This post is not a post about birth. Or maybe it is. I'm not sure what it is, maybe its a poem. Whatever it is, its personal. I figure that in the work that I do, my clients allow me to witness them totally vulnerable. Perhaps it is only fair.
I practiced today. Stretched out on my mat, I felt my jaw release. My hands fell into a natural cupped shape as they relaxed. It began to feel like my hands were pools of heavy liquid. I felt something rising in my chest, a sob or something like that. I took a breath and imagined the liquid was made of light. I don't know how long I laid there with my hands full of light.
Then suddenly, my hands were filled with gentle and honest forgiveness. I desired to give myself the contents of my right hand. I wasn't sure if I should pour it over my head, or try to urge it to seep into my skin. It remained in my hand.
I turned my thought to my left hand, and desired to give it to the other piece of this, and I felt it going out from me. It went.
Driving home along a road I've driven before, I saw the forest that burned the day before I brought my baby here. It burned all the way through our labor. Total destruction. Today it was bathed in light, the formerly charred black posts streaked in white character. Green everywhere, sprinting in comparison with the landscape, eagerly grabbing the light. Dead and alive.
I opened my right hand, and felt that it was still there.
If there are any mamas reading this, (and by mamas I mean persons with identities, with personalities and interests, and first names even) who didn't or aren't experiencing the incredible joy of motherhood without the barbs of private pain walking in step with it--you are enough, and we are many.
