This past week marks 2.5 years since the day of Aurora’s birth. This feels like an immense milestone for us. She is now taking charge of some of her care, and we are having to transform our roles as parents. I’ve been basking in our memories together and I can’t believe how lucky we are to be with her!
However, the trauma around her birth story does not evade me, and bits and pieces of the grief are surfacing. I remember the transfer to the hospital as I held her in one arm and held an oxygen mask to her face with the other, praying she would choose to stay. I remember the doctor forcing out my placenta and then having to plead to bring it home. I remember the poor soul at the hospital who told us we could not see our daughter and were being sent home due to Covid restrictions. I remember the numbness and tidal waves of grief that met me while being physically separated for her first twelve days on Earth.
This past week I was recreating our altars. Aurora’s had become a bit dusty; objects, cards and photos stacked up. As I was cleansing I came across a letter my husband Phil wrote me a few months after Aurora’s birth. He wrote,
“You could have fallen apart. I know sometimes it feels like that—scattered, but your heart is so strong. I’ve never witnessed a heart endure what yours did. The same goes for your body. But through it all, you kept a resolve, you kept a focus, and Aurora felt it and it persists. You could have disconnected. You connected, instead, more deeply. That is who you are. That is the action that reveals you. And I see you do it over and over again. But this was/is where/when it counts the most. I love you so much Sacha. You are amazing!!”
This brought me to tears to be witnessed in this way. As I look back now, I realize one reason I was able to hold a strong heart was by creating rituals to guide her home.
While Aurora was still in the hospital, we were able to pick up her placenta from the lab. For me the placenta is sacred, for it is the first connection that nourished her, gave her breath, and cleansed her blood. If you observe a placenta closely, you can make out an image of the Tree of Life.
We buried her Placenta beneath a Beech Tree whom we have named the Yoni Tree. It felt as though burying the Placenta was symbolic for Aurora to be grounded into the energy of the Earth.
Another connection ritual was while pumping her milk that would be sent to the hospital. I would energetically imagine my heart connecting to her heart with immense love flowing between us in the figure 8 symbol.
Now that I look back, it was as though I was showing her the way home just as the bees create a figure 8 when they dance for their hive indicating where flowers, or a new hive location exists.
The bees were prominent during her stay away. They appeared on murals at the hospital and her chaplain was a bee keeper. I imagine a time when my English ancestors recognized the bees as carriers of birth and death and created rituals with them to honor when this portal opened and closed.
Last week coincided with Aurora’s 2.5-year birthday, my moon, and the full moon, and I descended into deep grief that gripped my body, and my whole being felt as though it needed a deep rest. All inspirations vanished as I was carried into the underworld.
Ritually I go to a sacred place on our land every morning and listen to what my energetic body is telling me. All week I felt myself collapsed into the Earth as though my soul was calling me downward and inward. I stayed there all week until I was ready to resurface.
While I was within this deep heavy energy, I asked a dear friend Olivia Immitt to offer me an Oracle reading with an animal deck she recreated from the Medicine Cards: The Discovery of Power through the Ways of Animals.
This moon was also pivotal for we are getting ready to conceive. So my intention for this oracle pull was, “What healing is needed to prepare for this next baby?”
Olivia offered me a past, present, future reading. For the past I received Mouse, Scrutiny. Present: Blue Heron, Self reflection. Future: Mountain Lion, Leadership.
This first card was a reminder for me to let go of the scrutiny as I was re-living every moment of Aurora’s birth wondering what I could have done differently. This was similar to a message Pine had shared with me earlier in the week that it was okay to let go. I no longer had to carry the guilt or shame I felt surrounding Aurora’s birth.
The second card was significant, for Blue Herons appeared in the months proceeding and seemed to be in connection with spirit of the baby coming in. Just as people receive signs from their loved ones who have passed, it seems too that the loved ones coming in also send us signs.
The Blue Heron is also woven into Aurora’s arrival. A few months before I conceived Aurora, I took a course about Tulip Poplar and the animal medicine connected with this tree. Blue Heron was one of those animals. One of the symbols of Blue Heron medicine is to pierce the heart to receive healing and light. With patience the Blue Heron supports us in healing our heart.
Blue Heron’s connection with the Tulip Poplar Tree was significant, for before I had any indication that I was pregnant, I had a dream that I was with a giant Tulip Poplar on our land and she was speaking with me. Amanda Nicole, one of the teachers of the course was there and communicating with Tulip Poplar. Amanda said that she was receiving the message “freedom, but now, responsibility.” I told her it sounded like Tulip Poplar was telling me to have a baby.
The Mountain Lion card, which indicates leadership, was pulled upside down. Olivia told me to believe in my ability to lead. She suggested that it may be helpful to think of what my “plan” would be if I give birth again.
As I wondered how this related to the healing I needed for this next child, a false belief I was carrying onto began to weep out of me as I told her that I had failed the first time, so I felt like I didn’t want to make any of the decisions for this next child.
This jolt of tears indicated to me that this is what I needed to lead my family into this next cycle. I needed to reclaim my ability to trust myself again to make the decisions for this next baby, as only a mother truly can.
This is indeed why I had been brought into the Underworld, it was a reclamation of my soul. A reclamation of my power.
This whole experience offers me the sight I needed to move forward in trusting myself on a deeper level.
I dreamt the other night that birthing was inherently easy. It’s just that our society has twisted it up, and has fractured mothers’ trust in the simple flow of birth. As many have stated, it is now our time to heal and reclaim our powerful ability to give birth. This involves going into the underworld to reclaim our power to trust in our bodies and our intuition.
A lesson I learned from Aurora’s birth was through the memory of trying to force her out. What if I held onto patience like the Blue Heron and gently moved with my body and her and stayed in my flow? And now today “Patience,” says the Tulip Poplar as I go to this tree for Mothering advice.
Sometimes we need to be challenged to learn the lessons and wisdom we are meant to carry forward with us, and let go of the rest.
Every moment we are challenged, we can ceremoniously go out our door to find wisdom, support, and healing from the beings of the Earth reflecting back to us just what we need. We can create rituals to honor these engraved passages of time that change us forever.
I share these deeply personal experiences in hopes that others may resonate and we may affirm one another. That we may remember how to trust ourselves as we go through deeply challenging experiences, and trust that the healing will find us when we are ready.
With love,
Sacha Louise and the Bees
Thank you, Sacha, for once again speaking with lucidity and vulnerability about a deeply personal insight. I can relate to lurking untruths that riddle my days and affect my decisions and yet rarely do I take the time to really sit and come to name and release them. Persistence, broad-thinking and absolute courage are only a few of the qualities you have either been blessed with, or more likely, have cultivated. I so deeply trust you. Your way of finding your lessons is beautiful to read, and inspirational.