I love to write. To live. To create. To document moments that seem so small in the present, and so big in the past.
If we can pull on the strings of these tapestries, these woven pieces of ourselves, days that crisscross in patterns that eventually make up our lives... we can find magic and light and romance.
This year I have been pondering the spirituality of birth, and more specifically, the transition. The moment a soul passes through a doorway, the moment a life is breathed into lungs for the first time. The first touch, the first sound. This depth, while experienced so often, is uncharted and mysterious still. Like the oceans.
Birth is full of these moments.
When I worked in childcare, one thing we talked and learned about a lot in developmental classes and trainings- was the process of transitions as seen from a child. Some children struggle monumentally with transitions. The act of moving from one place to another. The motion of changing something visually, auditorily, or tactically. Changing of activities. Changing of clothes. To ease the transitions was vital. To use tools, coping methods, verbal indications, and gentle maneuvers- was something the best childcare workers had to perfect.
It strikes me how much effort was put into making those transitions, the simple walking from one room to another, as gentle as possible. When in birth, this concept is often ignored. And oh, how much bigger that transition is!
From womb to earth, from water to air, from maiden to mother.
These transitions should be gentle, honored, protected.
One of my favorite symbols of transition in artwork, photography, and dream interpretation- is the door way. The door frame. The door.
I walk through them, and my life is changed. I am invited into these homes and spaces. I look through, and see art. Drawings of children that wait for their baby sibling to arrive. On this doorway we see the past lives these children lead. Through the doorway we see the mother laboring beside her birth attendant, doing the work to bring forth a brand new life.
Hospital doorways hold the first number assigned to our Childs life. These numbers often become symbolic to us. Birth doors giving way to birth times and birth days.
In this photo, the family helps the mother dress in the postpartum moments after a beautiful home birth.
Here, her midwife starts the laundry. She is fond, familiar with transition. She knows the ways to move, the paths to take, the voices to make and encourage while a new mother navigates her labor.
She knows, and she guides, and the door ways frame her work.
Our door ways hold up our homes, invite our participation, lend us great great strength. Oh the number of mothers who grasp at, lean into, and hold these door frames.
The doorways hold space for us, and for every transition. Every beautiful intimacy. They are closed for privacy, opened for invitation, and dressed with artwork, numbers, and signs. They represent SO much.
May your doorways give you space. May each person who enters them, enter with a heart of giving. May each person who exits, be blessed by the flavor of your beautiful important love.
May you walk forth through these moments brave, through these emotions vulnerable, and through these transitions- deeply deeply supported.
- Your Wildwood Birthkeeper
CordeliaGrey Oriana Allen
The doorways that frame us- Birth Work Reflections