Marin Smith on Writing “Sphincter Law”

The experience writing “Sphincter Law” was itself a subsequent lesson in sphincter law.

Sphincter law, originally coined by midwife Ina May Gaskin, broadly refers to the idea that the cervix, though not a sphincter in the technical sense, functions like one during childbirth. It must be open for birth to occur, but for various reasons—like stress and adrenaline spikes—it may remain closed.

Similarly, I didn’t want to write about Nutmeg, the pregnant mare who died my first summer on the ranch. But when I started writing, there she was waiting for me, silent in her foggy field. Then she brought a friend along: the equally tragic horse named Buster, who I watched endure a particularly torturous cowboy training session.

For a whole year of working on this essay, I resisted the stories of these two horses. The trouble was, without them, I couldn’t figure out what the essay was trying to say.

So I did what I had to: I trashed the entire thing and started anew, this time inviting the horses in—and wouldn’t you know it? Things started to open up.

The opening scene of “Sphincter Law” sets up the idea that motherhood is like fixing a barbed-wire fence for the first time in your life—you have some tools, some idea of how a fence should work and what it should do, and some model fences around to look at, but you don’t actually have any idea what you’re doing.

There was nothing that could fully prepare me for the dismembering that was motherhood—in my case (and that of many other women) in both the literal and metaphorical sense. In writing this piece, the two horses—specifically the states of their bodies—became connected to my physical experience of birth, and, in a broader sense, to aspects of my experience with the creative act in general.

Writing, too, doesn’t work when you’re squeezing too tight. It’s only when we learn to open—or are cut open—that it can be born.