Today two topics are weaving in my mind and they make complete sense to me. Tiny threads of synchronicity creating patterns and paths connecting my mind, my soul, my heart to a creative energy, a spiritual force, an ancient wisdom that is so expansive. The challenge is to highlight just one of those, run my finger along its ridge and say, “see, here, this is where I am today and where I am going.”
I have given birth nine times. Each experience was different. Hospital births, home births, medicated, non-medicated. Birthing profoundly changes a woman. I am not speaking about being a mother but just the act of giving birth, the labor, the transition, pushing, the entire experience becomes part of our language and is used a metaphors in other parts of our life. I think that is why traumatic birth experiences really can cause such an imbalance in a woman’s spirit.
My birth experiences weren’t traumatic but there was a sense of frustration with them. In various degrees and for various reasons, each birth was conducted, directed by someone other than me. My choices of delivery options were shaped externally not internally.
Until the last one. My ninth. I cannot express how grateful I am for the obstetricians I allowed into that experience. They let me guide the pregnancy, the labor and delivery. They trusted my wisdom and taught me to trust myself as well.
That labor was not classic, not textbook and any other doctor would probably have intervened. My contractions were calm, not intense and didn’t last long at all and never became more frequent than every five minutes. My request for an epidural when I felt I needed it, which was my plan all along, was honored without hesitation or trying to convince me to wait. I clearly knew when my body had turned the corner and delivery was growing imminent and when I communicated that there wasn’t a hustle and bustle but a peaceful transition of the room, the team. It was calm, it was quiet, it was relaxed. Four pushes later, my ninth child was born.
I don’t think I realized the importance of that experience until today, just now, as I am writing these post. I was allowed to trust myself.
I can trust myself.
I need this realization today, in this moment, in the days and weeks that are ahead of me because I am giving birth again.
That’s the metaphor. There can be no other. It came to me this morning as I started re-reading The Dance of the Dissident Daughter. At the beginning it is full of the birthing language … conceiving one’s self, pregnant with new consciousness, hard labor followed, stalled labor, feeling like a newborn upside down and slapped.
I sat and meditated on the few pages I read this morning, I realized that I am giving birth to myself … again. I think I’ve done this before. But I am afraid that newborn died from malnutrition and neglect. I didn’t know how to nourish and nurture and protect her. At least I didn’t think I did. I didn’t trust that I did.
But now I do. I know and I trust myself.
It is going to look a lot like I am stopping up my ears and not listening to conventional wisdom, to how things are supposed to go, what progression should be happening, what markers to look for. It’s going to look like that because that is exactly what I am going to do.
I am going to trust myself. I can do this.
The first thing that I know to do … breathe. Breathe deeply and know that I do not have to rush this process. No pitocin for me, thank you very much. We will let this happen naturally and as it should. There is only one thing I am focused on … bringing my life into this world. I am not trying to do this for anyone else but me. So I am going to listen to my heart, my wisdom.
Well, like I said, there are two themes. That is one of them … the other will just have to wait until another day.
Grace and Peace, y’all!
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