This will be a short one, inspired by two short sentences from a recent email.
“I’m a failure. I’m an emotional mess with blocks,” says a lovely mama.
And I say, You sure can see it that way if it works for you.
But I don’t think that point of view really works for any of us.
Every so called “block” is a doorway to a mystery yet to be revealed.
What you call “an emotional mess” is your next Self. In gestation.
Love that emerging next Self, as you would love the newborn in that image.
I and the rest of us are here ready to join you in loving her
Is there an emerging self, perhaps disguised as your current “emotional mess” calling to be loved?
Thank you all for taking the time to write. I find that your insights become my insights and my inspirations, so thank you for sharing. I’ve been really drawn to body truth lately. I couldn’t settle on a specific sequence so I did them all to see which one my body responded to. During the calls Julia worked with me on my dreams (lots of rage coming up, couple of nights ago I had a dream about Itchy and Scratchy show from the Simpsons :-)). Its a shows in which Itchy the mouse repeatedly maims and kills an anthropomorphic, hapless threadbare black cat, Scratchy. Two things happened for me during the body truths. My body wanted to growl and say no, to nothing in particular, I think it just wanted to “own the no” (I tend to agree to things that I don’t necessarily want to do in my day to day life). So I’ve been growling away and saying no. I look forward to learning more about what my body needs.
Hi Fertile Mamas,
Thanks to all for your inspiring posts. Always so insightful and food for thought. When I read the post the first time, I was caught up in an orphan that was focused on my not knowing what to do with my life. How I can’t seem to figure it out, or reach an epiphany of sorts about it. And the possible visionary to be born is the person who does know what she wants to do with her life and is living her life to the fullest. I’m still working on that one, but I have had a new/old orphan pop up this weekend that has been a lot more vocal and in need of attention. It’s the control orphan, who wants to be in charge and controlling everything around her. I’m still not sure why she is coming up at this exact time, but she got very loud yesterday during a meeting that is usually a source of peace and serenity for me. Everything that everyone did there was annoying her and pissing her off. The need for control is partly due to lack of trust or belief that the UM or other forces are supporting or taking care of me. And maybe it is a reaction to all the crazy violence and upheaval in the world, with bombings, a gas explosion in a nearby town, and now the earthquake and aftershocks in Italy. The world does seem out of control right now, so this orphan is looking for a way to control what she can. I guess it is about fear too, that she feels safer if she is in control. So the visionary is the one who can trust others, the UM, the universe, that it’s not all an her, and who realizes she is not in control of things anyway. And yes the control issue extends to my body, as I too went through a very messed up time in late June and July that coincided with leaving my old job. My practice was spotty, and it showed in my body, I went 6 weeks between periods. So I finally thoughts that things were back on track this month, but things are odd again now too. However, the stress is much lower at the new job, I am now juicing every day and doing imagery more regularly too. But there is so much uncertainty with my body, I just don’t know what is going on anymore. For the past week I was doing 9 Hearts which I generally try to do after I suspect I have ovulated, but today I did Field of Creation instead so I could focus more on the controlling orphan and see what she needs and how to help her. This post reminded me that I need to be careful not to get stuck in the orphan place, but to recognize when orphans are triggered and be with them. I do get stuck there a lot of the time.
Hello Fertile Mamas
I am so grateful to read all of the comments and posts and feel the potency of our work.
Our last Visionary Moms call was so helpful. The thing I was “burning” to work on was really addressed while one of the other women was working through her feelings of betrayal. As Julia walked us through the imagery of the Field of Creation, I could clearly see the little girl, my orphan, who felt so unsafe with my parents. No wonder it doesn’t feel safe to share important things with people today! Of course, the same pattern with my mother came forward in some interactions with her last week so I could clearly see it and respond to it in a different way. What a gift.
I am noticing over this past week that my dreams are moving more to the view of the visionary rather than the orphans. I imagine this will go back and forth. What a great thing to see how the perspective shifts around through the OVUM process. The work really works and the container of the group strengthens it for me.
