Sacred Rupture: The Path to Secure Attachment

Last time we were in Kauai, we made a baby.

But then… three months later, we grieved the loss of it.

As we spend our final day on the Island with our 6 month old daughter, I reflect on the sacred relationship that’s being built with this land.

We didn’t know it at the time,

but that 2023 trip was the beginning of an initiation—

with this island,

with parenthood,

with parts of ourselves we hadn’t yet met.

And that imitation began through rupture.

We were hosted by a local mama—a doula, a women’s-circle-tender, a steward of the land—

who welcomed us to stay on her family farm.

We felt held by her generosity,

and by the womb-like quiet of the island.

From the very beginning, that trip mirrored the tension inside us about becoming parents.

We were each navigating how to get our needs met—

tender, tangled, often unspoken.

Underneath it all was a fear:

that our needs might be too much for the other to hold.

It led to rupture—messy, painful, and intense.

We were still learning the skills to repair,

to truly hear each other,

to truly listen without defense.

In that rawness, we reached out to close friends,

who offered us perspective and support,

helping us see more clearly

and guiding us back to each other.

So for the first few nights of our conception trip, we chose to spend them apart—

counterintuitive, but so necessary so we could conceive from a place of solidity.

Our time apart was not in resentment, but in reverence.

To reflect. To breathe.

To listen—

to ourselves, to the land,

to something quieter and more honest than the stories we’d been spinning.

I turned to the ocean.

To the rivers.

To the sunrise.

To the earth.

And somewhere in the stillness, I began to learn something no book or belief system had taught me:

That all of nature has needs—

and none of it apologizes.

A tree needs sun.

A plant needs water.

They don’t fight it.

They don’t shrink.

They just need—

and receive.

And if I am nature,

then I too can need.

I too can receive.

No shame.

No fight.

Just the simplicity of being in relationship with life.

That one lesson became a root system for motherhood.

Because to be a mother is to need—

in ways I never had before.

After years of giving, serving, and holding others,

I was suddenly being asked to let myself be held—

by my partner,

by my body,

by my village,

by the Earth itself.

It was Kauai that softened me enough to say yes.

The second half of that trip—we glowed.

We repaired.

It was the most skillful, sacred repair we’d ever done.

and the key to that sacred repair was

OWNERSHIP.

I own…

I feel…

I need..

This approach to repair has become the backbone of repairing with maturity for me.

And that’s the place we created new life from.

Solidity.

That trip became the foundation for the kind of parents we hoped to be—present, attuned, imperfectly whole.

And the pregnancy loss showed us how much we needed to mature before becoming parents.

The miscarriage was an invitation to grow.

To become a team in the truest sense.

To learn how to be in the depths of sorrow together and pull ourselves through to come out stronger.

Kauai didn’t just gift us a pregnancy—

she offered us a threshold.

A rite of passage into a deeper kind of partnership,

a deeper kind of listening.

And now, we’ve returned

Not to make a baby—

but to listen.

To give thanks.

To show up in reciprocity.

To let listening to the land be the offering to this island.

That’s what builds relationship—

with the land,

with each other,

with life.