written by Natasha Lappos

I accepted the invitation,

Knowing of the great initiation to come.

And True to any transformation,

I knew it wouldnt be easy.

But little did I know of the depths

I would journey;

  Of the infinite shades of emotion

that would soon color my heart.

My journey exceeded all of my expectations.

The expectations of how it should look;

The expectations that pulled me

from receiving my true experience

And so, after much resistance

I surrendered

I cried and mourned

the death of my maidenhood.

I cried as I shed the layers

I so intimately knew;

that had held and protected me for so many years.

I mourned the memories of what once were,

The body that would surely change

And the attachments I so dearly held onto.

I mourned the painful Death

and I shed my maiden Self.

I was naked, raw, sensitive;

Exposed

But it was in these moments of most sentience

Of my most vulnerability

That I could feel

the gentle flutter of Life

stirring in my belly

  My naked skin now alive to the tingles that travelled.

The tingles that sparked excitement

for a journey that has only just begun

My bare arms began to ache for the weight of her

For the moment I could hold her

For her outstretched arms that would soon reach for mine

My vulnerable heart began to break open

Its old container,

Its maximum threshold

 no longer enough

For the infinite love that was expanding me

From the inside out

This initiation was my invitation

to learn a new dance.

The dance between surrender and boundaries;

The dance between soft and hard;

Between fire and flow;

A wild dance that is not choreographed

but that welcomes the offbeat steps

between the woman I knew

and the woman I am to become.

This was my invitation

To grow to life

A child and her Mother.