Alumnx Feature | Kelly Hedglin Bowen
I began March 2020 iced-in and off-grid in residency at The Vermont Studio Center. A late afternoon Sunday, I’d arrived to snow-packed sidewalks framing a frozen Gihon River. I skidded into VSC a harried mess. My canvas bags stuffed with wool and fleece and years worth of unwritten essays.
My acceptance for a VSC residency was a shock. I had applied way back when sending off my manuscript pages; when pushing send feels like pressing delete. I never actually expect to hear from the residency, agent, or publisher. But, like a rapid-fire literary weapon, my pages are scattershot towards each submission deadline. The invitation came in January amid a pile of bills, and against all fiscal judgment, I’d accepted.
Residency is a magical place where creatives are given the luxury of time to do what they often cannot—create. For a working mom, residency means being responsible for no one except myself. Imagine waking up, not from the pattering paws of the Plotthounds whining to go outside or from the disgruntled pleas of a middle-schooler whining to stay home, but from the simple muscular sensation of your eyelids opening. When was the last time I started my day in tune with my natural rhythm?
For two glorious weeks, I didn’t argue with a soul. I wasn’t left a filthy laundry pile or a sink full of dishes. I didn’t pay a bill (okay, I paid all the bills & sorted the taxes before I left) or waste my time waiting for the repairman. And the best thing of all about residency is they feed you. No trips to grocery or hours in the kitchen serving a meal to be scoffed at by unsatisfied diners. Three glorious meals a day. Some a little too veggie for my taste, but I am not complaining. I ate my bowl of farrow as if every dry grain was a savory scallop. Because someone was cooking, and it wasn’t me.
Take a sleepy mill town hard hit by progress and infuse what remains with artistic vision. A burned-out church, a broken-down mill, dilapidated Victorians, and an empty barn—each reclaimed property, deconstructed and repurposed with white-washed walls into blank slates—this is the Vermont Studio Center.
Read the essay: https://vermontstudiocenter.org/alumni-features/kelly-hedglin-bowen
Infertility Killed My Sex Life
On those precious days when I was ovulating, our connection felt impossible. We were now lab partners, and our once-carefree sex life became a chore.
By Kelly Hedglin Bowen
Looking back, the evidence was staring me in the face. I had written about every gritty detail of my infertility experience in my memoir—the hormonal roller coaster, numerous exams and failed conceptions. But I’d missed the painful truth. With each injection and vaginal probe, a bit of my sexuality had withered. In our effort to conceive a child, my husband and I had inadvertently killed our sex life.
I’ll admit, I was never a sexually liberated siren. Years of Irish Catholic guilt tamped down my open expression of sexuality. I wasn’t exactly nunnery material, but I considered myself a “good girl.” I was taught that intercourse should happen only between a husband and wife, and for one purpose—conception. All notion of pleasure was absent from the conversation. When I finally had sex at age 18, my mother’s sarcastic voice echoed in my head: “Don’t go out and procreate and come home.” I knew she’d never kick me out, but I heeded her warning. My sexual expression focused on preserving my reputation and not getting pregnant.
When I married and decided to start a family at 37, I never questioned my ability to conceive. I assumed that genetics mattered; that coming from a fertile lineage guaranteed me the same fresh follicles as my female relatives.
Trying to conceive began innocently enough. My husband Harry and I had frequent, unprotected sex all over the house: in the kitchen or the shower—it didn’t matter. For three days a month, I viewed it as a sporting event: get the eight-ball in the pocket, puck in the net, ball in the basket. We behaved like jocks. Our sweaty physical sex was laced with hope and peppered with aggression.
Read the essay: https://www.healthywomen.org/real-women-real-stories/infertility-killed-my-sex-life
http://www.creativenonfiction.org/authors/kelly-hedglin-bowen
The Day I Took My Frozen Embryo for a Road Trip
From the smear campaign against Planned Parenthood to the recent uproar about Sofia Vergara, everyone seems to be talking about the fate of human embryos. This conversation is no longer a private one between a woman and her doctor it’s now in the legal domain of lawyers and courtrooms. Meanwhile, with the help of Photoshop, conservative Catholics and Christians have been busy rebranding the visual image of conception. We no longer think of embryos as just a cluster of cells that might (fingers crossed!) become a baby; we’re being conditioned to think of them as a fully formed human.
Should we take it as a matter of faith that an embryo is truly a person?
Read the essay: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/kelly-hedglin-bowen/the-day-i-took-my-frozen-embryo-for-a-road-trip_b_8134924.html
When Pussies Talk Back
Who knew that the most inflammatory picture on social media would be the two brave souls dressed in florescent vagina costumes?
On inauguration weekend, while Eve Ensler, the creator of Vagina Monologues, was running a piece in The Guardian about how Donald Trump was giving women flashbacks and nightmares, I was exiting Grand Central into the mass of humanity that had gathered for the Women’s March. In the Saturday morning sunlight, we stopped in our collective tracks at the glowing sight of two life-sized vaginas, waving to us from the curb. The stuffed anatomy became an instant hit with the crowd and unleashed laughter from me that had been stifled inside for months.
Read the essay: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/when-pussies-talk-back_us_588cfebfe4b06364bb1e265f
https://www.amazon.com/Pitkin-Review-Spring-2014/dp/149920169
REVIEW ~
The Art of Waiting by Belle Boggs is an inquiry into fertility and motherhood. After years of trying to conceive without success, Boggs makes the difficult and expensive decision to utilize ART—assisted reproductive technology. As she takes this drastic step toward biological motherhood, she explores every option and decision.
Throughout the text, I longed to hear Belle’s emotional perspective, but her story targets the intellect. She inundates us with facts, building a strong argument. When she skillfully divulges a few personal paragraphs, we unwittingly fill in her details. We feel we know her pain, her longing, and her waiting. But we don’t. Open discussions about fertility are risky and rare. Readers unfamiliar with IVF may be satisfied with the scant personal details, but those of us who have lived through similar years will recognize the veil of distance.
Read the review: http://fictionadvocate.com/2016/10/05/the-art-of-waiting-by-belle-boggs/