being born as a mother

I didn’t know, when I went into labor for the first time, that something in me was also preparing to break open.

I had ideas of how it might go. hopes, plans, a kind of quiet expectation that if I did all the right things, I would be held.

what met me was not a cradle, but a tide.

a birth that didn’t go how I imagined.
a shaking of everything I thought I could control.
it left its mark.
not just on my body, but on the way I saw myself.

I’ve called it trauma.
I’ve called it transformation.
I’m still finding the right words.
maybe it was simply the beginning of everything.

because after that, something in me refused to go back to sleep.

I did it; but not in the way I had hoped for.
there was presence, yes, but not the kind that leaves you glowing.
not the kind that lets you look back and feel the bliss.
an invisible thread of disappointment wove through the memory;
like I had drifted from something I once held close.

the birth I had envisioned was physiological, undisturbed, whole.
what unfolded instead was a storm.
it carried me into unknown waters, unfamiliar ground.

where a new trial was waiting.
breastfeeding;
a depth that felt like shadow, a stretch that felt like breaking.
I cried.
I called for the voices of wise women.
but only echoes returned.
I stumbled.

the midwife who had once left me unheld
left me unheld again.
this path was mine to walk.
and mine to light.

birth and postpartum demanded everything.
they asked me to soften, to break, to submit to the transformation.
and I did. not gracefully. not all at once. but completely.

my longing to nourish him with ease, with confidence, with joy
slipped further from reach, slowly, painfully.
still, I met him. with all that I had.

and beneath it all, something stayed.
not loud. not constant. but there.
a voice I’ll never forget.
"you couldn’t do it.
you weren’t coping."
words spoken to me
and somewhere, I believed her.
they marked me.
branded into my first becoming.

the fire that had been lit in birth didn’t burn out.
it dimmed, perhaps.
but it stayed.
quiet. warm. waiting.
I wasn’t ready to follow it; not yet.
first, I had to feel the weight of what had gone missing.
to walk barefoot through the shards.
to feel for what remained.
and begin again.

where the fire turned inward

for a year and nine moons, I prepared.
not just for birth, but for something deeper:
a return to the voice I had once silenced.
I began the slow work of gathering the pieces.
they didn’t fit the way they once had.
but neither did I.

I had been remade in the fire.
not destroyed; reformed.
into someone who listened more closely.
someone who moved with intention.
someone who trusted her knowing.

this time, I chose differently.
I watched closely.
I listened carefully.
and when something didn’t feel right, I walked away.
I didn’t wait.
I didn’t shrink.

my gut had spoken before,
quiet and certain;
and I had ignored her.
this time, I leaned in.
and when I did,
something in me began to rise.
not in a blaze,
but in warmth.
in steadiness.
in light returning to the places that had gone dark.

the second fire

my waters broke again.
but this time, there was no rush.
no hands pressing me forward;
no clock to race.
only a soft knowing.
my heart quickened; the air around me shifted.
it was time for the petals to unfold.

I reached for those I had chosen.
my doula, Ruth.
my birth photographer, Laura,
whose presence felt like earth;
steady, grounding, kind.
I still feel her whispers of love today.
she reminded me that i was safe,
that I was ready,
that I was already doing it.

my midwife, Bahja, arrived just minutes before the birth.
she entered quietly, without urgency;
honoring the space already unfolding around me.

the room was dim. still.
water waiting.
snacks nearby.
music drifting like breath.
this wasn’t just a space;
it was a womb I had shaped for myself.
and those who entered stepped gently,
aware that they were crossing into something sacred.

labor moved quickly.
faster than before.
but this time, I met it with calm.
I breathed.
I leaned into the rhythm.
I pressed the combs into my palms;
anchors for the power moving through me.

I didn’t need to be told what to do.
my body already knew.
I followed.
labor wasn’t happening to me;
we moved as one.
I was labor.
labor was me.
I was the force beneath the waves.

pushing came with sound,
but no fear.
no resistance.
only release.

and then
he arrived.

my firstborn woke to the sounds of his brother’s birth.
he stepped into the room just seconds after.
and in that moment,
something ancient in me was soothed.
and something in him, too.

I felt relief.
and then joy.
and then the kind of elation that lingers long after birth.
I had done it.
I had been held.
trusted.
believed in.
this was birth on my terms.

the placenta came with its own weight; its own waves;
but I welcomed it, too.
and when it passed,
I felt light again.

what followed was bliss.
quiet and lasting.
it still rises in me when I speak of that day.
a fire that didn’t burn me.
a fire that warmed me back to life.

there were challenges, yes.
but they were familiar.
and this time, I was not afraid.
I knew the terrain.
I had walked it before.
and i walked it again, with strength.
I fed my baby from my body for over two years.
this time, I endured.
this time, I rose.

and though a part of me still mourns the gentleness we were once denied,
a larger part of me was restored.
and something in my son’s story; his beginning;
was softened.
was witnessed.
was made whole
by being part of this one.

becoming the embers

I am not who I was before those births.
I am what burned away.
I am what stayed, glowing beneath it.

the storm, the surrender, the fire that rose through me
unraveled what I was
and embraced my becoming
woven into all I hold.

I do not need the blaze to know its heat.
I am the embers now;
slow, steady, whole.