In May 2021, I became a mother for the first time. It was very isolating. My child had just gotten home from the NICU, my child wouldn’t latch, my child wouldn’t rest. So, in the middle of a COVID summer, my child and I were seemingly in 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 because I was pissed, then she was pissed, and I hadn’t slept, and she hadn’t slept. Back then, I didn’t see that; I saw red, and thus I spent nights looking up the doctor, 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; it felt a bit like a prison where your insanity was experiencing the same day with no respite or sleep.

Hell became my mind.

On a whim, 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. It helped.

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