What modern manifestation misses [birth story and beyond edition]
My birth stories are not the pain free, ecstatic births that we see on social media. My babies were not born in a birthing pool, though I’ve used them for hours in labor. I do not gently breathe my babies down the birth canal, it’s more like roaring and crying and trembling.
In each birth story, I’ve had to travel to the depths of the Underworld to birth my babies. All three of them. Each labor was 24+ hours. My children were not little either, and it took every ounce of strength, courage, literal blood and sweat, and the loving (also firm) guidance of my partner and support team to bring them Earthside.
And this - at times - has been a shattering realization. That no matter how I’ve prepared - all the prenatal yoga, mantra meditation, birth visualization, positive birth stories and videos, shadow work, letting go, walks throughout the neighborhood, rest, journaling, childbirth education, somatic work - I could not manifest my birth story. Not a one of them.
We can be informed, we can bring our intentions and values into birth (and anything really), but we cannot guarantee an outcome. This latest journey reminded me that the more we know, the more we actually don’t know at all.
I joke that I must have some serious birth karma to have three labors unfold with such intensity and length, but I’m actually serious. In the depths of the contractions and in the spaces between, it felt like so much was shattering within and around me, metaphorically and literally. For each labor. That coupled with the sweet rewards of pulling wet velvety babies to my chest and watching my partner cut each cord (and watching him catch the baby with our third!); it’s a lot to process and integrate…
Which is where I am now…integration. At the time of this writing, I am 11 days postpartum (at publishing, I am around 30 days postpartum). It feels like I’ve lived years since birthing our new baby boy, Ford. It feels like no time has passed at all. It feels like the hardest days of my life as I watch my older children experience this change in our family dynamic. It feels like the sweetest moments, too.
I have a photo of the Goddess Kali that sits on my altar. She’s the Goddess of Birth and Destruction, two sides of the same coin. We cannot have birth without death. We cannot have death without rebirth.
Kali is wild, scary even with her weapons and skulls that adorn her body. She’s a warrior and yet she’s the great Mother. She’s the opposite of what we revere in spirituality - i.e. the tranquility, the peaceful serenity of a body in the stillness of meditation - and yet she IS the force that propels us into our transformation. A Mother knows when she needs to be gentle and when she needs to be fierce.
She destroys everything that’s not true to allow for the emergence of who we really are, and how to respond to the needs of this moment…even if it’s not what we want or desire. That’s the thing:
Modern manifestation practice is all about drawing towards us that which we desire or want, but it doesn’t take into consideration the karmas that we must work through in this lifetime.
What a lesson, yes?
You can't always get what you want
But if you try sometime
You'll find
You get what you need.
- Rolling Stones
Kali is so present for me right now, because in this portal of time - entering into birth, birth itself, and immediate postpartum - so much becomes crystal clear and so much is still lacking clarity. There’s so much that I need to let go of - ways of being and thinking and imagining how my life would be - while accepting the beauty of what is… reminding myself to want what I already have.
Ford’s birth and the unwavering presence of Kali Ma are invitations to be in the “no story” of right now, to be with the transitions of life even when they’re painful, and to allow space for the rebirth and re-creation and integration of life as it wants to come through right now. And, that likely will require some big changes for all of us in these pivotal portal moments in birth and beyond.
What life transitions are present for you right now? What might you have to release in order to allow something new to be born? Where is the resistance for you? What was birth and postpartum like for you? As always, I’d love to hear.
Jai Ma.
With love,
Leanne
Leanne Matullo; photographer Ria Mackenzie
