The deepest experiences of our lives will most likely be the ones that shake us to our core, and open up the doors of our perception, break us open, and tear us apart from the reality we thought we knew. To let yourself fall apart is hardly ever the invitation of the over culture. You are most likely more accustomed to the demand to pull yourself together. What if the depth of life’s power pulses with both chaos and cohesion? Dissolution is unavoidable. What if decomposition is at the core of your creativity?

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I’m thinking of the process of becoming a mother. I was fulfilled before. I had a thriving, growing career. I did work that was meaningful to me and to others. I felt connected to people. My relationship with my husband was great. I traveled – not too much, just enough to keep me excited. Life felt like it was moving in directions that I was inspired by and proud of. The feeling of freedom was palpable. And then came pregnancy. And I LOVED it! It felt like a blooming – a becoming like no other. Under the surface, it was a delicate, fierce undoing. It was new and changing and not necessarily comfortable, but it was sensual and wild and spiritual. 

The births of both my kids were dramatic and scary and miraculous. When I had my first baby, I thought I would give birth like a goddess, like an earth mama, all natural, with music and mantras. But when labor started, it started with a bang (after many days of stop and go), and I had no space between contractions, my body started to push too early, and I pushed for four and a half hours, we lost her heartbeat, and I found myself in the OR having an emergency C-section, they had to resuscitate her, and the unraveling was real. It was also beautiful because she made it! I was humbled in so many ways. It was painful, petrifying, and powerful, and the pleasure of holding her in my arms, and smelling her head, and breastfeeding her, and getting to know her, was the most profound experience of my life. 

Then came years of bonding and connecting and loving in ways that broke me open and sent me on a cosmic cruise. The joy was spectacular. I loved being there with my baby and taking care of her, watching her shed infancy and unfold into a smiling, laughing creature, a crawling and then walking entity, a speaking, thinking, creative being. It was (still is) magic! And the loss of identity was surprising. Devastating. My sense of self was dismantling. Working less and focusing on motherhood and living in a capitalistic society; my feeling of worthiness was disintegrating. I was depressed. And I was depressed about being depressed.

When I had my second baby, I did everything I could to create the conditions for a vaginal birth, knowing at that point, that this is not in my control. That little guy decided to arrive as a total surprise seven weeks early, as another emergency c-section, not only because he was breached, but he sure did turn our world upside down. Spending three and a half weeks with him in the NICU while having a four and a half year old at home, cooked me in the fire of motherhood in yet more ways. And even though hospital protocols didn’t make the natural bond between baby and mama easy, we carved our way, and we were the skin to skin king and queen, and when I held him and breastfed him, the fluorescent lights went away, the smell of hospital was replaced with baby scent, and that magic potion of oxytocin flowed like the abundance of milk that I miraculously was able to produce. 

My identity shattered with each birth. And it keeps dismantling as the years go by. My confidence collapsed. And it is still scattered on the forest floor of my life. My sense of self evaporated. And it hasn’t rained back down. My direction, my purpose, my vision were cast into the woods, and there is no path there between the tangled roots. And yet a golden thread weaves together the pieces with every step through the wilderness, and when the light breaks through the canopy of trees, reality glows and shimmers with magic. There is nothing in me or in my life that feels secure. And yet the depth of meaning has only grown with every breaking point. 

Being whole requires that we keep breaking, that we continue to unravel, that we unfold and tell stories not yet told, as we repeat, revisit, and recycle through versions and patterns of reality. Wholeness isn’t static. It isn’t a finished state that we get to hold on to. Being broken is how we participate in the project of our wholeness. We must be shattered by life’s experiences, scattered by its winds, scathed by its fires, fertilized by the ashes of what once was, made tougher and more tender as we tend to what matters to us most. You gotta wreck yourself, that’s how you make yourself.  

No one wants to fall apart. We do all that we can to hold it together for our kids, to keep it together at work, to pull ourselves together when it feels like we might break down. The feeling that life is out of our control is not easy for anyone to bear. Life’s volatility is difficult for us to accept. We want to find ways to fix the turmoils. We want to find steadiness. 

Humans want stability in a world that continuously moves and changes. The unpredictability of the universe is met with human inventions of imaginary, mythic characters with all mighty powers (religion) on the one hand, and human calculations and innovative solutions (science) on the other. 

