Tag: healing

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Motherhood

I’m cleaning tables at a cafe where I volunteer regularly and there’s a couple moms with their little ones. One of them is about to nurse her baby. It’s a little baby, still in that “feed me right now” frantic stage. Not crying, or even making a fuss, but as a mom having been there many times, if she doesn’t get the latch down right away, things could become a lot more frantic, real quick!

Don’t get me wrong, I am so grateful for the time I had to be with each of my girls, but I do not miss those frantic moments, sore nipples, wondering if people are watching me, wondering if I’ll ever feel like I’m getting it right. Oh my goodness, so many thoughts went through my head in those moments, but mostly it was the fear of failing, of getting it “wrong”.

Motherhood brings up a lot, I guess parenthood in general, but since I’m only a mom and I can only relate from my own experience, I’ll just talk about motherhood. No matter how confident you were before, you suddenly start to wonder if you’re “doing it right”, “getting it right”. Suddenly all the things you judged your own mom for not having done better become crystal clear and you find yourself wondering how she was able to do everything she did. Suddenly my own mom seems superhuman… Or is that just me?

Do other women feel this way? Do we all ask ourselves these questions?

It’s been a few years. I’ve had four babies. I’ve learned a few things, most of the time I still feel like I have a lot to learn. Mostly, what feels best is that I’ve learned about myself.

When I find myself worrying that I’m “getting it wrong”, I remind myself that my kids came to Me. They could have been born to any other mom, but they came to me because I have exactly what their souls were also looking for when they came to this life. I remember that it must have been the same for me and then traumas don’t feel like traumas anymore because I know I was exactly where I needed to be to learn what I need to learn. To grow and evolve and offer a different lesson to myself, to my family and essentially to the world.

I’ve learned that I’m amazing in my own way. I may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but I have an energy that draws people to me, other people who are also looking for growth, people who are not afraid of challenges and not afraid to challenge me to grow as well.

Sometimes letting go is hard, but I have an amazing capacity to forgive and be compassionate. Mostly, it’s hard to let go of guilt, that it’s somehow my fault, that I could have done better. Maybe I could have, but it’s also ok to make mistakes and to love myself through that. I apologize and take responsibility when I’m wrong. I look to innerstand which button got pushed and how can I soften that trigger; what is it actually touching that hurts? I examine myself and ask if, when I “got it wrong”, was I BEing in my highest integrity? Was I operating out of love? And if the answer is Yes, it can’t possibly be wrong. If the answer is no, I look to come back to Love. Come back to the Authoritative Love that is my guiding principle, my way of BEing. It’s all I can do and It. Is. Enough.

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Exactly What I Wanted

There are times when I feel like I’m failing, or not “good enough”. But lately, I have really come to the realization that I am doing exactly what I wanted to do.

Sometimes I would get frustrated with myself and think “If I’m so determined, diligent and hardworking, why don’t I have more clients or why am I not making more money?” for example. Or, not so much now, (not since I had my West Nile experience), I used to think, “I wanted to be a mom for as long as I can remember and now that I am, I feel like I’m not good at it or I feel guilty for not enjoying it more?” More than what? What was I comparing it to?

When I was making money in a career, I was wishing to be a full-time mom. When I became a full-time mom and caretaker of my home, I felt guilty for not being more career focused and bringing in more money. What was going on here? The common denominator was my mindset and thinking I needed to be something more.

A dear friend of mine from my middle school years helped me realize a couple years ago that I am already doing exactly what I set out to do since I was young. He said “Look at everything you’ve done, you went to school, you got your education, you’ve had your career, you’re raising a beautiful family as an awesome wife and mother. You are exactly the way I knew you would be since we were kids!” I had to take a step back and realize he was right.

The thing is, I was so focused on the family I had lost (when my parents split up and my world came crashing down), and how I had always “messed everything up” and “gotten it all wrong”. I was just thinking about how I always had to be better and do better, I was so focused on fixing that I hadn’t even stopped to realize that I, along with my husband and God’s guidance, I had built the very thing I set out to––a family; a strong, beautiful family.

Then, yesterday, my husband took the day off work so we could take some time to celebrate my birthday together. We didn’t do anything extraordinarily special, we went grocery shopping together (something we used to do when we first married but hadn’t done in years just for practicality), and we had a long lunch together. I was telling him that I used to feel guilty for not “working harder” at something that brings in money, but that I have now realized that we have the life we have because I have deliberately created margin in our lives for peace. He has the ability to focus on his career and how it can bless us because he does not need to worry about what’s going on at home or the well-being of his children and the state of our family because I have the time and space to do that. And we were able to take this day off to do simple things with no pressure, just peace, because we have been deliberate about creating it in our lives.

