R. Tali Adler on Parashat Tazria-Metzora: The Discovery of Birth

Ta Shma

Each of us was brought into this world by someone who allowed their body to become home to a stranger.

This is what mothers do before we meet our children: watch, sometimes in wonder, and sometimes in grief, as the bodies which were once ours alone grow, bend, ache, and change in ways that make us unrecognizable to ourselves. Feel our ribs widen, our bodies force themselves apart, to create room for new life. Bind ourselves to a person whose face we have never seen.