What's up?

Cartoon by poorlydrawnlines.com

Since finding out that I'm pregnant I have:

• Joined a political party (Liberalerna)
• As part of my husband and my preparations to move abroad, interviewed a friend about how it is to live in Amsterdam. 
• Started working actively to get labour union representation at my work.
• Started doing weightlifting regularly at a gym.
• Intensified my studies in leadership and applied them in my work.

It's almost as if I've gotten a huge drive to prove to myself and others that I am more then just a baby carrier. Not that the world outside my closest friends and family have noticed. The first questions to me are "How many weeks has it been?" or "Aren't you excited about a new tiny person coming in to your daily life?!" My response is "Fourth month and no not really, it's something that going to happen in the future and I'm excited about things I'm doing right now". 

Who counts in weeks in their daily life anyway? What people want to actually know is if you've stopped puking and if it's ok for them to comment about the size of the belly or not.

I am seeing many parallels of my pregnancy to how it was to move to a new country as a hidden immigrant. (For those who don't know what a hidden immigrant is, you can find it here) I see the constant social insecurity that arises when I respond in a non-typical way to standard questions and I recognise my own frustration and fear in not being able to show who I really am because of the social construct of what is expected of me.

Facing these issues is something I haven't needed to do for a while but it does help that I've done it before. The added benefit of knowing what worked and what didn't makes groping around in this new set of social constructs more methodical and hopefully less painful for both parties.

I want to finish off with a sculpture that I feel speaks strongly to me. Bruno's own interpretation is that the statue represents that every traveller leaves behind a part of themselves when they leave home. 

For me I see it as a reminder that we never see more than a portion of each person we meet. There is so much more to a person, some of which we will never be able to comprehend. Being aware that I do not have the whole picture is a great reminder to not jump to conclusions, and actually listen to what the person is saying.

Sculpture by Bruno Catalano