And then, I remembered what I had in my heart, close to 5 years ago after our youngest was born––I was on the cusp of a career change because destiny was calling me. I told myself that I was going to spend the next 5 years learning everything I could about natural healing, and seeing whatever clients I had space for, while raising the kids so that when they were all in school full time, I’d be ready to step into this new career as a natural healer. And I realized I’m doing it.

Those moments when I feel like I’m not doing enough or not getting it right come when I compare myself to other people’s journeys. I remembered that promise in my heart and it looks and feels like success to me because I realized I am doing exactly what I said I was going to do, and I’m doing it well.

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The Gift on the Other Side

When my youngest was a baby, in her first year of life, she was dealing with severe eczema. No big deal, you might say, if you know nothing about eczema–– before this trial, I knew nothing of eczema. I heard eczema and I thought dry skin on your knees and elbows, maybe a little itchy, whatever.

I learned that there are different types of eczema, that had varying symptoms of varying degrees caused by many different things. G had weeping eczema with an insatiable itch. This meant that she could scratch herself till she bled and still, scratching the itch would be the only thing that would satisfy it, even if she was cutting through her skin and bleeding, which she did.

I rarely slept as all of my waking hours were spent caring for her, being attentive, carrying her almost non-stop and watching her like a hawk when I couldn’t so she wouldn’t start scratching, because I knew she couldn’t stop once she started. I could barely sleep even when she slept because I was listening for any little stirring that would indicate she had woken up and would start scratching. I swaddled her, tightly, for longer than you would swaddle most babies, in attempts to keep her from scratching in the night. I kept her little nails trimmed at all times. I would put little mittens on her but she quickly learned how to remove them. More than once I would awake to find her sheets bloodied and her cheeks scratched raw. Her siblings all had to be more patient and settle for less attention. Our marriage required a lot of patience. Diets and activities were restricted. Everything revolved around trying to keep her safe and give her some sort of relief. Needless to say it was a trying time for all of us.

The 3:00 am feedings were spent researching everything I possibly could. One night I came across mitten sleeves! I couldn’t seem to find any stores that carried them in my city, but thankfully that week my dad happened to be in Chicago. I found a store there that carried them and asked him to bring me some. They were exactly what they sound like, a sleeve with mittens, made of silky satin, on either end. Because it was a sleeve, she couldn’t get them off; they did have openings that could be folded back during the day for play time or eating when I could be right there with her. Hallelujah!! I could finally take a shower that lasted longer than two seconds or put her down to cook dinner without worrying if her face would survive. My dad had brought me two pairs of mitten sleeves; it was what he could find, and they got non-stop use. It didn’t take long before they began to form holes from the constant use––she would still rub her face, which would give her some relief but also save her cheeks; they had to be washed and kept clean all the time. Thankfully, one of our wonderful neighbors made her two more pairs and a friend of mine was able to repair the originals. I can still remember how it felt, the relief of getting back some semblance of “normal” life when those sleeves came on the scene. I had already forgotten what it felt like to not live on edge, concerned all the time.

It hadn’t always been like that. Her first three months were amazing. She was the happiest little smiliest baby I’d ever seen. Always laughing and giggling. A very good sleeper, at about 8 weeks or so I could get a good 5-6 hours of sleep each night, but that didn’t last long. Right around her third month she began to develop eczema––I’ll talk about the whys and hows of this in another post; including why I believe those first 2-3 months were so great. From there, it was about 9 months before we would finally be able to start unravelling our tightly wound nerves from being on constant edge and alert.

I spent so much time with her, but I feel like I missed a lot of it––measuring progress on her recovery rather than growth milestones. (Thank goodness for the first-year baby calendar I kept for her, as well as a little journal; at least we can go back and read about the life we were living as opposed to the disease we were experiencing.)

One of the things that added to the difficulty of the whole situation, was that it was so visible, you could see it all over her face. All kinds of well-meaning people would approach me telling me the things they tried when their kid or grandkid had eczema. Others, would stare, some of them probably judging me with whatever reason they needed to tell themselves for why a parent would dare to leave the house with their kid suffering like that, wondering what I was doing wrong . Others I could see the pity in their eyes, and I just felt even more pitiful, because I felt there was nothing I could do and that I had already tried a million and one things.

I remember one time, while making supper, after having obtained the mitten sleeves, looking over at G in the Exersaucer where I had placed her, and my once jolly, smiley baby looked forlorn and depressed. I had never before seen a “depressed” baby. She just looked so sad and hopeless. It broke my heart. It was such a contrast from the happy, smiley baby she was in her first three months. Now, a few years later, G has beautiful skin. And, as the baby of the family is always goofing off and doing stuff to get a laugh out of us. She is a very happy, healthy little girl. (I will talk about the natural healing side of that journey in another post.) But I wondered at that moment, if I would ever see her smile again.

