The Baby, the Fairy, and the Forest: Meeting Myself Before Birth

Birth is not just a passage of the body. It is the passage of the soul—into death, into life, into everything unknown and uncontrollable.

No birth class, no breathing technique, no tidy affirmation could ever touch the depth of what it asks of us.

The question is, are we ready to meet this opportunity? Are we ready to step inside? Are we ready to go into the depths of ourselves, our physches, our hearts and minds?

For me, its always a yes--

And so, one day, I found myself in the jungle. Barefoot, heart pounding, with a microdose of mushrooms softening the edges of my mind. Not to escape, but to enter. To prepare. To walk into the thickest, deepest, most mysterious foresty-jungle of all: myself.

I was not alone. My baby was with me. My man was near by on his own inner quest to remember and awaken. I felt spirit guiding my every step.

Guiding life through my body.Growing roots in my soil, branches in my blood.

The weight of that truth cracked me open. The best birth prep I could ever do was not about control, not about mastering techniques or checking boxes. It was about surrender. About listening. About reparenting the little ones living inside me.

So I went to meet 'them'.

I found her first—the little Demi, the one I call Fairy. She is the child in me who remembers. The one who still holds the source codes. Innocent, mischievous, wild, curious. She carries the purity of who I was before the world pressed its hands upon me.

little 'fairy' (demi 4 yrs old) + her mama

She is the one who knows where God lives.

Where pleasure lives.

Where pain and death and life live, braided together in a single breath.

And best of all, she isnt scared. Shes in full, deep, wild trust of all that life is.

And she reminded me of the truth: to carry life is to also carry death. To hold them both, side by side, in one trembling body.

Holy wow. What a responsibility.

So I ingested with reverence and stepped deeper into the jungle, deeper into myself.

And there she was-- Mother Nature.

Fearsome. Raw. Unapologetic.

Just like birth.

Her presence hit me like a wave. I felt her power rising through the trees, pulsing through the earth, rushing in the waters that surrounded my naked body. For a moment, I questioned everything as I felt my own fear rise inside of me. My body trembled, my mind screamed. I wanted to turn back.

But birth will not let you turn back. Neither will the jungle.

So I surrendered.

I bowed to her fear. I bowed to her mystery.

And slowly, I began to welcome her into my bones, into my tissues, into my womb. With curiosity. With wonder. With humility. She pulled me toward her waters, cold and sharp. Naked, I stepped in. My skin screamed, my senses lit alive. And there, in her river, she stripped me to my essence.

I wept.

Tears streamed into her current as I felt the veil thin, so thin, between life and death. It brushed against me, kissed my skin, entered my cells.

Why do we fear death?

Is it really that bad?

I was cracked open, again. Exposed and vulnerable, yet more alive than I have ever been. Bliss and terror dancing together inside me, indistinguishable from one another. Truth pulsing through every vein.

This—this is the terrain of birth. This is the jungle I will walk when the time comes.

The Liminal Space

What I touched in the jungle was not just my own inner jungle/forest—it was the liminal space. The threshold. The in-between.

Science tells us that in late pregnancy and labor, a woman’s brain begins to change. Oxytocin rises, softening the body, loosening the grip of logic, and opening us to altered states of consciousness. Beta waves—the busy, thinking mind—give way to slower, deeper brain states that look more like dreaming. Our sense of time bends. The edges of our identity blur. Some researchers even call it maternal amnesia—a neurobiological softening of memory that helps us let go of linear thought so we can cross into something timeless.

Mystics have always known this, even if they used different words. They speak of portals, of veils, of standing at the edge of life and death. Birth is one of those rare passages where the ordinary dissolves and something larger than us takes over.

And this liminal space is not just a fleeting moment during labor—it begins in pregnancy, ripens in birth, and remains open for months after. That is why postpartum feels so tender, so raw, so holy. The veil is still thin. A mother’s nervous system, heart, and soul are porous. She is both here and not-here—straddling the worlds as she learns to weave herself back together. In that in-between, she becomes exquisitely attuned to her baby, and profoundly receptive to spirit, intuition, and ancestral guidance.

This is why the postpartum time must be protected—not only physically, with warmth, nourishment, and rest, but also energetically, spiritually, and mentally. The liminal space is precious. It is a portal. It is fragile. It is where new life anchors, and where the mother herself is reborn.

Forgotten Rites, Remembered

For most of history, birth was not a medical event. It was an initiation. A ceremony. A holy threshold that communities protected and honored.

But in the modern world, much of this has been forgotten. Birth has been stripped of its mystery and reduced to mechanics. The initiation is no less real—but without recognition, many women stumble through it unprepared, unsupported, and unseen.

This is why I went to the jungle.This is why I bowed to Mother Nature.

Communing with her—whether through plant sacraments or simply through presence—was my way of remembering what birth truly is: a rite of passage. A sacred initiation. A death and a birth, woven together.

The mushrooms did not “teach me” how to give birth. Mother Nature did not hand me a neat little lesson plan. Instead, she stripped me down. She asked me to surrender. She reminded me of the edges I would inevitably meet in the birth space: fear, resistance, control, and the wild mystery that cannot be tamed.

And isn’t that exactly what birth will ask of me?

The Deepest Birth Prep

So here, in the jungle, I prepared. Not by memorizing techniques, but by walking naked into my own fear.

Not by mastering control, but by practicing surrender.

Not by ignoring my inner children, but by meeting them with tenderness.

Birth is ceremony. Birth is initiation.

And the deepest preparation I know is to treat it that way.

There are many ways to prepare for birth. But this inner preparation—the kind that strips us bare, brings us to our knees, reconnects us with the pulse of life itself —is the kind that changes everything.

If you are walking toward conception, pregnancy, or birth, I invite you to consider this:

✨ What would it feel like to step into your own inner jungle?

✨ To prepare for birth not only as a physical event, but as an initiation?

✨ To protect and honor your own liminal space as sacred ground?

This is where birth begins.

With love from the jungle,

Demi