The 40-Day Portal: What Birth Trauma Taught Me About True Recovery

By Hana K'Koa 

“I didn’t just give birth to my son.

I gave birth to a version of myself I had never met.”

I’ve waited almost six months to write this.

Not because I didn’t want to — but because I needed to become someone who could hold it.

This is the story of my son’s birth. But more than that, it’s the story of my descent — and the slow, sacred return that followed.

The Birth I Hoped For — and What Actually Happened

I had planned a peaceful, unmedicated home birth.

And for the first 14 hours, that’s what I tried to hold.

But labor came fast and furious. The contractions took my breath before I could find it. I screamed. I sang. I pleaded with the spirit of the baby to come.

He crowned.

And then… he receded.

Somewhere between worlds, my son turned breech. What followed was a rushed transfer to the ER, an emergency C-section under general anesthesia, and a diagnosis of preeclampsia. I was disoriented, drugged, shaking, and in complete spiritual shock.

It wasn’t just birth.

It was a kind of death.

Trauma as Initiation

I didn’t want to call it trauma. I wanted to call it powerful. Transformative. Sacred.

And it was all of those things.

But it was also trauma — not because something went wrong, but because the experience exceeded my capacity to cope.

This was beyond my limits.

And it opened something ancient in me.

The 40 Days That Brought Me Back

Before birth, I had prepared as much as I could. Not just for labor — but for what came after. I knew I wouldn’t have my mother or sisters with me. So I turned to Zuo Yue Zi — a traditional Chinese postpartum practice that honors 40 days of complete rest, warmth, silence, and ancestral nourishment.

I made bone broth. Stocked the freezer. Created a menu my husband could follow week by week.

And when everything else fell apart — this is what held me.

Zuo Yue Zi became my womb.

My cocoon.

My quiet return to myself.

Healing Isn’t About “Bouncing Back”

I don’t want to go back to who I was.

Because she’s gone. And in her place is someone new — someone softer, slower, wiser in ways she didn’t choose.

This is what Chinese Medicine teaches us:

We don’t need to be fixed. We need to be remembered.

True recovery is not about reclaiming your old life.

It’s about reinhabiting your body — slowly, gently, soul-first.

If You’re Walking Through the Fire…

You’re not broken.

You’re being remade.

You don’t have to rush. You don’t have to explain.

And you don’t have to walk this alone.

If this story resonates, I invite you to experience The Balanced Woman — where we return to the foundational rhythms of healing through Chinese Medicine, ritual, and remembrance.

Come walk with me.