Embracing the Void: A Journey to Being With the Majesty of Who Is (Not) Here
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Embracing the Void
A journey to being with the majesty of who is (not) here
By mother mother binahkaye joy
20 March 2022
Last September I gave birth early to a starseed that transitioned 7 moons before having the chance to become fully human. It was my bloodiest birth yet, in all my years of birthing. I came to describe that labor as a gentle birth, even as clots as large as pancakes fell continuously from my center, a crimson processional onto the floor of the tub. I was not in any great pain; I was grateful. My children gathered above me asking me why all the blood. They hadn’t yet known. I was on the phone with a sistermama, talking through my labors. Together we waited for the passage of the one who was once going to be a baby.
Months before this starseed was initiated, I had arrived at new language for the phenomenon of an early birth transitioning. I call it a protostar birth. I have retired the word most commonly associated with these types of births. Language is powerful, and every word carries with it a vibration of possibility. The former language, the language of my grief, the language of my learning—it served in its time. I have expanded my consciousness of my birthing majesties. I have discovered the necessity of specific language that supports my most radiant, expansive self. I do not speak anymore of “loss” because I no longer feel anything, or anyone, has been lost.
It has taken me years, evolutions, initiations, rituals, movements, and discoveries to arrive at this radically different language. Now I reach for words that signal change and transformation, for language that connects me to the abundant expanse of divine creation intelligence, while still giving me plenty of room to matter all parts of my experience. The stars have been a very fertile space for me. Our fertility codes are quite aligned with the magic of star systems and the birthing labors of the universe.
All italicized words defined and expanded on in the glossary
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A protostar is a star on its way to becoming, but not all protostars evolve into main sequence stars like our holy sun. And not all embryos grow into babies. A protostar birth is when a starseed comes undone inside its mother’s womb, before having spiraled itself into a human being. When these delicate beginnings of new life change course and unravel, there is a dual death that the mother lives through. There is the internal death of whoever a mother is before she gives birth, that is inherent to all births. And then there is the death of the potential human story that this starseed will no longer embody.
I have lived through many such dual-deaths in my birthing years. Unearthing the language of protostar birth has been necessary for me to activate new possibilities in the translation of my fertility codes. All births, even the ones that don’t lead to a baby in the arms, generate a divine light. From this light, an enhanced dimension of knowing, of clarity, of intuition, is born and nourishes the mother who labored through that becoming. To access and apply this light to her life, a mother comes into her own peace and truth of what her birthing journey revealed. This looks and feels differently for every mother, for every birth.
“Language is powerful, and every word carries with it a vibration of possibility. The former language, the language of my grief, the language of my learning—it served in its time. I have expanded my consciousness of my birthing majesties. I have discovered the necessity of specific language that supports my most radiant, expansive self. I do not speak anymore of “loss” because I do not feel anything was lost. Rather I reach for words that signal change and transformation, for language that connects me to the abundant expanse of divine creation intelligence.”
For many years, when I was laboring through protostar births, I would struggle to accept the reality that a life was no longer there in a physical sense. I was unnerved by the hole that the starseed left behind, a hole in the future. This void was sometimes excruciatingly painful to process, sometimes maddening, sometimes muted. There were times when I couldn’t look at myself in the mirror because I didn’t want to see the evidence of my invisible motherhood. As a dancer, being able to study my body is essential, and so my avoidance would eventually alarm me. The imperative to dance would slowly bring me back to myself and the majesty of my body as the site of all my creations, of all my fertility powers. Over the years I discovered it was possible even to dance around the void without ever really honoring it.
Another, less obvious void also appeared after the birth of each of my children. This void was slippery and undefined though, only recognizable to me because I defied the economy of separation and the acceleration of capitalism that has perfected the art of rushing mothers through their birthing labors. Instead I embarked on a curious path of slow mothering and living as a multitudinous mothering entity. It was a mighty and lonely thing at times, holding the space for a new paradigm in mothering, dreaming thoroughly into what else could be all while navigating the complexities of life as it was. It was simple enough to ignore the magnitude of these voids and turn my attention instead to the plentiful joy and chaos of new mommyhood. I convinced myself that my gratitude for my babies, my relief of being able to hold my newest creations to the breast, and count their tiny fingers and toes—that all of this made any voids I felt irrelevant and insignificant to the bigger picture of motherhood.
