The veil is thin today, with something intangible looming just outside my peripheral vision. It’s cold, and the ground is frosty white, closing gates and locking doors to the realms below for the long season of darkness ahead.
I am sitting in bed with one hand on my coffee and one on my belly, feeling the strong fists and feet of my active baby, who isn’t set to make his debut until winter solstice.
I’ve been reading Ina May’s Guide To Childbirth, which talks a lot about the mind-body connection between mother and child. It also asks new mothers to name and address their fears around giving birth—not just the act itself but also whatever expectations, grief, and judgements they hold that could hinder or hurt the process.
So I have been working on this too, writing them down in my beautiful notebook made by friend and fellow writer WisteriaWorks, and spending quiet time to ask myself and my son what we need to do to be ready. This was also suggested to me last night in prenatal yoga , when the instructor said we each held two powers of manifestation within us.
The simple truth is this: It’s a whole lot easier to buy the diapers and make the registry than it is to admit to yourself that you hold perfectionist-like expectations around what (my) birth and motherhood should be.
I say my birth because I have started to think about this as a transformation for both of us. He will leave the in-between realms of the womb space, and I will leave the quiet solitude of maidenhood for the next archetypal phase—the mother.
I woke up this morning wanting to celebrate this day as loudly and brightly as possible, but now I am rethinking that. There will be future Halloweens where we dress up and prioritize making memories with our son. But when I think back to the traditional meanings of this day and this time of year, I realize that this year I don’t want to be loud or come up with some quirky costume that’s a big hit at the party we will be attending later.
In fact, I want to be quieter today than I’ve been in weeks. I want to sit in silence and forget the sound of my own voice and listen for other voices that may be trying to come through.
Samhain is traditionally the time when the veil is the thinnest, and I think for young and experienced witches alike there is the draw to lean into this space and see what we can learn from it. We should embrace this.
My husband just came home with two antlers, likely from the same buck. We have this habit of finding gifts from the forest on holy-days. And I am reminded that there is so much more at work than we can see, especially if you look for it.
So tonight I won’t dress as a gum-ball machine (one pregnancy costume the internet suggested), or a pumpkin, or a man with a hairy beer belly (I actually liked this idea, but it’s too cold).
Instead I will take some of the feathers from a bouquet of them I keep on my windowsill next to a photo of my maternal grandmother (she also used to keep a vase of feathers, but hers were peacock and mine are turkey), dress in black, and paint my eyes like a wise owl.
It’s okay if this isn’t your year to be the life of the party. It certainly isn’t mine. But I will still celebrate it in a way that feels authentic to this liminal time of birth and death.