This is part of Womb Space, explorations of the womb space-- literal, energetic, theoretical + otherwise.
Hello, friends.
A few weeks ago I wrote about my two-part postpartum obsession (other than my baby): placentas + watercolors. I wrote about painting myself back together after a sudden and dangerous pregnancy complication which originated from my very self.
That was part 1: painting my placenta, in case you missed it. It’s a piece I’m really proud of; one that felt both excruciatingly vulnerable and somehow urgent to publish.
Now this is part 2, an offering to paint *your* placenta. You can learn more on my website here, or read on below for more philosophical gooeyness + context.
Side note: One of my personal commitments in publishing Birdseed is that I do not over-edit or over-think what I write. I think a great deal about everything I write, but I do not belabor the post itself. I try not to second guess myself with an inner critic or fret over the possible typo. I try to stay trusting that what I need to hear is what someone else needs too. That said, I have to admit this post has taken me an inordinately long time to write and to publish. I have tossed and turned, deleted and reworked, and it’s essentially just a post to say hey! you can order a watercolor from me! But it’s obviously so much more. We can be terrified and keep moving forward.
On healing self + other
At our first meeting, my midwife said, “you’re a wounded healer.” It was part-question, part-proclamation. I wasn’t sure if it was a bad or a good thing (or a true thing). She was figuring me out. I was 18 weeks pregnant, working hard to shift my inner weather from an asphyxiating atmosphere of fear and grief to an expansive one of trust and abundance (lifelong work, btw).
A wounded healer, if you’re not familiar with the archetype, is someone whose painful experiences can become insights and life rafts for others. I say can become because it’s not automatic; it’s a choice and it’s a practice. Despite their wounds, or precisely because of them, they offer some illumination in the dark. They are both healing (themself) and healing (others), like a harmony or dynamic equilibrium.
By “healing,” I mean supporting and holding space for others to heal. Healing is always personal work, someone cannot do it for you. However, it’s often work we cannot do solely alone.
By “holding space” (a slightly tired term, I know) I mean providing a grounded, mindful container that is both spacious + steady — even if the thing being held is dark + heavy + chaotic. Holding space is being the grounding force in a lightning storm.
The wounded healer is a Jungian term that also has roots in the Greek myth of Chiron, the wisest and most loving of the Centaurs (half-men, half-horses typically violent and lusty, ya know!). Chiron was a healer, and one day he’s accidentally pricked by Heracles’ poisoned arrow. Damn! Unfortunately, his wound is incurable and he is also immortal. So he schleps on in this contrarian state — wounded healer — for some time. Eventually, Chiron offers Zeus his immortality in exchange for Prometheus’ freedom. His wound heals as his life ends. Chiron dies and is placed among the stars.
Being a wounded healer is fraught and exhausting, if magical, work. It’s a dazzling juggling feat to hold space for oneself whilst holding space for another. Sometimes doing so can be a balm. Gets you out of your wallow; reminds you of life’s bigness.
But there are also perils to it. Boundaries that can suddenly dissipate; old wounds that might re-open. There’s the slippery slope of spiritual bypassing, and the chance that helping others becomes a distraction from your own pain. Finally, the peril of teaching from the wound, rather than the scar.
Though whether you’re in a “healing” profession or not, frankly, I don’t know a single human who isn’t wounded and also, in some way, healing another (e.g. even simply by loving them). We know healing is not linear and neither is wounding. Astounding kindness, generosity, and strength is possible amidst our darkest moments. I’m sure you may have experienced that yourself.
Anyway, all of this is to say that I’m holding space for folks processing great cataclysmic moments — births, losses, etc. — even while I myself am holding space for myself traversing these. This is deeply intentional.
In addition to placenta paintings, that also looks like one-on-one sessions that offer trauma-informed, mindful space to examine and sift through deeper and stickier complexities you may be wrestling with when it comes to navigating fertility — loss, fertility treatments, anxiety and fear in pregnancy or postpartum, etc. These are tailored containers that offer practical and ritualistic ways to navigate fear, sit with the unknown, or incorporate joy, or or or. Sessions might integrate meditation, breathing, movement, painting, or writing, or or or. Email me if this resonates or you’d like to hear more.
Sharing as mode of wounded healing
In a recent lecture on creative lineage, one of my favorite writers Melissa Febos said,
“my creative practice is the most modulating and integrating practice that I have. I find myself and get relief from myself in it.”
YES, I thought. Exactly this.
I have interrogated myself many times in recent months about my insatiable drive not just to create during the most raw, tender postpartum time, but to share much of what I create. Why, and what is it? Ego? Boredom? Emotional recklessness? Or most-feared of all, naaavel gaaaazing?!?!
