The baby is only part of the birth. There's another birth that almost nobody talks about. The PLACENTA. For 9 months, your body grows an entirely new organ, an organ with one job keeping your baby alive. It delivers oxygen, nutrients, hormones, filters waste and connects two completely different circulatory systems without ever mixing your blood. Then, minutes after your baby is born that organ detaches from the wall of your uterus, and when it does, it leaves behind a wound roughly the size of a dinner plate. About 10 cm across, that is why you bleed after birth, because your body is healing a wound. At the same time, your uterus, which stretched enough to hold an entire baby, is working around the clock to shrink back down to its pre pregnancy size. Those after pains you're feeling those contractions, they are your uterus, squeezing itself smaller while compressing hundreds of open blood vessels to stop the bleeding. Now imagine this. If you had a wound that size anywhere else, on your body, on your arm, on your leg, your back, would anyone expect you to be back at work in a week? Would anyone expect you you to entertain visitors? Cook meals, carry a baby day and night smile for photos and get your body back, of course not. You'd probably be in the hospital on a drip. People would tell you to rest up. They'd expect weeks of recovery, yet when that exact wound is hidden inside your body, the world acts as though you should be back to normal almost immediately. 6 weeks later, you go for your postpartum, check up. Many women think it's a milestone that says, wow, you've recovered. It isn't. It's simply checking whether the bleeding has stopped, whether the placental wound has healed and whether your uterus is recovering as expected. It is not a certificate that says your body, brain, hormones, identity or even nervous system have all returned to normal. So if you've ever been wondering, why haven't I bounced back yet? Here's the better question why were you ever expected to bounce back from something this enormous in the first place? Your body is recovering from one of the most extraordinary healing processes a human being can experience. Give yourself some time and space to recover.
New York City Mayor Mamdani just gave one of the most amazing speeches you will ever hear:
"We are told that America is exceptional because we are richer, stronger, and more powerful than everyone else.
"The truth, my friends, is that America is exceptional because here, nothing is fixed into place. The frontier may be closed. We may have walked on the moon. But the work of fulfilling the values first enshrined in the Declaration of Independence — that work endures, and it belongs to us all.
"It belongs, too, to our newest Americans: those standing here with me today, all of whom were recently naturalized. Nearly a decade ago, I, too, felt what you feel: the joy of no longer being just a New Yorker, but an American, too.
"You each hold a special power: the power to determine what America means.
"The powerful have always known their answer. America, in their view, is an arena of supremacy where only a select few are allowed freedom; where not all are created equal. America, if you ask them, becomes less the more people it welcomes. America, they will tell you, belongs only to those with the right accent or the right shade of skin. The rest of us, they insist, should be grateful for merely being allowed to visit.
"How small they are. How weak. How unoriginal.
"At every moment in our past, those who led through exclusion and isolation have tried to win power and enrich themselves by turning us against one another. Division is the oldest trick in politics — and the cheapest.
"But time and again, including 250 years ago, those forces of division have been vanquished by the forces of progress."
I don’t care if someone works in an office, a warehouse, a restaurant, or cleans floors. If you give 40 hours of your life every week, you should be able to pay rent, buy groceries, cover your bills, and still have enough left to breathe a little. That shouldn’t be some dream. It should be normal. The fact that so many people work full-time and still live stressed, behind, and one emergency away from disaster tells you this system is failing the people who keep it running.
Women are afraid men will:
A. Drug them
B. Beat them
C. Rape them
D. Kill them
E. All of the above
Men are afraid women will:
A. Laugh at them
B. Reject them
C. Use them for a free meal
and this is why I realize it’s so hard for a lot of women to “wake up” to our reality in this world because with that realization comes a shit ton of grief once your eyes are open it’s clear to see everywhere in every man even the ones that seem to love you
I'm never getting over the fact that romance as a genre, as the HIGHEST selling genre, exists largely because straight women fantasize about being loved and treated kindly by men and men constantly make fun of this because they think it's just that unrealistic that they could cherish women and that women are stupid in the first place for wanting such an impossible thing
My fourth album, The Great Divide, is yours to listen to. It is hard to even begin to describe what these last few years making this album has felt like. The collision of fear and pressure and joy and luck and total love has left me wordless, and if you know me personally, I hardly ever shut my mouth. I spent many months walking forward in complete darkness, hands out in front of me, desperate to touch something familiar that would show me I was near the light switch again. As lonely as it felt, and as unfamiliar as the world seemed in those moments, I was never really alone. I don’t think any of us ever truly are. I was guided through the wilderness by calm voices, by the stillness of my home state, by the total commitment of my band, producers, and team, by the steady and loving touch of my wife and family, and of course, by the constant and enduring encouragement of you all, who I am so lucky to have as fans. I am very proud of what we are doing together and I hope we can live this dream for a long long time
https://t.co/stSzorkE4f