Scatter Me Wholly: A Special Delivery

I must have been in elementary school when my mother first told me the story. I don’t remember my response, but I imagine it was one of shock—the kind that lingers. For the time being, I placed it on the top shelf, next to the other questions I held about my existence. Even at the age of seven, the shelf was overcrowded—black books, each filled with misunderstandings and questions of who I was, and why I was different from my brothers, classmates, and other children in general.

One day, in my mid-twenties, the story resurfaced. Even then, I wondered if what she’d told me all those years ago had been true. Had I imagined it? When I asked again, she told it the same way, with the same details.

All the necessities and formalities following childbirth had been completed. My mom had delivered me via C-section. You were supposed to be born in August, she always says.I smile at the thought that I was “late”—perhaps I already knew the task set before me in this world, and felt no rush to arrive. She had already held me. My grandmother had already kissed the crown of my head. My dad had missed the delivery, and my mom was mad about that. In retaliation, I would get her last name instead of his.

They took me to the back for more “official” newborn processing. When the nurse brought me back in, my mom hugged and kissed me again. She was preparing to breastfeed when she decided to change my diaper first.

And that’s when she froze. “This isn’t my baby,” she screamed.

—

I was just about finished with my yearly active breathwork session. It was work—but not in the way it had been the last two years. Something about this session felt different. There was gentleness and grace behind my breaths that I hadn’t felt before. My mind was at ease, at peace. I wasn’t searching; I was being searched. I felt watched and supported—readied for an unknown occasion.

The first two times, my body had been full of activity, my thoughts stirring with every inhale and exhale. I was entangled, caught in a web of complexities and intricacies that were left at the mercy of time and patience. Well, time had passed. And I was the inherent difference: I was no longer the victim, but the predator—waiting. But for what?

“This is the last song,” the breathwork coach said. I was surprised at how quickly the session had passed.
I remained at ease. I surveyed my hands—missing were the crab claws, the cramped fingers that had been a part of my last two experiences. I scanned the rest of my body; everything felt light. Was I lying on the floor or a cloud? I could no longer tell the difference—but I knew I could trust whatever was holding me. I relaxed deeper into the palm of what I didn’t know, couldn’t name, but had grown to always trust.

One breath into my belly, one breath into my chest, and one breath out. With each breath, I felt something shift, scatter, then settle again—like pieces rearranging into something whole.

When the music stopped, she said, “You can allow your breath to return to normal now.” I lay there, still. Breaths shallow, barely breathing. Within a minute, tears streamed from the edges of my eye mask. Cold and silky against my skin, they flowed like a river—down the sides of my neck and over my throat, where they came to rest. And that’s when I heard the voice whisper sweetly in my ear: “You tried.” The voice continued: “But you can’t keep them both alive.”

—

I wasn’t far—just a bed away, only a thin sheet separating me from my birth mother. The baby my mom had been holding, about to change, and previously admiring, was a baby girl. She always says, “It was a Mexican baby, but you two looked just alike. I couldn’t tell the difference.” But there would always be a difference. And it is that difference that would cause so much confusion, even from the very start of my life.

Yet the same difference that was once chasing me, causing me to live in fear and beneath the calling of my soul, was now the one I was chasing. The scales had been tipped by the hands of time, and it was now my turn to reveal my hand—to show what I had been hiding and growing beneath the surface.

I reached back up for that book—the black book I had placed on the top shelf at the age of seven. Only this time, when my hand touched it, it turned to gold. A red bird had been etched on the cover, heading toward heaven. When I opened the book, I saw memories once forgotten—moments when I had been stifled by confusion, teased for simply being, embarrassed by how I acted and, at times, how I looked. As I flipped through its pages, shameful memories turned into ones of progressive growth, the gathering of wisdom, and healing. On the last page, there was a picture of a large web. At the very top was a spider, and it had written:

You are the spider. Your life is your web.
Make it beautiful.
You have battled beautifully.

For the last five years, I’ve returned to that story, asking my mom to tell it again. Not because I doubt it—I know it happened. I know the mistake was divinely caused, a prophetically inhabited moment that waited for my soul to grow whole enough to retrieve it.

Each time I revisited that moment on my birthday, I found something new. A small detail. A missing piece. Something previously hidden or disguised. And little by little, unbeknownst to me, I was putting myself together. Not her or him. Not the boy that was born to her, nor the girl who had been swapped in the cradle beside her bed. I was rebuilding another version: them. They were finally ready for delivery.

The time had come—as it does when every baby has spent its due season growing under the cover of darkness. I wasn’t just breathing that day. I was giving birth.

And there were a cloud of witnesses surrounding me. My grandma was there, again, just as she had been before. She smiled with eagerness and a profound sense of love and defiant acceptance for her pumpkin.

Crystal, my childhood best friend and heavenly protector since she was taken to the skies when we were in third grade, stood guard—just as she had on Earth, fighting off every bully and act of malice. There were others too—ancestors, guides, and animal spirits. They were holding me up, together—with pride.

Each year, as I listened to my mom, I grew more whole. The retelling became a bedtime story soothing my soul for the one who was to come. And the time had come—not with force or labored breathing, but with ease. Gracefully. Angelically. Softly. Gently. Divinely.

For a long time, I judged my mom for all the things she hadn’t gotten right—for the moments she missed, for not affirming me in the deepest crevices of my being, for not seeing who I was inside, for not rising to the occasion to raise me.

But she had seen me clearly, if only on the first day of my life. Her words had been true. And one day, I would grow into them: “This isn’t my baby.”

And with every retelling, I was able to see more clearly—
The one she took home wasn’t either.

But I am here now.
They are here.

—

Trust the version of you that’s arriving.

Trust the books you're pulling down from your own overcrowded shelf.

Trust the urge to resurvey your life—and retell your story from a higher place.

This is a divine moment of call and response.

How will you answer your wholly moment?