The Labor of Life

2016

So as I was in the middle of an emotional meltdown the other day when a good friend randomly shows up at my house – and we take one look at each other and just know…we’re both “there”. “Oww…this hurts! What do you think is going on?” she asked me as we held each other, hugging and crying.

I think we could all agree that it sure seems as if something is going on right now in our world – but then I also think about stories from my mother from when she was a young adult. Of her sister being shot and killed by her 3 year old son who had found the family gun in the night stand. Or of her brother who discovered while watching the evening news one day that his 21 year old daughter had been found dead on the side of a highway earlier from a drug overdose. Or what must have been a harrowing journey that my grandmother made at the turn of the 20th century being just 14 years old, traveling alone on a ship from Norway to the states to marry a Norwegian farmer in South Dakota, someone she didn’t even know.

The fact is that life can be really, really intense and shitty sometimes. Things happen in one second that change the lives for lots of people – for the rest of their lives. The big question is how do we manage when things like this happen? Or how do we manage when things aren’t life or death but just emotionally unbearable? I’ve lived through both, and they can be equally difficult.

I’ve known great teachers who seemed so wise – like they truly had the answers to life. Surely, these people would have the internal resources to sail through hard times effortlessly, I had assumed. The reality though, that I witnessed, was once confronted with a “real life” difficulty – these great teachers just crumbled like anyone else. At times they even resorted to behavior that was childish and vindictive. I remember when I first discovered this phenomenon and how devastated I was. “It doesn’t work” I remember thinking. “All the wisdom that they seem to have – means nothing when the real things go down…What is there, then??” I was beyond upset – I felt hopeless and betrayed. I was alone in trying to figure this out. Desperately searching for answers, hoping that there were some.

I never did find any. 

What I did find was that over time, I realized that what got me through the difficult times was not some great teaching that I could read in a book or hear from some wise teacher – it was drawing from my birth experiences. “It worked then, maybe it will work now” was my idea.

So now when those times come, I breathe – a lot.

Focused breathing, Nirvanic breathing. I cry when I feel like crying. I keep moving while I listen to my body. I immerse myself in water. I eat good food – whatever I can – even if that’s just one bite, even if I throw it up. I cuddle with people that I love. I make loud primal sounds. I’m intolerant of people that annoy me and sometimes tell them to leave, or I just leave myself.

Basically, I take control of my environment and do whatever I need to do for myself.

I also know that only I really know what I need during those times and I unapologetically do those things.

I try my best to surrender to what is happening.

Once I “push the baby out” – or when I’m “on the other side”, I usually have a brilliant and renewed appreciation and gratitude for life and the beauty of it all. Once through it, I seem to see things more clearly, and always at some point, I realize that I am wiser, and smarter, and more equipped to handle the next thing - whenever that happens…and I know it will.

So many times that I’ve been at a birth – I’ll have a laboring mother look at me with desperation in her eyes “what should I do?” she’ll ask me. Usually my answer is “you’re doing it. Already. Right now”. “There’s nothing you really need to do but to let go. Let it happen. Your greatest strength is in the surrender – you and your body already know what to do, and you’re doing it”.

And as she finally really lets go, you see it and feel it very tangibly. You see something lift and shift. You see this power surround her and fill her and the space around her. Something so powerful I could even call it God.

The surrender is when we become one with and align with the power of creative force – of the true essence of life, rather than resisting it.

It’s then that we see that most of our “pain” was coming from our resistance to this power.

Once the surrender happens, there is a cracking open if you will – sometimes met with what sounds like loud war cries – sometimes with inner retreat and silence. This is usually when the baby makes it down all the way and emerges.

I feel so lucky to have witnessed and participated in this power, both as an observer and as a participant when I gave birth to my own babies – I know it intimately and can draw on it anytime.

Experiencing a surrendered birth in its raw form gives us amazing life long tools. Tools that we need to be mothers. Tools to grow with, learn from and ultimately, for me, to build a happy life for myself and my family that is fulfilling and beautiful.

I remember the day my daughter in law was hit by a truck while walking home with her new 10 week old baby (my granddaughter). She was alive when I arrived at the scene of the accident, “but wouldn’t be for long” I was told by the woman who was the cosmically chosen Gatekeeper of that experience – a midwife and one of my best friends. I wanted to say goodbye to my daughter in law while she was still alive, but at the same moment, I realized that the paramedics were putting my granddaughter into an ambulance. I immediately ran in that direction instead, telling them that I was her grandmother and to please let me go with her. They agreed by helping me into the back of the ambulance and then passed my sweet grandbaby who was still wet from being at the beach just moments before, up to me.

The door closed and I sat there holding this wet, squirmy, screaming infant. I was still breastfeeding my 2 year old son during that time, and had milk, so I instinctively stuck my finger in the weakest point of the top of the dress I was wearing, and ripped as hard as I could until my breast was exposed, promptly offering it to her. She eagerly latched on, and through the tears in my eyes, I returned her gaze that held a powerful, peaceful sense of resolve that I’ll never forget.

In that timeless moment, even though I knew that this would shake us all for generations to come - looking in her big brown wise eyes – I also knew that everything was ok. In that moment and for all time, it was all ok. Beautiful even. I did the most natural thing I could do, the most primal thing I could do, and it worked.

Difficult times demand discovery of our primal responses.

When we surrender to this, we discover amazing inner resources that we probably were unaware of before. And when everything calms down again, we realize that we are wiser and stronger than we thought we were.

The real “Guru’s” to me? Those that move through life, through the difficult times, with grace and ease and authenticity – with acceptance. The ones that just do it, maybe screaming, shitting or vomiting during the really hard parts, but getting through it time and time again.

Enlightenment? Maybe it’s just continually surrendering to life and honoring it - and not a “finish line” or goal at all. Maybe it’s just living this life - breathing, crying, screaming and laughing and appreciating it together.

Giving birth together. Creating life.

Holding love and life in its raw form and knowing that not only is it all ok – but that it really is all beautiful.