Finding flow in starting over again
In 2011, I was reborn for the first time. Birth is difficult, I hear; painful and also beautiful in the same right. I can not say that I know the physical pains of birthing a child. That said, I have felt the pains of rebirthing myself. Birth takes time and begins far before the marked event of the time that we arrive outside of the womb.
Often we perceive that once we are here, born into this world, that we do not experience birth again or death, for the matter, until “the end.” We are, in fact, always in cycles of changing form, dying and regenerating. Take, for example, our seasons of birth and vibrance, affectionately known as Spring and Summer or our seasons of death, experienced as Fall and Winter. Our earth renews in cycles that we recognize and quantify as a calendar year.
Animals such as the Snake are representative as a symbol of transmutation and rebirth in some cultures because it sheds its skin over and over, growing and refreshing into a new being. According to several online sources, including Business Insider as well as Live Science, the cells of the human body are fully replaced by new cells every 7-10 years, although some cells regenerate faster than others.
Birth, death and rebirth happen energetically, spiritually and emotionally as well. My rebirth was more in these realms of existence, less in the physical sense. I am unsure of how to paint a portrait for you of the sweeping feelings, chaotic thoughts and shaking events that humbled me to my knees leading up to my rebirth- death of family, a breakup with my fiance, a transformative service trip in Guatemala, moving back home with my mother, and a deterioration of a deep relationship with one of my soul mates- note: I believe we have many in this life and that our “soul mates” serve to teach us something important.
Back then I didn’t even KNOW that what I was experiencing was rebirth. I only know now because I am feeling myself at the end of this cycle and rebirthing into someone new yet again.
This is “Homesick for Here” one of many pieces that I wrote on my phone, alone, in my room, late at night and emailed to myself back in September of 2011:
It took me a long long time to hoist the bits of my life that I hated up over my shoulders and onto the raft. It took me longer to set the raft out to sea. And even longer still to light the torch. I stood there.. on the shore of my existence, staring at all of the things that I knew I could change about my life, knew I had to change, and could not seem to bare down and do it. And then, when I finally had the balls to stand up against my own feelings about it all, I tossed the torch aboard that raft, cut the line from my shore and bid fair-well. As this life drifted out away from me, the heat from it all burned my skin and blinded my eyes. And when it was finally a twinkle in the distance as opposed to the scorching blaze of wrath that it was for so long, I turned my back to the shore line and walked away. It was then, when I could no longer feel the heat that I realized “oh my holy f*cking Christ, it really is all over” and “ I did this to me… I did this FOR me” and somehow, still, my heart aches. Prior to my even building the raft for this Viking funeral, I felt a bit homesick for here; the here that I am in now, the here AFTER I torched my life. And now that I am here, I feel home sick for the girl that didn’t even need the raft in the first place.
If you feel or have ever felt any of these ways, you just might have been in the middle of your own rebirth. Lean into the beauty that this new life can give, know that the hardship is required to get through the tunnel and new life exists on the other side.
Live Free or Die is a regular column on LIVING rather than just being ALIVE.
Be the first to comment