Trout Lilies and Birthing a New Year
Reflecting on Nowruz, spring equinox, and times of transition
My sister-in-law, being of Persian descent, celebrates Nowruz, the traditional Persian New Year that honors the spring equinox as the beginning of new life, and the first day of the coming year. Nowruz customs include fire rituals, dances, gift exchanges and special foods, much like any special holiday. In our Western culture, the equinox is not a holiday, but rather simply a recognition of the first day of spring, and I am pondering once again why our new year celebrations were separated from the beginning of spring and tied instead to an arbitrary date on a calendar. The natural rhythms of the Earth hold so much support and balance for our bodies and our spirit. If our calendars had always been integrated into these cycles of the seasons and moons rather than intentionally separated, would we, as a culture, have more respect for the body of our Earth today?
Because the spring equinox is a time when the days and nights are equal, hanging evenly between winter and summer, I usually equate it with a time of balance. But this year the equinox feels more like a transition. A time in between, in flux, where anything could happen. I am even remembering in my body that period of time I experienced while birthing my children known as “the transition”—the time between the opening of the womb and the time to push.
The whole birthing process—of a child, of a flower, of a culture even—is a long one, especially if we consider not only the time of labor, but also the time gestating the new life, and even the unknown soul time that guides one soul to another. Among the many species on our planet, both animal and plant, this process of bringing new life into a body on this Earth takes an infinite variety of time, processes and shapes.
Take the trout lily for instance. These spring wildflowers prepare to make their first flower for seven years. For the first six years, their root, called a corm, will only put out one purple mottled leaf. Each year, supported by their vibrant community, they build up the reserves required to create their first blossom. When the seventh year arrives, they produce two leaves, and a glorious yellow flower that looks like a fairy ready to fly. What is the transition that shifts their balance, telling them they are ready to bring forth such beauty?
When the long gestation process ends, and the bud is ready to burst forth in flower, or when our womb is ripe and begins to open, time speeds up and then drops away entirely into this liminal space we call the transition, the in-between time, just before the new life is ready to be pushed into the world.
In my own childbearing, I can vividly remember how this transition time was a wild, chaotic, unbearable place, the hardest part of the whole “only way out is through” birthing process. A time when the pain was unmanageable, when I couldn’t push yet, couldn’t DO anything but ride the waves that pushed and pulled me between worlds, opening me to the babe I was bringing forth from another realm to this one.
The “not doing” was the hardest part. As soon as I felt that urge to push, focus returned and we were moving again, coming to the culmination of this miracle of new life. But before that in the painful waiting, surrendering, not doing place, I was flailing.
Thankfully, it is rare that other transition times in my life are as intense as those of birthing. I have come to call the more ordinary of these in-between places in my life the mucky-middle parts. Times when I am in the middle of something, and the way forward becomes stuck or muddled. When I don’t know what to do next, how to fix something, the way out of a mess, or how to allow longings or grief so deep that they ache.
When I realize I am in a mucky-middle-place, if I can recognize it, then I can remember to take a deep breath and feel that I am being held in a place of birthing, of gestation—rather than a bad place that I just need to get out of or fix right away. It helps to calm my fears if I can be aware that this is the middle part of a longer story—that something will come together eventually, one way or another, even if I can’t see it now. It doesn’t make it any easier, but it helps me breathe, remember my prayer practice and step into radical trust.
When I am in the thick of a mucky-middle-part though, it can sometimes be terrifying. There is nothing I want more at that moment than out. Yet, when I can relax into the birthing canal, into the place of not knowing, the mysteries of new life have space to happen.
The path of the heart’s true desire, of birthing what is calling us to new life, is not always easy. How do we feel safe enough to trust opening our hearts? How do we surrender to the possibilities of what wants to be born in us? How do we endure “the chaos” and open to the possibilities all at the same time?
I have come to know the flowers have much to teach us about the trust this process requires, because they know surrender and trust with every cell of their being, living deeply rooted directly in the body of the Earth. When a trout lily gives birth to their one precious blossom, they know the years of gestation, the longing, was all exactly as it is supposed to be.
I am becoming accustomed to synchronicities, and I find it interesting that we both published within the same hour, featuring trout lilies and a theme of birthing or transition. Often I feel there is a collective message that finds its way through many channels when the time is right.
Anyway, yes...this feels like an uncomfortable and unstable time on many levels, and yet I am feeling an overall optimism and anticipation for what is next.
I've never heard of a trout lily - how remarkable! It also reminds me of all the "underground" work that is going on. We only see the glamorous result, but there are years of necessary preparation beforehand – an important reminder for me, so thank you.