The land is blooming and so am I. With delight, every day, discovering how the lady’s mantle and the mugwort have multiplied overnight. The cottage surrounded by forget me nots and apple blossom.
On the days the sun shines I am called to the garden with my sweet cat, or further up the hill to the secret bluebell grove, stopping to breathe more times than I used to. Where I stand beneath the birdsong, on the familiar tree long fallen and bare my body to the sun. The breasts that already are full of life, I noticed last week.
We have glorious days, and the days where the rain comes. Last night there was thunder and lightning and I thought of the raspberry leaves wilting in the herb trough and how we need the sun and rain in equal measure. And just how my body is thrumming and strong with life, it is also vulnerable to the emotional storms that beat down.
I work with ceremony and birth trauma, and when it’s needed, I share about the mother’s heart and how it is designed to open during pregnancy and birth.
My mother’s heart cracked open last week, like an egg smashed over my chest, and the vulnerability of it poured out and washed over my belly in a way that I still feel keenly and tenderly.
Sensing this, the babe pushes against my womb harder as if they could break through, testing their strength and the boundaries of my body.
I spent two years in the waterfall country recovering from trauma, away from my family and all I had built in South Wales. Even now I miss it. The real gift of it was to find god in the land, to allow myself to be mothered by trees and waterways and mountains.
Singing mantras as I let the land show me where everything I needed grew. There is the sense that, for this pregnancy I have allowed myself to become somewhat of a recluse. Given the option, I’d prefer to disappear away with the flowers.
I am learning so much.
I am becoming.
