In May 2021, I became a mother for the first time. My child had just gotten home from the NICU, wouldn’t latch, wouldn’t rest, and who, in the middle of a COVID summer, kept me inside a bubble of sorrow, worry, sleep deprivation, and depression.

I was also spiraling into vengence. The doctor who had cut me open and delivered my baby had also screamed at me in the NICU. I spent nights looking her up, envisioning vindication, writing, and rewriting letters to George Washington Hospital about my Blackness, womanhood, and anger.

I was also staring out the window, watching people freely walk around, without a wailing infant, riding bikes and scooters, smoking weed, laughing, and sauntering toward Lincoln Park with picnic baskets and puppies. The summer of my fourth trimester was an excruciating journey, a prison that I thought was going to be soft and peaceful.

Hell became my mind.

I began recording videos of my daughter and me, to see myself. I wasn’t looking in the mirror much during this time, but watching myself on the desktop, mothering this tiny human, I started feeling a bit more real. Embodied. Light.

These are ten-second clips of my first 60 days as a mother.