Birthing Dragons
It is now a little over five months since Oran barreled though my body and into Earth, and it is finally time to share some of the gifts of his birth.
Conception, gestation and birth are without a doubt the fiercest and tenderest medicines I have received. Within them, there is some of its nectar to offer to others, and there is some I will always keep for just our family.
When we first found out I was pregnant, on a road trip through the Rockies (an RV park the perfect setting for the annunciation!), we found ourselves hiking in a forest of evergreens, who were positively oozing golden resin-- generously oozing their nectar. In fully conscious reciprocity, we gathered some for ourselves, gave some to others, and left much for the trees themselves. Sharing this medicine with you is like that. It is the sweetest medicine. Some of it is mine to share, to offer, to give, and some of it is ours to keep.
I find that, as I start to write, I do not want to share the details of the moment my water broke, or the way Eliza drove me to have a massage afterwards 🤪 or the specifics of the ways the contractions slowly and gently and then persistently increased until I met my desire to die. All of the details of the tub and the showers and the drums and songs and taking a walk through the neighborhood at what I now know was likely 9-10cm dilated-- they’re all part of the story.
Parts are downright hilarious because I can be self-willed and naive like any first mother (5 different tea brews and types of snack bars and jerky for the birth team, anyone?!). And parts are so precious and tender, so precious— the meeting of ancestors and choruses of Marys, and the sweet medicine of rushing waterfalls of tears: the love that births worlds. Parts are epic and terrifying, parts are mundane.
But this morning, what I feel mostly to offer as medicine, to take out of my family’s vault of gems, and give— is the medicine of the moment of transition.
In this life, I have had the honor to witness two other women in this precious moment— one in a hospital and one at home. This sacred moment is terrifying space where we know we cannot go back, and we have no map for moving forward. This is the moment of life and death— where we must find the deepest prayer and birth it into form if we are to survive.
I am offering this medicine-- of my own transition between maiden and mother-- because we need to remember that we can make it through these passages— in our relationships, in our culture, in our moments of deepest transformation. We are in transition, now. Liberated life is waiting to be borne through us, and it is time. We cannot go back.
Transition is the space in birth is the space when cervix has dilated to 9-10cm and is the most open it will ever be in a woman’s life. Cervix transforms from a tiny pinhole opening into a size large enough for a tiny human body. And as baby starts to move through the cervical opening and into the birth canal, the tissues and tendons and muscles being stretched wide open have never, ever been touched before. it is a stretching wide open of all a woman has known herself to be.
The corresponding emotional and psychological experience, especially for first time mothers, is intense. It is the forging and fire that births worlds of diamond light. And it also destroys— ego, ignorance, illusion. When we meet this space consciously, awake and in union with our bodies, we become fully primal. Fully alive. And we meet our medicine.
I had decided to take a walk shortly before this time, because we thought perhaps, based on my body’s contraction patterns, that Oran was a little challenged getting fully in position to descend. I knew I could lay in the bed and suffer, or I could walk. And so Richy helped me get dressed, and out into the twilight we went, even though I could barely move. My deepest prayer was for this child to be born at home, and I was committed to doing whatever I could to ensure that. And so, we walked into the early spring misty twilight.
At the end of the block, I knew I could not go on as I had. I wanted to die. My mind was filled with very dark thoughts— the pain and sufferings of my lineages, this culture, the pain of the numbed, and dissociated abused womb. The depths of pain and powerlessness. But Richy and Eliza stayed right there with me.
After some time, and upon returning home to the birthing cave, I found the hook— the place where I was stuck. It was in thinking I couldn’t do it, that I should be able to, but that I couldn’t. As soon as I found it, I shifted my thought, the grace of the dove Sophia descended. And I began to say, “it’s not that I can’t do it, I just don’t know how.”
And soo I began to pray to every ally, every Mary, my deepest guides, my grandmothers, to Gaia, to Sarah to show me how. How to become Mother. How to birth and hold child. Show me how. Show me how. Show me how.
And the dragons came.
In the moment of transition between maidens and mother, I became dragon, fully. And right there, the embodied bridge of dragon and dove, I began to pray the only prayer that would get me through the birth.
I prayed for the liberation of all the wombs in my lineage, for my mother and sister and Richy’s mother and sister, and for the women and babies in this place (Alabama). I prayed for their wombs to know pleasure, and liberation and truth. I prayed so that my own prayer would forge the path for easeful birth for myself, and for the others. For all the stories to dissolve, and for new life to be born.
In that moment of clear, selfless prayer, my gaze got so clear, and my focus centered, and I lost touch with this reality. And I began to journey to birth. I had no more care for what I looked like, sounded like, what anyone thought or what happened. I was full dragon, and I was birthing a rainbow egg, my baby boy, the Song of Creation.
I wish I could say that I found ecstasy. I wish that I could say that I did anything other than scream bloody murder with every contraction. There were a few contractions right at the very end, where I found the easeful dropping of the egg, of my baby. Where the breath and the body and the mind found union. And I felt a flicker of ease.
And for now, this is enough, because we made it through the passage awake and alive. And I was able to give him the gift I so deeply desired: he was born at home, in the water, with rose petals and song, to the sounds of crying midwives and the silence of the night. We welcomed him, fully conscious, to Earth, to this wild and ecstatic and painful Mystery.
I know this passage, the dragon birthings, will be easier for others the more we do them, and the more we gather together. As the midwives and medicine women attune to the depths of these births, and learn how to map and meet the hooks, and find the joy in the rainbow light that pours in.
Of course, there is much more to this story— stitches from perineal tears, encounters with the medical system post-birth, a swollen bladder and so many other things on the other side of the transition. The deepest ecstatic love, and the rawest pain. This is Motherhood.
And so, these are the gems Oran and Richy (and Eliza) and I have to offer you now. This is what it looks like to become the dragon mothers and fathers, to birth Life. If this is the passage for you, you will know— everything in your whole being with be drawn to it, and you will sacrifice all the egos comforts so that it may be borne. It is the agony and ecstasy, the rainbow and lava, the union with Life. It is possible now. The gates are open.
May this nectar be received with generosity and grace, and respected for its tenderness. This is Life, and it is precious.
Hallelujah.
