A Kind of Birthing Process

I really haven’t blogged at all the week before I left. The stress of everything I had to do was just overwhelming. I didn’t feel like I had time to sit and reflect. But in all my conversations with friends and family I tried to create a comparison or analogy to what I’ve been feeling.

It occurred to me that this process was similar to being born.

The house I lived in, all my possessions, my truck and my job were my womb- My place of comfort and security. It was what I knew and was comfortable with. I was surrounded with familiarity.

But this whole week has been a process of purging me of those things- breaking out and away from all the familiarity. I quit my job, sold my truck, threw out/gave away or sold almost all of my stuff and moved out of the house. With each cord I cut I felt fear, anxiety and yet a strange surge of propulsion. Like the birth pains that come faster and faster until the baby arrives, my past few weeks have been cutting more and more ties and moving further and further away from comfort and security.

Now I’ve moved before, and I’ve traveled all over the world. But no matter where I’ve gone and what I’ve done, I’ve always had a place to return to. There’s always been a place with all my stuff. But now I don’t. All I have are the bags I carry and a few trunks of things in storage.

So now I’ve broken through. I’m out of my comfort zone; away from the familiar and into the bright, cold, alien world of the new. Everything is different from what I knew before.

My womb is gone.

I have to live, breathe, eat and sleep in this new place. There’s no going back. There’s no return. Just moving forward, growing, learning new languages and change; always change!

So here’s to being born! And to being reborn! Not in a religious way, but in the way that creates those defining moments that are speckled throughout our lives. They move us in new directions and create points in our life that we can always look back and acknowledge that  those were the moments that changed us forever!

This is one of those moments.