Birthright Gifts

I woke up this morning before my alarm, my mind spinning over both sides of this circle of humanness we find ourselves in...a friend in the hospital birthing new life, a family member in the hospital slowly losing life. With sunlight streaming in the window and a mug of coffee in my hand, I read these words from Parker Palmer in his book Let Your Life Speak: "We arrive in this world with birthright gifts--then we spend the first half of our lives abandoning them or letting others disabuse us of them...Then--if we are awake, aware, and able to admit our loss--we spend the second half trying to recover and reclaim the gift we once possessed."

I pulled up videos of "my" babies, little ones I cradled and cooed over from the day they were born. I watch silly antics and unformed words and think about how their birthright gifts have unfolded into blossoming little personalities. Oh, that we would nurture those gifts instead of strip them down to some cultured and socially acceptable way of being! This world needs her spicy stubbornness, his unfettered joy and curiosity.

What were my birthright gifts? And how do I reclaim them? I hear that I was tender hearted, sweet and always looking to befriend the person in the room with no companions. I had no regard for age or social status; every human being had potential in my young eyes.

One of my earliest memories was of my younger sister breaking her thumb. My parents were out of town for the weekend, and we were staying with family. She fell out of a utility vehicle we were riding in and landed on her hand in an awkward fashion. I remember feeling so scared for her. She was only about three years old, and I wanted to protect and mother her. A family member snapped at me, though. Told me to stop worrying, not to cry...that she was fine. She wasn't fine, though. Even then, as a little girl, my instincts told me she was not okay. We later found out her thumb was broken. That silly little incident is the first memory I have of someone "disabusing" my birthright gifts, telling me to suppress my tender hearted compassion in a way that would be more acceptable to the adults in the room.

Do you remember? What was your purest self like? And how did the world try to mold and shape that little person into a more "socially appropriate" human being? I think about my friend's little one who will enter the world in a matter of hours. What will this little person be like, without the influence of a world that wants to rob her of her truest, most pure essence? I want to cultivate and nurture those beautifully unique gifts she will offer this world rather than break them down and re-render them. As I consider how to return to that little Abigail I once was, I hope this new little babe can forgo the stripping and compressing so many of us experience as we encounter the world.