Re-generation, I wrote this piece below quite a while ago, for a Zine called men (d) on a theme of regeneration.
Noticing others shares around easter and eggs over recent days… and a friend sharing her bleed and more with me and others this morning… I am bringing this piece back into the spring light.
This is not necessarily based on a true story. It does tap into some of my feelings that showed up before I had words, and even these are just a distant imprint felt through a hazy patina of time and dust.
Others have shared similar words and feelings with me, that may find their ways into this text too. I am aiming to do them all justice within the limitations of the words available to me now.
When I first came out of my mothers womb, I leaned into what I knew and trusted the stuff the she knew too.
I already knew the sound and cadence of her voice. I already knew the rhythms of her heart beat. I recognised her anxieties, her joys, her quiet contemplative moments and her excitement. I had spent time tuning into the choreography of the fluids that flowed through her body and mine.
When our hormones and muscles collaborated, to get me from her womb into her arms, that was new to me. And here, in her arms, against her skin, with her breath and mine falling into what would become a regular gentle embrace, I felt at home here, in this new space, still attached, even while moving away.
Within those first few days together we built up a way of understanding each other. I got good at asking for what I needed, she got good at offering what I needed.
Gradually she introduced me to the world she had been living in for 25 years. She recognised that I did not know how to stay safe in this new space, she helped me grow little by little, and to feel ok without her holding me close, skin to skin, or feeding me from her breasts.
I was free to experiment by using all my senses, the ones that have names and those ones that don’t.
As I reached out to touch and grasp and taste and smell whatever caught my attention, she kept me on the path of least danger. As I got to my feet she also encouraged me to stray from that path and together we found bugs that bite, nettles that sting, dogs that bark and cats that scratch.
We laughed and cried in equal measure as we discovered each other and the fuzzy boundaries of these worlds we wandered in together.
Now, sitting here many decades later, I understand that my trust in this life to provide me with what I needed, my confidence in my capacity to cry and sleep and recover from injury and pain, my curiosity that led me towards safety and danger, hurt and healing, all of these early gifts that I arrived with and developed with support from people who either loved me or were prepared to look after me, I can see that the process of making the transition from child to adult in this modern culture, has stripped me of flowing with those experiences that my intuitions are attracted towards.
How is it that in raising our young, in these modern cultures, we steal their trust, we discourage them from wandering off the path. We even go so far as to suggest that a dusty rough path is to be avoided. There seems to be a pressure to travel on six lane well lit highways, each edged with clear and luminous lines and indicators of the directions we should take to get from one metropolis to another. How is it that in raising our young, in these modern cultures, we steal their trust, we discourage them from wandering off the path. We even go so far as to suggest that a dusty rough path is to be avoided. There seems to be a pressure to travel on six lane well lit highways, each edged with clear and luminous lines and indicators of the directions we should take to get from one metropolis to another.
Getting there fast being the object of all our journeys?
As I have got older… I have found my self digging through the clutter that has buried my trust, my wonder, my spontaneity, my joy, my intuition… I’m regenerating my capacity for finding my way beyond the limits imposed upon me by others who live in spaces and places of fear and shame.
Regenerating these buried and ancient parts, these relationships with self and other, self in other and other in self.
Regenerating my inherited wisdoms, my somatic self expression, my tactile connections with all things living and no longer living. All this and more, opens me to the sun, the moon, the rivers, the seas, the soils, the grit… and guides me along these paths not lit.
Uncertainty is welcome in me, and I would suggest that you should not take what I say as an elder as true or useful without discovering your own paths and truths.
And, if you can find ways back to your ancient somatic wisdoms, those knowns that new mothers tap into, those freedoms of expression that you had as a new born baby, use them, trust them, express them. If you get stuck… look around the space that holds you, look around the space you hold in you… and breath… every in breath bringing you new energy, every out breath bringing you new peace.
This piece is a release, a libation, a returning to the unknown known. I trust it may land and offer some peace… from me to you… a toast… heres to us… always re-pairing, always regenerating.
