transitioning through the inevitable-evolution was akin to body horror. most of the time she wasn't certain what was happening to her, inside her, or what was going to happen next. initially it felt quite disabling as her body and home became strange, growing new abilities--many with no apparent rationale or benefit. laboring towards a new world in that season meant to surrender, and as a first born daughter, that felt foreign and unsafe. as new worlds are prone to. as her senses recalibrated and acclimated to an other world register, she felt an inability to communicate the misalignment she felt internally and externally. her interiority itself became alien. was it safe to acquaint herself with this alien world? she wondered. how can i act as doula to this other world, guide others to and through it, if i myself feel uncertain?
it is from her ruminations that we now have one of the many tenets that other world doulas teach: to collect the discomfort, fear, and uncertainty seeping, sweating out of every pore. to use it as divination water, holy water. it holds wordless information for living through liminal transition and transformation. after all, the other world is not instantaneous nor is it easy. feeling uneasy need not be a sentence but a fleeting landmark to say you are, indeed, traveling. some motion sickness is par for the course.
