My Journey of Descent

If you’re just arriving here, you’re invited to read the Maiden to Mother series in sequence: Introduction, Preconception, Conception, When Conception Doesn’t Happen, Pregnancy, and The Story of Inanna

When I was about 6 months pregnant, my husband and I decided to move to Boulder, Colorado. This is where my husband was from, where much of his family lived and also the same state where my parents were planning to spend the winter and spring (My baby was due in March). It felt like the right place to be to embark on such unknown territory, even though it was far from friends and land I loved.

It was when we landed there, winter began, and the grief started.

I was struck first by the landscape: the cold, barren expanse of land and mountains in the distance. It was starkly different from the green rolling hills in winter that I was accustomed to in California.

When we arrived I soon realized I couldn’t feel a connection to the land. The plants were dormant. They were losing their leaves. The snow started soon after. It was a time of hibernation for winter. I hadn’t experienced a true winter in almost 12 years.

And there were so many things I gave up before leaving. I kept thinking about my beloved car that we decided to trade in (for one with all-wheel drive for the snow).

My friends, the ones who had known and loved me for over a decade, were now all a plane ride away. My status as a yoga teacher and a community member where I was often recognized living in a small town of Northern California was released. My support system felt stripped. Life became increasingly isolated. I almost didn’t realize how much was missing, how much I had given up in making this choice until it was gone.

I was a nobody in this new city. No one knew me or the gifts I had to share. Besides my husband, and the occasional visits with family, I felt lost.

What I didn’t know at the time was that I was going to experience a huge shift in identity in becoming a mother, and the move just made the process that was already happening under the surface, more apparent.

Our choice to move was not for our own personal desires. It was for this child, and for our family. It was just one of many choices that I began to see, how differently I would have chosen if it was just me.

But as much as it all felt like a big mistake, I needed to trust the process. The rightness I felt in it when we made the decision.

But after the move, expenses began piling up: the cost of the move, hiring a midwife, renting a home, furnishing it and buying basic things we needed in a more expensive city.

What an interesting time it was, to prepare to stop working while at the same time take on new expenses.

Part of the reason we felt comfortable taking on these extra expenses was because my husband had signed with a client that was going to provide a cushion for us to rest into over the next year.

Two months after living in Colorado, that deal fell through.

I felt helpless about the new expenses we had chosen, about to give birth (at this point in only a few weeks), as my income as an entrepreneur was winding down. I had saved enough for a few months of maternity leave, but wasn’t planning to accommodate all of these extra expenses on my own.

But I knew there was no going back, only forward.

Just like Inanna, walking through the gates, one item at a time was stripped away: first my car, then my friendships, my status as a teacher in my spiritual community, and at least temporarily, my work and savings accounts.

Slowly, I started to feel that I didn’t know who I was anymore.

I decided to attend a meditation retreat the week leading up to Christmas, a dream I had held for years, to be in stillness and meditation with a baby growing in my womb.

The space offered solace in a time of unknown. I leaned into my practice.

Upon my return I learned my in-laws did not think it would be safe for me to join them for Christmas, because of their fears of COVID (their other son was preparing for a surgery and COVID would have greatly compromised his immune system), and because I had been with a group of people on retreat (even though I had been carefully wearing a mask the whole time), they felt it was best I didn’t come.

I returned home from the retreat on Christmas Day to discover this news. I felt alone, cast out, isolated. Something about this triggered a deep, primal grief inside of me.

I remember crying deep, loud sobs by myself in the dark with this being in my belly, alone in this new home in an unfamiliar city.

What had I done?

One thing after the next, I was stripped of the life I once knew.

I had lost my connection to place, to land that was familiar, friends I knew and loved.

I was being asked to surrender to a process that was completely unknown.

If you’re working through grief and loss in your life, I invite you to listen to this beautiful song for grief - Apprentice by Alexandra Blakely.

“This work is holy, soul-cleansing slowly…again, and again.”

If grief arises in your journey of pregnancy or postpartum, know you are not alone.

To shift from Maiden to Mother, there is an inherent loss, in order for one to be born anew. It is a completely different identity to step into. It’s an initiation, an initiation that requires a death before a rebirth.

Thanks for being here, and staying with me this far. Stay tuned for next week where I will share a ritual for grief.

With ❤️, Meredith