AN INCREMENTAL BURGEONING

Photo by Henry Ward

What a fortnight it has been. I can hardly believe I was in Los Angeles last week for New Years eve. We lay in the sun by the bluest pool and I took my vacation – an hour or so with a magazine, some gelato, the sun on my skin. It’s almost unbelievable to consider that in a few months we will meet our son. I am overcome with thoughts and feelings. How do I express this emotion? Anticipation doesn’t fully capture what I want to share. I sense one layer of my life closing and another opening. I once considered this like a chapter ending and another starting. I mourned the loss of my girl self, my freedom and ‘innocence.’ But I don’t see it like that anymore. There is constant overlap, evolution, an incremental burgeoning towards fulfillment.

What do I know now that I didn’t before? What will I know in six months that I didn’t before? I know that even after the roughest climb, there are valleys. I know that even after the well is emptied, there is more water. I know that no matter what I go through or where I am, these days are pages in my life and I am the author, the flint and the spark. I have given up wishing to be elsewhere – my life is only happening now. It is a great blessing to be reminded just how easily I can take the reins of my life, to sail on an infinite horizon upon which I paint. It takes a lot of courage to dream your own dreams, and even more to actually create them, to move towards them. New friends, new adventures, new hobbies, new life.

Death too. I see how much of my past life has withered away into the earth, how I stood in the winter forest praying for the sun. Instead of running from that passage of my life, I understand it now. This needed to happen. Death, birth, rebirth. I needed to raze the forest to plant new seeds. I have killed and been killed. Now I am building a village. I am starting again. I am reinventing myself, just as I am inventing a soul. What else is there to say? Words fail me. The baby kicks against the wall my abdomen; he is here too. What adventures await us? I know I couldn’t possibly imagine. Even now, no mountain seems too high, too daunting. What courage will birth bring? I am not afraid.

“The most difficult part of birth is the first year afterwards. It is the year of travail - when the soul of a woman must birth the mother inside her. The emotional labor pains of becoming a mother are far greater than the physical pains of birth; these are the growing surges of your heart as it pushes out selfishness and fear and makes room for sacrifice and love. It is a private and silent birth of the soul, but it is no less holy then the event of childbirth, perhaps it is even more sacred.”

– Joy Kusek LCCE