In a room of love and light

Same as me, words of gratitude are floating on the air.

“Thank you.” “I love you all.” “Thank you.”

I’m hovering above this scene, yet I’m completely in my body. The words are pure expression of what keeps me afloat. There is no fear in gratitude.

I’m grateful for the choices I’ve made, and here I am- in full celebration of who I choose to be. I’m on a twin-sized bed in a tiny room where the clock on the wall is unmoving, and like myself the rest of the walls are naked. My sister has just arrived. My mother is here. My husband and his mother too. A midwife named Hope, whose words are as gentle as her hands, ensures my baby will be met with love. That is all that exists here in this room- it’s this love and light that places me right in the middle of a miracle.

They say the way you approach pregnancy and childbirth is the way you approach life. If this is true, and I believe it is, then my way of living can be distinctly viewed as before and after. Elle’s birth marks the change in which, like her entrance here, broke the boundaries between in and out. Before, I categorized myself according to the way I was viewed by others- quiet and sweet- or the way I was reinforced by the constructs around me- unquestioning and obedient. But in pregnancy, I returned to my truest self with the same urgency that a whale needing a breath bounds to the surface to breach. My feminine capabilities and gifts had been held under too long. Like the whale, I instinctively returned to another realm; a realm where processes are valued, where intuition is my guide, where the sacred is felt, where I can do things that blow my logic out of the water.

And so it was that I found myself in the midst of a miracle as my daughter was brought to this earth, so it was that without contemplation or conscious understanding, I knew the oneness of all of humanity, so it was that I felt that grand connectedness. The question now is can I continue to see the world through those eyes? Can I continue to live in a world where your joy is my joy, where your despair is mine? Can I see that the anguish in a mother’s eyes as she struggles for her life in the very act of giving life, is also mine? If I can, if you can, the world will be a very different place. It will be like the room my daughter was born into- without fear, with only love and light.