LETTING OURSELVES CHANGE & TRANSFORM

I never wanted to have kids until I figured out my queer, dykey, expansive, not-into-cis-men sexuality at 26.

By 10 years old, like a good baby feminist already rejecting the patriarchal gender norms from religion, I learned to look down on women like my own mom who made their lives about having children and caring for them. In my rush to reject what I was taught, I swung the pendulum totally to the other side. I didn’t have any lens on capitalism, race, the privilege it takes to be able to opt out of paid labor, the value of care work, or the reasons people who aren’t cis men make the choices they do.

Real work, I decided, was something outside the home. Something that paid you. Something that gave you access to freedom, choice. Something that let you be an entire, whole human. I knew work outside of the home (and for someone in my body, no kids) could do that for you like it did for my Dad. Unlike my mom, he got to be a full, independent, complex person.

And I deeply, desperately, wanted to be an entire, whole, full, independent, complex human. As I see my best friend raise her beautiful baby, my godson, with such tenderness and care to their attachment and his autonomy and growth, it feels clear that kids like me who were raised under a more authoritarian style of parenting are the kinds of kids who can’t wait to grow up, enter the capitalist hellscape, and take some of our power back the only way we were taught how.

The desire to not have children is valid and real, and I’m sure most people who don’t want kids won’t change their minds. For me, though, the desire to not have children was much more about undervaluing femme labor and care work, learning to center paid work as the only thing that could give me identity and purpose, rejecting the traditional “feminine” to embody the traditional “masculine” in the best chance of survival under patriarchy, and experiencing dysphoria around my gender and sexuality when I imagined giving birth and having kids with a cis man partner.

Dying Continually as Spiritual Practice

There is so much here about letting ourselves change and transform, and I am dedicated to giving myself that. Changing a big piece of the future, shifting identity - it’s the movement of tectonic plates. We wobble, we grab for whatever is near. Giving ourselves permission to be different than we were is radical. Allowing ourselves and our lives to unfold opens us up to the practice of dying continually (Pema Chodron) - something I consider a deeply spiritual practice.

How do we let ourselves die continually? How do we continue to look ourselves in the eyes when we refuse to change and cling to what is known? How do we not let go, enter the fire, become what we are? How do we hold solid ground amidst it all? Do we? Or is a full surrender to the forces of the universe and the selves we are at our core what is required to make a full life?

As always, I look to nature.

Sunsets teach me about beauty, change, mutability, liminality, the changing nature of all things, dying continually, being present, the somatics of joy, nervous system regulation, accessing awe when times are really fucking hard.

The ocean teaches me about shifts, flow, release, surrender, fear, opening to being annihilated, being born anew, presence, magic, togetherness, love.

The trees teach me access to groundedness no matter where I am or what’s going on around me, the balance of stability and change, how to access myself in every season, how to be held.

The stars teach me about right sized-ness, wonder, curiosity, cycles, my part in the web of all things, timing, that everything - on a cosmic level, at least - is really going to be okay.

I keep meeting nature and I keep meeting these questions, and so I keep meeting more of myself and letting that which is not me (that which is trauma, is conditioning, is old selves) fall away.

It’s not easy. But one place of many the process has brought me is to the deep desire to have a baby with my sweet love, my partner, my person. We dream about how we can create more equity in our partnership around parenting as queer parents, how we can prioritize attachment, how we can raise a baby in a gentle way in alignment with our values, without demonizing my parents who truly did the best they could with their own collection of programming, religion, trauma, and our shared ancestral inheritance. And for now, we channel our baby fever into the babies in our lives.

Forest Ritual to Welcome Baby Josie into The World

In the forest for a week, sick with COVID, my partner and I sleep among the bright stars and waxing moon, wake among the lush trees and bright wide sky.

The morning of my sister’s induction, we channel our excitement for my sister and our baby fever into a ritual to support the birth. In our hammock lair in the woods where we spend every day napping and reading, we set the space with a candle and plate of offerings: vegetables and rice cooked on our camp stove for my ancestors. Sweetness to entice Josie earthside: fresh picked wineberries, a peach, and a few cherries.

We ground in meditation and sink into Tonglen practice for my sister. We imagine breathing in her pain and discomfort, breathing out love, care, relief. In pain, out relief. In pain, out care. In pain, out love. Again. Again. Again. I start to cry, imagining this person I have known and loved since the moment I was born, who I have suffered with, fought with, played with, cried with, cared for, been held by, who I know deeply, who knows me deeply, in pain. I cry and I breathe, and my love holds my hands, and we breathe together.

When we come back, the ritual space is cast and we light the candle for the health and safety of both my sister and baby Josie. We ask my loving ancestors, especially my ancestors who gave birth — Grandma Hall, Mom-Mom, Grandma Laverick — to receive our offering and join my sister in support.

I imagine a circle of golden light encircling her in the hospital bed. A light of every supportive birthing ancestor in our lineage, hundreds or thousands of energies, joined with all of the elements, to swirl around her in support. To remind her of her resilience, of her power, of who she does this for and alongside. I know they’re there, and as the birth progresses I visualize my Grandmas and Great-Grandmas with their hands at my sister’s back, pressing their palms in support as she pushes, pushes, pushes, brings forth Josie.

But for now, labor is just starting, and so is our ritual.

We offer Josie her plate of sweet fruits next. We hold hands and we tell her of all the beautiful things about being a human on earth in a body, all the reasons she should come.

We tell her about sunsets, trees, the ocean, flowers, love, hugs, fruit, magic, family, art.

We tell her there is heartbreak and pain here, too.

But we tell her it is so worth it, it is so worth it to be alive in a body on this magic planet. We tell her of the beauty and magic that awaits her.

We invite her to come.

And when she does, a new generation begins. Rumblings below ground whisper of changes in our family system. It’s 9:16 am and some new, unknowable, magic has cracked through the night and all the stars.

A death and a birth all at once, and we are all changed.