Introducing...

Musings from a Mama: Essays on Motherhood, Feminism, and Living a Meaningful Life

In 2015 I started the process of trying to get pregnant. I had just wrapped up my doctoral degree in clinical psychology. Having completed this vigorous, *nearly* traumatizing four years of graduate school, a dissertation, one year of a predoctoral internship, and one year of a postdoctoral fellowship- I decided - “Hey now. Rest is overrated. It’s time for the next major life milestone.” “Let’s do this.” I said to my husband (the poor sucker).

Flash forward four years- past month after month filled with disappointment and tears, *all of the clomid*, failed IUI after failed IUI, an IVF cycle with several failed frozen embryo transfers, and a rapidly depleting sense of hope that anyone would ever call me mama- and there I was- holding my very first positive pregnancy test in my bathroom. EASY AS THAT FOLKS.

I gave birth to my son Ezra in January 2020. I always like to say that meeting him was like finally meeting the sun. We had a few short months together in blissful ignorance as to what was around the corner- and then-you guessed it- the panorama hit. I hunkered down with him, and we spent a very weird, brutal, beautiful first year of his life together.

“I want to try again.” I said to my husband in early 2021. “Let’s get our embryos tested and if there are any genetically normal ones, I want to use them.” I felt compelled. Somehow pulled by a force bigger than myself to throw us both back into the hellscape of infertility treatment. The genetic testing came back promptly. “You have three genetically normal embryos. Do you want to know the sex?” The nurse on the phone snapped her gum. As if she delivered this type of potentially life-altering information every single day. (Ok so to be fair, she did. But still.) “Uh-ye-yes!” I closed my eyes. “They’re all girls.”

In March of 2020 (after several heartbreaking losses), I found myself once again holding a positive pregnancy test in my bathroom. “I really feel like I already know her name in my soul” I told my husband. And after one doozy of a high risk pregnancy, on a cold day in December, I gave birth to Marigold. Meeting her was like falling in love with the moon.

Today, my moon child is just over four months old. My sunny son (who is *pure* chaos, by the way- more essays to come on the terror and hilarity of mothering a toddler AKA a tiny overlord) is just over two years old. Our little family (those two hooligans, my husband, and our two dogs) live together in a town outside of Philadelphia. I work- part time as a clinical psychologist at my own group practice. I love my work. Truly I do. I specialize in the treatment of eating disorders and body image- but I see people with all types of struggles. Pre-motherhood, I was what some people might refer to as a workaholic in the realm of eating disorder treatment.I have written countless articles, spoken on podcasts, presented at conferences, been interviewed for magazines and television, and even co-authored a book. I also run a moderately large instagram account that focuses on this arena. It’s called @drcolleenreichmann, and I have so much love in my heart for those who follow along.

The thing is, ever since having Ez, I have experienced this itch. This twinge of desire to branch out and talk about realms outside of the anti-diet space. Specifically, I have an urge to talk about motherhood. This radical, incredibly difficult, intensely gorgeous and hideously messy new identity of mine-mama. Additionally, I have been finding myself feeling as though I am in a sort of toxic relationship with social media. I love writing. I have always been enamored with words, and stringing those words together to create art. But now I feel coxed into creating “snippets” of information via short captions. Similarly, I love nuance, but I feel like word limits on captions don’t allow for it. I love losing myself in books and thought-provoking essays- but notice my attention span for such things becoming shorter and shorter as I ingest more social media. I worked so hard in the past to disengage myself from feeling like a prisoner to numbers- but now feel like follower counts and likes keep me firmly stuck in the prison. I love talking about really juicy stuff- things like motherhood, yes. But also feminism, the pursuit of joy in uncertain times, and living a meaningful life. And yet I feel like the folks on insta are largely disinterested in these topics. I love being able to brainstorm and think out loud, but feel like I am constantly on edge about possibly saying the wrong thing at this point.

And lastly- I have become sort of generally disenchanted with the instagram world- specifically the eating disorder professional instagram world. I have seen a lot of- I’m not sure what else to call it other than “mean spiritedness” when it comes to interacting with one another. And an unbelievable lack of dialectical thinking. Additionally, I have gotten caught up in the gerbil wheel of competition and machine-like content production. It’s left me feeling like I have a deficit in creativity. (I am by no means saying that I will be leaving instagram. But I do want to continue to reevaluate and reflect upon how I can show up there more authentically.)

All of this- my yearning to talk more about motherhood, my struggles with social media, my desire to reintegrate nuance, words, and concentration into what I share- has led me here. I am so excited to share this space with you.

I plan to release an essay every few weeks. I can tell that this is really lighting up my soul because I already have a list of THIRTY-YES THIRTY topics for essays-ranging from “Why Bring Kids Into This Uncertain World?” to “Generational Passing of Body Image Struggles Among Women” to “Why Having Kids Didn’t Heal my Infertility.”

Thank you for being here. Thank you for caring about the written word. Thank you for your interest in these musings from this mama.

Cheers to the journey,

Colleen