5

Dying to Live

All Great Journeys Begin in the Dark

              For a seed to achieve its greatest expression, it must come completely undone. The shell cracks, its insides come out and everything changes. To someone who doesn’t understand growth, it would look like complete destruction.

              CYNTHIA OCCELLI

When I was pregnant — and at the beginning of my journey of creating new human life — I spent months researching and practicing to have a natural birth at home, and ideally one that would be pleasurable. So often, women’s expectations for childbirth are limited to scary, freaky, and painful with a side of anesthesia. So I thought, why not imagine — and potentially experience — something wonderful instead?

I listened to over thirty lectures by midwives, doctors, doulas, researchers, and mothers. I danced, did yoga, took naps, and because I was also supposed to have lots of sex and lots of orgasms, my husband was happy to get seriously involved. It just made sense: I had been studying and practicing how to make my life more pleasurable for years, and it was a theme in my coaching practice as well.

And yet, at the same time that I practiced like an Olympian for a pleasurable birth, I became more aware of death. It wasn’t just that I was aware that I could die in childbirth, or that I might be entirely unequipped to keep my tiny wisp of a baby alive. It was also as if I had been playing in the sunshine all my life and suddenly noticed that there were shadows everywhere — and I could not take my eyes off them. The dark aspect of all things whispered to me. I couldn’t make out what it was saying exactly, but it sounded important, vital, and badass. I did feel a little weird to be so noire at a time that was all about tender new life, but I was fascinated. Interested. Willing. This kind of death didn’t feel like the opposite of life, but more like life’s long-lost twin.

When I went into labor, I was ready. I put all my pleasure strategies to use. I breathed, stretched, kissed my husband, did lunges down the hall, squatted, got in the shower, lowed like a cow, got out of the shower, got in the birth tub, talked with the baby, visualized my womb opening like a lotus flower, got out of the birth tub, kissed my husband, and did more lunges down the hall.

After trying for twenty hours to turn the pain of labor into sensations of pleasure, I internally gave the finger to my home birth teacher who had said contractions lasted for about a minute. Mine were easily two minutes with very little rest in between. I retreated into another realm where I couldn’t even remember the word pleasure. I was in agony. I closed my eyes and listened for guidance. There’s no way out for him, my inner voice said, referring to my baby. And then I sensed a series of images: the front door of my house opening into the front door of the hospital, opening into the door of the operating room: C-section.

WTF? Okay, first of all, “no way out”? Of course there’s a way out. It is called giving birth. All babies have a way out. It is called my vagina, thank you very much. Vaginas happen to be really, really good at getting babies out into the world. And this labor-induced vision, that is the opposite of what I planned for? I don’t think so. No. No, thank you.

I did more lunges. More lowing. For another two hours.

Then my midwife checked again on my dilation and the baby’s position. With a worried cast to her eyes, she whispered to her partner, “Transverse arrest.” They exchanged a foreboding look. “Get her overnight bag, and we’ll meet you at the hospital,” they said to my husband. Just like that, my pleasure plan evaporated. Exhausted and dehydrated, I threw pleasure under the bus and prayed fervently for narcotics. I literally wept as the drugs were injected into my body, and I could finally see again. With my baby’s heartbeat slowing alarmingly, they wheeled me into the operating room.

My baby was born healthy and beautiful (well, more like cute old man alien) with all his fingers and all his toes intact. The doctor who performed the C-section — who looked like one of the gorgeous blonde interns from the TV show Grey’s Anatomy — said she had never had to pull so hard to get a baby out. Either he or I would have likely died without her intervention.

“Sometimes a blessing comes in the form of a scalpel,” my friend Sera told me. But I couldn’t yet see the C-section as a godsend. It felt like a curse for failing my god of pleasure.

As I nursed my newborn, I read about transverse arrest and discovered why it is so alarming: instead of coming out crown-of-head first, the baby tries to come out side-of-head first and gets stopped, too big to pass through mom’s pelvic opening. In medical texts, transverse arrest is a rare and dangerous complication, known as the “no way out” position.

No way out. I started to cry. And then to laugh. I hadn’t thought to share my strange birth vision with my midwife. I thought it was nonsense or fear rather than wisdom and premonition. Because I was expecting a vision of my vagina opening as a sacred flower, letting my baby slip ecstatically into this world, I ignored my actual and alarming vision of the doors opening to operating tables and scalpels, the doctors prying my baby out of my body. I cried and laughed some more, unsettled by the eerie power of my inner voice and vision.

Still, even with this understanding, it took me nearly two years to completely unravel my shame at my birth gone crosswise. I agonized over what I had missed. How had I been so unable to make the birth pleasurable? I was supposed to be the expert. Many of my friends labored for thirty, forty, even fifty hours and in the end had natural births. I was trained as a dancer to perform through any catastrophe, even a broken toe. (I have, in fact, performed once or twice with a broken toe.) How could my training and resolve have crumbled so completely? My plan had failed. I had failed my plan. My plan had failed because I was a failure. If I hadn’t turned into such a fake, I thought, perhaps I could have had my kiddo at home and avoided ingesting more painkillers in a few hours than I had in my entire lifetime. For what was I being punished?

