Becoming A Mother

Synonyms for become: transform, change, passage, metamorphosis, development, evolution, alteration.

All of these words apply in their own way as I move through the journey of pregnancy. I have always identified with the symbol of the butterfly. Its metamorphosis from egg, to larvae, caterpillar to chrysalis, and then its magical transformation, using something that biologists call “imaginal cells,” to become a butterfly, resonates with the constant change that we experience as living beings. Before a caterpillar can become a butterfly it must die to its former self. Literally, the immune system of the caterpillar resists the change, fighting the new cells until it’s immune system fails and metamorphosis can occur. The new self cannot exist until the old one dies.

This story of the butterfly speaks to me again, in a new way, as I become a mother slowly more everyday, and as my baby grows wondrously inside of me.

This is an excerpt from the journal I’ve been keeping to my new baby.

I am becoming a mother and you are becoming my child. We will perhaps never be as close again as we are now- made of one body, nurtured by the same food, fed by the same spirit.

And yet…

We are one with all the world. There is no separation between what each of us truly are, though you may grow to think there is.

I will do my absolute best in every moment to teach you with my actions, words, and choices that this is so, that oneness and connection rather than separation and loneliness, are the rule, though the world is filled with all things.

Still, I will fail, again and again, to live from oneness and I will surrender to this failure and in doing so, show you the way.

The enormity of your tiny presence in this life leaves me full of a new kind of living. For you, for love, for me, I vow to let my highest self live this life.