Without discounting the possibility of any of these (ego is a lurker, by nature), I landed somewhere more solid. That is, creating and sharing (with some calculated lag between the two) is my most modulating and integrating practice. It is the fulcrum between healing myself and my hope to heal others.
In my life thus far, a core part of my work to heal or process has almost always included a polar plunge into vulnerability, oftentimes sharing as I go. I’ve written about that here. There are many things which I have not yet shared, for good reasons. (Saving the juicy stuff for the book(s) lol) But in my lifetime, I plan to do so.
Sharing isn’t for everyone, and has its drawbacks. But to me, it feels instinctual; absolutely necessary. It’s difficult, terrifying, and painful for good reasons. It’s also healing, liberating, and powerful.
In part, my motive for sharing in hard moments is to challenge any facades of total together-ness that might be convenient to hide behind, and, god, I would like to hide behind them. My aim is also to disrupt norms around what shouldn’t or cannot be named because it might cause discomfort. This is part of fucking up white-supremacist capitalist patriarchy (TM bell hooks).
Sharing pokes holes in stifling narratives, so that lightness, darkness, breath, and energy can peer through. In doing so, I hope to normalize the struggle, the highly uncomfortable in-between, and the pungent heaviness of our continual losses. Most importantly, I share with the hope that doing so resonates with others. Perhaps in ways I could not predict or imagine, and perhaps offering a lifeline in the form of language or framework which enables meaning-making or feeling less alone.
There is an exhilaration to exposing one’s surface areas, secrets, and soft underbelly through openness around hardship, because it brings great risk and great reward. The risk is sharing before you’ve fully processed and healed. The risk is giving something away too soon. The reward is juicy, catapulting transformation. The reward is connection so deep it hits the earth’s core. As I have come to accept about myself, my drive to do so is instinctual. It’s licking honey off a razor’s edge.
I have been sharing via Womb Space elements of my own postpartum experience. These are both deeply personal and totally universal in other ways. I am doula-ing myself through an intense time. At the same time, I am supporting others in many ways. This is a mindful juggling act and dynamic equilibrium of simultaneity. It is terrifying and courageously purpose-driven all at the same time.
“Are you ready,?” my midwife asks me, about opening myself up to supporting others through their experience of birth, loss, the womb, etc.?
Yes, I am ready.
Painting as a way to process + heal
As by now you know, dear reader, I’ve spent the last many months painting placentas as an effort to reconcile with my own placenta, which essentially betrayed me with HELLP Syndrome, or severe preeclampsia.
As humans, meaning-making + ritualization are core to integrating big experiences + finding peace to move forward. This is the vision of the placentas I paint, whether mine or yours.
There’s a controlled lack of control in the watery pigment and a spooky, fabulous irreverence in the googly eyes and sequins I use. Most of all, there is a trans-verbal experience that enables a fuller processing of something so overwhelming and wild.
I am honored to offer my paintings as a heartfelt way to hold space for you, rendering the fullness + complexity of your experience, whatever it may be.
More about these paintings
These paintings are for people who want to process, commemorate, ritualize or honor — for the first time, or anew — a significant moment in their life. This can be the birth of a baby, however long ago that may be. It can also be a loss, whether stillbirth, miscarriage, or abortion. The significant moment can also be the birth of an idea, or a creative endeavor.
Anything which may have had a placenta, literally or figuratively, nourishing and sustaining it, however fleeting.
It’s an energy and heart exchange. You’re sharing parts of your story — and yourself — with me. With care and honor, I hold that. I meditate and reflect on it, channeling that into colors and brushstrokes and creating a re-imagined depiction of your placenta.
It’s not a literal painting, it’s a holistic one. It reflects the complexity and fullness of your experience inside it, just like your actual placenta is made of your blood and tissue, and all that you’ve eaten, felt, and dreamed.
Your painting will be informed by the richness of your story, flecked with the complexity of emotions and unknown. But it will also be a surprise to you, and even to me. Things aren’t always as they seem, and our stories are always holograms of meaning.
I am six months postpartum which is barely anything at all! And yet I am ready, and present, and honored to hold space for you as well. Healing and healing.
As I’ll continue to paint my own placenta, wrestling with the wild experience of being a womb bearer in this life, I want to hold space for you and yours.
-JM
I have never heard the term a wounded healer and now recognize that I have been one my entire adult life. Such an apt phrase I get to understand myself with now. Thanks! My early years as a healer were centered on concealing my wounds by projecting confidence, not unlike the rest of western medicine. To expose a wound, that is to be vulnerable, seems to be the only way to let in what one cannot heal in isolation. I think...I am now learning that the creation of novel patterns seems to be the only way to synthesize a wound with our surroundings.