I am grateful for all the messiness of birth, all the humanness, all the humanity.
Thank you very much for this blog!! It has struck a huge chord with me – and I can feel how every block and emotional mess that I have felt and experience(d) has been and is a truly amazing chance to birth a new me. I feel I am birthing a new me right now, who is going to be a much better mommy, that I could never have become without this journey.
I am trying to understand and heal my O who says you have no self-worth. She is a very very big O. So, it has been a journey to remember, that is for sure. My emerging self is my V who sees her self-worth & loves here life, not something I am used to! So, it is a slow slow process and painful at times, too. Then again, it is birthing, so that means it is/will be painful. So, without being too vague about it – I really feel how a block can be an amazing first step to finding out more about oneself and changing course to be more nurturing and loving to oneself. I am in the middle of this step now.
I know that without finding my blocks and my “emotional mess” I would be nowhere close to living a new lifestyle, as I am now. Though, I also know that you Julia and all you very lovely Visionary mommies here have been my circle of support, without whom I would not be where I am today!! Thank you Julia and to you V mommies, I am feeling a huge wave of gratitude coming over me. I feel very blessed to be here.
With love and peace,
FearlessRose
Dear Fertile Mamas,
gutsymama, yay for asking and yes, the one who wants to sabotage self care is tough and Annabell, wonderful supportive dream. Brave caterpillar, yay that writing down orphans is nourishing and heather1975teaching, we can be lovable and messy. peacefulwarrior, thank you for sharing the inspirational story about the mother in her 40s and I need to clean my house as well and I’m sorry you’re feeling down and butterflyfaith, yes, how would we treat our children. Sparxy, wow that is hard to talk yourself into feeling included and Chopin, I love that healing with your mother and grandmother. Gracelife, it sounds like a real visionary speaking up for your self, taking care of yourself and being the best mommy you can be.
I have been doing Circle of Protection Fertile Heart imagery (Imagery 2) and Rock the Baby Fertile Heart body truth. I have been working on loving my reproductive system – saying kind words, asking what it needs from me. Typically I’m pretty demanding and I don’t think that’s working very well. Also, my husband may be out of work in a month (we’re hoping not) so I’m trying to really receive him without forgetting myself entirely. We are currently focused on his plan since his would be a way larger salary most likely and it might involve a move. The other day I watched a learn to sing video on You Tube – it was a lot about breathing, but I found it nourishing!!
Blessings to all
Always great little questions for us to ponder as Julia always knows the right questions to ask at just the right time. Right now is an extremely busy time for me professionally which includes a promotion and an upcoming move of our offices to a new regional headquarters. I’ve been struggling with just getting through this busy time and letting everything else go until I have more time to focus and listen to my inner voice.
Julia asked me what my miscarriages have been trying to teach me/show me that I wouldn’t be able to see otherwise. My first reaction was to just power through and think I didn’t have time (at the moment) to answer that question. But I kept asking it and having a conversation with myself, doing some imagery and trying to figure out what I am supposed to learn.
And then it hit me. I have an orphan who is scared s***less. And I saw her! I saw an image of her and she was hiding so far in the orphanage I couldn’t see her until recently. I’ve had three miscarriages in the last year. Not so much with the first one, but definitely the second two this frightened orphan had already decided that the pregnancies would not go to term. I had a dream in between the second and third miscarriage that I would have three miscarriages. So my thoughts and actions behaved as though that idea was my truth. As much as I wanted to believe that I wasn’t doing orphan behavior with this last pregnancy, looking back I was doing almost nothing but orphan behavior.
My emerging self calling to be loved is this scared, stubborn, wanting to be right so she can say she was right orphan. She needs nurturing and love but she also needs to know that she is not the one who gets to make the decisions.
I’ve rediscovered an an old song by Incubus called “Drive” recently that describes the FH journey. One of the lines in the second verse that really speaks to me is:
It’s driven me before
And it seems to be the way
That everyone else gets around
Lately I’m beginning to find
That when I drive myself
My light is found
When I drive myself, my light is found. I love this. This orphan is on her way.
