Birth Yourself First

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been listening to what is calling to be birthed through me right now. Which projects, paradigms, or programs are ready to be ushered into the world, calling to be nurtured and grown into trees that can nourish the world. What is my service at this time?

I realized that among all the projects and programs, what was calling to be birthed first was myself.

Just like we cannot come into right relationship with another before we’ve come into right relationship with ourselves, we cannot birth our sacred work before we birth ourselves.

I wonder if maybe something happens to a woman when she births a child that makes her realize she is sovereign over herself. Maybe in the process of birthing an actual child a woman births herself in some form. Perhaps she realizes the power of her body to hold, create, and give life.

I don’t know, because I’ve never given birth. But my observation of this is as follows:

Before the birth she was a woman, and after giving birth she is a mother.

It’s a radical shift in identity. Of course it’s not “sudden,” because in reality this new identity incubated for 9 months before it took hold. She had time to adjust to it, to feel the changes in her body. And when the baby is born, she has a constant reminder that she is now in this new identity.

Giving birth to a child is not the only way to become a mother, of course. A woman who doesn’t give birth to a child, but has a child by other means may have a more sudden shift in identity without the physical embodiment for 9 months, but the presence of the child gives her a constant reminder of her new identity.

What happens when you birth yourself, or your sacred work?

We may not have obvious physical changes like those that happen with pregnancy. Our shifts of identity are more subtle; they are not necessarily noticeable by those external to us. Indeed, it can be hard enough for us to notice those shifts as they occur within us.

Unlike with a baby, there are no external signs of this incubation period and no tangible evidence of my new identity once I’ve given birth to myself.

We continue to look the same, and people may see us as they’ve always seen us.

So we have to be more present to what’s happening inside us and around us, to the shifts in our identity that we create through our personal rebirthing process.

As we birth ourselves, we must actively embrace the identity of the mother. When we birth something into this world, whether a child, a project, or ourselves, we take responsibility for caring for it and nurturing it into being.

As mothers to ourselves, we must commit to providing ourselves with unconditional divine love, acceptance and compassion. We must fight tenaciously for ourselves, protect ourselves from harm.

The challenge may be greater when we have no physical sensation of our incubation or a baby to remind us that we have this new identity now. So we need to create something tangible as a way to remind ourselves of our new identities that are emerging.