I stayed up late so I could sleep in this morning, and as I awoke and lay in bed the thoughts moving around in me were all about being pregnant, giving birth. We have a painting on the wall from my uncle, and in it I can clearly see the outline of a baby, and, sometimes when I look at it I wonder, do I see it to taunt myself? This morning my thoughts were not about that. They were around giving birth, and I realized it’s more about giving birth to something different, perhaps giving birth to my Self, a rebirth of sorts. I have been in the gestation period for the last four months, a seed, new thought, has been planted and is taking root and growing inside me. I am expanding, my tummy is even getting bigger, well I am letting it be, as opposed to hodling it in tight. Happy to be who I AM.

This birth started out like any other with the conception of a new thought, of a new way of being. Changes have been taking place in my body, growing pains, as old ways of being, and old thoughts get processed and absorbed, causing me to change in ways I never expected. Surface conversations are boring, they do not feed me, I need to explore more to go deeper, deeper in understanding who I AM. I have created this world to teach me about who I AM.

So I’m in my first trimester, getting used to all the changes, my body adjusting to a new way of being, a new way of seeing things. Knowing with each breath, each moment I make a choice. Do I stand on the right or left side of the line? And there is genius in whatever I choose, there is no good, bad, right or wrong, just genius because whatever I choose is the right choice for me.

Being asleep is like operating on auto pilot. I would just do, react, not take the time to breathe and think about how am I feeling in that moment. I have to admit I have dozed off, and I have to admit that I have caught myself. It’s easy to be on autopilot, easy to fall back in that way of being. The difference now is that my body let’s me know right away, and if I choose to pay attention, I know I have a choice to make, and I choose to be awake. To stay in the moment, totally present, living. Choosing life. Yesterday the question of “How much Life are we willing to claim?” was put to me, and I sat with it for a bit and realized I want to claim as much as I can. And I can’t do that sitting on the sidelines, I have to be an active participant. Much like a pregnancy, there is no sitting on the sidelines, the body forces you to participate whether you want to or not, how you choose to participate is up to us. Up to me. This new life that I am giving birth to, this new way of being cannot be a passive experience, I have to participate, to be willing to go into those places I didn’t want to go before, to not run and hide, to be fully present so that I can come to know my PRESENCE. And I don’t know where this new life will take me, I do know it can’t be worse than where I was before, it can only be better.

Because I’ve never been physically pregnant I can only assume that a woman has to trust that her body will do what it needs to, even if it means aborting the fetus. This first part of my journey has been about trust. Trusting my body, trusting who I AM, trusting that I am safe within my Self. Wow, no rumblings, no tears, breathing and feeling a sense of warmth filling my tummy. Now that is nice. I’ve come a long way and there is more to learn, because a wise person once said, “There is always more.” And I look forward to the more, without fear, not because I’m any braver, because I know that going forward can only happen one breath at a time. This birth process won’t take nine months and that’s a good thing.