Birth Story

This morning I was smelling the damp earth as a light mist fell on all of us. Parents and children lined up outside of the school waiting for my daughter's kindergarden to start. I was talking to another mother, just starting to show her pregnancy, still dealing with the nausea of her first trimester. I found out from her that Ailee's preschool teacher from last year is due any day now with her own new person. It made me think about my own experiences giving birth.

Of course, I did birth art, I photoshopped the sketch above that I drew while pregnant with my firstborn. (I've been into dandelions for a while now) I look at it now and I remember how naive I was. I really had no idea what I was getting myself into. Then, one daugher and one miscarriage later, I painted this:

It was a hard time for me. I was dealing with a lot of depression at the time and creating this painting was really therapeutic for me. I wanted to share one last painting that I created about a year later than this one.

It is an image of the winter solstice. The frozen earth giving birth to the sun after the longest night. It was my way of talking about coming to terms with pain and fear and sadness. I'm not much for words most of the time. I tend to express myself with imagery and actions. Sometimes I think the more words there are, the less meaning there can be. So that's my birth story. Three lost pregnancies and two daughters later, I'm pretty content with it, because really, this is less a story about loss or achievement and more a story about love.