Six years ago, age 43, I had a miscarriage.
It was the culmination of a fourteen-month journey that began on my mother’s 65th birthday, when my husband unexpectedly declared he wanted a baby.
Until then, I had kicked the ball of parenthood into the long grass of ambivalence. Stopping to ask Do I want to become a mother? I was shocked to discover echoing silence and an awareness that my proverbial egg shop might be about to close.
After endless pros and cons lists led to multiple no score-draws, I had life coaching and bodywork therapy desperately searching for my wholehearted answer. Eventually, a mysterious manifestation of motherhood energy seemed to take form and a boy began appearing at the edges of my vision, like Genie-smoke from a lamp.
Sadly, I miscarried Egbert (as I called him) after ten weeks.
I felt numb.
We would try again.
Yet a couple of months later my doorway to motherhood was slammed shut. Without prior intention or forethought, I wrenched open our bathroom cabinet, scrabbled for my packet of contraceptive pills and, with one dramatic gulp, swallowed the most stunning full stop of my life.
The air around me tingled. There was no argument, no weighing of pros and cons, just the full-body sensation of Motherhood is not my path. It didn’t feel like a choice, more a commandment.
In the days that followed I was keenly aware of having no map, only the profound sense of an ending and that my inner compass was pointing north.
A couple of months later, I was on a ferry to Holy Isle, a tiny Scottish island with a long spiritual history, shaped like a footprint. The moment I set foot on the land, I experienced the sensation of being held. You can rest. I’ve got you. You are here to grieve for motherhood she whispered.
My DIY pilgrimage lasted three days. I sat in a circle with Christian mystics chanting the rose inside slowly blooms. I attended evening meditations attempting to follow mysterious Tibetan script. I had a soulful encounter with a woman grieving for her mother. I walked to the summit with new friends, belly-laughing harder than I could remember. I kneaded dough to make the legendary holy bread.
A few hours before my departure I was chatting to a guy called Matt. “I think you should be a therapist. You’d look all serious, then let out that raucous laugh and clients wouldn’t know what to make of it. Then, you’d have ‘em”. He was the third person to say something similar.
As I boarded the return ferry a rainbow appeared, like a heavenly witness to my first footprint on Path B. My future may not be motherhood, I thought but I can feel motherhood energy in me.
I expected to roll my sleeves immediately and get on with my new beginning. I had not planned for the in-between transition: that messy, confusing liminal space we must experience and pass through to re-orientate and re-define ourselves.
I made vows to creativity and began several attempts to write a book. I pressed up against the shop window of psychotherapy training but never entered. I started a blog but ran out of steam. No matter how inspired I felt, I could never sustain my energy. Disheartened and menopausal, I buried myself in work.
Three years later I was driving home late from the office. Rain battered the windscreen and as I strained to see I heard a calm conversation in my head.
You could crash, die, and make it all stop
Yeah, but mam would kill me, and I might hurt someone
Fair point
The next morning it happened again. I approached a railway crossing as the warning lights were flashing.
If you carried on, you could stop on the line and the train would hit you
Yeah, but what about the train driver? He would probably be traumatised for life
Oh, good point
I reached out for help and, with counselling, dug to the root cause: I was grief stricken. “It’s like I have all this motherhood energy inside, and I can feel it metastasising” I said in our penultimate session. I wept with my whole body for fifty minutes: for the empty nest I felt inside, and for the unfulfilled yearning to birth something from within.
The day after I felt like a light breeze had blown through me, clearing old leaves. With fresh impetus, I managed to train as a celebrant and start up a personal development group for women, where I met Jess.
Since the age of ten a rare brain disease had dominated Jess’s life. At her lowest, she had become suicidal after a seizure left her blind in one eye. “I have all of this unprocessed emotion and don’t know what to do with it” she said. “I can feel it welling up inside”.
It struck me that Jess needed a rite of passage so on the afternoon of her 18th birthday we held a bespoke ‘Coming of Age’ ceremony which Jess later described as “a spiritual awakening”. It was also a watershed moment for me. Emboldened by Jess’s bravery I crossed my own threshold, took a leap of faith, and resigned from my job.
Next time our women’s group convened was Mother’s Day and Jess gave me a card. “Other Mother” it said. “Thank you for being in my life as a mentor, friend and mother. You’ve allowed me to see that being freaking weird is amazing …”
Since then I have returned to Holy Isle with Jess, and the island held her too.
I am now writing Wild Egg, the story of how my atoms split as Path A closed, how I entered an incubation period, and eventually began hatching my authentic self. Wild Egg is an invitation: to step outside what might be expected; heal inside our empty internal wilderness; and connect to our unique expression of motherhood energy.
Jennifer Flint