Birth

Dear Body, ⠀⠀
I didn’t know,
I didn’t know that I have been underestimating you.
I am in awe of your strength,
At how much you can handle.
At how much you can withstand.
At how much pain you can endure. ⠀⠀
Going through this together,
Through this pain,
I hold a reverence for you,
That I haven’t held before. ⠀⠀
Through these intense surges of pain,
I learnt your strength,
Your power.
Your resilience.
And I also met my own strength,
My own power,
My own resilience.
⠀⠀
Painful, yet powerful.
Things that aren’t often linked.
Typically when thinking of feeling pain,
When we let ourselves FEEL it,
It somehow is equated to weakness,
To frailty,
To fault.
Feeling is too emotional.
Too fragile.
Too much. ⠀⠀

But the mixture of pain and power,
Is how I would describe birth.
Fully immersed in the pain,
Wave after wave,
But also connected to a deeper strength.
Although many times I felt uncertain and incapable if I could keep up,
You seemed to say back, “Don’t worry, I know what I am doing”.

So I trusted.
Maybe not completely,
But I tried to trust you through the discomfort.
Facing the pain,
Facing the feeling,
Being embodied with you,
I felt empowered.
⠀⠀
Not caring about containing,
Or holding you in a certain way,
I followed your force,
Followed your movement,
Followed your instincts.
Even though it was painful,
We were connected in a rhythmic dance.
A dance with our feet pounding till rawness,
A dance where our hair wild,
A dance that led to bringing a life,
A soul,
Into this world. ⠀⠀
Painful, yet how powerful.