I have been asking for help more and more! The first step may seem mundane and simple but it has been incredible! I asked my husband to help me unload the dishwasher more and more. It is just the 2 of us but we seem to load that thing up every other day. I loathe unloading the dishwasher! Laundry I do not mind. Dusting I do not mind. However the dishwasher chores annoy me. So I asked him. He was like – yeah I am on it. SO he unloaded them for me and has been doing it every since without me asking! Whew hew!
At work I was talking to our boss and was saying our coffee machine stinks. We need a new one. I told her to ask the department if they would buy us a new one – or if we even bought one would they pay us back. It was a quick: Yes! I like the hot water in the fall/winter. It may seem weird but sometimes my drink of choice is hot water with nothing in it. I seem to be on the chilly side all the time.
Then yesterday I was on the train and a friend was randomly on it too. I was tired and I really did not feel like chatting too much (even though I love her!). So I asked – do you mind if we just read? She said: oh yeah. I wanted to finish my book anyways. Then she told me she was finishing “the Goldfinch” and what a wonderful book it is. I felt like I was rewarded. I asked for what I needed – quiet time and reading my book AND I received another book to read just in time for my upcoming vacation! I am still working on this day in and day out but I am enjoying the results so far.
Last night I had a very sweet dream: I was about to head off on a journey and Julia was with me, saying goodbye to me, sending me on my way, with so much love.
The last few weeks have been quite challenging for me and, if I’m honest, overall I have not felt a lot of support around me, both at the “invisible” more UM level, and also from those in my day to day life. So this dream was such a lovely gift to receive.
Friends keep getting pregnant – last week I heard about 2 on the same day – and almost all of them without much effort. And I find news of other people’s pregnancies challenging, especially knowing how hard I have worked, trying to bring our baby to us. My mum’s response, when I shared my feelings with her, was “well, just be grateful you have a lovely husband & that you survived cancer.” It was well intentioned but not that helpful. When I spoke to my father he was actually far more empathetic and said he really understood how I felt. Being heard felt much more nourishing & healing.
One thing I’m learning from this journey, is the importance of holding space for others, with whatever they bring us. For really listening to them, and not trying to gloss over stuff with a “oh but you have so much to be grateful for”, or a “I’m sure everything will work out fine.” Not that those are necessarily untrue or always unhelpful statements, but in the moment of pain they are not always the most supportive thing that can be offered, I feel. I think our natural tendency is often to run from our own pain, and therefore to run from it in others, rather than make space for it. I guess partly because we don’t like to see those we love struggling, and maybe that’s one reason we might tend to gloss things over.
Annabell,
what a nice image of Julia seeing you off! I can hear how ‘just be grateful for what you have’ can feel unsupportive. I feel that way too, my husband survived cancer twice and I keep being in awe at his wonderful recoveries. But I want more – it feels as if this was just a starting line – where others start, and we had already been tired from a long marathon. And I want life with the bright side too. I had been handed bitter lemons, and now I want to taste a sweet fruit of life, when I can taste blueberries etc. That’s my metaphor. I want to eat all the sweet fruits that I had been waiting to taste. I want to share with you that when my husband had no sperm, and the sample he left before starting chemotherapy was no good, and he cried that it was no good, I was on one of our circles with Nick, and said out loud that I hope or even that I believe his sperm will come back, through tears, I had no idea if it was possible, the oncologist was skeptical, his treatment was very very harsh. A month later he went for a test, and there they were, they returned!!!! I almost feel I brought them back myself…And recently I asked Nick to say something similar to me about having a child, it wasn’t enough to hear it will happen when it happens, but when he said I trust it will happen, that you will get pregnant and we will have a child, it sounded right to me. I don’t know how to explain this.
