My Birth Story

PART ONE: OPENING THE PORTAL 

 Mother’s Day approaches, and with it, a quiet stirring within me. I’ve been in deep reflection of this initiatory process that has been my birth. And as a form of honoring my story, my process, and me becoming a mother—it feels right to begin to share more intimately. Not only for me, but for all mothers. Especially those who have navigated a traumatic birth. Typically, I wait to share my story until I feel complete in my metamorphosis. But I now understand that this particular metamorphosis will be ongoing. That a part of the alchemy is in the telling. A part of reclaiming my birth as sacred is allowing it to be witnessed. Since my birth and the separation that followed, my womb has become a vessel of both immense grief and newfound power. Where once there was pleasure and ease, I now feel a raw tenderness—especially along the incision of my cesarean. She aches, not only from the physical rupture but from the grief of early separation from my son. And yet, beneath that grief, something ancient stirs. Once defined by the pull to create and hold life, my womb is now something more—she is a wellspring of embodied, primordial wisdom. She knows now what she is capable of. The experience of creating, holding, and birthing life has changed her, and it has changed me. Where there was once only the dream of becoming mother, there is now the embodied memory of initiation, forever altering the terrain of who I am. This rite of passage has initiated me into a union of power and vulnerability, shattering what I thought I knew and opening me to a deeper trust in my body’s voice. Before birth, my womb was a place I could meet with reverence. Through meditation. Through ritual. I knew her pulse, I knew her seasons. But birth changed the texture of that connection. It moved from something I could touch in stillness to something I live with every breath. It became cellular. Primal. Now, my womb feels like a force—like a tidal pull from the root of my spine. She speaks not in whispers, but in flesh and bone. She is no longer just a sacred space—I feel her as the axis of my body—somatically, spiritually, and in the ache that still quivers at my scar. If this story were a portal, it would be an invitation to honor all the ways birth breaks us open—and reweaves us into the truth of who we are when all illusions fall away. To trust that the rupture holds wisdom. To know that our power and our pain are not in opposition. That grief does not negate sacredness, and that even the births that go nothing like we envisioned still carry the codes of our becoming. My birth story is a beckoning into the truth that my experience is worthy of reverence—no matter how messy, complex, or incomplete it may still feel. It is sacred because I lived it. Because I survived. Because I AM still becoming. I now know that meaning doesn’t come all at once—it emerges like roots reaching into the earth. Some truths rise quickly; others stay curled in the dark, waiting for the right season. But I feel the wisdom in my breath, in the tears I’ve cried, in the heat of rage, and in the way my body whispers things my mind is only just beginning to understand. To the mother still grieving her birth, I want you to know: You are not broken. You are not alone. And your grief is not a sign of weakness—it is a testament to how deeply you loved, how fiercely you hoped, and how profoundly you showed up, even when everything cracked beneath you. This story is not the end of you. It is the beginning of a deeper becoming. And though the path of healing may feel steep and sacred and solitary, you are walking it in the company of every woman who has ever knelt at the altar of her own rebirth. You are sacred. Your story is sacred. And your womb remembers. I am with you. I am you. This is the story of how my son was born—and how my womb and I were reborn in the process: broken open to pain, grief, and the sacred power coursing beneath it all.

