01/04/2026
There is a moment in labor often during transition, around 8–10 centimeters when a woman goes somewhere else.
Those of us who have witnessed birth again and again recognize it immediately. Her eyes change. Her voice softens or disappears and time bends. It’s as if her spirit steps forward while the thinking mind steps back.
So many of my clients describe it the same way:
“I felt like I left my body.”
“I was here, but also somewhere far away.”
“It felt like a dream I couldn’t fully explain.”
Across cultures and generations, this space has been spoken about as a journey, a crossing or a moment where the mother’s spirit reaches out to gather her baby and bring them back with her. Not in imagination but in instinct. In knowing In the deep intelligence of the body. This is transition.
The body is opening fully. The nervous system is surrendering control. And the mother is doing what mothers have always done turning inward, beyond language, beyond logic, into the primal place where birth happens.
From the outside, it can look like overwhelm or doubt. From the inside, it is initiation. When a woman says, “I can’t do this anymore,” she is often standing at the doorway. The old self dissolving and the mother is arriving.
This space is not something to interrupt or fear. It is sacred space.
And when she returns with her baby in her arms she comes back changed, carrying not just new life, but a deeper remembering of who she is. X Lori 📸 taken by me of my girl somewhere deep in transition 🌀
