New Life Approaching

Pregnancy photo shoot courtesy of Asja Dawn - www.feralheartsclub.etsy.com

My life is about to drastically change again. The rhythm of change can be so startling, and what bigger changes do we experience as human beings than the beginnings or endings of life? These immense transitions bookmark our experience, bring us together even with estranged family members, and weave us into the fabric of what it means to be human.

I write to you within 1 week of my “due date,” or as some call it “guess date” since only 5% of babies are born on their due date. Like any mother I am expectant, waiting and amazed to imagine that in a short, but unknowable amount of time, I will be holding this brand new human being that I have already cared for and fed in my womb for 9 months. I will meet a new family member, life-long friend, and precious human life.

I have been through this before with my nearly 3 year old and somehow coming so close to this threshold I find myself once more overwhelmed with the sacredness, immensity and intensity of what this time means. The last time I counted myself lucky. I had an 8-hour labor in my house, mainly just myself and my husband and attended at the end by very competent and endearing midwives. But despite the relative simplicity of my birth story it took me to my very edges of capacity and like most women felt that I was definitely going to die at one point. This is birth. To me, what people talk about as the thinning of the veils around this time of year is quite real as part of birth. I feel, from my experience, that birth and death are nearly the same process - an opening between worlds that normally is not there. I feel in this way that every birth is a death and every death a birth in a certain transcendent way.  

It seems to me not an accident then that I have heard of so many deaths as well as births this month. My friend’s father died suddenly of a heart attack, the spiritual teacher of several of my friends passed away after many years of struggle with cancer, and a highly revered teacher of acupuncture, especially pulse diagnosis, all have just left us. Of course I am also honoring the deaths of the thousands of people in the Israel-Palestine conflict that is an unthinkably painful war with extreme carnage and suffering happening everyday now for more than a month. It seems in some ways a terrible time to be bringing in new life, and yet I don’t feel that way.

The fabric of life is strong and despite all our best attempts to sever ourselves from the gifts of this exquisite Earth through distraction, extraction, and running away into the cyber-frenetic zones of our computers and phones, the breathtaking dance of Life becoming more life has not stopped and won’t stop. This is the beauty that I feel as a mother awaiting a new child. All the colors of Fall (now already Winter in the Chinese calendar) are deepening into thick goblets of wine-tones, eye-filling golds, oranges of fire and glimmering rusty pinks and I can’t help but feel myself changing to into a deeper tone of myself.  In Chinese medicine and in so many indigenous teachings around the world, we are the environment around us and the ways that it changes, we also embody. Fall is the time of the metal element and the emotions of sorrow and grief. So I know that this is also a piece of our ability to move with Nature in these times is to feel these depths of emotion. I also know that this grieving of the pain and the loss is an intricately woven piece of the ecstasy and joy of new life coming. To give birth is to go through a painful portal. I hope not to push away the pain of loss or the pain of birthing but to deepen into it. To know that it is in the place of meeting pain that I come closer to the power of Life. After all, the Earth never stops giving birth, so it is an honor to know even for a day what it is like to create life, with joy as well as pain, as she does without ceasing.

Also this is a message to let you know I will be on maternity leave starting this week. I am planning to be available by phone or zoom for herbal consultations in March, but I don’t have a date set yet for when I will be seeing patients in person again. I will certainly be in touch when I am. 

Here’s to a Winter Season of true rest, letting go of what has finished and allowing ourselves to go inward and gestate what wants to Spring up again next season.  

Wishing you health and happiness in your hearts, minds and bodies,

Peregrine Whitehurst, LAc.