Happy Birthday to Me

We're Gonna Have a Good Time

"Do not wait
for your pain to depart
for it is the nothingness
that creates the vacuum
that begins the cycle
of rebirth
and re-entry of Love

Only allow
even in the midst
of all that gives you pain
to open
your expanding heart
and feel the breath beginning
to carry away the grief
and carry in the light
to breathe out the fear
and breathe in the love until
without thinking
you have chosen life
in all its complexity
once again

This is the choice
that is knowing
Not simply feeling the pain
or thinking of the fear
but rather knowing
as the baby knows
how to suckle
as the heart knows
how to beat
and the soul knows
that Love is infinite
and so any other
state of belief
must be the illusion
of the wound 
we have come here to reveal
and then heal
 
It is true
that the greatest faith
is born
out of the deepest lack
for when we are most empty
there is the most room
for the next breath
the next song
 
Trust in the power
of breathing
for it lives beyond life and death
as we imagine them
in the breath
of the universal light
expanding into the universal dark
waiting only
to better illumine
the power
of all Love
This is a peace
that will comfort
every crying child
like the kiss
of the Great Mother
herself
 
Let your breathing
begin"

~ excerpt Knowing Breath ~ Oonah

My baby bracelet from the hospital.

The story goes, my bassinet was covered with lace and my brothers ran all the way around the block shouting out to the neighbors that they had a sister. I expect their excitement may have lasted no more than a week because most of the stories I heard after that were about how unfair it was that I had dresses and dolls and toy tea cups all my own.

I was born during a decade which I like to call the dark ages of obstetrics. My mother was given a drug they called Twilight Sleep. It did nothing to ease her pain but rendered her fully incapable of speech or movement. Her inability to speak must have simplified things for her doctor, while her immobility made it much easier for him to see between her legs, which were suspended in mid-air in cold metal stirrups, while she lay flat on her back in the most unimaginably uncomfortable posture for giving birth. All told, the experience of childbirth was a nightmare for her.

Given the bliss of existence in utero, it’s hard to imagine what an about-to-be-born infant feels, being compressed into the birth canal while sharing the very blood and heartbeat of a mother in terror and agony. It seems perhaps a fitting introduction for a Starborn soul to this dense material plane, to be birthed into searing fear and harshness. To immediately know the suppression of feminine power and be pulled and slapped, wailing into a world of disconnection and heartlessness.

It has taken me an entire lifetime, and many years beyond her death, to realize the extent to which my mother loved me.

May my children make this discovery sooner than I.

Many thanks for all the beautiful birthday wishes which have flooded in from friends and family. As Joni Mitchell said, you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone. Such a clear expression of the purposefulness within duality.

Arigato. I am grateful.

And on this special day, I have announced the decision to leave social media behind and move all my writing to Substack. It is my birthday wish to connect here with all my loved ones and friends, a most wonderful place to share our stories, poetry, art, music and love. If today is the day you feel inspired to subscribe, thank you so very much; I am thrilled that you are here with me.

You have made my day. Happy Birthday to me.

much love, Adi