Today I honor a very personal anniversary, the 19th one in fact.  This special day marks nineteen years since passing through the portal of having cancer in my womb and enduring a sorrowful give-away at the age of 27.
What a passage it was, and continued to be, long after that fateful day nineteen years ago.  I still remember it vividly. I’m certain I always will.
What I know now is that I am a wiser woman for having had to give my womb away at such a tender age and live without the fulfillment of my dream of a second child. I am wiser for the courage it called forth in me and for the compassion it drove home in my core. It IS indeed our wounds that allow the light in and allow it in ways that we would never have dreamed of….
I may not have given birth to another child, but I did give rebirth then and many times since to this woman that lives in my body. She knows a way of loving now that is far more expansive than any body’s womb could ever have held. That give-away led to a gift that I continually give and receive now, through my way of being in life and through what I am able to give life to in other ways.
So today, for all that it carries in meaning for me, I honor it.
I light this candle and I honor it.
I honor the wisps of grief and tenderness that remain, even after nearly two decades.
I honor the dreams and the unanswered prayers. Â I honor the prayers that came to be and the little life that did not.
I honor BEING alive myself, living the blessed life that I have.
I honor my husband and daughter who’ve been with me through that and much more.
I honor my family and friends who encircled me then and now.
I honor those with whom I’ve walked the path of life, whether it has been for a few moments or for many years.
I honor all the myriad of experiences, feelings, realizations, lessons and evolutions that have been lived these past nineteen of my forty-six years of this life.
I honor my own process of living, now more than ever before, and I honor the woman that I Am with all my scars, flaws, frailties, insecurities, eccentricities and uncertainties that are partnered with my continual courage, compassion, creativity, myriad talents, softness, strength, intelligence, intuition, flowing and deepening knowing.
I honor all that I continue to discover and to offer.
I honor life lived authentically and lovingly.
Today, I honor it all.