Painted Pink Moon

The month of May can come with intensity: a sudden shift from hermit mode, icy nights, and frozen fertile ground, into the opening earth, blooming flowers, and longer stretches of light. 

And what a time to be pregnant with life, anticipating inevitable transformation. 

This week, a dear client in her last days of pregnancy arrived for her scheduled massage, carrying an unexpected gift: a full pink moon she had painted for me.

She gifted this pink, shimmering moon while she was coming to terms with factors surrounding her birth plan and a decision she had made for the sake of her unborn child. She hired me months prior to support what we thought would be her homebirth, but there had been gradual changes due to her health, and on this sunny May day, she announced her decision to bring her baby from moonwomb to earth by way of surgical birth. 

And on this day, we spoke about her feelings of disappointment and failure, and though I know failure does not actually exist here, we talked about the gift in feeling whatever surfaces, be it sadness, frustration, disappointment, or confusion, because usually when we reach through the complicated layers, we are able to fully grasp the raw pieces that make up our rich, authentic lives. 

Each client that chooses me to attend their birth are mirrors. They are my greatest teachers. She gifted me right on time. Unbeknownst to her, she reflected a current personal dilemma; recently, I had decided to address (what I'll refer to as) a "health condition" in a manner that's more medical than I had originally planned. After more than a year of attempting to treat the condition naturally,  my intuition told me that my body needed more. Though I was feeling much better within my body and with my decision, I, too, had to allow myself to hold compassion towards my array of feelings, including, similarly to my client, feelings of failure and disappointment. 

It's through the process of holding space and compassion for all arising feelings that we are able to surrender to what IS and truly soak in the beauty of NOW.

The "nows" on that sunny May day: my client on the massage table, her full moon belly moving under my hand, fluttering with the child she will soon meet. The releasing of her jaw, her left upper trapezius melting under my fingers, her eyes softening against the gold and pink hues in the room.

I could feel our surrender in the textures of the painted pink moon. I read it in the words she wrote on the back of the art piece:

"Before the moon
I am what a woman is
A woman of power"

The following day, she met the baby she had dreamed of: a daughter born under the Gemini new moon.

My room had a space on the wall, waiting for this full pink moon.

And I had been waiting for the lessons and gifts from her and her daughter, now forever painted on my heart. 

—Altranise