The Story of the Womb: Cosmic Origins.

You are the universe experiencing itself.- Alan Watts

The womb- An interdimensional passageway, where our deepest desire for connection and security begins.

Illustration by ©Struvictory Art. Image Licensed by the Author

The evolutionary story goes as follows.

We are 3.5 billion years ago, and we are looking at how oceans form.
They aren't yet blue. Life is pretty grey at this point, and the oceans have huge, violent waves.
Volcanic gases cause the atmosphere to become foggy, as nothing is tropical yet.

We plunge deep into the primordial soup, which is rich in minerals and simple organic compounds. The initial chemical reactions are just occurring.

Beautiful Olivine is now the main character, as it is a silicate mineral found in the earth's mantle that can release also our essential daily vitamins, magnesium and iron.

The ions, magnesium and iron, help regulate the atmospheric carbon dioxide level, stabilizing the Earth's climate.

As organic compounds begin to form, these minerals act as catalysts, and we are witnessing the first single-celled organism!, a simple but exceptionally resilient form.

We as humans are sexual beings, but our ancestors did not require a womb; life at this stage was self-sufficient and asexual.

Consider how those microscopic beings split themselves in two through binary fission, eventually evolving into more complex multicellular life forms.

Living in the water supplied them with everything they needed to create greater diversity and the first form of sexual reproduction.

During this time, the earliest womb ancestors began to take shape.

"The womb is the place where the future takes shape."
Rainer Maria Rilke

On the land. 500 million years ago.

The transition from the ocean to land is underway. This calls for new reproductive strategies.
Amphibians laid eggs in the water to ensure the survival of their offspring, but some species began to develop internal structures to protect and nurture their eggs before birth. The era of primitive womb-like organs began.

Reptiles, 310 million years ago, stepped forward and retained eggs within their bodies until they were ready to hatch. This is next-level protection from environmental dangers.

"We are part of this universe; we are in this universe, but perhaps more important than
both of those facts is that the universe is in us."
Neil deGrasse Tyson

Here we are, in the Mesozoic Era, 200 million years ago, when the first mammals appeared.

Unlike their reptilian ancestors, mammals have a unique new organ that allows them to nourish and offer protection inside the womb.

The simplicity of this womb was nature's ground-breaking innovation—offspring fully formed, ready to face the world. Game-changing mammals have a significant advantage—a higher rate of survival compared to egg-laying species.

Because of this evolution in specialized and complexly developed placentas, the womb was super efficient.

Nature has created a new organ, a new advantage, and a new step forward.

Extended gestation periods provide ample time for the offspring's development prior to birth.

"You can cut all the flowers but you cannot keep Spring from coming."
Pablo Neruda

Great stuff in action: 60 million years ago, primates emerged.

The womb is leveling up. Arboreal mammals are adaptable to life in the forests; their dexterity, vision, social behavior, and unique reproductive strategy have changed again.

There are fewer births, longer pregnancies, more dependent offspring with larger brains, and extended care and nurturing from their mothers.

7 million years ago, humans began to diverge from other primates. Hominins* evolved early and adapted to bipedalism and larger brain sizes.

*Modern humans (Homo sapiens) and our closest extinct relatives and ancestors are hominins. This group includes Australopithecus, Paranthropus, Ardipithecus, and Sahelanthropus species. Hominins have bipedalism, larger brains than bodies, and significant tool use and cognitive abilities. Hominins reveal millions of years of physical and behavioral changes that led to modern humans.

Based on this chronology, early Homo sapiens (300,000 years ago) coexisted with other hominins, such as Neanderthals and Homo erectus, and were therefore a relatively recent species in the grand scheme of human evolution.

“Hominins represent a key chapter in the story of life, where the evolutionary experiments of our ancestors paved the way for the complex cognitive and social behaviors we see in modern humans.”
Ian Tattersall, Paleoanthropologist

The childbirth.

The pelvis accommodates both walking upright and the passage of a large-headed infant—a very delicate balance that has shaped how we experience reproduction ever since.

