Category: Kill The Patriarchy

Postpartum

Interlude:

This piece is about what happens after birth—the unraveling, the rebuilding, and the silence that surrounds it. It’s not a celebration. It’s a confrontation. “Postpartum” is the first in a series that names the struggle, honors the survival, and refuses to stay quiet.

So this is postpartum.

I didn’t expect it to feel like this.

I used to think it was exaggerated, just something women said to fill the silence.

But then I met it face-to-face.

And here I am.

The thoughts came in floods.

Not gentle waves, riptides.

Anxiety, I didn’t know I’d been carrying for years, suddenly had a name.

I thought everyone’s mind raced like mine.

I thought talking to yourself was just how people processed life.

Turns out, I was already surviving something I hadn’t yet defined.

I didn’t expect to be left when my son was six months old.

Didn’t expect his father to choose selfishness over family.

Didn’t know I was never part of his definition of “us.”

He was faking it.

And I was believing it.

I didn’t think betrayal would be part of my postpartum vocabulary.

But here we are.

I didn’t expect to still be in postpartum,

while raising someone who mirrored the man I was learning to unlove.

My son carries his father’s face,

with a flicker of mine tangled in the corners.

It’s a strange inheritance.

I heard the harshest words of my life

from the man I kept choosing,

even after he stopped choosing me.

And I was supposed to swallow them.

But how do you digest lies

When you’re trying to build a life rooted in truth?

I didn’t expect to carry most of the weight—

while promises dissolved into absence.

Fatherhood, it seems, was optional for him.

For me, it was never a choice. It was a vow.

Postpartum.

Is this something I was just supposed to know how to survive?

It’s chaotic. It’s loud.

Questions pile up like laundry I never asked for.

I’m overwhelmed.

but is it hormones?

Is it grief?

Is it just life showing up without warning?

I didn’t expect to lose people who once swore they’d never leave.

“Best friends” vanished.

Support systems crumbled.

The curtain dropped, and behind it,

I saw the truth:

I can’t depend on the same people who rely on me.

Not when I need them most.

What is a best friend when you’re postpartum?

When you’re not your most polished self?

When you need someone to just sit beside you,

without needing a reason?

I’ve asked for that kind of presence.

Unconventional, quiet, real.

But they don’t show up.

Not like I did.

And I don’t know why.

Maybe they don’t either.

Maybe silence is their only language.

Is it postpartum depression?

No.

This ache predates motherhood.

It’s the slow realization that some relationships

are built on expiration dates.

Outside of family,

Impermanence is the only promise I’ve ever seen kept.

I grew up knowing one thing for sure:

Family is what remains when everything else falls away.

But now, people want to pin my pain on postpartum.

They offer commentary like it’s comfort:

“Families look different these days.”

“Conventional love is outdated.”

“You’re strong—you can raise him on your own.”

They don’t get it.

I didn’t bring my son into this world for a situationship.

I wanted permanence.

Postpartum doesn’t excuse betrayal.

I didn’t expect to carry the full weight of shaping his future alone.

But I refuse to be a temporary figure in his life—

not when I’ve lived through too many of those myself.

Flashbacks.

Faces that faded.

Promises that dissolved.

I see the facade now.

I’m too blunt, too real, too rooted for people who only show up when it’s easy.

They can’t take me.

And I’ve stopped trying to be taken.

Turns out, it’s not postpartum at all.

It’s ADHD. Maybe bipolar.

Maybe just me—finally learning the language of my own mind.

I’m the one who’s going to know.

I’m the one who’s going to name it.

I’ve always seen the world in systems.

Now I understand why I’ve always felt like the outcast.

Postpartum?

My ass.

That label was never big enough to hold me.

I never knew my racing thoughts were tied to anxiety.

Never realized that what I called “normal” was actually depression,

threaded through years of my life like an invisible inheritance.

My mood swings?

They’re not character flaws.

They’re coded in my lineage.