Whatever their source, there was always a way out of being with the void. To not have to carry the weight of my voids, I would stuff my heart with everything else. New shows, old shows, scheduling more gigs, busying myself with performances, teaching artist adventures, traveling here and there, assorted relationship dramas, decadent, chocolate-peanut butter situations, beginning projects with evermore collaborators—anything to not have to feel the fullness of what, of who, had moved through my body, and the space now left behind.
dance into the Possibilities of each new day
Soundtrack | Lansine Kouyate & Sissokho Yakhouba Fakoli | Greg Foat Symphonie Pacifique | Photo by Colin A. Danville
A week before I gave birth in September, I had started seeing some slight blood trails in my underwear. I tried to not go into fear-and-panic mode, and also not to censor my thoughts. Every day I welcomed the possibilities as softly as I could. I breathed into the knowing that I would labor lovingly through whatever was happening inside of me with presence and courage. It was during this time that spirit led me to start fasting from TV. I didn’t watch much TV anyway, but I did spend a few hours most nights after the last munchkin was tucked in indulging in a movie or my go-to shows, mostly Madam Secretary, and once upon a time, West Wing, and sometimes Frasier when I wanted a sure laugh. This TV fasting was a long time coming. For almost a year I had marveled at how much time I could repurpose toward my creations if I simply didn’t Netflix and chill to supposedly “decompress” from my day. So when I felt that last nudge, I knew it was time to turn everything off.
It was synchronistic timing because once the starseed passed from my womb and into my hands, and the blood quieted, and I made my way into the bed, for the first time in my nearly 15 years of giving birth, I did not reach for a TV show or movie to numb me from the realness of living through another death. Instead, I faced the void—and the munchkins who were still very much up under me—with as much presence as I could and felt into the depths of the moment in a startling fresh way.
I am now months away from that September birth. I am actually inside the season that I estimated would be the birthing window for the starseed, had they continued on their way to becoming my baby. I am sitting with the layers of feelings that swirl through me. All this time of healing and recovering from the birth has also felt like I’ve been walking this parallel life beside the alternate me, the one who gets to grow wide and luminous with expansion. There is a date on the calendar that I had felt would be our birthing day. As it approaches I find myself rocking softly within an ocean of what-ifs, and sifting through countless hypothetical details of the birth that is no longer eminent.
I feel like I’m approaching the void from the other side. For had I still been sitting with possibilities and preparing for the birth of a new baby, I would also be preparing to navigate the inevitable death that comes with bringing life into the world. Every time we give birth, something within dies as well. The parts of us that were sustaining new life transition too, and we feel the density of the physical, energetic, and spiritual masses moving through us on their way out.
In my previous Sacred Return seasons, I coped with the intensity of this duality by cueing movie after movie, and rerun after rerun. Today I am celebrating that I didn’t do that this time. I didn’t run from the void; I didn’t clamor to conceal it with things that would take my mind off of what had happened. I have been dancing, and creating, and breathing, and visioning. I have been hyper-present with the hole in the future, and now the future is arriving. This moment feels very transcendent. I am meeting myself where I would have, could have, been. I am greeting her with my eyes wide open, and witnessing the sweet birth I had dreamed of in my heart.
“It was synchronistic timing because once the starseed passed from my womb and into my hands, and the blood quieted, and I made my way into the bed, for the first time in my nearly 15 years of giving birth, I did not reach for a TV show or movie to numb me from the realness of living through another death. Instead, I faced the void—and the munchkins who were still very much up under me—with as much presence as I could and felt into the depths of the moment in a startling fresh way.”
This morning when I danced with the sun, I received an illumination about why it’s so important to be with the void, and not try to cover it, or bury it, or deny it. The void is another source of light that birth brings. For every other birth journey except this one I was afraid of the void, or overwhelmed by the void, or confused by the void—and so I filled it by consuming whatever would help me not have to feel it all. Before this most recent birth journey, I had grown well-practiced at cluttering the void. The emptiness I feared led me to just pretend my voids weren’t there, closing myself off from the nourishment of my own labors, and blotting out the light that could have been emanating through my days.
Now I am ready to revisit all my birthing labors. To go birth by birth, void by void, and recover the light that is there for me. I am especially journeying back through my movement rituals and sunrise communions. There is also more dialogue and writing emerging, and combing through old journals, notes, and captured stories. I have been beautifully documenting myself and my labors throughout, so this reclamation process is also me going through the bounty of my creations and weaving the untold stories of my birth majesties into the whole narrative of who I am, how I create, and why it is I dream the dreams I dream.
The void, it turns out, is actually another place to begin, another way to shine light onto the becoming. I am ready to live in the fullness of the light that all my creations bring. The generativeness of every birth is that it never stops giving us a chance to be with the majesty it holds. Whether we realize it in the moment, or a decade, or a lifetime, later—the power and possibility of the birth to deliver us into an expanded relationship with ourselves and all of creation remains potent and vibrating. The void holds space for us in this way. It keeps the story and the blessing and of each birth alive for all time, and radiant and generous with light.
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