Fast-forward: we have grown a muscular womb that is flexible and capable of expanding dramatically to accommodate a fetus.

The body produces hormones to prepare for labor and initiate the childbirth process. The lifeline placenta attached to the womb's wall supplies oxygen and nutrients while removing waste products.

We have Womb Craft our way into the future.

It took millions of years of natural selection to create this finely tuned, tenacious organ, and we're still changing and evolving.

Childbirth is nature's answer to our desire to evolve, explore and thrive.

We are curious sexual beings who have taken their time getting here.

We get to live our lives: We privileged few, who, against all chances won the lottery of being birth.

"Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood.
Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less."
Marie Curie

The Womb’s Role in Shaping Our Psyche

Illustration by ©Struvictory Art. Image Licensed by the Author

Our first chamber the womb represents more than just physical space; it is where our deepest desire for connection and security begins. It represents comfort, nurturing, warmth, and protection. It leaves an impression on our lives, sometimes influencing how we travel the world and find our place within.

Some of us remember the womb as a place of profound serenity, a cocoon of warmth and protection from the outside world; it can drive us to seek this sense of deep-seated security and belonging throughout our lives.

We find ourselves returning to this symbolic and symbiotic womb through many ways, seeking environments and relationships that provide wholeness and nourishment. Including items that provide this sense- our cars, bowls, cups, caves, shells, our home mirrors (The mirror reflects the inner potential and development within the womb, representing the inward journey of growth and formation.):).

One of the reasons we crave sex is not the biological/emotional desire itself, but rather a re-entry into the original shelter, a moment of psychic regression in which the primal closeness and comfort of the womb reawakens our earliest sense of completeness.

“Man lies in the woman's womb only to gather strength, he nourishes himself from this fusion, and then he rises and goes into the world, into his work, into battle, into art. When man lies in her womb, she is fulfilled, each act of love a taking of man within her, an act of birth and rebirth, of child rearing and man bearing. Man lies in her womb and is reborn each time anew with a desire to act, to be. But for woman, the climax is not in the birth, but in the moment man rests inside of her.”
Anaïs Nin

Conversely, if our time in the womb felt dangerous, the consequences could be profound. Those who have experienced stress and hardship during or before birth often approach life with a sense of vulnerability, insecurity, and distrust.

This early experience influence even our career choices. Otto Rank in his book "The Trauma of Birth”, explains that the initial separation from the womb creates a profound psychological impact, shaping our feelings of security and attachment in different areas of our adult lives.

I am amused by the fact that I ended up as a freelancer because I was born without assistance; my mother was alone while giving birth to me, and we worked together to deliver myself into the world.

Being born before your due date may leave you feeling vulnerable.
As one of my friends told me, her skin is extremely sensitive because she was born prematurely, at 7 months, not fully developed, yet she felt safer in the hospital than in her mother's womb, where she felt threatened.

The act of working one's way through the birth canal is a biological psychological ritual, and it represents our first significant effort. It symbolizes our initial struggle and perseverance.
Beside its biological role, it is a metaphor for how we face challenges and work to establish our place in the world. The struggles themselves become a transformative experience that shapes how we approach future challenges.

In contrast, a Cesarean section, while often life-saving and medically necessary, marks an escape from this ritual of passage, it could be interpreted as a depriving one, a less “demanding” way to enter the world, seeking easier paths and assistance with life's challenges rather than directly participating in the growth that comes from overcoming obstacles.

“We must remember that the ritual of birth is as much about the psychological as it is about the physical. The way we enter the world can leave lasting imprints on our psyche.”
Robbie Davis-Floyd

This eye-opening article, "Caesarean Birth: Psychological Aspects in Babies," published in the Journal of Prenatal and Perinatal Psychology and Medicine, highlights several interesting points about how babies are aware of their birth.

