Between Earth and Sky

It’s been over a month since I last sat down to pour my thoughts into this container, and what a deeply moving month it has been. Each day has set before me an ever-changing landscape, and I have made it my intention to be present and deeply listen to what my life is asking of me. So far, what has been coming up is a request from myself to show up as my whole self wherever I am, and to take up all of the space that is mine.

It is the nature of my work to hold a lot of things. I accumulate so many stories during my clinic days and the nights I spend wiping sweaty brows and supporting perineums and welcoming new little lives onto the planet. I hold with my clients the intensity of pregnancy loss, the discomfort of aching backs and swollen ankles, the sweet relief of that first newborn cry. My hands guide babies safely into the world and their parents through the process of birth, mostly without excessive effort (aside from careful watching) on my part, though occasionally swift intervention to save a stuck baby from birth injury or a hemorrhaging person from complications is needed. I show up and occupy that space between life and death, and I feel it deeply when I do. I am learning that my education in science and the skill and training I received can coexist with my intuition and more subtle ways of knowing, and I am working at trusting them both.

I find myself in an endless process of becoming. I am in transition, now and always. I will never not be changing. Nothing feels solid to me right now, because I exist in the dynamic tension between beginnings and endings. There is a certain sweetness in just being in the discomfort of transition without having to know how the story ends, without having any idea if the paths I am walking will take me where I want to go, or even if where I think I’m headed is where I actually want to be.

I stand here in this singular moment in time, occupying this particular space between earth and sky, gravity holding me fast, feeling deeply into the strong force that unites the particles of matter that have come together to form this thing I call myself. I hold gently to my heart the groundlessness inherent in being human. I sit in the questions without having or needing the answers just now. I can breathe into the restlessness in my heart that wants to know what is going to happen, or if I made the right choice, or if it is all okay in the end.

Several times before in my life, I have felt a sense of being invited to do something by something larger than me, and of that being something I just couldn’t not do. I didn’t have answers, or even certainty that I would be able to do it. I felt this when I decided to come out of the closet 13 years ago. I felt it when I was deciding if I should go on the Equality Ride in 2006. I felt it as I was trying to figure out if I would be able to survive midwifery school. And I feel it now.

Mia Hollow put it this way:

every now and again,
you will feel a dull ache in your soul.
a gentle humming around your heart.
a longing for something without a name.
if i ever told you to obey anything,
this would be it.

listen to the call of your authentic self.
that part of you that lives just outside of your own skin.
let it have its way with you.

i have died a hundred times trying to ignore it.

I have learned to deeply trust this voice, because every time I have followed it, the subsequent journey it has invited me on has become a vital part of my becoming myself. It is a call to my deepest courage and most audacious visioning. It is, as Mia Hollow said, “the call of [my] authentic self.” And I have made a commitment to myself that I get to show up whole and take up space, which means claiming all of the parts of myself as mine and not making myself small to make other people comfortable.

Standing at the edge of this unknown, I feel a pull from what feels like a future iteration of myself whispering, “Yes, take this next step. You don’t have to see the whole path now. But take this step.” I also feel an immense surge of gratitude to my past selves for all of the times that I’ve shown up for these invitations with an open, curious heart, and how each of the steps I’ve taken so far have led me right here. There is a sense of continuity here throughout my evolution thus far, and as I sit with my own liminality, it is becoming clear to me that while the destination is uncertain, I know that I am coming home to myself.

This word that I’ve chosen for 2017, belonging, is already challenging me to show up for my life in brave ways. This afternoon, during a meditation on grounding, I felt a fierce sense of belonging as I sensed myself occupying the space where earth and sky came together. There was a wholeness, a continuum between the farthest reaches of space and the solid core at the center of the earth, and I existed in that expanse, taking up a miniscule fraction of it, but nevertheless belonging here.

So much is happening under the surface, and I keep coming back to a question posed by poet William Stafford: “Ask me whether what I have done is my life.”