That’s how it is, isn’t it? When you’re in the eye of the storm, it can be very hard to see anything beyond. While I would never, ever wish to repeat this experience, nor wish it on anybody, I am grateful for the lessons I learned. Coming through this trial, and many others, has taught me to have faith in the gift on the other side.

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Writing My Story

I have recently begun a writing workshop, a 7-day book writing challenge by Hay House. I have been meaning to start writing my story since last fall as part of a business program I had committed to. But every time I determined to do it I would inevitably have all kinds of other things to do; my procrastination pattern I mentioned in a previous post was trying to rear its ugly head.

After Day One of the writing challenge, my story is pouring out of me. I have only begun to dictate bits and pieces in my Notes app as they come to me, but this is more than I have done, ever.

Four days before the writing challenge started, I wrote down my goals for this year; one of those goals was to write my story. One week before writing down my goals, I registered for the Hay House writing challenge–something a dear friend sent to me. And exactly one month before that, I made my commitment to write a blog post everyday for 100 days. This is the physics of progress, as one of my mentors would say. I’m biting off pieces that I can chew. I’m taking action and as my mentor always says, action breeds clarity, clarity breeds awareness, and awareness breeds certainty. Each step I take brings me closer to what I want. Each action I take brings me more clarity. And because I’ve set my intention, (and written it down to make it real), more opportunities keep flowing to me. Everytime I make another move that I know is congruent with where I want to go, my story becomes more and more clear to me. For the longest time, I didn’t think I even had a story, not one anybody would be interested in anyway. I was much too ordinary and insignificant to have a story. How many of you feel this way?

There are parts of my story that I am not looking forward to writing. I know it will be therapeutic, and it’s necessary for my growth and healing. There are things that, had I known then what I know now, I would have done differently. But, it is finally time to talk about those things, because I suspect that many of us have those things that we feel we can’t talk about. No matter how big or small, significant or insignificant they seem in our own eyes or in the eyes of others, we all have those moments that we wish we could undo, or do better; the coveted do-over. If I can talk about my stuff, I can empower you to talk about your stuff; to forgive yourself and learn to know and love yourself so that you too can empower others to know and love themselves and we can have a world full of people who truly love themselves.

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Control

So 2020 is almost over, and this year has been a real ride. It’s not over yet and I’m sure there are still many more surprises to come as we have basically entered a decade of challenges; challenges to the systems that are no longer working and/or serving us; challenges to the way we do things and the challenges that go along with adapting to new ways of doing things. And most of all, challenges to the way we think, feel, grow and change.

Many people are still choosing to live in the consciousness of fear and the invisible killer virus that isn’t really killing more people than would already die in an average year. But for most people that would even be reading this blog, many of us have realized this is all about control, or rather fear of the loss of control by those who currently possess it and an ever unquenchable thirst for more.

The one question that has been on my mind lately is “What is this need for control?” Why are there people who want to know everything about everything we do? What is this weird need/desire for them to reach in and have access to literally every facet of our lives? Why do they want to know about all our little habits and nuances to be able to market to us more efficiently and control our every movement for profit that can’t be taken with them when they die anyway? What happened to raising up people who would believe in themselves and who would subsequently do better and be better for society?

This need/desire to be in control has created problems that require evermore elaborate “solutions”, like the helicopter parent that has to forever be present because the need to control every circumstance has stifled the growth that would otherwise have superseded the need for control in the first place.

I once worked for someone who I noticed would become much more micro-managerial whenever they were more stressed about some issue that they had no control over––the seeming loss of control in one area would cause them to grasp for control in other areas, making things very uncomfortable, often creating more senseless work for others in their environment. Isn’t it interesting that our need for control causes us to grasp tighter thereby causing more havoc that we then feel also needs to be controlled?

It’s not new, but I found this need most recently in myself during a healing session for a rather intense pain in my arm. What was I not wanting to let go of? What was I trying to hold so tightly in my grip that it was causing pain in my physical body? (Thank you, Body, for that awareness. Thank you for bringing this to my attention so I could now let it go along with the pain it was causing.)

The thing is, control is an illusion anyway. Trying to hang on to it is like grasping play-dough in your fist, the tighter you squeeze, the more it oozes out of every little crack. How much more fun and creativity can we enjoy and express when we just allow it to flow and begin to take form and shape on its own?

The paradox is that the more we let go the more “control” we have. It’s the point where control makes way for surrender and surrender makes way for flow and flow makes way for ease. What else is possible when we give up the need for control?