What Comes in the Dark

Yet another paradoxical epiphany rolls in on a stormy night in the seas of Motherland. I can feel something rising in me again, that familiar pressure building, the kind that feels like the early stirrings of labor. Subtle at first… until it isn’t.

Then comes the angst, the loud internal soundtrack:
“I’m drowning!!! Someone save me! Why isn’t anyone helping me? I cannot do this for another second!!”

I’m writhing inside my own skin, heat building fast, bearing down just to contain the rage.

And then it hits me- oh my god, this is literally transition.
Not metaphorically. Not spiritually. This is straight-up labor.
How did I not notice it earlier?

Yes, THIS is what the birth prayer flags are for. This is yet another Mother-becoming-moment shaping me, stretching me, burning me down so I can rise again.

Right now I’m in the flaming-into-ashes part… but I know the phoenix rising will come. (Soon, please.)

Everyone in my family has had a vile stomach bug for days, the full-on gnar gnar, nonstop throw-ups for every single person, including my sweet baby. And, I’m the one who recovered first so I could tend to everyone, as Mothers do. Unfortunately, it meant missing my women’s circle, canceling bodywork clients, losing precious time I needed for my holiday market prep (clock ticking, cortisol surging), running on no sleep, endless (and I mean NEVER. ENDING.) nursing…

I hit my edges- hard.
I kept repeating in my head, “I’m gonna fucking lose it,” like a mantra. And honestly? I indulged it. I didn’t want pretend-calm. I wanted to throw an old-fashioned MF FIT. I vented to my mom. I snapped at my son. I felt every contraction of each hard moment tightening within & around me.

After many failed attempts to get Juno to sleep, with Z curled up against my back while I nursed her, something shifted. He softened first. His sweet little body pressed into the back of my heart, exactly where I was resisting. He was quietly caressing my hand, holding my finger like he did when he was tiny- and that’s when it landed.

That familiar, melancholic ache of, “oh, how fast they grow.”

Cliché or not, it’s real. It’s beautiful and bittersweet and very real, and there’s grief tucked inside it.

And in that tiny gesture, his small warm hand, the weight of him, something in me finally opened.

Just like labor.

The part that feels most impossible is the exact moment you soften.

Wave after wave…and then one final crash on the shore reveals the most beautiful shell, offered up through the sand from the depths of the ocean - a reminder that there is always treasure hidden inside moments that might break you. Motherhood drags me under and then spits me back out with just enough grit to keep going.

I never get to choose the timing of the waves.
But I am learning to honor the offerings they leave behind.

By the time morning washed in, I realized what I’d written so far had only been the calm before the real storm. As the night unfolded, I felt myself descend further into the underworld as my baby’s tiny body woke up constantly, writhing in pain, her screams tearing through the dark, and then the sudden diarrhea explosion that covered her, the bed, everything. Half an hour of wiping, rinsing, changing, soothing, moving on instinct.

Wave after wave, pulling me into the rawest edges of Mothering, the invisible moments in the night that split you open, revealing another version of yourself you didn’t know you were about to become.

Sometimes I wonder why the epiphanies keep rolling in like this… how many selves I’m destined to meet… but that feels like a story for another day.