This week I invited folks to ask for their birth story while spending time with loved ones. I empathize with the hearts of people who can't speak with their mothers this holiday season because they have died, because they are adopted and don't have contact with their birth parent, because their mother is in incarceration/detention, or struggling with addiction and mental health, because trauma has separated family members, and because your mother is deployed and not reachable. Grief for the absence of mothers can be a kind of excruciating pain during the holidays.
In honoring that grief and not pushing it away, I acknowledge it, and I extend the invitation to you to ask loved ones that have some details of your birth story for their memories and details that they have. In the case that no one has details then I invite you to tell a short tale, a creative non-fiction that represents your own hero story. When we work to develop our own narratives, we are in-light-end. I play with that word to mean that we move into the light of knowledge and away from the darkness of not knowing our own story.
Below are some of the details that you might ask about:
-What time were you born?
-Was it a snowy day, rainy day, or sunny?
-Where was your mom when she went into labor (living room, office, store, bowling???)
-What was it like when her water broke?
-Who was there when she went into labor?
-Who was the first person she called?
-How long was the labor?
-Was it an easy labor or complicated?
-Where did she give birth?
-How did she get there?
-How long did it take for someone to put you on her chest after you were born?
-Were you sick or injured in the birth process?
-Did she experience and postpartum depression?
-Were you easy or difficult in those for the first months home?
-Was she able to get any sleep after you were born? :)
Be ready to listen, to hear things you didn't know, and to empathize with her by way of you went through all of that too, together. Maybe don't do this if you are drinking this holiday and save it for when people are having breakfast not drinking. Birth stories can be intense and are best served sober.
When I gave this invitation to clients before the Christmas Holiday - I hadn't made the correlation that we are celebrating an amazing birth story of a first-generation immigrant named Jesus to a new land, who then led people into compassion until perishing by way of persecution. No, I didn't make that correlation until waking this morning and the only part of my dream that I could recall was a big bright pentagram/star of David.
As I made my coffee I thought to myself, yeap birth stories, that is the real gift this Christmas. If you can't get details on your own, make up a creative non-fiction as all retellings are essentially, a creative non-fiction.
To life lived well and 2022!
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