Birthdays can elicit a string of reactions. Personal new years, check-ins, reminders, milestones, moments of deep joy, guilt, admonishment and possibility. The days before I crossed over the constellation of my birth this year showed me how haaaard celebration has felt.
Distinguishing the difference between joy! pleasure! oversaturation! escapism!
Disentangling how slow I could be, how long my gaze could remain fixed, how much I would stay in that sweet, sticky, fulfilling pace of being poured into.
Reflecting this year brought up questions around what my birthdays have looked like in the past.
I wanted to trace whether I liked being centered, celebrated, where there may have been wounding that has led to letting it be just another day, where agency was lost by letting others take the lead, where possibility and ease emerged when I surrendered to the ways my loved ones know me and how to show up for me.
A birthday desire I’ve committed to strengthen is knowing how to ask for help, then getting better at knowing who to ask, when is best and when we ourselves are able to give on the other end.
All of life is an exchange of love and care.
There is really nothing beyond this and so many of the barriers to this force flowing as it should are structures that tell us we need more than loving and being loved by one another.
I find the grief rises up when touching moments where love was not expressed, received, when love’s physical materialization disintegrated through loss, death or harm.
In the process of reflection, I came to acknowledge the birthdays that were moments of tension, disruption, chaos, of giving my center away to something more pressing or distressing.
I also noticed the ways climate grief, generational grief and personal grief has impeded by ability to see my life many years out. This is a pattern I’m actively healing by choosing to live, choosing what is truly nourishing and honoring death in it’s cycles when it does appear.
This year was a huge shift, I went straight into the arms of loved ones. I let myself go to where I knew I’d be celebrated and named simple desires to full-hearted friends and the day developed so sweetly. I glowed through hands full of sunflowers, a mouth full of oysters and a warmth that radiated the beauty of experiencing home through the acts of care and compassion that kin weave together.
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