Embodied writing for conscious remembering
Part 3: The body may keep score, but I still want to write lyrics
In my last post, I shared my “birth story,” recounting the events and experiences of the day I delivered Nora. There are a number of reasons why I think new parents might do this (at least, upon reflection, this is why I did it):
To process and make meaning of the experience. Writing is therapeutic and pulling the experience out of yourself and onto the page can help create the space required to integrate the experience
To connect with others who’ve given birth by exchanging stories or simply reflecting on each mother’s link to the infinite chain of childbirth. I can say with utmost certainty that I have never felt more connected to other people, whether they are parents or not; childbirth (and the subsequent concoction of hormones) has jolted my empathy awake, reminding me very viscerally that the only reason we are all here is because millions before us, since time immemorial, have continued to create and birth life—and this makes each of us a complete miracle.
To advocate for certain types of care or raise awareness (e.g., about birth trauma, informed consent, or midwifery support). During this time, I’ve become so much more aware of how privileged my circumstance, to live where I do and be able to receive the care that I have. In BC, public health covers in-home midwife visits and lactation consulting for the first 6 weeks postpartum. I am also very lucky to be on paid mat leave, which includes a top-up for a whole year from my employer, as well as to have such an incredibly supportive and hands-on partner, who has been with me from day 1 (prenatally and postpartum), and who also gets paid time off.
To celebrate the arrival of our little one— and myself. While I had a low-risk pregnancy and had no complications with delivering Nora, the physical experience of childbirth is world bending. Reflecting on the stages of labour and the full spectrum of experiences that came with each has helped me appreciate how incredibly powerful my body, mind, and spirit are, a context which amplifies my joy and delight and relief for having birthed a healthy baby.
But a new reason has begun to emerge, insomuch that it can be called a reason, since I’ve only discovered it after doing it…
Several moms have told me that with time they forget the labour pains, the toughest parts of the magical day they delivered their little one. Perhaps this is the universe’s gift to us, they say, to take away the ache. To make sure we can have a second baby, they joke.
At first it was hard to believe. How can we forget such a monumental, transformative, life-altering event?
But with each passing day, the intensity of those hours does slip from my mind’s grasp more and more.
I think back to May 11th and May 12th and in some ways my memory of that fateful day has already begun to fade, like my old black Nirvana t-shirt; freshly laundered, it’s not quite so grunge anymore; it smells cleaner, closer to everything else.
Thankfully, the body keeps score by internalizing our experiences. Every memory lives inside our tissues and leaves unconscious markings on us like rivulets carving loose soil. With childbirth, as with any experience, there is benefit to trying to trace these markings, follow the insights to which they lead so we can integrate the experience consciously. It’s like looking back on a set of travels, trying to remember which train we took where and when then realizing that it wasn’t about that. It was about how the travels made us feel.
Embodied writing for emotional integration
I read somewhere that the only true time we have a memory is the first time we remember something—every subsequent time we try to remember, we actually remember what we remembered not the experience itself. If this is true, if time and reflection dilutes our access to the past, I think embodied writing can help us cut through the intellect and bring the core memory back so we can continue to process it from a place of security and groundedness.
In the context of writing Nora’s birth story, I recount the sensations in my body that surface as I remember and notice how those events make me feel today—where they live inside my body now and how they show up when I become aware of them.
I recount the moments when I first remembered the story too, when over the course of the first few nights at home, Jason and I sat up rehashing that fateful day, trying to piece together the order of events, first as a list of time stamps, then as experiences with layers and opportunities for reflection. We shared, we cried, we laughed, and we rejoiced, as we picnicked on our bed with sleeping Nora on my chest. My heart feels full in the abundance of those first days and weeks together. That, too, is part of Nora’s birth story.
Conscious remembering brings us into the present moment
To me, writing is an imperative. It helps me process and integrate. It helps me keep my past experiences in my consciousness so that I can reflect on them, learn from them, and appreciate them. Even if some were challenging, remembering them helps me maintain the wider spectrum of the experience against which the beautiful moments, too, can be measured.
Like the discomfort, my legs trembling from under me as I braced myself against the hospital bed… If I forgot this, would it mean I’d forget the intensity of the relief that followed? When I was finally submerged in the bath, the dimly lit room, the flickering candles…the only sound: a gentle sloshing of the water around me in tune with my breath that I swear took me to another universe; my consciousness popped into another dimension where there was no pain, no sensation, just a journey forward and through.
And the existential fear that rocked me to my core, that had me yelp out loud, “help! What is happening!” when I fully dilated and thought there was no one there with me… It was a painful cut into an otherwise beautiful delivery, this moment of panic that struck me.. but I don’t want to deny it because it also offered me a gift: When in the dim bathroom I turned to find Jason sitting there by the tub, his quiet, tender presence… and his vigourous move, his prompt getting up to call on my midwife for instruction.
And then there was that cement-like force that threatened to split me in half…. that sensation, if I were to forget it, might it erase with it the ineffable, out-of-this-world dimension I entered with my mind with those few contractions…? It was a meeting of life and death, but both turned out to be life.
And the feeling of her skin against mine... her eyes looking up at me for the first time…I feel an energy in every part of my body rise up.
And every time I look at her now, that same feeling comes back, a feeling of knowing, of connection, of world-bending technicolour presence. A feeling that, try as I might, no words can hold but I’m gonna try anyway.
xx
Vish
