Today this site is officially in the public domain and with it the story of the most harrowing events in my personal life: the cowardice, the repeat abortions, the moral confusion, the duplicity, the addiction, the self-mutilation, the relentless need to cloak myself in someone else’s power. What does this mean, I’m not sure yet. That I call Impossible Motherhood a testimony rather than a memoir might be part of the answer. I position myself in the Latin American tradition of testimonio and feminist methodology, attempting to enact new forms of agency and solidarity and alleviating the shame inflicted by trauma. In a way, I have embarked on a journey to the past-no matter the disturbance of memory or how impossible the task- that has transformed my identity. As speaker of testimony, I wish to stand as representative of women who have remained silent about the power struggles of their reproductive bodies, specifically of those whose bodies have acted out the emotional life and dramas of their families and countries. I wish to distance myself from the at times hyper individualistic mode of memoir writing, though I will inevitably remain forever such a writer. The story begins with a double bind: I’m fated to be misunderstood and my body will never forget the life interrupted that shall die with it. You will never understand. I will never forget. Yet here we are. You and I.“No one bears witness for the witness” wrote Paul Celan. Where can we look for the witness for whom there is no witness? I’m hoping she is you.

www.traumaweb.org/content.asp?PageId=31

www.centropr.org/

www.abortionconversation.com/

www.apatraumadivision.org/index.php

www.abuelas.org.ar/

Modern American Memoirs

The History of Childhood (The Master Work)

www.sigi.org/

http://www.nalac.org

www.latinainstitute.org/