life from death from life

So last autumn was rough. I fell through the net I'd incautiously woven. To a rough landing. But I landed.

Strangely, during a slow recovery and decision to try to live again, I found myself at a meditation retreat in October. This ended up being the place where I let myself go all the way through to the other side of suicide. I experienced the only birth I remember, without having to harm myself or anyone else to get there. After all the years of thinking about this and avoiding it, I was able to see my death, and my life, and return to my body in an entirely new way.
My first birth involved my cord around my neck, a noose made of my own cells and my mothers', the connection to my past and my life source that was in the wrong place at the wrong time, near to killing me because I didn't know how to remove it myself.
I sat in the loft of a barn. I sat with several others, many times over a few days. One afternoon, I became brave or reckless, and looked at my thoughts about wanting to leave the earth, wanting to leave my life, to leave my personality, and then, as follows, my body. And I wondered if one could choose to leave. And I wondered if one could choose the time. And I wondered if I chose right then what would occur.
And I saw it. My eyes closed, my breathing calm in meditation, my mind intense and focused on this line of questioning.
I saw my body suddenly crumple to the floor as my spirit rose above it.
At the exact moment I was overcome by a wave of love in my chest so strong I could only cry out in my mind "oh, love, no no no no no I'm so sorry I didn't mean it!" at my abandoned collection of cells, symbiotic bacteria, neurons, organs, suddenly left without animation, a doll tossed aside by an ungrateful child.
The wave of emotion was completely separate from my mind or thoughts, it was an instinct, exactly the same as if a close friend's child had suggested no one loved them or they deserved to be hurt, exactly the same as if my love had said someone had abused them, exactly the same as if I were my own mother, but still myself, and had heard my child, myself, say that life was not worth living, that I was so alone, that I never did anything right, that I was no good to anyone or anything.

And so it was that I learned what self-compassion felt like.
I will never be the same.
Thanks be to all that is good in the world.