PART 2 | BIRTH BEGINS AND UNFOLDS DIFFERENTLY 

 I awoke on the morning of February 21st feeling more raw, more permeable, than I had my entire pregnancy. The veil had been thinning for weeks, accompanied by Braxton Hicks contractions, but something about this morning felt different. The emotional intensity coursing through my body was tidal. Immense. I knew the only place that could hold me in that vastness was the ocean. So I spent the day in solitude—meditating, communing with my son, my cervix, my womb. I felt ready. I felt surrendered. At 7 p.m., as my partner made his way home from work, I began to feel a deep, unmistakable intensity in my cervix and womb. It was as if my body had been waiting for him to return before opening. The waves came steady, spaced evenly apart. I began to time them. I was in labor. For the next 36 hours, I labored at home—unmedicated, held by my partner and birth team. There were moments I will never forget: • Entering what felt like active labor and remaining in that state for over 18 hours. • Meeting the edge of myself, again and again, in pelvic-breaking pain and psyche-breaking depth. • Shapeshifting into a jaguar, surrendering into each contraction as I become one with it • The way I had never been held by the masculine in the way my partner cared for and witnessed me without flinching as I unraveled • Making my way out of the house at 2am to walk the streets to progress labor at 34 hours in, feeling like a warrior with each step I took • Receiving two cervical checks, only to learn I had not dilated at all. • Making the heartbreaking decision to transfer to the hospital, sleep-deprived, unable to eat, and pushed to my physical limit by the unrelenting pain. When the second cervical check revealed no progress, something in me unraveled into resignation. I felt utterly defeated. I knew then that my birth was veering far from the vision I had so intimately held: my water home birth, feeling my son crowning, pulling him through me in the embrace of my love, the golden hour cocooning the three of us. That dream began to fade as I was wheeled into the emergency room. At the hospital, I was presented with two options: proceed with a cesarean or be induced and continue laboring. I’ll be completely honest—there was a voice within that said to choose the cesarean now. But I deferred to the doctor and my partner, both of whom believed it should be a last resort. And there was still a deep, primal desire within me to birth my son vaginally. So I kept going. I labored for another 18 hours—this time under bright lights, hooked to machines, undergoing intervention after intervention. At the 53-hour mark, something changed. A chill overtook my body—deeper than anything I’d ever felt before. My teeth chattered uncontrollably as I lay trembling in the hospital bed. It was then I knew: something was very wrong. My fever spiked to 104 degrees, and with our son’s heart rate dropping, I was told there were no options left. We were being rushed in for an emergency cesarean. Up until this point, the experience had already tested me beyond measure. And still—I felt like a warrior. I believed I could do it. That my cervix would open. That the birth I had envisioned was still possible. Even with the heartbreaking detours—leaving home, choosing to induce—I had stayed connected to myself. Every decision, though full of grief, had been mine. But this one wasn’t. There was no time. No space. I was handed a hospital release form warning me I could lose my womb or my life. Something in me shattered. But my only thought—my only priority—was my son. I would do whatever it took to bring him safely earthside. He became the lighthouse guiding me through every crashing wave. My love for him pulled me through every edge I didn’t know I had. As I was being prepped for surgery, the epidural began to wear off. I could move my legs. Panic flooded the room. They dosed me with anesthesia—six times the amount—and still, I felt the first incision. My body was slipping. I was losing consciousness. Time warped and fractured. I saw golden fractals of sacred geometry and had the felt sense of leaving this realm. I didn’t resist. I surrendered. I let go. I entered the black void of nothingness.

PART 3 | THE NICU + THE SEPARATION 

 When I awoke, I was in the recovery room, by my bedside, my mother. No partner. No baby. I thought I had died. I didn’t recognize the world I had returned to. I couldn’t find my son. A wave of panic overtook me—primal, feral. My body ached with a yearning beyond words. I needed him. I was told he had been taken to the NICU with my partner. In time, I learned that our son was born blue, the umbilical cord wrapped tightly around his neck and body. He wasn’t breathing. He had to be resuscitated. The first time I saw him was over FaceTime. His tiny body wrapped in wires and monitors. It would be 24 hours before I could see him in person—and five excruciating days before I could finally hold him in my arms. We were housed in different buildings. He, undergoing therapeutic cooling to prevent possible brain damage. Me, barely able to move, writhing in localized pain from surgical complications. What should have been a 3-4 day stay became 8 days for me, 10 for him. I was wheeled to see him each day, granted only 45 precious minutes before being taken back to my room. I watched doctors make medical decisions I had no say in. Nurses soothe him in ways I could not. I felt powerless. My womb had held him for nearly 10 months—and now I could not even touch him. It was the deepest grief I have ever known. A somatic disorientation like no other. My body had birthed life, and then—he was gone. The rupture of our bond was immediate and visceral. I feared he wouldn’t know I was his mother. That he wouldn’t recognize my scent, my sound. That fear echoed through my heart like a sacred echo of every ancestral loss. The pain of separation from God—of being left, abandoned in the most sacred moment of my life—felt like a rupture that echoed through lifetimes. Everything was moving too fast. Too much for my nervous system to process. This is trauma—too much, too soon, too fast. And still, there were miracles. My milk came in. I began to pump. Eventually transitioning to breast. Feeding him became my daily prayer. It became the one thing I could offer that tethered me back into motherhood. My partner was my anchor. My rock. Tireless, unwavering. Moving between two hospital wards to care for his son and me. Wiping my body when I couldn’t move. Feeding me when I had no strength. Holding the weight of our family when I was unraveling. I thought I knew love—until this. My son cracked me open into an ocean of love I had never known. My partner carried me through it. My mother never left my side. She slept beside me in that hospital room, holding vigil with the quiet strength of generations. It was as if I had been born again—and she rose to meet me, just as she had when I first entered this world. Her touch carried the memory of every mother who came before us. In my most vulnerable state, she became both mother and midwife, tending not only to my body, but to the rebirth of my spirit. Through her, I felt the lineage of love that I now pass to my son. Something else awakened in me during those days: my voice. Fierce and unwavering. I advocated for every ounce of my son’s care. For mine. I asked for tests. I refused unnecessary interventions. I stood between him and a system that wanted to dehumanize our experience. My voice rose like a sword—sharp and sacred. I did not let them forget we were human. That he was mine. This was a spiritual battle cloaked in medicine. A rite of passage veiled in medical gowns, yet bathed in maternal devotion. But through it all—what mattered most was getting home. Together. And finally, after nearly two weeks that felt like lifetimes, we did. Yes, there was devastation. But there was also beauty. There was terror—but also tenderness. Amidst the wreckage, there was devotion. And in that continual devotion, I have been finding my way back to myself. Back to a self that is still being reborn. This was not the birth I dreamed of, but it was the birth that split me open to my core. I did not return whole—but I returned transformed. Initiated. My body etched with the memory of the threshold I crossed. My womb tender, my heart rearranged. And with my son in my arms, a new story began—not stitched in perfection, but in presence, heartbeat to heartbeat.

