Crossing the bridge to motherhood.

the primal unfolding within me

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I’m writing this to you tired, exhausted even. I feel unsure about what words to put on the page. Life is so beautiful, and yet I feel half-alive right now - so depleted I am by the energetic effort of growing a human life.

There is a profound clarity that comes through the act of breathing another human into being, bone by bone.

I have found the veil between myself and my intuition, my truth, to be thinner than usual, as though everything in my being is ripe for change - if only I choose to listen.

Layers that I held true so firmly for decades are being stripped away.

Everything is still the same, and yet nothing is as it was.

I am being tumbled by the mounting froth of this experience. Unbridled. Undone. My insides becoming my outsides. My outsides preparing to be shed like the selkie skin that no longer fits, that cannot contain my becoming.

I am so tired. I feel half-awake and caught in the mists of brain fog much of the time, and simultaneously, I have never in my life felt so clear, so boldly unquestioning of what I know to be true.

A ruthless beast is growing within me. Some might call her mama bear. Others might give her the name of wild woman. Some will say she is unleashed, destructive even. But I know what is true. She is simply my true self finally being set free.

I imagined touching this part of me would come at a time of great vitality. My senses awakened to everything around me. My capacity for aliveness, heightened. I imagined it would look like swimming in the ocean, and dancing around the bonfire.

But instead, wild woman is coming to me in the moments I can barely keep my eyes open, in the darkness, in the solitude, in the giving over of all that I am to the emergence that awaits me on the other side of this threshold crossing.

I am the only one who can cross this bridge into motherhood for me.

The closer I move to that portal, the more I want to be alone.

I crave solitude.

Perhaps it is because I feel misunderstood and unseen by so much of the world around me right now. Or perhaps it is because I feel so deeply understood and seen by myself. But my desire to retreat into the hermit’s cave comes not from a place of running away, but from an impulse to run toward.

To run toward the depths of me.

Some people in my life do not understand this retreat. They may call it selfish, or take the distance I am creating personally. But the embodied women know. They too have tasted the underworld journey and surrendered themselves to the descent.

The over-culture teaches us to resist this process.
But I yearn for the shedding of my skins, a snake on the cusp of her evolution.

It is dark here. And I am tired, more tired than I have ever been. And yet some part of me knows that at my core I am more awake than ever before.

Rest, sweet one. I remind myself. For you are on a journey from maiden to mother. There is nothing to solve or fix. Your only job is to surrender, all of yourself, to the unfolding.

I want to scream. I want to scream at anyone who asks anything of me right now. Can’t you see I have so very little to give?

Where is the honouring of the journey to become mother?
Where is the bowing down to this as a rite of passage?
Where is the acknowledgement of the depths I am traversing?

Instead you ask for more. You demand to sip from my nearly empty cup. You demand to sip from the cup I am offering my unborn child.

Know that is not how I will mother, myself or this new life inside of me. Because even through these half-asleep tired eyes, even in these weary bones, even tethered by these aching muscles, I can feel myself awakening.

There is a primal roar within me.

I am learning to trust the weight of my inner knowing, the resonance of my no.
I am learning to trust, that despite everything I have been taught, I actually know what is best for me.
And right now, I do not owe anyone anything but the tender care of myself, my body, and the baby growing inside of me.

That is enough.

Recent writing and other offerings you might have missed…

• The story of our conscious conception journey and the path we took to call in this baby.

• More musings on connecting to the inner wild woman and the power that can be sourced from within.

• Behind-the-scenes reflections on both life and business for the month of March.

• Want to connect with your inner child? My self-study course on embracing and re-parenting your inner child is available and open once again.

Hello to anyone who is new here… I’m Kelsey, a therapist, writer, space holder, community tender, creative business coach, and soon-to-be mama. You can find out more about my work here. If you enjoyed this essay, please do subscribe. And if you have the means, I would be so grateful if you chose to support my creations as a paid subscriber.