I wish someone told me that to create life you have to die. When I became pregnant with my first son I didn’t feel the death that comes with going from maiden to mother so acutely. I was 17 and I hadn’t invested so much yet into my identity. By my second baby I had accumulated accolades and a persona. I’d become rooted in beliefs about myself and others, some that formed in my childhood. Before this pregnancy, I was finally coming to a point where I knew exactly who I was and where I was headed…or so I thought. 

Becoming a mother again was planned but I didn’t understand this change would cost me my old life. My body changed, my brain matter changed, my nervous system was activated. I was suddenly confronted with things I thought I let go of and things I never even realized were living inside of me, wounds silently guiding me through life. Pair this with facing my trauma head on, I was changing at a cellular level every single day. The woman I was before pregnancy is not in the lead anymore. She quit without so much as two weeks notice and I have grieved her. That confidence, that sexiness, that drive. She took it all with her when she cleared out her office and retired. Or so I thought.

Through my spiritual practice, I can look at this journey with gratitude and pragmatism, however I still would’ve appreciated the heads up. I read many books and talked to many people but I feel as though I never really got the message that I would be dying. Pregnancy was portrayed more as this temporary situation. Like getting benched from the game or sitting out with an injury. No one told me I would never be coming back. Not the way I existed in my life before.

What I am coming to understand now at 11 weeks postpartum is that nothing ever really dies. It changes form. All that power, wisdom, and vitality that the old me cultivated still lives within me - waiting to be transmuted into something greater…deeper. Maybe the depression, the ungroundedness, the feeling of being utterly lost is an unavoidable part of transformation. Maybe you have to feel the rawness of vulnerability, the jagged edges of your most unpolished parts.

My therapist offered recently “some things are just uncomfortable, the win is leaning into the discomfort and following through anyway.”

My pregnancy was one long challenge. An almost violent cracking of my outer armor leaving my inner world to spill over like a stormy sea. Postpartum greeted me with insecurity and threads of patriarchal self-oppression that I believed myself to be immune from.

Sure, I have broadened my capacity for the sharp edges of being human. If I knew I was going to die though I would’ve prepared to give myself more grace. To be more gentle with myself. To understand that when you’ve committed so deeply to the path of authenticity you experience the shadow so much more intensely. 

I grieve the ethereal pregnancy I envisioned for myself. The “bounce back” of my first pregnancy that garnered so much praise. I gift myself permission to be angry about it. I let myself ache just little for what I once was. However, I also see the light of a new dawn. I feel myself rising from the ashes as the phoenix who guides me on my journey. I look with a clear mind to the fact that I have experienced rebirth many times before. I swim in my shadows carrying the pain back to shore. I breathe new life into them and allow them to become something new and beautiful.

I feel broken generational connections mend. I feel cycles end. I feel myself becoming…again…and again. I come home to myself and I rebuild a more solid foundation.

A bank slate, a fresh start, with all the tools to get me through. Renewal - the gift of death and decay.

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