“Breathe-two-three! Breathe-two-three! Breathe-two-three!”
The unified voices of the midwives filled my otherwise silent bedroom as they hovered over his tiny, still, blue body. My relief after nearly forty-one hours of labor was short-lived, me having not even taken a breath before the realization that he had not either. As resuscitation efforts continued, his soul hovered somewhere nearby, a decision to be made.
Most of our days are spent this side of the veil. Most of our days we live safely and unchallenged, blissfully ignorant within the confines of our comfort zones. We think that our bodies are substantial, the ground beneath our feet can be relied upon, and that time ticks on as expected. If they exist at all, we think that birth, death, divinity, and eternity are all very, very far away.
And then there are those days. They’re few and far between, and for that I think I want to say thank goodness. Because they’re challenging even for us, the seekers. The ones that wake us, shake us, and shatter us. The ones that remind. They’re the ones that stretch and twist our perceptions of reality. The ones that bring our long-held and deep-seated beliefs into question. The ones that bust open our paradigms and leave us inquiring suspiciously about the very ground we’ve stood on all of this time.
This was one of those days.
It was a birthday.
The birth of a child, yes. The birth of a mother, a father, a family.
It was a death day.
The death of a maiden. And with her, the death of her beliefs about what she was capable of, what she was meant to do, and about how she defined herself in this world. And the tricky part is, that - no matter the preparation, no matter the seeming readiness for change - these don’t always die easily, they don’t always go with grace. Not for me, at least. I’ve been stubborn for many lifetimes.
So what does it mean to surrender? What does it mean to trust? To drop the expectations, to drop the desperation for control? What does it mean to soften? And what does it mean to forgive? What does it mean to become a mother?
Late in the night, more than 12 hours since the start of my contractions, in the darkness of my bedroom, cuddled deep into a nest of blankets with my lover, I swam out through the stars to meet him. I could see him, the boy, our child. He was in the arms of Grandpa Joe. Nearby stood both my maternal and paternal grandmothers. Ram Dass was there. And her – the mother. I’d spend the entire night trying to prove to her that it was time, that I was ready to receive him.
“Give me the child,” I’d pleaded. “Let me deliver him earthside. It’s time.” I waited expectantly for her blessing.
She was beautiful, the mother, yet frightening. Her pink robes flowed to the ground all around her. Her braids were long and mysterious-seeming, as though she held secrets within her intertwining locks. Her eyes were fierce, piercing, and kind. She shook her head, making sure Grandpa Joe had seen that the answer was no, it was not yet time to hand him over. Her smile almost seemed to mock me.
“You’re not ready,” she’d said.
“Of course I am,” I’d argued.
Was I, though, I’d asked myself. Or was I asking her to pity me and end my pain? To let this labor be over?
Her face was soft and compassionate, but she was stern and she didn’t budge. “Sweetheart, what about these? There isn’t room for these around him.”
In an instant, I saw before me all that had to go.
They were long held beliefs and stories, still gripping desperately in the deepest parts of my womb. Beliefs and stories that I knew she would not allow to remain with the next generation. It was time to clear the space. We had forever, she explained, and he wasn’t coming with me until the work was done.
I started by looking at my feelings of unworthiness, my undeservingness to be a mother. The belief that I’d be poison to such a pure, sweet being. The belief that I’d fuck him up, still clinging like a parasite, hiding in the depths.
I then looked at the voice in my head that told me I wasn’t ready. That insisted it was too soon, that I hadn’t done enough. It was sure that he’d be better off with someone else.
I saw clearly that I still carried heavy shame about both my physical body and the sexuality inherent within it. I saw how I continued, embarrassed, to hide away the pieces of humanity that I had been taught were its imperfections.
I recognized that I was still struggling to set boundaries. I was still much of a people pleaser; I feared upsetting others. I feared being misunderstood. All of this led me perpetually into self-abandonment.
She showed me that at times, I continued to disconnect from much of my intuition, and I had trouble trusting it and acting upon it in the times it did come through clearly.
And what was this? All of a sudden, and for perhaps the first time in my life, I was doubting my physical body, doubting my physical ability to continue on in this labor. What if I wasn’t strong enough? What if I can’t do it? What if I can’t go on?
Fuck. Hadn’t I burned much of this on my fire altar during my first trimester? I’m always (and I’m also never) surprised by the repeating lessons. By the layers, the fractals, the seeming never-endingness of it all.
But these are things I know: The only way out is through (again), and lessons repeat until we learn them.
The maiden was already dying, perhaps she was already dead. There would be no going back the way I came. Isn’t that the hero's journey?
And so, together with the help of the mother I was becoming, one at a time, with each contraction of the womb, we released. With each contraction, as I writhed, moaned, there became a literal wringing out of what my body could not carry through this initiation, of what maiden must leave behind to become mother. Like the goddess Inanna, I traveled through the underworld, leaving behind a garment at each gate. Only in bare naked, raw, vulnerability would my true power be revealed. Only empty handed, could I reach out for the child.
And so I inquired: What would it be like to feel worthy? To feel deserving of the pure, innocent love of a child? I’d have to let go of my self-condemnation, I’d have to be self-compassionate and easily self-forgiving. It was time to cut us free, myself and the seven generations, free from the chains of self-proclaimed guilt and self-inflicted punishment. I breathed out as my body squeezed.
What would it be like to believe that I’m ready, that I’m prepared - for this or for anything? That I truly could meet any challenge, that I could serve, that I could shine, that I could succeed, not as some future, cleaner-cut and more spiritually toned version of myself that of course, didn’t exist and I would never become, but now? What if I was always ready now for exactly what was here?
