Laboring Love
She was pregnant with a fullness that was uncomfortable, nourishing, familiar and unknown. She had dreamt of this fullness for what seemed like lifetimes. A fullness that was inhabited by the divine and held the key to ultimate truth.
Ever since this woman was a little girl she had a close relationship with the moon. Her secret grandmother she called it. She watched the moon follow her wherever she went. She felt watched over, cared about and acknowledged. She always sensed the moon had something to tell her, but she could never quite understand her silence.
As the little girl grew into a woman the moon would reveal small truths of her wisdom. Feminine power, cycles, shadows, cosmic energy and sacred waters, but the woman knew there was so much more to learn from this ancient grandmother.
So as the full moon rose high in the sky, the pregnant woman knew it was time. It was time to labor love.
The moon guided her, revealing more and more wisdom as she created waves in her inner waters. The woman resisted at first, unsure if surrendering to the pain was really the gateway to love. Slowly, moment by moment, she gave away pieces of herself that did not live in love. Scars of heartbreaks, abandonment, unworthiness, false stories. She let the waves of labor washed them away.
As the moon reached its fullest point the woman’s labor climaxed, revealing its fullest power. This moment was like no other and she found herself in full surrender. The divine had crawled into every orifice and reclaimed her body. There were no thoughts, there was no rehearsing, no planning, just a full body take over of a rebirth of radical love.
Only weeks before she had been on a mountain with a bunch of wild women when she was questioning her ability to receive such a love. How could she possibly love something enough, if she couldn’t flow into love herself? Her sisters showed her that great love is possible. They held space for her tender heart to expand, contract, and expand again. They showed her that she was made to labor love.
With the guidance from the moon, she knew that her thoughts and the language she gave her expressions were so far from the divine wisdom that her body knew all along. Wisdom she knew from the moment she first noticed the moon following her. Wisdom the mountains gave her bones. Wisdom the salty sea gave her blood. Wisdom the divine now housed in her child. Wisdom that revealed itself as she labored love.
In that moment if there was one thing she knew to be true it was that love is not something that can be taken or given. It is something that you choose to nourish or not. The mountains used love to build her bones and the salty sea used love to create her blood. The moon washed wisdom that nourished her seeds and the sun gave energy to enliven it all. Love is a reflection and expansion of everything she found beautiful and through all the pain, love is what she birthed from her body that night.
Image painted by Amanda Greavette
