Giving Birth To Yourself

Mom did the hard part, bringing me into this world. The love, the nurturing, the support and encouragement. I don’t know if she was the best mother ever, but to me she undoubtably was.

Mom would often tell me that the job of a mother is to give her child both roots and wings. To give them a foundational sense of who they are and to get them ready to fly and become what their hearts have told them to become. To build them up and to let them go.

On a late December solo hike a few months after her passing I found myself reflecting upon those wings she worked tirelessly to give me. More specifically, what have I done with them in the decades since leaving the nest she so lovingly built for me. Did I ever soar to the heights I was capable of reaching? Did she ever see the very best version of the son she gave birth to?

Those wings of mine were often weighed down by the heaviness of self-doubt and uncertainty which certainly limited my altitude. I don’t recall any specific reasons which ultimately inhibited my willingness to fly, but the presence of such doubt and uncertainty kept me from growing into all her child was capable of becoming.

Mom never got to see the very best version of the son she gave birth to.

Mom never felt as if I owed her some kind of return for her efforts. But as I meandered in silence on my beach hike that cold December day I felt the frigid emptiness of my realization that she never got to see what all her efforts could have produced.

It was a long two-hour drive home with my thoughts vacillating between a painful sense of disappointment and a growing resolve to use this disappointment as a reminder that I still had those wings I had been given.

We are born once. Yet we are given unlimited opportunities to be born again, to give birth to a new version of ourselves, as often as we choose to, to take those wings we’ve all been given and become what our hearts have always longed for us to become.

We are here.

Where will we go from here?

That’s always up to us.

Your wings are ready.

Photo by Shing on Unsplash