What would it be like to own my own body? To know confidently and exactly its likes and dislikes, its needs, its wants, and its aversions? What would it be like to believe it was perfect and knowledgeable, and to treat it as such in every moment? What would it be like to share that knowledge and that growing curiosity as it fluidly changed and expanded with my humble and openhearted partner? To clearly communicate, to ask, and to be willing to both give and receive with a fully embodied yes?
What would it be like to speak my truth? Confidently, assuredly. Trusting in my own intentions so deeply that it never mattered how I was received, perceived? What would it be like to let myself be misunderstood? To give others the empowerment to have and to process their own beliefs and reactions to me as me, as all of me? To be firm. To be knowing. To be fierce, piercing, and kind?
What would it be like to listen? To listen to the deepest intuitive knowing of my body and spirit. How can I always be quiet enough to hear that still, small voice? And then what would it be like to trust it, to heed it? To act upon it in every moment? To be the embodiment of spirit moving through this worldly body, gracefully guided by highest self?
And lastly, but certainly not leastly, I recognized this truth. The truth that no, strength as I knew it, in fact, would not get me through this labor. Because what if strength wasn’t force, wasn’t grit? Wasn’t flexing and pushing and demonstrating our physical power? What if strength had nothing to do with drive, determination, or desire to prove oneself? What if strength was buried deep within the letting go? What if it was to be found only within the softening? The trusting, the surrendering? What if strength was so, so gentle? As Huxley suggested, what if it was only difficult because a little girl was trying too damn hard?
So this is what it takes to become a mother: It’s a letting go of every one of our self-imposed and childish limitations. It’s a somewhat painful, albeit cathartic release of self-ignorance, self-judgment, and self-hatred. It’s an ownership of worthiness, an allowance of our bodies, our emotions, our opinions, our needs, our desires, our boundaries, our families to take up some space, as much damn space as we need. It’s about allowing our voice to be heard. It’s about knowing ourselves, loving ourselves, trusting ourselves, and letting others do that, too. Asking others to do that, too. It’s a stepping into our power in an entirely new, uninhibited, and unedited way. It’s a power that needn’t be demonstrated over anyone or anything, but rather a powerful softening into our own already-and-ever-present truth: that we are mother.
The contractions wore on through the night. The harder I gripped, the harder they squeezed. “Easy, Jen, easy,” I told myself as I continued to attempt to let it all happen. Nothing to control, nothing to force. Nothing to do, really, at all. Soften, open. Patiently. The morning did come, as it always does eventually, received with equal parts gratitude and surprise. With it arrived the first of what would be four midwives to usher in him.
It was hours (decades? milenia?) later, after another full day of labor - in the bathtub-turned-birth pool, in the garden, in the shower - then back in that same bedroom, that we waited anxiously to meet him. His father, having been rushed out of the catching position post-surprise-meconium-and-blood-eruption, sat next to me on the bed, both of our hands resting upon his unmoving, dusky gray chest, our voices calling out his name.
“Jonah. Jonah, my love! We’re here; we’re with you.”
The midwives, our shamans, continued their multidimensional efforts to help him, to assist his infinite soul in entering the tiny, perfect body before us. Time waited with us.
“Breathe-two-three! Breathe-two-three! Breathe-two-three!”
And then, finally, his eyes fluttered open as he coughed, choked, gasped for air. His decision had been made, and Grandpa Joe, under the direction of the mother, lovingly placed him in our hands. Whether they were steady or shaking didn’t matter. He was coming. He, after all, had a contract to fulfill, and it started here, now, with us.
It was in that moment, that of his first breath, as I heard my partner describe it later, that we were done entertaining the idea that there isn’t a god. Call it what you like, but we were both done, in that instant, entertaining the idea that there wasn’t something bigger, something organized, something, well, divine, conducting the symphony that is life on this planet, life as we know it. As we pressed our hands together in abhayamudra, the yogic symbol of pushing fear away, we were done entertaining the idea that our practices didn’t hold power. And we were done entertaining the idea that love in its infinite forms wouldn't always win. On this birthanddeathday that form manifested as a baby boy being born at home in his bed, the same bed within which he and his mama would learn to breastfeed over the coming weeks, the same bed within which he’d cosleep with his three loving dogs and his two tired parents who worshipped him, who would breathe in his scent like prana to power them through on those long sleepless nights, the same bed, now soaking in a mother’s blood, that would soak in a new family’s spills of sweat, tears, and breastmilk, as they learned, breath after breath and day after day, that love always wins when you choose it.
And as I sit here now, typing slowly with one hand as he sleeps on my chest, I know there is so much more to learn. For each little breath I feel on my neck, never guaranteed, teaches me heartbreaking presence. It reminds me how in every moment he is the youngest and smallest he’ll ever be, and then that moment slips away, onto the next, and onto the next. Each breath its own complete birth and death. Each soft, small, baby exhale reminding me of the fleeting, ephemerality of it all. Don’t blink, Jen. Don’t wander.
His cry, never to be taken for granted, teaches me patience. Because maybe we can’t fix every confusion and discomfort for our child, and perhaps we’re not supposed to. But how much wide open space can we hold for a little being, learning to navigate his own unique experience in a big new world? How gently can we hold him? And can we bathe ourselves in forgiveness along the way?
These are the questions I ponder as his deep blue, expansive eyes lock on mine. These are the questions I’ll ask and the answers I’ll fumble with as I begin the curriculum of my life’s greatest teacher: my new, perfect, delicious smelling baby son, Jonah Love.
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