Today is my birthday.

(Well, this was mostly written on my birthday...)

Today is my birthday 🎂

Happy birthday to me. It's always been great to say that phrase out loud. I love the adoration, and all the love poured into my life on this day. People remember that you are alive and say they are happy about it. It's simple really, happy birthday means I'm so glad you were born, and I hope you are happy about it too. 

My birthday carries a large significance in my life, not only because it’s my day of birth, but because I decided as a child that the actions or energy I place into it would be the theme for the year. This year, I began my day with a women's circle. We moved into Somatic practice at the start of the circle, and I unexpectedly balled my eyes out. I felt this lump in my throat, it felt like a wet rag. The facilitator worked through it with me.

"What is it saying to you?"

She knew that a strong emotion was coming through.

"This is the feeling of every tired mother, frustrated wife, and exhausted woman who sacrifices everything for the well-being of her family. This is the feeling everyone gets when it all becomes too much."

She kept the questions coming.

"And why is it here with you?"

"To be present and to know that it can be relieved, but it can also be felt strongly because it connects all women." 

I couldn't stop crying.

I felt the weight of the world of all mothers; The will to do our very best as life unravels and hours become minutes as our efforts unfold with less help than we'd like. It all happens so fast and takes every ounce of love and grit. The force of our unspoken prayer surfaces when we see these beautiful moments when our babies smile at us and kiss us out of pure and simple delight. 

  I felt a multitude of women in this emotion. And I wept for them, and I laughed for them.

We moved on, and I stood up to ground myself. My daughter looked at me like I was going somewhere away from her, but I needed to feel myself come back home into my body. I was stirring with waves of emotion so large that I could hardly hear what people were saying around me.

My throat felt a relief. 

The thoughts of our next move flooded me. I pulled an Oracle card. It said- widen your perspective. The card had a black moon and the world in perspective to one another. The world was zoomed out, and the moon was closer. I understood immediately.

These everyday feelings of showing up for my daughter and my husband are so immersive. Even if I'm tired, hungry,  or even busy with something,  I will drop everything the moment I hear a cry from Esme or the moment my husband needs help with juggling the million things we do all the time.

It hit me hard. Take more time for yourself. It's all going to continue to move forward no matter what.

Let yourself feel yourself again.

The swell in the throat completely disappeared, and a pressure moved down into my heart.

We continued with a few more exercises and ended the circle with Carnatic singing.  It's a practice from South East India and is taught verbally from Mother to daughter.  We sang different chants, and the vibration of our voices created the most illuminating harmony. It was pure beauty. Esme began to sing with us, just ahhhing and ehhhing along as we sang. It was so incredible to feel such a deep peace and release through the place where it had just felt like a heavy pressure.

The day continued. A fellow mama and dearest friend invited me to have some brunch. This is especially difficult with our daughters because one is walking and the other is crawling. We typically go to their house and they play for hours. They are both so active together that being in a public place makes it hard to sit and eat. We took turns watching the girls while the other one ate. ( I'm skipping some details here for the sake of interest.)

She said something really important to me, and it made me see the entire day as a lesson, rather than a difficult day.

"You see, today is the day to receive, so learn to reciprocate the receiving just as you give."

I pondered this for days. When did I begin giving and not receiving? How did my life become one of sacrifice? Why hadn't I written in over 2 weeks? Why was I so tired all the time? How could I make more time for myself? How can I communicate this, and would it have a long-term effect?

These thoughts point-blank stop when my daughter wakes from her nap or cries for my attention when I'm attempting to cook a meal.

It's been one day at a time, and I'm still trying to do everything to stay healthy and keep sane.

My husband is busy with his self-discovery and playing daddy to the kittens that we still have. We have WAY too many kittens, but we will be downsizing soon. The tangent there trickles down to all the things that distract me from myself. It forces me to ask my husband for more help, while not assuming he just knows I need help, and not getting angry that he isn’t assuming I need more “me time”. The result is an endless cycle that I need to break so that I also value myself and who I am outside of being a mother.

This birthday was the most challenging day for me because it reminded me that I had lost a big part of who I was, but it gave me something I cherish daily and desire deeply. I called it a mixed-bag birthday.  I didn't get a cake to make my wish on the actual day itself, so days later, I made that my priority.

I ended the day with a massage and had to leave my daughter with her father and a babysitter for three hours, the longest I have ever been away from her since her birth. I found myself wishing she was older so we could do these things together, but that’s not the lesson of this birthday.

I heard that you’re not supposed to share your wish out loud or tell anyone or it won’t come true. I think it’s ok to share my partial wish as I call it into fruition. I wish to allow myself to receive in a form that I have yet to experience; I wish to be happy to be born, unconditionally. 

As I close this, my daughter is crying in the room over and her father is trying to soothe her with an elongated effort. Her cries are dwindling, but my heart wrenches as I quickly finish typing. It will take lots of patience from both of us and lots of effort to remind myself that I also need a break. But in the end, this is the start of the undoing of generations of learned self-sacrifice and wringing out the emotional weight of the world on my shoulders.

Happy Birthday to me!

If you are new to my publication, Welcome! I’m intrigued to meet you. 

My name is Misha, and I’m here on a need-to-write basis and post my writings weekly, once for free subscribers and once for paid.   

This publication is a mixed genre experience, I write essays, creative non-fiction, poetry, and life musings. I also have a podcast, mostly for my paid subscribers, but I open one episode monthly for everyone. 

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If you’d like to peek around- try reading some of my favorites:

FIRST, THERE WAS JUST ME-(creative memoir)

THE MAN OF MY DREAMS- (creative memoir)

THE PERFECT LOVE- (poetry)

THE DIRECTOR, PRODUCER, WRITER, AND ACTOR- (essay)

P.s. Outside of writing, I like to help people heal and find a way back to themselves. Check out my small business  www.ritualcomun.com to learn more.