Broken Open--My Messy Beautiful

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For many of us, this has been a seemingly endless winter. As April spreads its sunny weeks before me, I start to see, and feel, the fringes of a season change. Light fills the room of my evening yoga classes a little longer each day, the sun creating criss-cross patterns across my mat. 

About a month ago I was taking one of these classes with one of my favorite teachers who tapped her practice into the season change, describing the coming of spring as a time of “breaking open”—winter “breaking open” to spring, spring to summer, and the visual struck me as both violent and kind. 

A woman about seven months pregnant was practicing a few rows ahead of me. At the end of class I overheard my teacher asking her when it would be time for her “breaking open.” Fifteen or sixteen weeks pregnant at the time and not quite showing yet, I thought silently about her question. In six-month time, I too, would be broken open, the visual both violent and (after nine months of lending your body to another being) kind. 

Our lives, dictated by the seasons, are built upon a foundation of “broken open” moments, some painful, some of which bring with them immense joy. After a decade of battling breast cancer, after a decade of persevering and refusing to allow herself to ever be defeated by the disease, a time came when my mother got really sick, and would not recover. Those dark days in brightly lit hospital hallways were endless and raw. My husband described that time as the wound wide open, broken open, red and angry and untouchable. In the days after my mother passed, he described it as a time in which that wound could now slowly close, a stitch for every year that passes. I still think about his beautiful analogy often, and how right he was in understanding how we heal, and our capacity to feel whole again after pieces of ourselves have been broken open. 

In September, there is a new “breaking open” waiting for us. But instead of a wound, it’s a broken open body, a broken open heart, as we make space for new life. I think about how everything will change, be rearranged and turned upside down. I think about how grateful I am for this opportunity to be vulnerable, and frightened, and joyful, and scared, all at once. 

I’ve carried my teacher’s words with me these past few weeks, unable to let them go. I think about the cherry blossoms in downtown Washington, D.C., a mile away from my home, blooming now after a stalled “breaking open,” their pink-pedaled glory peaking for a fleeting few days, their short window a violent show of color, a kind reminder that spring, and change, and new life, are finally here.

Springtime blossoms in Washington, D.C.

   -Yaz
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The Weeks Since

On December 24, 2010, I lost my mother to breast cancer.

On December 24, 2013, I found out that I was pregnant.

When the strip turned into a plus sign, a positive, a wordless life-changing message sitting on the ledge of the bathroom sink, I thought of two things: 1) oh my God, I’m pregnant, and 2) The date.

In the weeks since, I have thought a lot about this coincidence, trying, and failing, to understand it. Instead, I have accepted it as the work of a much higher power. I have accepted it as the work of my mother—giving me a sign. And a gift.

In the weeks since, I have thought many times about how I could possibly do this without her. I have thought, there is still so much advice she hasn’t given me yet. All that advice I was supposed to fight with her on and say, “Hey, I’m going to do this MY way.”

But really, how much of my way will in the end be her way? I am sure all of it will belong to her, from calming Baby’s cries, to singing lullabies, to rocking Baby to sleep, to healing sick Baby, to making Baby laugh.

All of it belongs to her, and now to me, passed down from generations. And generations. 

In the weeks since, I have thought about all the things I’m going to tell Baby about her.

She was an artist. And an architect.

She could make dream homes appear on forsaken plots of land. She made dreams appear.

She had a gap between her teeth she refused to close. It’s for luck, she said. Baby, I hope you have a gap between your teeth the size of an ocean, a valley, a sea.

She was patient. And kind. When I was overcome with stress, or grief, when I couldn’t sleep, my mother would take her finger and smooth the space between my eyebrows. It was a repetitious movement, her pointer finger against my skin, smoothing out the wrinkles, the worry, the fear.

Baby, I hope you see her best parts and pieces through me.

In the weeks since, I have felt her absence, and her presence, in equally intense waves. There is a hole in my heart, but my heart is full. There are words left unsaid, but I know everything she would have told me. This new beginning, this do-over, this birth, this re-birth, they are all reminders that the line of life is fine. And impossibly sweet.

They are all reminders that there are no coincidences, only signs. And eternal, never-ending gifts. 

Me and my mom, circa 1998(ish)

-Yaz
We are so excited to have Yaz as a regular honest mom contributor! To read more about Yaz, click here.