The Art of Letting Go
There is peace in surrender. And perhaps peace is the only real thing to strive to attain in this life. I have learned that there is nothing to hold without first learning to let go of what you grasp tightest. This lesson applies to everything in life; Love and pursuit of purpose... But surrender applies exceedingly well to the process of ushering life safely to this world with spiritual profits intact.
What causes most fear is the perception of control. We know intuitively that truly we control nothing, yet modern society convinces us that if we pay the right fee, we can influence anything. Fear and pain occur when we fight intuition and surrender. So of course there are expectations heaped on us in our birth culture, right? Most of us here in the west expect a perfect baby, the gender we’ve prayed for since childhood, a painless labor, damage free lady parts, beautiful pictures, a pristine environment, the perfect doctor, for baby to come at the right time... And when we don’t get these things we can feel cheated or worse as the reality of our lack of control confronts us.
What progressive birth workers tenderly urge as we move toward an age of sacred feminism (where women truly feel and inform their transcendent power), is that we practice this flow of surrendering to the unknown. To recognize the need to resist “flow” and control and actively push it away. In ridding ourselves of the impulse to (try to) control, we make space for true experience. In true experience we make room for understanding, and in understanding we make room for bliss.
What you’re witnessing when you watch a video of someone ecstatically or orgasmically birthing is a woman who has let go of expectation has entered the flow of her birth, surrendering to every sensation with the understanding of it all as “good” “safe” and “holy”. Her body rewards her trust with a chemical cocktail of beauty.
As a doula, my clients have been at most peace when in carefully cultivated private spaces filled with loved ones and sacred vibes. Their bodies released their babies quickly and easily and with minimal to no damage. In educating women of their options in birth, engulfing them in divine environments of their design and crafting wonderful and trusting birth teams, we will hear of so many more of these blissful births until they become the norm.
Oh the day when a mother walks up to an expectant one and shares her birth bliss rather than her birth horror.. That’ll be when we’ve collectively honored women kind in western culture.
Much love always,
Zuri Sabir, CD/B-P