Love Works Like This

from Lauren Slater's Love Works Like This

"According to Susan Maushart, females are a whopping sixteen times more likely to experience psychosis after the birth of a child, and pregnancy for a woman with a history of depression is a known and serious psychiatric risk….It is nearing Christmastime and hundreds of women move through the dusk. I stand on the library steps and watch them, and I feel a new respect. Ninety-four percent of the world’s women bear children, which means they agree, knowingly or not, to navigate the most difficult terrain of the brain. Sometimes I am ashamed of being female, but not today. I like the snow, I like the salt-block sky, I like how we women move, en masse, toward the lighted trees."