The Burial (also known as the first year of Motherhood)
Over the course of the past few months I’ve been putting myself back together again.
This is what happens after what I call, The Burial, or what others may call the first year of motherhood. When you’re in The Burial you barely have enough room and air to survive. There’s not even one extra O2 molecule up for grabs. Just enough for you to get a small sip, then you turn to your new little beautiful human child and give her all that you have.
About three months ago, a part of me emerged from the underground and I took my first deep breath since she came. I remember it vividly. I was sitting on my couch downstairs, she, about thirteen months old upstairs with our lovely nanny (what a privilege I might add, one I’m so grateful for). I had an entire hour to myself before I began client work, so I opened up my journal. I’d get back to my writing, I thought. Writing has always been a refuge for me – a place where I can listen to myself. A place where I can find things in me I didn’t know were there. A place where I can heal.
As I opened up my pink and gold journal to write, the pen wouldn’t move. Nothing came. I had forgotten. I had forgotten how to have a thought or reflect about something. . . anything. I didn’t know who I was or what mattered to me. I felt like one of those astronauts in the movies who loses connection to the mothership and spins away from her base with no orbit, forever lost.
I cried. Then I cried some more. (Crying never left me, heaven forbid it ever does.) For someone who likes consistency and predictability (I mean who doesn’t?) all this *unknown* terrified me. I think I wrote about ten sentences that day. I kept coming back to my journal to try. I told myself to write about the events of the day, to start simply, and to just move the pen, it didn’t matter what I wrote. Then eventually the pen started to move. Then it moved more, then a lot more, and these days it won’t stop.
That’s the thing about Burials. We don’t always know they are happening. We don’t know we are suffocating until we feel our lungs again. We don’t know that all those uncomfortable feelings were the tremors putting our bare bones back together. We don’t know that that internal spin cycle that gave us hell was a sifting - a throwing back to the earth what we don’t need and a harvesting of the most fertile nutrients to grow again. We don’t know that the Burial is a shapeshifting that is ours and only ours, and that what proceeds is a Resurrection.
So my dearests, I’m popping in to say hello. I’ve missed writing here, versus just in the lovely journal I call home these days. I’m sure I’ve missed some things, but I’m cool with that. I’m more of a JOMO type gal these days anyway. One of the many parts that feel different now after The Burial. More to share on that soon.
In the meantime, know that I’m back. Client work is richer than ever before. If you know this isn’t about the food (well maybe it is a little bit) let’s jump on an informal Discovery call to chat more together. Also, I’ll be writing more over at Instagram and Facebook so if you want more contact be sure to follow me there.
So happy to have you hear. Thanks for reading.
Xoxo,
McKenzie