misplaced mama

I believe in everything. Mama, don’t you? How can you not believe in everything? The stars and the moon. God and zombies. Flowers and placentas, too. Everything. It’s so beautiful. Why don’t people just believe in everything?

I had a moment of clarity last week. My well had been running dry and I had been tapping into post apocalypse supply of energy to get me through the days.

I’ve been in the closet with the jaguar, eye to eye, no illumination to this practice, no iphone flashlight app allowed. The answer is in the darkness surrounded by the glow of the animals eyes, like daggers they reveal enough of my insides to really question my choice to be human.

As usual grace steps in and saves me. Whapio, my midwifery teacher, friend, and wise elder came over and we exposed my 8 year old and 6 year old placentas (mia and sulas) which had been frozen since their births.

We laid out the fly to our camping tent across my new leather ottoman in my living and first opened Mia’s. I never saw hers at the time of her birth. She was born wildly into the arms of our midwife, and her placenta followed quickly . She had some trouble with breath and while her dad and I blew life force into our newborn, the assistant had taken the placenta and wrapped it in about 15 plastic bags and placed it in the freezer. The placenta then lived in our freezer in Los Angeles until it was transported and lived in two more states and in 7 different freezers. I got to spend time with Sula’s after she was born softly into my arms under the water. All involved noticed what a sparkly little gem of a placenta it was. We made a print of it and wrapped it and froze it. It has lived in 2 states and 5 different freezers.

Mia’s was heavy, weighted, large and it slid out with a thump that sent orgasmic chills under my skin. The smell brought me not only to birthspace, but to MY birthspace, the fresh smell of the human experience once again clung to my air. It wasn’t rancid, it wasn’t foul. It was Blood. It was Life. It was my insides, the place where I held my babies.

{the wise barn owl, her heart leads her, she wears no masks, she is magic}

{so ALIVE and understanding the presence of her very own root system, our connection}

We spent time with it, an hour, moving it, examining it, talking to it, thanking it, but mostly just listening. It comes with a story, the first narrative of inner life, it holds the hieroglyphics, ancients imprints of our internal world, a galaxy of desire and choice, the place were we all have lived, where we all decided to be born. It is the beginning of our egg, it is from the karma of own mother, the idea of the life in motion, stuck to my wall and stuck to her. Nothing short of a fucking miracle, a vessel for godly gas exchange, a tunnel for love and matter, of knowing and mystery. How can we toss it aside as worthless flesh? We listen. It has stories about who we are and why we are here, and where we have been.

{Sula’s maternal side, where her and I began this life’s relationship beyond egg and spirit. Her and I have been many places together}

{the fetal side of Sula’s, a wise lil one, a gem, a pearl, a teacher, a gift}

Holding the sacred text of my daughter’s journey as well as my own as her Mother, the villous tree coming together and creating cotyledon villages and timepieces, I learned nothing I didn’t know, but was whispered exactly what I needed. This isn’t about telling the future, it’s about practicing the mystery of the moment. I had regretted all these years not doing something with their placentas, (I ate their sisters) but now I regret nothing. I am so grateful that I still had these, especially grateful to have had all these years living with these girls before experiencing this. It’s profound to watch your daughter give love, authentically and almost meditatively to her own placenta. It is an affirmation that we are not separate from where we come from, that we can’t be denied access to our own wise and well-traveled paths.

{whapio and sula listening}

This day was a slice of life fully courting the paradox and riding the waves of the flux and knowing for sure the Earth, the Universe is the most perfect Home finding it’s way. My daughters’ hands moved blood through the still vibrant placentas, sculpted and shaped their original Twin and it became very clear that this mattered, that The Grandmothers, the Roots of the cosmos, the Eye of the Eternal Omnipresent, somewhere in there, up there, around here, are showing us The Way.

{the beautiful veil we saved. whapio has passed on a ritual of keeping a bit of the veil and allowing it to dry and watch as the stories upon it unfold…}

I hold these stories sacred, personal, some things will be left unsaid. Mia and have a lot of work to do, and we have a long life together to do it in; we are newer to each other but with a important partnership: she truly has crowned me as her teacher and she truly comes to learn leadership. We work on gently massaging each other in ways to untangle the anger and free up the knots. She has many unique gifts and I’m her assistant in finding them. Sul’sa placenta went from looking little turtle shell into blooming like a flower and revealing the most pearlescent piece of her world. She is powerful healer and humble goddess. She is quiet but inside she holds bold beauty, beauty that I know will change the world. I needed to remember that her and I go way back, like far back, from the beginning of time.

{we come from such sparkle and shine, fabulous and divine}

We all are given the medicine when we truly need it. The medicine is Us.

{on a less stream of consciousness note: if you have your placenta frozen and not sure what to do with it, it’s absolutely not too late to make magic and medicine with it. If your children are into it, it’s amazing to include them in the journey. Mine are now soaking in grain alcohol and will be there for another month or 2. Then we will practice alchemy with them using fire and salts. They will eventually, after a process be turned into a more homeopathic type of medicine. But before that I will take a little piece of each and bury them somewhere special. When the time comes, I’ll make sure to share the process. It’s quite easy, yet extremely powerful and fun for the kids, too. It’s something that they can keep with them forever….and keep passing on.}