PART 4: THE DESCENT OF POSTPARTUM 

 Under the watchful eye of hospital staff, we had to meet a checklist of protocols before we could bring our baby home. Each day we prayed that today would be the day. And then—after what felt like lifetimes—it was. Driving home all together felt like a quiet triumph. We had made it. We had our baby boy, and for the first time, we were free to just be with him. No beeping monitors, no sterile rooms—just the sanctuary of our bed, tangled in soft blankets and the warmth of his tiny body. Something in me softened the moment I held him close. But another part of me remained behind. Still lying on that surgical table. Still in the NICU. Still waiting. The pain didn’t end when we got home. I remained in excruciating discomfort—unable to walk or stand without assistance. Even now, my legs still give out beneath me. My body had become unfamiliar terrain, one I am slowly learning how to inhabit again. In those early days, I couldn’t even look at my womb, let alone touch her. The incision felt like too much to bear. For the first time in over nine years, I disconnected from my womb—and I disconnected from God. I felt suspended in that void space between death and life, uncertain of the reality I had awakened into. What anchored me were the ones I love—my partner and my son. I would spend hours memorizing my baby’s face, his little fingers curled around mine, our breath synchronizing in slow waves. I learned every sound he made: every sigh, every grunt, every cry. I attuned to him like a second skin. And yet the fear of losing him has lingered like a shadow. The trauma of our separation replaying in my nervous system. Any time someone else held him, my body tensed with hypervigilance. Emotionally, I was unraveling from the aftershocks of PTSD. Physically, I was navigating the raw edges of post-surgical pain and immobility. In time, I began to tend to the parts of me that had gone offline. With the support of somatic and physical therapy, I slowly started to make contact again. I began by placing my hands over my womb, offering gratitude. She had created, held, and birthed my son. Not vaginally, but through a sacred threshold no less miraculous. That knowing didn’t come instantly—it unfurled gently. I remember one night, offering milk in the sacred stillness, when the gnosis arrived quietly: my cervix didn’t open for a reason. She wasn’t failing me—she was protecting him. Had I birthed vaginally, more harm may have come to his fragile body. My womb, my cervix, had been in divine alignment all along, ensuring we were where we needed to be for his safety and care. In the beginning, I thought she had betrayed me. But she had been guided by a deeper knowing, one that stirred beneath my awareness. Eventually, I remembered that I had every tool I needed to heal and integrate this experience. I knew how to regulate my nervous system, to alchemize trauma, to express what lived inside me, to come home to my body and my womb. And that return stirred a sacred labor that continues to shape me. This experience has shattered the constructs I once held. In the beginning, I questioned everything. My cervix hadn’t opened fully in time, and I felt like a fraud in the work I do. I felt like a baby in my own recovery—vulnerable, raw, undone. And yet, somewhere beneath it all, I also felt like an unbreakable warrior. I had traversed the edge of life and death, experienced the primal rupture of separation from my child, and still, I remained. A deeper self—the one beyond any title or role—anchored itself more firmly into my being. I am changed. As a woman, a mother, a partner, and as a space holder. Something essential in me has been rewritten. This integration has not come all at once. It began slowly, gently—moment by moment, breath by breath. I gave myself permission to rest. I met each layer of the journey as I was ready, not a moment before. There were flashes of clarity. Surrender. Breakdowns that left me hollowed out. Beauty so profound it cracked me open. Postpartum has not been linear. It has been a spiral—a descent and a reclamation. Navigating new motherhood while unable to fully function in my body has added a weight I couldn’t have prepared for. But I have met it time and time again with the slow devotion of each inhale. As the weeks unfolded I began to sense that this wasn’t only a healing journey—it was an initiation. Beneath the layers of physical recovery and emotional unraveling, something older than words stirred within me. The birth, the rupture, the descent—they had become a threshold. And walking through it, I crossed into a deeper knowing, where the sacred revealed itself not in brilliance or display, but in the quiet: the hush of midnight feedings, the warmth of my partners hands holding me together, and in the fragile faith I whispered into the dark—even when I wasn’t sure anyone was there. And what I found there was not just healing, but the presence of something holy—woven through my scar and every surrender I had been beckoned through.

