Transition
We are in a transition, the “great pause,” the big shift, the “space between stories.”
I hear talk of “when will this end, when will this all be over, when will things go back to normal?” I know there will be no going back to normal. Normal was an exhausting rat’s maze whose structure was ideal for the swift global transmission of the corona virus.
Instead, we find ourselves thrust into a transition — between what was and what will be built out of the dialectic reaction to our honest understanding of what is. Like a laboring mother whose contractions have become increasingly close and painful, I have been sensing this transition coming, the pressure building up, although I was surprised by the rapidity and specificity with which corona struck the pain points of our civilization.
So, what does it mean to be in transition?
Transition, in the birth process, occurs when one is 10 centimeters dilated, as the baby’s head shifts from cervix to birth canal, just before pushing begins. It is the moment of metamorphosis as a mother births herself along with her baby. It is the moment of true transformation, of utter magic and otherworldly pain. Transition taught me that the outer limit of what I thought I could bear was even beyond my expectations. I discovered that the only way to get through it to the other side, to birth and love, was with total presence and genuine connection and support.
When birthing my first, my beautiful girl, I reached the moment of transition in total shock at the intensity of labor. I felt myself at the cliff’s edge of my ability to cope. Wanting to fly out of my body from the enormity of the pain, I grasped and twisted the sheets of the bed, and said — that’s it, I just can’t anymore, I can’t do it, someone do this for me. My sister, who had been with us the whole time, feeding my husband chocolate while he massaged my back for hours, said — “but Jen, you ARE doing it.” And that was all I needed, enough to bring me back into my body and feel the palpable energy of support channeling from her to me. Her words felt like her hand in mine, leading me over the very narrow bridge to a few pushes and then the birth of my sweet daughter and rebirth of myself as an empowered mother.
Two years later, when birthing my second, my beautiful son, I progressed so quickly in the exam room that there was no time to make it to the labor room. As I surfed wave after wave of increasingly intense contractions on the narrow exam bed, I found myself looking desperately at my husband, grasping and twisting the sheets again and saying — I can’t do this anymore, how the hell am I going to make it to the labor room? I can’t remember what he said — but his pure and total presence next to me at the head of the bed was again my energetic bridge through transition, to pushing and birthing.
Over the past years, as I’ve been sensing increasing pressure squeezing our reality to its limits, the echo of transition has risen again and again in my psyche.
And now it seems that here it is, and here we are are — in a global human transition, being pushed along by planetary contractions, towards a collective rebirth. We are also being offered a choice — to tense up, run away, say “I don’t want to give birth today” or to hold each other tight as we walk the bridge together.
