Breathing in, out, deeply, slowly.
It always begins with breath. Our life, a roar as the breath enters our lungs for the first time amidst the bright lights or dark corners. And the cold. The cold that lets us know we are alive, autonomous, singular.
The roar that rises up in those first moments of life. Her roar came quickly, his after he had a look around for a bit. Mine? I don’t know what those first moments of my life were like, if I roared immediately or if I looked around first and then made myself known.
Perhaps I did look around at first, try to figure out what the hell was this place, where I had landed. Perhaps that has been my home base this whole life so far: sitting back observing. Then when I’m ready, the roar comes.
I feel the roar and cold and my body coming alive. I have watched and observed and I know I could continue to do so for the rest of my days, but now, now is the moment to make myself seen, heard, known.
These words flow out of my fingers, onto this screen. They have bubbled and boiled in my womb and belly. Sometimes they burst up and others they slowly simmer and rise. These words, sharing the experience of being mama, of being woman, of stepping into my own being, my own becoming and unbecoming.
What is it to be alive? It is to feel the brisk cold morning air as I settle in to write. It is to feel their warm bodies pressed against mine at the end of the day. It is to hold his hand, and know, simply know to depths of my soul, that he loves me, as I am in this moment. It is to laugh and shiver and glow. It is to whine and feel frustration and wanting. It is to listen to the whispers of my heart and it is to roar out my very being.
It is to own what is mine and make amends when I can. It is to love myself and my humanity and all its foibles. It is to love them and all their perfect imperfections. It is to examine, and excavate, and unearth, deeper and deeper, seeking out that juicy center that is me and all me and no one else.
It is to be curious and playful and ever the scientist experimenting and exploring. It is to be creative, filled with wonder and awe, ever the artist expressing and sharing the world as I experience it, as I know it.
It is reaching up to the stars as my toes root down into the mud. It is being made of clay and stardust and first laughs and lingering kisses and tears and heartache and unquenched passion.
To be alive is all this and more. It is feeling my body, from the inside out and the outside in. It is feeling my skin crawl and belly ache and head pound. It is feeling cool water quench my thirst, warm water soak my muscles and sunshine shower down on my face.
And more than all that. Being alive is living and it is more than mere words can express. It is the silence and deafening loudness, the darkness and the blinding light and it is everything in-between all of that.
It is in those in-between spaces that most living actually happens. In those ordinary moments when we don’t even notice how alive we feel. Or perhaps we do notice. And smile. And know.
Know that this life of ours, is ours. That we choose, each moment, how to live it, even in those moments when we don’t consciously or intentionally choose. How we act and react, what be pass on and keep, what we believe to be Truth and what we believe to be Lies. It is all choice.
To be alive is to choose, every moment, every day. And so I choose to know, to dig, to dive into my depths and grow my mermaid tail, knowing that in time I will glide with ease through this layer of being. I choose to connect and reconnect with this body of mine, to live inside it and not hover above it, unfeeling, unsensing. I choose to feel and know. I choose to explore and shed and allow what is me to glow through.
Starting Friday, for 30-days, I will guide an amazing circle of women to their depths through deeper connection with their breath, their body, their self and to shedding the stories that no longer serve them. Won’t you join us?
(Blog post inspired by a prompt from Alisha Sommer and Robin Sandomirsky‘s Liberated Lines FLASH::Amplify.)