It took time to understand that not getting what I wanted or had prepared for so diligently was actually a blessing. I reviewed the facts and let them shed light on the fog of my shame. Slowly, slowly, I realized that if the birth had gone according to my plan, I would have assumed that any outcome I wanted was always in my control. I would have assumed that my plan was the best plan. I would have assumed, a bit smugly, that any pain can be transmuted into pleasure. But the truth is, some kinds of pain can be transmuted and other kinds simply fucking hurt.

If the birth had gone according to plan, I would have continued to feel a tiny bit separate from and elevated over other women and mothers, those poor, lazy suckers who didn’t get what they labored for. “I’ve made a plan; I’ve done my research; I’ve followed my plan; and therefore, I deserve a great result,” would have remained my thinking. I would have smiled compassionately on others’ heartbreaks, feeling safe and secure on my high horse.

I would have continued to believe, as I learned from the worlds of dance, media, and culture, that mothering, parenting, creating, working, or simply being alive and a woman, is a competition. Which is life stealing.

I would have continued to attach my worth as a human being to any outcome I planned for and worked toward. Which is toxic.

I would have continued to dismiss the voice inside me that knew exactly what the hell it was talking about, and I would have missed learning the markings of intuition that distinguish the voice of inner knowing from the voice of fear. Which is tragic.

Don’t get me wrong, I like getting what I want. Sometimes I hit it out of the park, and it feels good. And I am also overjoyed for the women who have given birth on their own terms, even pleasurably. I no longer take one woman’s triumph to mean my defeat. But now I also know that getting what I want is no longer the main event. Which is what the dark death aspect of my pregnancy had come to teach me. As it turns out, all great journeys begin in the dark.

In our shadow — that dark underworld of our psyche that holds all we have disowned, aren’t ready to see, cannot yet feel, or refuse to look at — nestles a seed germinating a new part of ourselves. The day I birthed my baby, I also birthed a new part of myself. My baby’s birthday will forevermore also be my birthday. And for another part of me, it will also be my death-day. The blessings of the dark hold true for literal and figurative mothers alike. Blessings, all, from the divine offices of Feminine Genius herself. Oh, hello, darkness, our old friend.

INVITATION TO THE DARK

The complete destruction of a plan, the alchemical burning of outworn parts of yourself, or the unadorned heartbreak that brings you to your knees are simply your invitations to descend into the dark, into the bright holy death part of the cycle of death and rebirth.

The dark requires you to compost your rotten ideas about yourself and create fertile soil from which you can burst into life. The dark asks you to renounce your false idols of “getting it right,” to renovate the shrine to your intuitive voice, and to resurrect the belief that blessings often come in wolf’s clothing. (Scalpel, anyone?)

The dark outlines your heart with indelible black marker so that whatever was previously invisible, you can now see in stark relief. The dark reminds you that you are not being punished; you are being invited. The dark reminds you that feeling, “I can’t. No really, I am not kidding; I truly don’t have it in me,” is a sure sign that you are about to do the impossible — although not in the way you planned to do it, of course.

Feminine Genius, this patron saint of women worldwide, has plans for you, too. She prefers curveballs to remove separation between you and other women, between warring parts of yourself, and between you and the Divine. She is a straight shooter, helping you hone your inner wisdom and your courage to follow it. She is a righteous badass who favors tough love, yet knows when to apply the balm of grace. She brandishes both dark and light, whatever it takes to kill your illusions and bring you more to life. Absolute genius, she prefers to wear your face in the mirror. Girl, Feminine Genius looks good on you.

With all due respect to the different forms and degrees of our dark times, all women need to learn black-belt-level skills so we can navigate the dark, whatever dark may come our way, whether from the big mama in the cosmos or the big daddy of our dominant culture. Because there is something more important than getting what we wanted with our whole hearts. More important than any plan is all that we must learn and unlearn, and the woman we must grow into as we do.

“Easy for you to say,” you might reply. “In the end, your baby was healthy and so were you. Easy to find a lesson and a blessing in that. Explain to me, if you can, why that woman’s baby died, why that woman can’t have a baby at all despite spending a small fortune in fertility treatments, why that woman’s sister got hit by a bus, why her country is torn apart by genocide, why she is dying of bone cancer, why she had acid thrown in her face, why she was raped and left for dead, why she was passed over for the promotion.”

There’s no way to explain pain and heartbreak, no way to measure blessing and grace. This isn’t a competition. Mine isn’t better or worse than yours. Trying to measure is madness. Trying to explain is beside the point. Plus, you can’t hear your inner truth if you are too high up on your high horse.

              Rupture is not where your story ends.

              It is where it begins.

              REGENA THOMASHAUER

So, one day, as you are shooting for the moon and landing among the stars, Feminine Genius will divert your itinerary and hurl you into the underworld. “WTF? What just happened? Where the hell am I?” you will likely ask.

“Come on down from that horse,” she will say. “Come on in. And don’t mess around swimming in circles in the shallow end. Dive deep. Descend. That’s right, let’s go down. All the way down. Come on in,” she will invite you with a toothy grin, “the water’s fine.”

I can’t. This is impossible. Will this ever end? I can’t do it. I can’t make it through. It’s too much. It’s too long. I thought I dealt with this already. This is impossible. It will never end. This is what you will think when you are down in the dark and everything has been invaded with the chill of your personal wintertime. It will be too much. It will be too long. You will have dealt with this already. It will be impossible. It will never end.

And then it will end.

              Sometimes when you’re in a dark place you think you’ve been buried but you’ve actually been planted.

              CHRISTINE CAINE