It is difficult, actually impossible for a woman to accurately describe the childbirth experience to anyone who hasn’t been through the process. The mind relinquishes itself to the body that somehow goes from resisting and fighting against to accepting and allowing. The lungs grasp for air in a way never fully known prior to that moment. The muscles begin reacting and moving seemingly without any prompting from the normal places in the brain. When you have a baby naturally, without the standardized epidural or pain relievers, you can’t shield yourself or protect yourself from the sensations of pressure, bones being forced apart, ripping, tearing and slicing. While at the same time a feeling of complete and total release. A letting go of everything known and familiar. Everything safe. I remember thinking it must be similar to dying; surrendering into some life force that we all own, we all respond to, we all come from and go back to and that circles us while we are awake and while we sleep. And that energy takes over and takes charge and there is nothing that you can do anymore; simply experience it.
A child letting go of a mother. Life. Death. Birth.
A mother letting go of a child. Life. Death. Birth.
A place where endurance is a must. Where strength has to be present because there is no other choice. A hovering between life’s first breath and life’s last. That sensation of absolute “not knowing”. I sometimes wonder if we don’t all walk death’s edge from experiences we go through. And through it all, one HAS to believe in something bigger. Someone greater. One has to believe it’s all leading to some kind of new life, even through tears and sometimes screaming out loud from the pain.
I’m glad I’m a daughter and I’m glad I’m a mother. From inside my heart I know what true love is. What can take it. What can break it. What can tie it up into knots.
And sometimes it's about stepping away, stepping back and allowing something else in.
I surrender.
Again and again.
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