When Silence Nearly Killed Me

Summary

My mother has always been an expert at speaking on my behalf.

Seven days after I gave birth, the obstetrician asked me how I was sleeping at night.

Before I could even part my lips, my mother stepped forward, her voice bright and dismissive.

"Oh, she sleeps like a log. The baby cries his lungs out and she doesn’t even budge."

Except that wasn’t true. I wasn't sleeping through it.

Once—just once—I had been a single minute slow to get out of bed. My mother had pulled up a chair by my mattress and berated me until the early hours of the morning, asking how someone like me could ever call…