The Mythic Land of Pregnancy
a glimpse into my feral journey
Lately, I've been dancing with this liminal, ethereal space in my pregnancy where everything seems like it was before, yet nothing is the same at all. Within me, there is a tremendous shifting happening. As if the ancient plates of my inner terrain are vibrating, moving, sliding in and under each other. Creating deep canyons and soaring mountains. My inner landscape is changing like when an earthquake comes sweeping through the land. Everything in its wake is touched by quivering, the stretching, the crumbling. And in between such shaking the land quiets and nothing is the same. Yet this tumultuous remoulding is solely an internal experience. In all appearances, nothing has changed. Yes, my belly stretches and grows, but that’s about all that can be detected of this world-shattering alteration.
The emotions that ripple up through the cracks broken up in my heart burst forth with such intensity my heart feels raw and exposed. I feel everything, as though my heart has grown along with my belly. Suddenly, my love overwhelms me. It feels delicate and soft, yet fierce and consuming. I move in the same manner as a creature sneaking off to her den to simply stretch and be transformed in the quiet of the darkness. It’s an interesting paradox to this other desire that swims within these inner canyons, that longs to be seen. To be asked how I’m feeling and celebrated in my stretching and held in my crumbling. Yet my life path has taken me far away from my family and friends. Phone calls and face times just don’t feel the same in a time calling for deeper intimacy and touch. It makes me want to slip away into a cocoon of my own solitude where I may lengthen and contract alone. Giving in to my fate. That is a tricky illusion of the online realm. A surface level connection that is lacking in what we truly need - especially in moments like these. For my mom to rub my belly and my sister to look into my eyes and my friends to ask me questions of my changing self.
It feels isolating to be moving through such a transformation while having friends deep within their maiden boss bitch liberal activist mentality and not really feel understood, seen, and honoured in what is such a life changing initiation. My worldviews have unravelled and been rewoven so much that I don't relate to my friends and their desires of building businesses, dating or protesting. The entirety of my world right now is my husband and this baby growing within me. All that feels important to me right now is this. Is the stretching that I am feeling within me. That consumes my world in the most wonderful ways. It swallows me whole. All that is asked of me right now is to be with these changes. And it's hard to be moving through such a process and not really be acknowledged, understood, seen, or anything at all by those you love. It has been very revealing to me how people perceive pregnancy and becoming a mother. And now actually moving through it myself, I see how much is lacking in our true celebration and care for our women. How much feminism has actually failed women - but that's a topic for another day.
Pregnancy has plunged me into another world entirely. One I feel blessed to inhabit and grateful to be able to explore with such expansive presence. With my being in this other world, one deep within the womb of the earth and cocooned by the dark fertile soils of the land, the topside world just doesn’t feel relevant to me. So a dissonance grows between me and those I once knew. You know how they say becoming a parent changes you. Some people don't welcome that change, yet I see now that the shifting of priorities that happens when one walks the path of a present parent and steward is inevitable, and that means relationships will change, some may begin, and others will come to an end. That is simply part of the crumbling, shattering, quivering mythological landscape of this journey.
I know those who have never been on this pilgrimage or never seen it as such can't truly comprehend what it takes, and what it gives. And although I'm not alone on this journey - I walk within the footsteps of every woman who claimed the role of mother, who have felt that spark of life in their womb, and I walk with all the women who are descended here with me in this very moment - only I can walk this path for myself. And in that way, although it is connective and deeply woven into the motherline, at the same time I walk alone.
A part of me feels melodramatic, that part that is influenced by a world that dismisses mothers and the profound experiences they initiate and move through. It's just the hormones of pregnancy they say - but these so-called mood swings and emotional tendencies serve to weave me even deeper into the earth-shattering changes of becoming a mother. They are the threads of intimacy with my baby and my husband, so that I may feel even more, and more and more. So that I may step up into my diligent role. They are the cords that I may descend upon to retrieve my baby from that which is spirit. There really is nothing else like this journey.
Pregnancy and preparing for birth, motherhood, bringing a baby into this world and stewarding their soul on this earth, well it is a quietly dramatic souring mountain of new sensations, emotions and initiations. It is an internal upheaval and rebirth. It is a mythological landscape not of this world but of the liminal, spirit places. The places we go to bring our babies here change us forever. We swim in those waters throughout this whole odyssey. Becoming mythological creatures ourselves. Unravelling, stretching, growing wings or shedding skins. Perhaps it feels isolating because among many of those who surround us, it is not really seen for the journey that it is. It is not held in the reverence it truly embodies and instead is brushed off, as mundane as going for a shit.
Yes, it is simple in that women have always done this, do this every day, and will always do this. Yet it is also spiritual, sacred and profoundly important. Women aren’t really encouraged to explore these liminal spaces let alone are they understood in them. They are asked to trudge on as usual, as though nothing has changed, when in actuality they are no longer the woman they once were, nor will they ever be again. Not only during pregnancy but even after babe arrives earthside women are expected to bounce back and continue living as before. That is what feels isolating. And although this time does feel like some solitude and stillness is needed, what is also needed is to be held in our descent. To be guided and encouraged as we navigate this new terrain, especially when it is for the first time. Right now I am grateful for the women who do surround me in different capacities to hold me as i walk the journey, yet I grieve for the women my skin longs to feel the touch of, the village my soul misses. I am learning better how to show up for others in their pilgrimage, and how to truly be in service during such times. This journey feels like THE most important path I will ever walk.
Bless the mothers, for they walk the path of spirit and reemerge into the land of flesh forever changed in invisible ways
Of all of the aspects of our lives that have been medicalized and mentalized and materialized and trivialized, pregnancy and dying have to be the worst. Sacred soul transitions and tectonic shifts of physiology that are overrun with experts and expectations and at the same time reduced to statistics and biochemistry.
Thank you for honoring and sharing your own journey. I agree that feminism has largely failed at a deeper purpose, which ultimately fails not just women but all of us. There is a place for activism that pursues equality across identities. But there is also a real need to bring a masculine-dominated paradigm back into balance. So that we value community and relationship more than productivity, being more than doing, intuition more than logic, immersion more than observation, wildness more than civilization.
Thank you for such a tender piece. I see your becoming. Matrescence was a real unraveling for me as well. I left a lot behind, in order to gain so much more at such a soul level. It is the journey of a lifetime, woven through with so much mystery, of course the overculture treats it as mundane. Savor this mystery. It is your greatest teacher. Blessings on you and babe.