Being perishable is not a fun fact. We try hard to either forget or overcome it. We see it as an issue we must fix. We try to find solutions to this inevitable aspect of reality. Old age and death are viewed in our culture as problems we must resolve. Eternal life is promised in some religions. Other spiritual paths offer the perspective that change is an illusion. Pharmaceutical companies and skin care brands make billions by trying to fix the error, at least temporarily. 

Modern society keeps old age away from the everyday, keeping the elderly in special designated areas. Death is not integrated with life in our society either. I’m always thrown by the fact that people in our culture bury the dead in coffins – so far removed we are from nature’s intricate dance of creation as entropy, dissolution, and continuous reconfiguration. 

Modernity keeps birth tucked away too. Hospitals replace the natural environment of childbirth, and with it, women lose connection with the natural rhythms of our bodies, and our trust in ourselves. And yet, both my kids would not be here today if it wasn’t for modern medicine. Both their lives as well as mine were saved by the hospital. It’s not simple or one sided. And we can hold the dichotomy of things being both a gift and a burden, a problem and a solution. 

Out in the forest, death and life are woven together in seamless elegance. Life bursts out of dead wood. Fallen trees provide nourishment and shelter to a wide variety of species. Dried leaves that fall off trees in Autumn, fertilize the ground for the Spring to come, providing the soil with nourishment, and moisture maintenance. 

Deep in our bodies, our digestive system breaks food down, and takes what’s necessary for the function of other systems. Whatever isn’t necessary is eliminated. In the natural world, that which is eliminated fertilizes the soil into which it is reabsorbed. 

The universe creates itself through an entropic process. From a condensed essential possibility, it exploded into chaos. And it still continues to unfold further into disorder. As it disintegrates form, it generates other forms, particles coalesce into new entities out of dust of broken down older structures. As things come together, other things fall apart. As something breaks down, new things collect into becoming. 

The day to day wears us out. Slowly, the constructs and contours of who we are transmute as we cycle through the days, the weeks, the months, and the years. And I’m not only talking about the wrinkles. The deepest experiences of our lives break down who we think we are, and reformulate new versions of our being. And those most profound experiences are not only the big, once in a lifetime earthquakes that swallow us whole, but the slow tectonic shifts that make up a whole new version of earth over time. 

Our children’s childhood feels like a flash of transformation. But it’s also a shedding and renewal that happens not only over night, but constantly right under our nose, while we pack their lunches. The transition is continuous. The Very Hungry Caterpillar becomes a butterfly, and continues its journey through The Land Of Stories to become The Lord Of The Rings, and while it feels sudden, like the wrinkles on your face, the skin shed and the new shape are a simultaneous event that never stops. 

Death and decay are the birthing place of life itself. And life is never not a metamorphosis, a molting process, a dissolution that is simultaneously a creation. 

We have the capacity to pull ourselves together. Even as we experience a falling apart of some sort. Or as we go through the deconstructive process of the everyday. The integrative process of assimilating, of putting pieces together as we break open, or shatter an identity, or grieve someone or something in a way that changes the architecture of who we are, is not a process of coming back to who we are, but a revolution of reconfiguring our existence. 

The Beatles, inspired by Transcendental Meditation, and by their Guru, Maharishi, sang; “Nothing’s gonna change my world…” and I often wonder if that’s a good idea. I understand the appeal, I get why people are attracted to teachings and philosophies that offer stability and a sense of finality, but we gotta wonder if not letting anything change us, is a project healthy to pursue. 

Our beloved earth, the very planet that gives us life, this entity within which atmosphere we breathe, and on which we stand, this very body that nourishes us, and toward which we turn as a source of stability, came to be through dust and gas and volcanic power, spinning around a fierce ball of fire, many collisions, high impact, and burning heat, as well as the ability to cool down. 

Without the meteor that hit earth about 66 million years ago, and ended the rule of the dinosaurs, we wouldn’t be here today. 

The egg must crack for new life to emerge. The womb must stretch for the fetus to develop. Flowers must wither for fruit to grow. Fruit must decay for the tree to be nourished, and for new trees to grow. The amniotic sac must break for the baby to be born. A mother must be changed by the birth of her children in order to shift the focus away from everything else and toward caring for them – a process that continues to change and shift as the children grow, because a mother must turn her attention in other directions too, as the baby becomes a kid. Everything changes. Reality falls apart in order to put itself together in new ways. 

Cracking open offers us the possibility of rebirth. Painful, terrifying, and destabilizing as it may be, changing with life’s changes, gives us the ability to change our lives. 

Everything’s gonna change our world. Who are we if we don’t let our world change us? And what is the world if not change?