of the “Me Too” movement is not completely lost. Behind blinding eyes, Bill Cosby may recall his glory days of pudding pops, The Cosby Show, and penetrating unconscious women. But the monuments to his greatness are gone. And Weinstein is no longer a man; he’s a symbol of a man whose time has passed. The Weinstein era. Trump evades his fate like a slippery eel, but his time will come as well.

So until then, dear daughter, guard your uterus. Gather your wits in the belly of the beast. Find a rally and speak up for your constitutional rights to dignity, privacy, and bodily autonomy. And please, I beg of you, do not get shot. You are the universe in my grain of sand.

Love, Mum

About the Author

deirdre mclaughlin (she/they/we) is a counsellor, sex educator, and phd student in clinical sexology. they live and work within the ancestral, traditional, and unceded territories of the tmixʷ (Syilx Okanagan), snʕickstx tmxʷúlaʔxʷ (Sinixt), and ɁamakɁis (Ktunaxa) peoples, as well as many other diverse Indigenous persons, including the Métis.

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