The joys, sorrows, stops and starts, pains, revelations, ups and downs of birth are not just for women and mothers. We are all of us called to passages of conception, nurturance, labor, and birth by the consistent pulse, the cyclical rhythms of life.

We must remember that we conceive with our thoughts and prayers, give life to new seeds each time we speak to the gods with conviction. Whispered or shouted, every word, every turn of phrase brings reinforcements to shore up the foundation of our insistence.

Hence the warning that you tend carefully every reflection, reverie, railing and remonstration. For the keen ears of Fate are always attuned to what calls with persistence, the squeaky wheels of repeating refrains.

Do not doubt that you will be visited by pangs of new life growing within you along the way, a confirmation that the grounds of creation are fertile, alchemy most definitely in progress.

The kicks and tugs of transformation will sometimes lift you to higher ground, remind you of the great task you have undertaken with courage and anticipation for change, instill you with superpowers unchecked. Other times, you will fear for your life, wondering what it was that possessed you to carve out space for such an enormous undertaking of unknown outcome, an exhausting path of no seeming end.

The imperative is that you embrace the wild nature of gestation. Bow humbly to the unpredictable, myriad layers that are destined to unfold by minute, by second.

The process will frequently demand that you close your eyes as you take steps forward, ask that you feel your way to the next stage of metamorphosis, leave behind the mechanics of the mind.

You will be asked to build on a trust that there is a path before you, no matter how obscure or winding. That there are forces at play that have had things in hand for millennia upon millennia, giving shape to the human process with the confidence of a potter’s hand.

Remember that it is you who initiated conception, gave permission for the process of emergence. Your primary task is to surrender. To lean in and welcome the transfiguration, the new shape that accompanies and is required by birth.

You cannot go back. Only forward. Accept this fact and all will be well as you step into the next chapter of your inevitable and spectacular evolution.