She asked me if I cycled with the moon, and I thought Soon. Julianne Victoria and I were talking over FaceTime as she interpreted my Vedic birth chart which was filled with this source of divine feminine energy. In a few days I would be turing 41, and as a birthday present to myself I was having my IUD removed. Julianne’s reading was also a gift. I had won her contest for a free reading after guessing her age. The number had come to me instantly, as through channeled from a higher realm. It was meant to be.

I still remember the day when my mother put me on the pill. I was 18, and dating the young man I would one day marry. She came into the living room where I was reading, holding a paper bag filled with condoms in her hand. Days later, I went to the local family planning clinic for my first gynecological exam and came home with a compact that held a plastic coated clock of birth control bills. I popped those tiny drops of hormones religiously, everyday, following the hands of the clock, until my husband and I decided to start a family when I was 29.

After “trying” for 3 or 4 months, I became pregnant with my daughter, whose face appeared to me like a full radiant moon inside my dreams one night. I felt wholly complete as my moon child grew within me. Ours was a fierce hold, so strong it took the hands of forceps to rip us apart. I like to think, though, if I had listened to my body and my daughter instead of fighting the push to be free under the urgings of the doctor, her birth would have been a different story.

Instead of going back on the pill after my daughter’s birth, I got fitted for a diaphragm. A rather messy, unpleasant alternative to controlling the probability of birth, in my opinion, but we knew we wanted a second child within a few years. Our son took root in my womb sooner than planned. He was an anniversary baby, and we had forgone the use of the pesky diaphragm for the occasion. Some might say he was an “oops,” and I’ll admit I cried when I realized I was pregnant. I wanted him, just not so soon.

My son’s life was an easy gift. There were no months of “trying” to conceive, and no weeks of morning sickness like I had experienced with first pregnancy. Even his birth was easy. 45 minutes after we arrived at the hospital, he almost slid out of my body. It was only after his birth, that I began holding him tight. My little man from the moon.

Now, nearly 11 years after the birth of my daughter and 9 1/2 years after the birth of my son, I am experiencing another birth. The IUDs that I had willingly inserted into my body to curb the growth of a birth for 9.5 years have been removed, permanently. I will not return to the cycle of an artificial tide. Mine is a birth back to self. Back to the energy of the moon, and the rise and fall of the life-blood of her. As by body bleeds free, I feel whole. I feel complete. I have returned to my mother Moon.