25. the womb as a portal

'mothering' today for a new world tomorrow

For as long as I can remember, I’ve known that I want to have a child.

When I close my eyes, I can often feel the essence of my child around me. They feel familiar yet new, grounded yet ethereal, playful yet wise—like love. 

Maybe it’s a combination of being 36, that it’s spring, the season associated with fertility, or maybe written in the stars, but I currently know a colossal number of women (cis and mostly in heteronormative partnerships) who have either just given birth, are currently pregnant, or trying to have a baby. That line I’ve heard over the years, “You hit a certain age, and suddenly everyone around you is having a baby”, well, I am at that age, and that is exactly what is happening. Some of these expectant mothers are my nearest and dearest friends and I am so excited to welcome these new babies, but I cannot deny the ache of longing my body feels to be on that journey myself. As it stands, that is currently not my path. Instead, I have recently left a relationship, am in my fifth month of being without my own home, and am currently staying with my mother. I have come back to her because I am in a moment in my life where I need her again. I am currently in my own process of gestation and feel an intrinsic bodily yearning to be near her womb to recalibrate. 

I am hearing the call of this monumental time in the world, a time when we are collectively starting to confront all these interwebs of harm and oppression, as well as the true cost of the myth of progress we have been indoctrinated with. The collapse of empires is always violent and ugly, as people with power will never give it up freely. We are being asked to either birth a new paradigm by radically transforming ourselves, to go back into the womb of creation to understand how we can constructively support ourselves and each other through this disruption, or to stay within our current one, along a path powered by greed, destruction and, most of all, fear. We are at the crossroads of our existence, and the pendulum can still swing either way.

When reflecting on the choices I’ve made in my life that were powered by fear, there are many. The things I have done (or not done) because I was afraid, afraid I was not enough, afraid of not being loved, afraid of being alone, afraid of what others thought of me, afraid of losing, the list goes on. There is something so freeing about this moment in time where I am living out so many of my greatest fears, and yet here I am still alive! I am learning that if we are not able to face our fears and inadequacies head-on, we cannot heal them, that our unwillingness as a world to sit with our fears is ultimately what continues to fuel them, and we end up building our world from fear instead of love.

Like the humble caterpillar, I know that for me to move forward, my life as I know it has to be disintegrated into soup. I’m still in the process of coming apart, I am still here in the sticky darkness of the cocoon. I don’t know how long I’ll be in here for, as this darkness transcends time, but even in the darkness, I feel the beauty and potentiality of the butterfly permeating all around me. My disintegration has been undoubtedly painful but it has also come with moments of such an acute sense of aliveness and humbling beauty. I must now care for myself as I am a baby in my own womb, to live as if I am already pregnant. I must nourish myself with all the things that are good for me from the food I eat, to the amount of rest I get, as well as be mindful of how I process my feelings and how I honour my capacity for dreaming and imagination. That means intentionally withdrawing from places, things and people that aren’t energetically conducive to this moment of growth. Like a tender tendril, I must protect myself at all costs. 

So often in life, we find ourselves in environments that cannot support our growth process. It’s so hard to leave behind something, someone, somewhere or a way of being that once worked, but seasons change, life changes and proverbial spaces that once felt so safe can start to feel like cells when we have outgrown them. Now, more than ever, I understand that to move forward, all the different aspects of my life from where I live/how I live/my relationships/my work etc. cannot be thought of as separate, they must all expand together to come into the deepest alignment. 

Living under our current system has given birth to new complexities around having children. The emergence of our planet's recurrent exploitation and extraction will undoubtedly continue to impact our survival. The persistent rising living costs (food, healthcare, childcare and housing), as well as the lack of systemic support for mothers, have created an almost impossible and inhospitable environment for raising children. The morality around having a child knowing what we know now about where our planet is headed is something I continue to wrestle with all the time. Is ignorance really bliss? Or is there power and purpose in accepting reality? What learning is there for us in creating a supportive and nourishing environment in such a time of destruction? Maybe this is what it means to decide still to have a child when the collapse of life is seemingly on the horizon, especially for those of us who currently have the luxury of living in relative safety as beneficiaries of the system in place. Despite the fear all around us, our children are our teachers, seeds of hope and intention for something better. Not only do they bring joy in a time of such immense grief but they are an act of ultimate dedication to a future, to communal transformation and a panacea for the dangerously alluring cynicism, nihilism and fatalism that seems to be ever-growing in our current society. I’ve been deeply moved by the many recent interventions and movements led by young people and parents worldwide who have been coming together to work as protectors and truth-tellers for the liberation of Palestine and the Earth itself. They are the ones who have been awakened and radicalised through their children's eyes, who know that fighting for our collective futures gives our lives the deepest purpose and meaning. That leading through ‘mothering’ is the ultimate political work. 

My beautiful, brilliant friend (and eternal teacher!) Aditi Jaganathan left me a timely voice note this week that speaks to this:

“Without wanting to essentialise and flatten the complexity of womanhood: we have wombs and our wombs are portals, we carry life. There's so much knowledge woven into our bodies. There is so much power that we can share with others, power that’s not rooted in the Self but in the collective and the community. Most of us have been conditioned out of that collective way of being, but it’s so umbilically connected to what it is to care for and to mother. It has a simplicity, but, as we navigate the current capitalist colonial matrix, it's hard to sustain these innately radical practices.” 

Understandably, it’s so easy to feel a complete sense of loss and paralysis when we think about the state of our world. It’s so easy to feel like we have no power. When I think about this collective umbilical connection that Aditi mentions, it raises more questions and curiosities in me: how do we birth new leaders, men, women and those across the gender expansive spectrum to ‘mother’ and shepherd our Earth? How do we bring those who do not have children or are consciously choosing not to go into new forms of kinship, support, and family structures? How do we see the children who are already here today, whether they are in Gaza, London or anywhere else in the world, as our shared responsibility? How can we support each other and feel connected enough to step into our collective power? How can we transmute our fear of the future into action powered by love? How can we hold the grief and fury of the moment alongside the vision for a new world being birthed from under the rubble of our current apocalypse? 

I keep going back to this metaphor of the womb as it allows me to honour where I am right now as well as where it feels like the world is and reminds me that just because it feels so dark, it doesn’t mean there isn’t growth happening. Right now, I’ve withdrawn, but there will be a moment when it’s time to breathe, push hard through the discomfort and come out. May this be true for all of us. As the saying goes, “The night is always darkest before the dawn”. I see visions of another world waiting to be born from our cells that collectively and intuitively know there is another way. It is time for us to face our fears, to soften them, and to find our values so that we can nurture the Earth, ourselves and each other. We are now here to practise being good ancestors who think collectively instead of solely prioritising our own individual glory.

One of the big reasons it felt so hard to leave my last relationship was my deep fear of possibly missing out on the chance to experience having a child. The procreation girl math doesn’t math very well anymore on paper. There are of course, biological risks and implications that come with my choices but ultimately, something deep within me told me that honouring the truth of who I am becoming and the journey I feel called to go on right now takes precedence; it’s just not my time yet; that there are so many ways to mother, to care for, fight for, sustain and nourish, which are needed in this time; that before I (God willing) birth new life from my body and get to meet this spirit I have felt so many times before, I must rebirth myself; and that by trusting in this process, a more aligned life, built from a foundation of love awaits. In due time, all will be revealed.

today’s portraits of me as a baby were taken by my mama Nel who always sweetly reminds me that having me was the best thing she ever did. thank you mommy <3