How lovely to hear from you, Chopin. And what a great image of longing for sweet fruits instead of bitter lemons – I know exactly how you feel. It is incredible to hear how Nick’s sperm recovered, despite the harshness of chemo. I am so glad to hear he is well again – having cancer twice must have been very tough. Once was crazy enough, I found!
I think sometimes you just know things deep inside. And sometimes others know those things for you – like when I was single & worried I was never going to meet someone, one of my dearest & wisest friends said there’s absolutely no way you are not going to meet someone, and I kind of believed after that that I would!
Love,
AnnabelL x
Today one of the yoga teachers I really liked came back from a long vacation. At the end of the class she started suggesting that today we should nourish ourselves. That when we are mothers we are constantly attending our children’s needs, that it was important to stop and do the same for us and that the more skilled we got in finding out what we really needed the more easy it will get to identify our children’s needs and cover them as well. Nothing new, we usually talk about this in this practice. It was a nice reminder for me, nonetheless.
When I came back from my class I spoke with a friend who is here visiting, who’s opinion has always mattered to me. She just had a baby and we started talking about how we were going to manage who will be here after our son’s birth. We had different approaches. On my side, I’ve been struggling with my mother in law because we asked her to come one month after the baby is born and she said she will come anyway whenever she wanted. She is like that, and my orphans always wanted to avoid conflict, for me and for my husband. But right now I just don’t feel like it. It is obviously something I still have to work with because when I was speaking to my friend I got really anxious and angry talking about this, she was calm talking about her own situation. I hang up and feeling very uncomfortable. Why I was not also calmed, why I am not strong to defend my point of view, is it an orphan or a visionary the one who doesn’t want my mother in law to come earlier? overall I started to question my reactions and feelings.
What was funny is that I was aware of what happened next. First, I wanted to apologize to my friend for the way I reacted. Then, I wanted to call my parents. I wanted to eat something. I wanted to watch TV. And thought about all these options in three minutes but didn’t do any of that. I decided that instead of looking for validation outside, or for something to numb my feelings, I would listen to my orphans and deal with them writing in my diary. I was going to do something truly nourishing for myself.
It felt so good. Then I decided writing here, which is also nourishing for me. I wanted to share how even when I felt very vulnerable and again like a mess, compared to my friend specially, which then lead me to feel uncomfortable and weak, I ended up feeling super strong and loved just by doing something as simple as writing down how my orphans felt, letting them express themselves, then I knew exactly what to say and do and everything went away.
I had to miss the last call but I am looking forward to our next one. I enjoyed all of the insights in your posts as always, lots of love to all of you.
I have been beside myself with frustration and angst these past couple days and find so much solace in FH and the FH community. Since the birth of my little guy back in November of 2015, my cycles have been irregular and “complicated “.
I sincerely and naively thought that after my son was born I would be ” over ” the montly cycle worry. Instead, I have been overcome with worry that I will be unable to conceive again while at the same time feeling guilty because I have a wonderful little bundle in my arms so what do I have to complain about.
I am starting to revert back to old habits so I need to work with V to stop the O spiral. I hate that I went on google. I loathe the fact I was beginning to surrender my decision making to another authorities. I have been struggling to communicate with my loved ones as in my mind they just don’t understand my emotions.
I am in the middle of my own emerging self right now and it is messy.I feel like I too am an emotional mess and I very much need to be loved and love myself. And its so very hard.
Hi Heather,
I totally can relate to the point you made about reverting back to old habits. I got away from regular FH work this summer when I was away visiting family. I tried to do some imagery and body truth but it wasn’t the same as now being back at home. I am frustrated with myself too because I am 10 days late with my period this month. I started googling info and as you can imagine, more orphans popped out from all over. I am making myself sick over this late period. I think my cycle is out of whack because I was away and not in my normal routine. I too feel guilty because I have a daughter already. Some days my hope is very strong and then lately I’ve been an emotional mess. While I was away, I met a woman who told me not to give up hope because she too miscarried and went on to have 4 children, the youngest which she had at 42 1/2. She was very encouraging to me and said that she would pray for me and that I should not give up hope. I am struggling often to balance motherhood, being a wife, working and home responsibilities. I remember on a call Julia once asked me what would I do for the envisioned self. And I was going to curl my hair or paint my nails. I never have kept up with my hair and just end up putting it up in a pony tail. I’m going to try to make time for a much needed hair cut. It sounds silly, but today while out shopping with my daughter, we found a nice red nail polish shade. I bought it and hope to paint my nails this week as much needed ME time. I think it will perk me up and I can also paint her nails as a treat too.
