When Silence Nearly Killed Me
Language: en
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…