giving birth

october 22 | weekly warm-up

photo: @tolga__

Write out a birth plan for a creative calling that you hope to give birth to in the future.

- who do you want as your birth partner and/or support system?

- where do you want to give birth? what environment do you need to create to bring this idea to life?

- what habits do you need to cultivate to stay mentally and physically healthy?

- how do you plan to continue to nourish your idea after birth?

“Because I promise you this: if it doesn’t hurt at least a little, you will never birth your best writing.” - Sandra A. Miller

Giving birth is the most miraculous form of beginning. We are wired to create and give birth to the ideas that come from our truths that come from our souls. In Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert, she says, “Ideas are driven by a single impulse: to be made manifest.” We are driven by this mysterious connection where, in service of evolution and self-actualization, we give birth to ideas and impulses and turn them into the stuff of our lives.

Just like the gestation process between conception and birth, the early stages of the creative process start invisibly, beyond our awareness. Gestation is a useful way to reflect on how our ideas develop and are eventually expressed into the world. In this in-between place of surrender, we have no choice but to accept that growth happens organically. Ideas are like seeds. We can’t force the development process, but we can cultivate environments that are conducive to nurturing these seeds.

We have to trust that the phases of development are happening just as they are meant to, and that all we need to do is cooperate by giving ourselves what we need—mentally and physically. From incubation, to cultivation, to expression, we have to trust that there is a divinely right time for delivery.

When the time is right, we go into labor. French philosopher Michel Foucault said, “We have to be there at the birth of ideas, the bursting outward of their force: not in books expressing them, but in events manifesting this force, in struggles carried on around ideas, for or against them.” What I take away from this is that we have to do more than read about and sit with ideas, we need to find the courage to birth them, facing our fears and showing ourselves that we can handle the struggle and force of it all. Giving birth is traumatic, of course, so our labor is all about committing to habits and behaviors that strengthen us to do this sacred work that we are called to do.