Birth Is Messy

One of the cards in our forthcoming Wisdom of Birth deck offers the prompt "Birth is Messy". If you're familiar with Tarot, this is our "Tower" card.

We loved it so much that we turned the art into a candle so this reminder, that birth is messy, would be even more readily available.

A sample of this candle has been sitting on the shelf of my desk, and boy has having that prompt in eyeshot on a regular basis been helpful in recent weeks.

Both in the process of dealing with the messiness along the way in this creative endeavor, and in witnessing so much crumbling in the world around us, the reminder that creation is messy, has been an odd comforter.

Because it is normal to want to feel in control. To want everything to run smoothly, as planned. But one thing I know for sure after all these years of birth-work, and just being alive, is that that is just not how life happens.

In birth and life, it's messy. From the mundane (i.e. when you realize the candle labels won't be ready in time for the photoshoot), to the more serious (learning a change in birth plan is needed for the welfare of your baby).

Remembering the messiness helps remove the judgment when expectations are dashed. It can help replace the thought that "things shouldn't be happening this way" with a certain acceptance of the messiness of the moment. It can help reframe whatever's happening as part of an unfolding process that's on my path, as opposed to off it. As the saying goes, "Everything will be okay in the end. If it's not okay, it's not the end."

Every time I see that prompt I take a deep breath and a layer of frustration softens and leaves my body. I hear in my mind, "it's supposed to be messy, it's supposed to be this way". (To be clear, I don't mean this in a sit back and take no action kind of way, but in an accept the things I cannot change, and change the things I can kind of way.)

So that is my invitation to you this week. To remember that birth is messy. Not in a bad or a good way, just in a way it is when it is kind of way. In the hopes that it helps you find a similarly odd comfort with however the moment is unfolding.