Part 5: WOMB ALCHEMY 

 What I understand about the womb now is no longer conceptual. She is not just a sacred space. She is not just a symbol of creation, death, or rebirth. She is consciousness itself—a sovereign force that governs the cycles of life and beyond. She is not something I carry. She carries me. Before, I knew the womb as a mystical space—a source of power, remembrance, intuition. But now, after being severed open, after meeting death through her threshold, I no longer speak about the womb. I speak from her. She is not a metaphor for divinity. She is divinity—raw, present, embodied. This wasn’t knowledge I sought. It was forged in crisis…when I hovered between worlds, through losing every tether that once anchored me, only to discover that what remained was indestructible. The womb is not something to be accessed. She is a force that claims you when you’re ready to remember. In that operating room, I thought they were cutting me open and removing the essence of me. But what remained was the root that could never be severed. Though this experience has brought me back to the beginning, I know this terrain. I already carry the blueprint of my own restoration. This is the very work I’ve guided others through—and here I am, being asked to walk it again. But this time, it’s different. The integrations are coming through with a rapidness that feels almost quantum, while I myself am moving more slowly than ever before. It is humbling. It is holy. The revelations live in sensation—while cradling my son to my chest, while feeling the pull of healing beneath the incision, while breathing through tears in the safety of my partners embrace. Those early postpartum days felt like a void state. Disoriented. Empty. Lost. And yet…something ancient remembered. I had walked this path before. I had come home to my womb before. And so it began again. The reunion this time is raw. It is wordless. It is more intimate than it has ever been. It’s not a healing I complete…it’s a living relationship I nurture, moment by moment. A soft tending. A sacred reweaving. Through it all, my partner stood beside me—not as a savior, but as a steady, grounded presence. When I couldn’t walk on my own, he became my legs. When I couldn’t meet my own needs, he did—gently, without asking for anything in return. He held me through the darkest nights, reminded me of who I was when I had forgotten, and loved me without condition. This season forged a deeper union between us. It softened old defenses, dissolved ancient wounds I still carried with the masculine. In his presence, I began to feel safe again—held not only as a mother, but as a woman. Our bond, once tested, has become a sacred root system that now holds the three of us: me, him, and our son. And God? I used to pray to God as if God lived outside of me—somewhere distant, benevolent, and powerful enough to spare me from pain. I didn’t realize how much I still believed suffering meant absence. And when everything I feared unfolded…when my prayers went unanswered…I felt betrayed. Abandoned. Forgotten. But the deeper truth came quietly…like a thread I didn’t know I was still holding. That God was not the force that failed to stop the rupture—God was the presence within it. Not a protector hovering above, but the very breath that stayed with me. The thread of consciousness that never left. Even when I was cut open. Even when my baby was gone from my body. Even in the silence of that sterile room. I was still here. And so was God. Not separate from me—but as me. This is the God I know now. Not a rescuer, but a current. Not a gatekeeper of grace, but grace itself. The One who bleeds with me, births with me, breathes through me. Who never left…because God was never somewhere else to begin with. This trauma has become my teacher. But I am not reading the map—I am walking it. In real time, I am meeting the trauma body with reverence. I am practicing what I preach…somatic attunement, nervous system restoration, womb alchemy, sacred breath, spiritual communion. This isn’t about surviving anymore. It’s about remembering the wholeness that was never lost. This experience revealed where I was still tethered to victim consciousness—where I had unconsciously agreed to powerlessness. It showed me the places where I was still carrying separation from God, inherited through early wounds of abandonment and betrayal. And as harrowing as it was, it became the altar where I laid down my illusions and remembered who I truly am. A holy undoing that helped me shed the illusion of disconnection and root more deeply into union. Trauma is what happens when the body encounters too much, too fast, too soon—and cannot complete its cycle. Healing is what happens when presence meets what once felt unbearable. And I am still healing. Still unraveling. Still remembering. But I am no longer lost in the dark. Now, I carry the torch.