rebirth

I noticed this today sitting in the dirt at the base of my jade plant. This withering leaf with the tiny new plant growing from it. It is not attached to anything except the leaf. Rootless.

I am on a healing journey that involves a rather significant rebirthing process. This process works by reclaiming all the orphans within–the parts of myself that have been left behind or ignored. It involves taking full responsibility for myself, my choices and the wholeness of my journey.

One thing I’m really learning from this journey is that while it’s important to let go of old stories about oppression, it is equally important to honor the past and all it has taught me (including past lifetimes). It involves blessing, loving and forgiving the wholeness of myself and life.

A piece of my homework for this work is to imagine a new version of my own birth including conception, in utero, birthing and post-partum. I can choose different parents or keep my own in this imagined reality. This is a powerful sort of magic that recalibrates the experience of life and helps me feel welcomed into the world and safer here. It’s tender, courageous work.

I am not surprised to have happened across this tiny plant growing from the old, discarded leaf.

I’ve always embraced rebirth as a form of violence–a cutting away of the old self. This is not very respectful of my journey I see in retrospect. Much better to let the new be reborn from and fed by that which is naturally dying away.

Life is such a beautiful mirror.

PS, The dime is just there for scale but I rather love that the word “liberty” is in the image.

PPS, After posting this, I saw this quote from T.S. Eliot which rather fits:

“In my beginning is my end. In succession, houses rise and fall, crumble, are extended, are removed, destroyed, restored… Old stone to new building, old timber to new fires… In my end is my beginning.”