”Through thousands of years of human evolution (phylogenese*1) the human baby is being born through a narrow birth canal, which is developed out of a compromise between the narrowing pelvis of his mother enabling her upright position and the baby big head containing his human cortical brain (Janus, 1991) .

The human baby is the only species on this planet that needs an internal rotation in the birth canal in order to be born. This makes birth difficult and painful. Both the mother’s and the baby’s body have biochemical options to ease this pain. Birth is, in the words of Odent, a biochemical symphony, stating that we have biochemical solutions for this difficult process of entering the world.

This birth process is biologically programmed in every baby. The baby knows when to activate his birth process, knows how to go through the birth canal, knows how to cooperate with his mother, and expects to end up in her arms.

Any interruption of this process can be harmful, stressful or even traumatic to the baby. C-section birth is an abrupt and sudden interruption of this natural birth process. It is not only a different doorway being used, but also a violation of the biological birth program hat is stored in the baby and activated during birth. Trauma happens when any experience is threatening the baby; it overwhelms the baby, leaving it disconnected from the body.

As trauma resides in the nervous system, the body is not going to forget about trauma. Caesarean birth can be seen as a traumatic event for the baby who has only limited coping skills to deal with the situation and this trauma is stored in his body leading to physical symptoms.”

In the end within the female womb, we are reminded that we are all part of the same story; we are made of stardust, literally, and we all go through the same cycle of birth, rebirth, and death.
Death is just a return to the universe's womb.

“The creativity of the womb is far greater than the creativity of the brain. Women carry not only new lives in their wombs but also carry the seeds of ideas, revolutions, and the future.”
Alice Walker

Illustration by ©Struvictory Art. Image Licensed by the Author

For the second time since I started writing, my geology knowledge has come in handy. I'm starting to enjoy combining science, history, art, psychology, and sexuality. Will do it again!

I hope you enjoyed this brief natural history tour, and if you did, please let me know in any way you like—through words, smiles, or subscribing.

HOMO SAPIENS: CREATING THEMSELVES
by Pattiann Rogers

Made in the image of the moon, where else
would the name of ivory rock craters shine
except in our eyes… let there be language.

Displayed in the image of the rotting seed
on the same stem with the swelling blossom…
let there be hope.

Homo sapiens creating themselves after the manner
and image of the creator’s ongoing creation — slowly,
eventual, alert and imagined, composing, dissembling,
until the right chord sounds from one brave strum
of the right strings reverberating, fading away
like evening… let there be pathos, let there be
compassion, forbearance, forgiveness. Let there be
weightless beauty.

Of earth and sky, Homo sapiens creating themselves,
following the mode and model of the creator’s creation,
particle by particle, quest by quest, witness by witness,
even though the unknown far away and the unknown
nearby be seen and not seen… let there be goodwill
and accounting, let there be praise resounding.”

I write because it’s how I make sense of the world—how I listen, how I speak, how I stay close to what matters.

But this isn’t just something I do in the quiet hours, in that space we artists share—our solitude.
It’s also work. A lot of work. It takes time, presence, and energy—resources as real and limited as anyone else’s.

Art is not a luxury. It’s how we live on.
And like anyone living, money matter—not to chase anything extravagant, but to keep going, to stay rooted, to keep making.

If you find something here that moves you or lingers in you, consider becoming a paid subscriber or offer a coffee. It’s a simple act that carries weight.

You’re not just supporting a writer—you’re helping someone continue the work that feels most true. And you receive something real in return.

Thank you for reading, for arriving, for being here. That, too, matters more than you know.

Resources:

1* phylogenesis is central to evolutionary biology as it provides a framework for understanding how life on Earth has diversified and adapted over millions of years.

“The Trauma of Birth” by Otto Rank
“The Drama of the Gifted Child: The Search for the True Self” by Alice Miller
"The Second Sex" by Simone de Beauvoir
Cosmos: Possible Worlds

Rien Verdult : "Caesarean Birth: Psychological Aspects in Babies," published in the Journal of Prenatal and Perinatal Psychology and Medicine,