“I can’t! I’m not strong enough, I’m not powerful enough, I can’t, I’m not good enough.
I want to give up!
I can’t do this anymore!”
This is the record the echoed through my mind moments before I birthed my daughter into this world.
And it is the death cry of the girl who believed in disbelief.
On March 7, 2017, I was invited to break free. Free from a life of enslavement to lies. Free, to the other side. This was the day I was invited to become a mother, and the day I gave birth to my daughter, Lily Eve.
From the time I found out I was pregnant, I knew I wanted to have a natural birth. I wanted to take on the all of the experience, and in my heart it just like the way my baby was meant to travel into the world. And then, through the rollercoaster, of pregnancy I learned that it was probably best to dissolve away any desire I had around my labor and birth, and allow life to guide the experience instead.
That being said, all 40 weeks I had been mentally and physically “preparing” for natural labor. I studied labor and childbirth, and fell madly in love with the process. I practiced prenatal yoga, followed a healthy diet, drank the pregnancy teas, and rehearsed the birthing affirmations. Only to find within twenty minutes of being in labor, that the experience defies any preparation and truly calls for one thing, surrender.
That morning I awoke to find I had either peed the bed or my water had broken, and by 10 AM I was in the early stage of labor. I felt focused, and excited to meet my baby, and also had absolutely no idea what kind of transformation was about to come my way.
We got to the hospital at 1pm, and by then I was already ready to be done. But this was just the beginning. I was dilated 5 CM, and already felt like strangling the nurse for daring to put anything on or in my body, and persistently insisted on being in my own space with the freedom to move and breathe.
The sensations that surged through me as my baby began her descent rocked my world. Every contraction pushed my capacity to eclipse my mind with breath, and enter into a space where I could open, amidst annihilating pain.
I was dying to just get it over with, and willing to throw the crazy idea of natural birth out of the picture and opt for a c-section, anything, just anything to get out of the pain. By then I had made it to 9 CM, and felt the point of no turning back, and the enduring need to keep turning in, to my intuition, my power, and grace. I felt myself on the bridge of birth as I entered the pushing stage, and life was ever so ready for pushing me.
Sweaty and shakey, I summoned all of the energy within me to push. As the pain grew greater, my being shook harder. I felt all of grips I had on life, all of the blocks that had been restraining my existence of flowing freely. The “I’m not strong enough, I’m not good enough, I can’t, can’t, can’t, the plague of worthlessness and powerlessness. I felt the hold that fear had on me, and the intense degree that it denied my breath and extinguished my power.
Push after push, I was returned with resistance. I was near depletion, or so I believed, and to make little progress, or none at all, after channeling my entire life force into it, shattered me. In the best way possible. It shattered the limitations I lived inside. I saw that I had no choice. For new life to come forth, I needed to commit, all the way, and die into the repercussions that repelled from the commitment to new life. If I wanted to meet my baby, it was time I transcended my old identity, and birth myself into a new being.
With every brave bit of my soul I went for it, all in, and felt every last shred of it, all to receive the light that will always guide me back home, my daughter.
This is the beauty of dying into life, and the perfection of our wondrously woven bodies.
The uterus is the only muscle in the body that contains within itself two opposing muscle groups. One muscle group opens and expands, dilating the cervix and allowing the contractions of labor to flow from one to the next. The other muscle group tightens and constricts, closing off the cervix and stopping the flow of contractions.
When a birthing mother is in danger, or in fear, adrenaline floods the body and signals this muscle group to contract, tightening the cervix and stopping the birthing process. This creates the intense pain of two powerful muscles pulling in opposite directions, as the process of birthing new life becomes a fight against fear.
To receive new life, we must open.
Fall into the unfolding of the unknown.
Breathe.
It will call upon your bravery. It will demand your breath.
It will radically shake your world.
In a way that is foreign to the mind but ever so familiar to the soul.
The fear that keeps you locked away.
The doubt that perpetuates your hiding.
The questions that keep you spinning.
How can you break free?
What is on the other side of your gripping, your walls, your constricted way of living?
New life, is waiting.
Waiting for you to return to faith.
Waiting for you to befriend your breath.
Waiting for you to forgo the fight.
The soul yearns to exist in its innately expansive, evolving state and dilate in every dimension.
As fear enters the body, we constrict, restrict, and resist the natural unraveling of spirit.
As with childbirth, the magnititude of pain may be there, but the baby will come regardless.
The new life is destined to arrive.
You are destined to exist in your ever infinite form.
Happy BIRTHday.