Ordeals and Triumphs
(And the beauty in both)
I once heard bringing babies to the world described as a quest. There will always be ordeal. And there will always be triumph.
The ordeal could come at any step in the path; conceiving, during pregnancy, birth, breastfeeding or much later.
Maybe mine was in the long nights of sleeplessness and the dark days that followed, when exhaustion sat heavy on me, wearing me me down.
I have witnessed many families in their moment of triumph, and I have also witnessed many navigating their own moments of ordeal. I see their struggle, but I see so much beauty too, so much fragility, so much truth.
Last night my boy couldn’t sleep. When I sang to him that old lullaby of ours, it took me right back to those nights. I felt a deep tugging, something inside shifted and I saw the preciousness of that time, the closeness, the impermanence. Several years later I’m beginning to see the beauty in my own ordeal.
I believe that words and photos can help us to do that. They can gently hold a moment in time that we are unable to truly see, when we are so deeply within it. I think we all need a record of our ordeals as well as our triumphs, there is so much truth to be found in both.