#primal side

Probably one of my biggest fears around birth is triggered when I hear birth stories about tapping into your primal side. 

“You go to a place that’s hard to explain,” is one of the many ways its been explained to me. 

I nod and smile like I don’t know what they’re talking about since I’ve never given birth.

But underneath that smile is an idea of what that primal side is like. 

When my mom died, I flew in from Maine where I had been shipped away for the summer while she was in the hospital, and she was already in a coma by the time I arrived. She couldn’t talk or see anything. Her eyes would twitch and that was the only way I knew she could hear me. Supposedly hearing is the last to go. 

I talked lots to mom, but then it got to a point where I just broke down into tears. I couldn’t stand up. I fell to the ground and was crying so incredibly hard. My cousin Meggin described it to me as hearing an animal ripped away from its mother - that primal type of cry. I guess you could hear me all the way down the hospital hallway. 

While this is a very different circumstance - the beginning of life, not the end - the thought of tapping into that primal side during labor is really scary for me. I don’t want to go back there. I don’t want other people to see me like that. Will my neighbors hear me while I labor at home? 

This is something I have to think and meditate on and make peace with because it can’t be avoided. Maybe I won’t go there - but if I do, I can’t avoid it or resist it because my inner 12 year old is afraid of revisiting that side of me. 

“The only way out is through,” is one of my favorite mantras.