And what is me—is not to blame.

I’ve always carried expectations this world doesn’t know how to hold.

They’ve called them unrealistic.

But I know how to reshape them,

How to bend perspective without breaking my truth

especially for the family I’m building.

The realization shook me.

Grief came in waves.

But this isn’t just postpartum.

This isn’t just a season.

These aren’t new wounds

They’re old truths finally being named.

And now, I know.

The blame was never mine.

The knowing is.

Postpartum is not.

But I empathize with the woman with postpartum, the one that people forget.

Have you heard 4Da Streetz by Alissa Fere? Watch the lyric video below.

No Egos Spared: A Woman’s Voice in the Echo Chamber

No Egos Spared marks a turning point in my writing—a conscious shift toward clarity without sacrificing depth. Through layered storytelling and honest critique, I examine the raw fault lines of creative community, betrayal, and resilience. This piece doesn’t just tell—it demands attention, challenging conventions with a style shaped by experience and sharpened by purpose.

I let him see the blueprint to my dreams—unrolled it in front of him like sacred scripture. I thought we were building together. But he used the plans to wall me in. Am I doing it because I’m a Gemini? Is it Fere’ that you want to see?

In the rooms where sound is supposed to matter—studios, stages, writing circles—my voice was often the most inconvenient thing in the mix. Not because it lacked strength. But it wasn’t his, and I asked too many questions. I needed too much help. God forbid him doing anything beneath him. He claims that he’s above it.

We had history. The kind that blurs boundaries between romance and artistic kinship. I believed that intimacy and creativity could co-exist. That if I bared my struggles and ambitions, he’d respond with support—not possession.

But some men in this industry respond to uncertainty not with curiosity, but control. When they can’t predict me, they try to contain me. When they can’t mold my message, they challenge my value. My art becomes a threat, not because it’s loud, but because it’s mine.

His jealousy wasn’t thunderous—it was tactical. It crept in through gossip, manipulation, and the halting of collaborations. He began favor-banking our friendship, stacking emotional IOUs like poker chips because he’s his mother’s child. Every compliment came with a receipt. Every gesture, priced. I didn’t realize our connection had turned transactional until I stopped paying—and the interest he’d quietly collected came due. “I already do too much for you, Taylor.” Well, excuse me if you chose to buy my son cookies for Christmas last year. I didn’t ask.

His whispers traveled farther than my melodies. A man with too much time and too little grace, spinning tales like rollers in a salon chair—comparing, competing, resentful of what he couldn’t imitate. Telling tales to uncommon realism as if he knew realism at all. He’s stuck in a realm believing that becoming a leader will give him everything his yearning heart desires. But all he’s doing is waiting for his mommy’s approval.

As women, we are trained in the choreography of making ourselves digestible—smiling through dismissiveness, softening brilliance to seem less threatening, praising fragile egos while our confidence starves. Mother fucker, I was quiet enough listening to your whining.

But I’m done tiptoeing.

This isn’t an indictment. I’m not here to name or shame. This is an elegy for the kind of bond I thought we had—a goodbye to the version of friendship where love came without listening. Laughter in between the smoke now is just leftover ashes in my 2002 Chevy Malibu.

When I create, it’s not for approval. It’s survival. It’s reclamation. It’s medicine.

So yes—these words are intentional. These metaphors are machetes, clearing space for my expression. Consider this not an apology, but a declaration:

He thought blocking my art would trap me in his silence. But silence is a room—I’ve kicked down the door.

I will not be silenced.

I will not dilute my art for the comfort of any man, mentor, or self-proclaimed “best friend” who flinches at my full volume. 

My story will be told—with fire, with elegance, and without permission. I’ll leak it.

Words crafted in my declaration. I will make sure you drown in Fere’s abbess. Now, who really wants to play chess with the queen of Doc’s Castle?

Have you heard 4Da Streetz by Alissa Fere? Watch the lyric video below.