I don’t know what baby fever feels like.
And lately, there’ve been so, many, babies, all up in my dreams. Most, just a few months old.
The pre-teens and I share the liminal space well. I’m usually a witness to their antics and play. Fascinated by their joyful, carefree movements.
The babies are a different story. Those I decidedly shun.
The one on November 3, 2024, that passed in tears coming down the stairs. I picked her up, held her at a distance, and handed her off quickly to her mother at the bottom landing.
The one on January 28, 2025, I smothered in sticky peanut butter.
The one on March 6, 2025, offered to me by a man with arms out stretched. No thank you. Continue on. I don’t want her.
The one on April 9, 2025 sitting contentedly on the couch. She I surprisingly tried to breastfeed, until I realized the abrasive top I wore made nourishment impossible.
“I’d love for this unconscious baby to grow up already,” I joked with my dream group.
The child symbolizing newness. Something to be born. To come alive. Not necessarily a baby birthed in the literal sense. The birth could be anything. A new creative endeavor. A new attitude. A new adventure. A new way of moving in the world.
This dream baby’s got some gestating to do. I’m not sure what exactly it represents, but I’m getting the sense this is a process I can’t force to understand or rush to develop.
Because on April 19, 2025, a dream woman put a dream baby in the oven.
The oven wasn’t turned on. It was cool and cozy. The baby sat unbothered, observing the woman who arranged some things by its side on the racks. Pumpkin pizza as I recall, a recipe she wanted to try.
The oven, said to represent the womb, is a place where we watch transformation happen before our very eyes. In the heart of our homes—the kitchen—we surrender our often cold ingredients—having done with them all that we can—letting the oven’s heat create something substantially sublimated for us to receive.
Maybe it’ll burn to bits.
Maybe it’ll be the best damn meal we’ll ever eat.
Everything in its own time
What’s curious is, before the babies were the eggs.
Not in a dream, but in a dream-like state doing active imagination, a method for engaging with the unconscious mind while awake.
On November 7, 2023, my therapist guided me through a short visualization, bringing me into a space where the mind ceased its incessant babbling. Then a few open questions that allowed an image to spontaneously appear. Nothing forced. Just noticed.
Under the blurry surface of shallow, soft rippling water, in a nest-like depression of muddy earth, were a few, soft-boiled-textured eggs.
On March 2, 2025, amidst the babies, the eggs reappeared.
I was practicing a similar technique in a group setting. During a mental body scan, we stopped at the head, heart, and womb—or gut—to ask specific questions, giving each space the freedom to reveal its answer.
At my womb, were the same soft eggs, nested not below water, but in thicker fluids of rich burgundies and reds.
The next day, Michelle, the alchemical artist behind imagery here at Everyday Alchemy, checked in about the logo. I’d been struggling since October to decide the right design or icon that truly captured the “why” behind starting this storytelling project: to support women going through periods of profound transformation.
A shortlist emerged, but nothing seemed to hit the way I felt it needed to—with a subtle, somatic, “Yes. This is it.”
Until, scrolling Google images tied to “transformation” I saw, the egg.
Full, body, chills, as the active imaginations came flooding back. Confirmation that this was it.
The symbol for Everyday Alchemy had finally hatched.
Resonance
“In many creation myths,” reads The Book of Symbols, “the universe is hatched from an egg, which has everything within itself and is needful only of brooding.”
The entry continues, “In deeply introverted, self-reflective states, brooder and brooded become one in egglike, nuclear processes of crystallization.”
In other words, we are the nurturer capable of bringing the entire universe within us to life. And we are the universe within that can only be brought to life through our attention and adoration.
We must brood. We must still ourselves, focus on ourselves, and let ourselves be born. Sometimes again and again.
And we must be brooded. Accepting of self-care without shame. Without judgement of how long it takes.
Because when the universe is ready—when we are ready—the shell will break open, and we will emerge, transformed.
> A liminal flicker: Resonance can’t be rushed. And when it feels right, you, will, know.
Very relatable Amy💞🙏🏼