the language of blood

every full moon, I dream of blood.

eight months postpartum and still in limbo state, I dream my red moon dreams where I am once again part of that sisterhood of shedding.

it's visceral and heavy as my womb contracts and weeps.

for the last ten years I've always been with the full moon - until that final miscarriage before conceiving my son, the delay and the duration of bleeding that finally shifted me over to the cycle of creation.

for women, blood is a language. the colour red bringing so many different meanings

something is ending

something is beginning

someone is coming

someone is leaving

something is right

something is wrong

duality first existed in the womb and in the language of the blood.

the cycle after ending a relationship where you can feel them leaving your womb.

the relief of a fresh start.

the first show of labour

the scant bleed as an embryo burrows into the womb

for my most recent pregnancy, praying not to see it every day for twenty weeks. my great great grandmother came to me in a vision between waking and sleep and held my baby in my womb firmly with hands that knew what it was to lose a child.

for my most recent birth, the blood was a warning sign. my body telling me in a language she knew I would understand, that I was being asked to make a sacrifice bigger than I understood to bring this life through.

we used to have a word for the menstruation before conception. it meant "the flowers". the bleed a woman had the cycle she conceived her baby was considered the flowers before the fruit. womb consciousness asks us to reorient ourselves to see the bleed as the beginning, not as the end.

for women who have been aching to conceive for a long time, who see blood as a failure, this reinterpretation can change things. flowers are a beginning. how we care for the flowers impacts the later fruit.

my baby's flowers came two days after supporting a hypnotic and otherworldly unassisted birth, my womb taking her cue from the mother just in time for my daughter's seventh birthday party. I made the cake and the food with a pounding head and my husband took over the festivities while I rested in my chair in the corner, eyes closed. I had made a promise long ago I would never miss her birthday for a birth, I was here, but not here.

there is a message I always have within myself, when I get to the root of what is causing an emotional outburst,

"nobody is coming to help you"

it's what has spurred most of my spiritual explorations since becoming a mother. when you are desperate for help you develop a heavy trust in the unseen.

but my husband was here, I could see him, and he was helping. two weeks later we were under an ancient yew as my baby's spirit fluttered down to us, finally coaxed down by our mutual vibration, the ceremony we were witnessing and the love emanating from the group.

likewise, with the blood, you must learn to trust it's unique language. it is not always what you want to see. it can be heartbreaking, devastating, frightening, painful. but it is a wisdom older than we can imagine, a language without words, one that we can learn, if we start to listen.