Memory Once Removed

Birth Trauma

The trauma of my first birth had cast a long dark shadow. I had walked the edge between darkness and light. I had tiptoed along the Knowing. I had ran my fingertips over the Veil. I had peeked behind the curtain and all I had seen was inky blackness.

It felt empty.

And I felt alone. 

I had felt too close to death. The primal smell of it in the salt that coated my skin. So close, I had expected someone to come for me. My great grandma Jessie. My grandmother. My nanny. I had tried to invoke each of them. Screaming their names in my mind. All who I thought of as my Angels. My Divine Feminine.  

But no one came.   

No one answered. 

I was sure Souls existed, because I had felt mine bounce off the walls of my body. Desperate for escape. But, it was tethered to my bones. I was trapped. 

I’m dying. 

I’m dying. 

I’M DYING.

Those words bounced off the inside of my skull like alarm bells. All my cells were screaming of death. High pitched and constant. 

Faith. 

You’re not dying.

You’re not dying. 

You’ll get through this. Just like you get through everything else. 

You’re not dying. 

It was a voice other than my own. Sure and unwavering. But, I felt it was a liar. I had felt death. This felt like an end. This couldn’t be what beginning felt like. 

But, it was. 

I was there. But, I wasn’t. I could see everything happening to me in real time. But, I was also miles away. 

I was blinking. But, as I did I was pulled into the recesses of my Soul. Each blink maybe half a second. Or was it hours?

I was there. But, I wasn’t.

My heart chose escape. And within each timeless blink was a memory. Each flooded with sunshine and fast shadows of clouds moving across the ground.

Memories of moments I had been completely present in. Moments I felt safe. Moments I felt peace. Moments I felt whole. 

In the end, right before I was pulled back, I was on my favorite beach. Not a memory, but something new. The sun was setting. The sun was the pinkest it had ever been. The cliffs and rocks of the shore were lit up orange and warm. Golden hour. The salt water like a bath. The shore was empty. Everything was quiet. Just the crashing of the waves. I was floating. The water softly lapping at my edges. 

I turned away from the sun beginning to dip beneath the horizon. I had heard something. The shore was still empty. 

Then there it was again. Faint. Then louder and louder. Screaming. 

And the screaming was me. 

I blinked and they cast my son upon my chest, everything snapped back into focus. The darkness reseeded almost instantly. My cells stopped screaming. My Soul fluttered, then went still. But, that inky blackness still clung to my peripherals. 

I had never felt more hollow. More forsaken. Frosaken by my birth. Forsaken by God. Forsaken by my Angels. 

Hollow. 

And when they wheeled me to my little cell within the Mother and Baby Ward, I waited until the nurse left the room and whispered to my husband:

What the fuck just happened…

Laying there, my body broken clutching a baby to my chest was so surreal.  Had it been hours or days? Had it been lifetimes?

How much of me had stayed in that Delivery Room? How much of me had been lost?

I didn’t have a lot of words to describe what had happened to me. All I managed to stamper to was:

I died. 

You didn’t die Love. I was there. You didn’t die. 

But, I did. Tears leaked from the corners of my eyes. 

I died. I felt them rip my soul out of my body. I died.

There were no other words for me to explain what had happened to me. What I had felt. I still don’t have the words.

I died. 

It still feels true to me.

I felt lied to. I felt stupid. I had been so completely and wholly unprepared for what it could be. I felt cheated by my expectation of Birth and Motherhood. My expectation and my reality had collided violently and bloody. I had thought it to be some great and beautiful becoming. A fierce and triumphant becoming. But, here I was. Icarus flying too close to the sun. I was a bitter surrender to the flames, where I was thrown writhing and screaming.

I was angry and grieving. I was heavy with guilt and shame. Some ugly part of me felt that maybe somehow I deserved it. I didn’t deserve the flower crown of Motherhood. Why was mine a crown of thorns?

The pain radiated through my body that sometimes I couldn’t even see past it. I felt raw to the world. An open wound to everyone around me that I was desperate to hide. With a little baby boy that deserved so much better than me. 

In those first moments of Motherhood, the darkness had crept up on me so quickly and completely, I told myself that’s all there was. 

I was abandoned. I was forsaken. There was nothing else there, just the inky blackness. 

But…

That voice other than my own hadn’t lied to me. 

I was the liar.

The pain was the liar. The trauma was the liar. 

I had lived. 

Every memory I had walked through when my body could take no more, had been in full sunshine color. Where I had been present, safe, at peace, and whole. 

It hadn’t been dark at all. I hadn’t been alone. I had been answered and rescued. Peace had been in full sunset gold. 

But, I had to peel the darkness of my trauma from my bones. Fiber by fiber. I washed it with my tears. I rang it out and hung it on the line. I folded it and pressed it under glass. I hung it on my wall. 

They say you forget. But, I've never forgotten. Not one thing.

Every so often I take it down and unfold it. Like the pages of a pop-up book. I walk through it to make sure I recognize every shadow.

A memory once removed.

I see myself there. The darkness and the light. And when I am satisfied, I fold it back up and press it under the glass. I run my fingers along the seams. I make sure the lines are crisp. That they can’t slip out from under their glass and pull me back. That they don’t sneak into my closet, or under my bed. 

And I carry it with me. A badge for the strength of my back. The strength of my heart.

The Truth: The darkness never claimed me. I was melted down and forged new. Layered for strength and seamed in gold. Motherhood claimed me, full sunshine bright. Through darkness or through light, it’s a choice just the same. 

And I choose it everyday.