Have you heard about the birth myth? It is supposed to hold the key, not so much to who you are, as to who you think you are.
The birth myth is the story you’ve been told about circumstances surrounding your birth.
It stands to reason that it makes a difference if you were born after three days of protracted labour, so agonising that your mother vowed never to bear another child, and never did…
Or if you were the long-awaited heir hailed as a gift from heaven, whose birth was celebrated in floods of champagne;or the unwanted fruit of a shameful illicit liaison, born after a failed termination, to your mother’s bitter grief.
Or perhaps you were the seventh out of ten, who slipped into the world almost unnoticed? So insignificant, even your family can’t recall much about it.
Or a weakling saved against the odds amidst much tears and anguish: a triumph of life over affliction?
The birth myth is the story you’ve been told about circumstances surrounding your birth.
It stands to reason that it makes a difference if you were born after three days of protracted labour, so agonising that your mother vowed never to bear another child, and never did…
Or if you were the long-awaited heir hailed as a gift from heaven, whose birth was celebrated in floods of champagne;or the unwanted fruit of a shameful illicit liaison, born after a failed termination, to your mother’s bitter grief.
Or perhaps you were the seventh out of ten, who slipped into the world almost unnoticed? So insignificant, even your family can’t recall much about it.
Or a weakling saved against the odds amidst much tears and anguish: a triumph of life over affliction?
Often it is nothing but a myth; sometimes quite unfounded. But it still reveals a lot about your own perceptions.
Now you know what the birth myth is. The question is – what is yours?
August, 1948. A hospital in Gothenburg, Sweden. A young doctor, himself a patient, in a bare room, nearing the end of a losing battle against leukaemia.
Next to him, his wife: younger still, looking like a school-girl, except for the fact that she is nine months pregnant. They are waiting, as they have been waiting these last seven months, for life, for death. Which will arrive first? Will he ever see this child, their third?
The following day, she doesn’t arrive as usual. Instead there is a telephone call from his colleague in the maternity unit. “Congr-atulations! You have a daughter.”
Nobody knew where he found the strength to get up from his death-bed. He surprised them all as he entered the room, where his wife was nursing the new-born.
Now you know what the birth myth is. The question is – what is yours?
August, 1948. A hospital in Gothenburg, Sweden. A young doctor, himself a patient, in a bare room, nearing the end of a losing battle against leukaemia.
Next to him, his wife: younger still, looking like a school-girl, except for the fact that she is nine months pregnant. They are waiting, as they have been waiting these last seven months, for life, for death. Which will arrive first? Will he ever see this child, their third?
The following day, she doesn’t arrive as usual. Instead there is a telephone call from his colleague in the maternity unit. “Congr-atulations! You have a daughter.”
Nobody knew where he found the strength to get up from his death-bed. He surprised them all as he entered the room, where his wife was nursing the new-born.