The earth umbilical cord

How children tether you to life

I never used to be afraid of dying.

I would have preferred not to, of course, but I was at peace with the fact that one day this body would end. As the old Druidic saying goes, “Death is but the center of a long life.”

I loved the Earth—I was grateful to be here among the wonders of waterfalls and whales moving in big silent waters—but I wasn’t attached to it, exactly. Part of me was ready, always ready, to go back to the place from which I came.

All of this changed when I had a child.

They say that, in pregnancy, you become a conduit for heaven. Like the original world tree, you reach the tall branches of yourself up into the cosmos and call down a child. Each culture has their own idea about when the shooting star of a child’s soul officially lands, but nearly all agree on one thing—a soul is anchored here on Earth, and the one who holds them in their body is their first umbilical cord.

I remember seeing the umbilical cord when my daughter was first born. Holding her on my chest, I looked down at the sturdy rope of purple. Saw it for the comet tail that it was. The rope ladder let down from the amethyst of the stars so she could come into form.

I knew that I was helping to tether her to life, but I didn’t realize that she would also tether me to life.

After a child is born another umbilical cord is formed. It’s invisible. Neither purple, nor red, nor comet-colored, it is, instead, the shade of everyday things. Translucent, like water poured from hands. Tan like the last oak leaves that fall in autumn. The deep gray of the earliest morning, mornings when you’re still awake after a long night.

This umbilical cord doesn’t attach you to your child. Nor does it connect you to the cosmos or what lies beyond.

It connects you to the Earth.

It connects you to now.

It connects you to the present moment, the chest of the ground and the thrum of it’s heartbeat against you.

Your child may have been the one who was born, but after they arrive you become a child of existence in a way you never have before.

Before you prayed to the invisible winds—now you pray to the deities of matter.

May my child be safe.

May she be protected.

May I stay here, please gods may I stay here, for as long as my child needs me.

It’s unavoidable, the realization of how reliant you are, how reliant you’ve always been, on the Earth.

You’re attached in a way you’ve never been before.

You take nothing for granted. Not the milk that flows through your breasts or the food you eat with both hands. Not the sunrise in the morning or the heat of the woodstove. Not the beating of your child’s heart against your own, or the thin silk of their hair. Not their health, not your own.

Suddenly, you know why the words mother and matter have the same root. You are attached, intimately attached, to the mother that is matter. And so you ask over and over again for mercy. You pray, over and over, that nourishment continue to flow.

We glorify, I think, the umbilical cords that connect us to the stars. The tethers we have to the worlds beyond this one. To the times that are not now. To the selves we have yet to live into.

But having a child tethers you to the present. It brings you into the placental moment that is now. The only place where you can truly be fed.

It can feel frightening, at first. To be here so fully.

But the more I lean into the fact that I’m tied here, tied in a way I never felt or understood before, the more it feels like being cared for. The more it feels like being held. The more it feels like, even when I’m turned upside down, I’m still floating in a place that was made for me to thrive.

The Earth teaches me what it means to be of her, and I feel my own mothering change for the umbilicus that connects me to this place.

I am the stone buried hip-deep in the river. I am the soil underneath the soil. I am the space between old growth roots where groundwater gathers. I am the force that brings together minerals, creates crystals, compresses matter into shapes that mimic the designing forces of the universe.

I merge with the orogenic force that is life, and learn that this is what it means to be here.

To let the Earth shape you like clay. To let motherhood form you like water forms sandstone. To be patterned by it, claimed by it, nurtured by the sheer full-bodied intensity of it all.

It means giving up control.

You do not command the umbilical cord. You are only its recipient. The full body of what you’re connected to, what holds you, is a mystery that will never be fully understand.

It means giving up knowing.

I used to make my peace with death. But now I make my peace with life.

I do not need to know why I’m here, what’s going to happen next. I just have to allow the tether that connects me to this moment to hum.

I am tied by an ancient cord to this planet.

I am tied to this Earth.

And she will hold me in the womb of this life, this body, this place of matter, until it is time, yet again, to be born.

All photographs by the wonderful Eliza Bell Photography