Before it happens you are the soul of delighted anticipation.
Then your being is hurling toward some unknown tomorrow and you think you can, if you make it through this, handle anything.
There is the unequivocal terror of course. Then the considerable and insistent pain arrives regardless of what they have told you.
And your body turns against you. The body you have known your entire life - that which is completely you - begins a complex ritual of changing into something else.
You are at once confused, excited, and filled with an urge to turn around and run back up the path you have made in the deep parts of yourself. Yet you know you can't turn back.
This can continue for minutes, hours or days. You may feel light, like a twirling tiny dust mite. You may feel heavy like a rock bound in chains. But when it is done, you feel nothing but a joy you can't describe.
And then you hold your baby - forced out of your self and onto this earthly plain, he now belongs to you.
Now the real duty and everlasting beauty of life begins and you are no longer as certain as you were before, that you can handle anything.
You will do well just to handle this tiny person who knows only that you are the bringer of love, of sustenance and of life...
As overwhelmed as you feel at this moment, you are grateful to the universe which made you, even as you have made this tiny light; the glow of which lights your very soul.
Now you are filled with a certain joy and you can scarce believe your good fortune.
There is the unequivocal terror of course. Then the considerable and insistent pain arrives regardless of what they have told you.
And your body turns against you. The body you have known your entire life - that which is completely you - begins a complex ritual of changing into something else.
You are at once confused, excited, and filled with an urge to turn around and run back up the path you have made in the deep parts of yourself. Yet you know you can't turn back.
This can continue for minutes, hours or days. You may feel light, like a twirling tiny dust mite. You may feel heavy like a rock bound in chains. But when it is done, you feel nothing but a joy you can't describe.
And then you hold your baby - forced out of your self and onto this earthly plain, he now belongs to you.
Now the real duty and everlasting beauty of life begins and you are no longer as certain as you were before, that you can handle anything.
You will do well just to handle this tiny person who knows only that you are the bringer of love, of sustenance and of life...
As overwhelmed as you feel at this moment, you are grateful to the universe which made you, even as you have made this tiny light; the glow of which lights your very soul.
Now you are filled with a certain joy and you can scarce believe your good fortune.
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Story by Pamela Tyree Griffin
Originally Published by the Terrific Cat's Meow for Writers and Readers Ezine
