Your Own Birth

There is a movement you made before you could think. The first great movement of your life. From a place where everything was carried, warm, and rhythmic, out into a bright, cool, loud outside. You saw light for the first time, breathed air for the first time, heard your own voice for the first time. And you crossed a passage that no one could have prepared you for.

That was no gentle introduction to your life. That was an existential event. And your nervous system was fully attentive. It stored how it unfolded: whether it went fast or long, whether you were pulled or pushed, whether hands helped or instruments guided, whether you were ready or taken out before you were, whether the first contact was skin or incubator light, whether someone was waiting for you or you arrived in the shock of the world.