Grandmother Wombs

I. Grandmother

My grandmother gave birth to a daughter who gave birth to a daughter. In my grandmother’s womb, the growing baby generated the entire collection of eggs her ovaries would naturally hold. The potential for my existence was floating somewhere inside a pair of delicate pouches holding millions of precious eggs inside the body of the little one who was coming alive inside my grandmother’s womb.

I wonder if my nana knew.

I wonder what else she carried while pregnant with her daughter who one day would give birth to me. Was my nana happy? Did she feel safe? Was she nourished and loved?

What was passed along in the braiding of family trees with European roots, in the migrations across oceans and lands?

What passions and dreams, unspoken stories, and beliefs about mothers and daughters flowed through my grandmother’s veins and settled into her bones, touching the little one in her womb?

Mother to daughter and mother to daughter. Birther and birthed to birther and birthed. A weaving of creation, three generations, womb to womb to womb.

The lineage of wombs flows back in time too. The potential for my grandmother’s existence was held in my grandmother’s grandmother’s womb. The fibers of connection can be followed even further beyond to the Great Womb giving birth to creation.

I wonder what has been woven, dismantled, remembered, and rebuilt through countless generations on our earth. And what happens now? What continues beyond us? Beyond me?

Because I am a daughter who has not given birth.

II. Mother

At a precise moment in the flow of womb cycles, one tiny seed was released from a delicate pouch in my mom’s body. Floating along a winding path, that singular egg made a remarkably impossible journey to the womb, welcomed in only one sperm, and instinctively started to grow. Momentous transformations began to take place guided by ancient blueprints and cellular knowing.

The inner sanctum of my mother’s womb was my first homeland on the earth.

After giving birth to four children and many years of taking birth control pills, my mom decided to have a medical procedure to prevent pregnancy. The process was supposed to be simple and safe. She almost died.

The doctors insisted that the painful symptoms and her declining health were all just in her head. Eventually, her uterus and ovary had to be surgically removed due to the negligence and harm. Somehow, through a long recovery, she survived.

Who is tending to the inner landscapes of women’s bodies?

How do we reclaim healing traditions that don’t leave harm in their wake?

Grieving and loss. Woundings and fear. Lifeblood, co-creations, and love. Our wombs are holding so very much.

III. Elder Womb

Six decades have passed since my birth. My body is now the home of an Elder Womb.

The ending of my bleeding time was sacred initiation, a transformational passage, the opening of a doorway into unknowns.

My feet are rooted now more deeply in the earth, in rich soils of lived experience and the vast mystery. My body and spirit are joined with the moon and the spiraling dance of

change. Getting close up with death heightens living.

So what is my medicine for this time on the earth, in the path of my life, with my Grandmother Womb?

What promises do I hold, what dreams do I carry, for the generations now and to come?

How am I a vessel of co-creation?

IV. Birthings

Breathing into the birthing, a quickening is felt. Waters flow, a cleansing, a clearing, as structures wash away, as pathways open. The unstoppable momentum is ingeniously designed to move around and under and over and beyond any efforts to hold creation back.

Questions rise to the surface when the birthings begin. Relationships swirl around in the currents, unraveling, rearranging, while what has been dissolves away.

Give a name to the essence of who and what is being birthed, to the spirit of all that is becoming. Honor the purpose. Remember the intent.

Because seismic shifts will surely come again, in invitations, instinctive callings,

and quaking, shaking, rippling waves.

Life birthing life birthing life. Birther and birthed to birther and birthed, continuing on and on and on.

A universe of potentials, sacred blueprints, and dreams are wrapped inside wrappings and held so very close, until it is time, in the lush fertile space of Grandmother Wombs.

JoAnne Dodgson – www.joannedodgson.com