a pie for all who mourn today

Today I baked a pie. A pie full of fresh berries. Sweet and tart. Rolling out the dough I felt a sense of purpose. Assembling the crust with my new pie bird gave me such joy. As it baked the house smiled as the glorious smells permeated every corner.

I was going to write about love languages and how pie is one of mine. How I often bake pies for others who need hugs or reassurance or thanks. It is my offering. My tithe. My love.

Then I read the news. I am shattered and sorrowful and scared. Shattered for all women who no longer have privacy in their OB/GYN offices. Sorrowful at the loss of autonomy of all of our bodies. Scared for the girls who do not yet understand the enormity of what was decided by six black robes.

I already had my babies. No politician was in the doctor’s offices forcing their decisions on my birth control or childbirth plans. No religious leader was in the delivery room telling my physicians whether or not I could have an emergency caesarian section. No judge was at the appointment where I scheduled my hysterectomy because of painful fibroids. No phone call was made to my husband to ask for his permission. This was the world I lived in; as of today, this world no longer exists.

I wish I could bake a pie for all who mourn today. As I told a young friend of mine, today we grieve. Later I am going to share this pie with a few dear women friends. We will eat and talk and probably shed a few tears.

But we will go on. We will speak out. We will march. We will vote. We will remain strong.

“After today, young women will come of age with fewer rights than their mothers and grandmothers had. The majority accomplishes that result without so much as considering how women have relied on the right to choose or what it means to take that right away.” ~Justices Breyer, Sotomayor, & Kagan

(I wish pie fixed everything. The world would be a better, kinder, tastier place if it did.)