I Was Born with the Knowledge of Death
Stephanie Mines is unique in fusing her background as a Pre and Perinatal Psychologist, embryologist and neuroscientist, with her vocation as a poet. Transform your Substack subscription to PAID and receive recordings of Stephanie reading her award-winning poetry with music composed specifically for the poems.
You can read Stephanie’s memoir as an embryologist that integrates her poetry in her soon to be released The Secret of Resilience: Healing Personal and Planetary Trauma Through Morphogenesis, available for pre-order NOW.
I Was Born with the Knowledge of Death
I was born with the knowledge of death.
More than once my mother tried to terminate my life.
It made sense, under the horrific circumstances of her time.
Rape, holocaust: a world at war with itself.
But her efforts failed.
So, when I was born, I was not quite sure if I had
Died or arrived?
The two were conflated, woven together, like the front and back of a
Coll body, like one of the patterns my mother created out of
Newspaper
To make dresses of her own design.
These were usually the same dress.
Over and over.
I was born with the knowledge of death.
It was my partner, my twin.
This gave me a kind of liberating wisdom,
A daring,
And a lack of interest in
Ordinary life.
It also imparted attachment, if not
Obsession, with
Perseverance and fearlessness,
An intrepid disbelief that I am actually
Here.
Am I?
So, as I inhabit a world on the brink of extinction,
It all seems familiar.
I know how to fight for life,
But I don’t think I know how to
Live it,
Or even if I should
Enjoy it,
As all the spiritual bypass pundits insist I should
With their big smiles and bright eyes.
I have not yet found the model for
True enjoyment, except in my own
Creative bliss,
The spontaneous, unforeseen discoveries
That appear out of nowhere.
Perhaps it was that which
Gave me life.
The surprise and gift of it that
Transcends family and
Parenthood, and comes instead from a
Parentless vast domain
Inhabited solely and infinitely by
Creation.
—Stephanie Mines