Then life asked an even harder question.
During COVID, both my sister and my sister-in-law became pregnant within months of one another. I offered each family six weeks of live-in support. Life had other plans.
I arrived before the twins were born to help us make it to thirty-seven weeks. After they arrived, I stayed. Then another baby was born. I moved between two households. Twice a week, all three babies came together under one roof.
Three babies.
Two new mothers.
Two fathers becoming fathers.
Months of overnight shifts.
Tiny fragments of sleep.
Love stretched beyond what any of us knew was possible.
People sometimes tell this story as though I became an extraordinary aunt. That isn't actually what happened.
I was initiated into alloparenting.
Not visiting.
Not helping.
Living inside the family system while new life arrived.
Alloparenting is the ancient human practice of raising children in community rather than in isolation. Long before the nuclear family, entire villages helped welcome new life.
During those months, I wasn't visiting. I was living inside that forgotten role. For months, my nervous system became part of theirs.
Everything I had spent years studying — bodywork, nervous system regulation, improvisation, listening, leadership, community — was suddenly no longer preparation.
Life asked,
Can you actually live this?
Can you remain kind after almost no sleep?
Can you regulate yourself while everyone around you is dysregulated?
Can you keep listening when there isn't time to think?
Can you adapt every few minutes without becoming rigid?
Can you trust reality more than your plans?
That season didn't teach me those things.
It required every skill and every layer of consciousness I had spent a lifetime cultivating.
It tested them. And in being tested…
They became part of me.
Those months changed how I understand care. I wasn't simply supporting babies. I was witnessing souls arriving.
Mothers becoming mothers.
Fathers becoming fathers.
Families becoming families.
Birth wasn't happening to the babies alone.
It was happening to all of us.
Every hour asked a different question.
Every cry was different.
Every body was different.
There was no protocol.
Only presence.
Only listening.
Only the next right response.
Following the medicine, one micro-moment at a time.
Looking back, I don't think those months made me more capable.
They made me more trustworthy.
Not because I always knew what to do. Because I learned to keep listening while reality changed.
To myself.
To the babies.
To the parents.
To the moment.
That is still the practice. That is still the work.
DevotionIncarnationListeningMedicine