Thank you all for listening and your support!
Thank you peaceful warrior for sharing! I was taken aback by myself at how quickly I hopped on Doctor Google. I felt like I was undoing years of work with FH. Apparently those orphans still need some attention.I struggle with the guilt as you do of knowing how blessed I am to have my son but feeling that longing for another child.I loved your story of meeting that woman. I am always touched when people offer to pray for me and my family.
I am getting better at handling and loving my hot mess orphan thanks to the OVUM tools. I am feeling “less stressed” during this busy time of year as my daughter heads back to school and my work schedule gets crazy. I am usually sad that she is one grade older and still an only child. Silly right? I should be satisfied and content says my orphan. But my Visionary is much wiser now and consoles that orphan. So instead of crying a river like I usually do I was able to shed some tears and sit with my emotions. I found out that I miscarried…it wasn’t a delayed period after all. I am emotionally drained and very tired so I won’t write the details now. I’m handling this one better than my last one. My orphans are pouting and upset but my visionary is saying that I can still get pregnant and have a healthy baby. I appreciate all of your support Fertile Mamas!
Dear Peaceful Warrior.
What a beautiful visionary you are birthing here. You are an amazing mother!
I want you to know that we are all here with you. You are not alone. You are using the tools and clearly you know what to do.
Nurture yourself.
Take care and love,
xxxx
Dear Fertile Mamas,
What a blessing it is to be here.
Julia I live having the newborn image as a way to take care of our orphans with love. I am still working on that. Chopin, yay to 6 year old possibility and what a beautiful thought to share the poem with your child and Purple Parrot great about taking a breath. Beautiful Journey, I like the Olympics, too, for inspiration and Harmonious Life, beautiful, beautiful poem. Brave Caterpillar, yay for asking for what you want and experiencing the birth you want and heather1975teaching that sounds great to love this part of your birthing. LovingLife yay for being human and Gracelife, wonderful for becoming the mother you want to be to your child. Amy, great for being supportive.
I have been doing Field of Creation Fertile Heart Imagery (Imagery II) and Rock the Baby body truth. My orphans mostly have been anger and fear – some fear because of my husband’s job situation which is tenuous right now and anger when I’m trying to do something on the computer and it just sits there for a while and maybe does or doesn’t do what you need – usually just some website problem. So much time goes by sometimes. The other part of the visualization is a moment in the life I’m hoping for where I am with my family and handling all the time situations with serenity. I have thought of myself as being busy all the time for a very long time and when Julia talked about not taking time for ourselves on the teleconference it struck a chord. I always told myself if I did this one more thing for or with my daughter related to school work that it would make a difference. Then I told myself if I did one more thing related to her emotional challenges – read one more article, involved her in another healthy activity, etc, that would make the difference. I tried doing some self nurturing along the way, but I mostly thought I was working very hard all the time.Now that my daughter is in a special program (and hopefully it will work out) I am trying to redefine that reality. When I look at the baby in this picture (if we see that as us or our orphans) I recall telling myself so often, not right now, I’m busy – especially for self care. So that gives me something to look at.
I feel fertile when I do belly dancing, when I cuddle with my husband and I had another experience that made me feel very fertile when I was visiting my husband’s family a few weeks ago. A lot of the family was sitting around visiting, which I did for a while. Then I decided to go over to my niece’s daughter who is 4. I haven’t seen her since she was 2 so she didn’t really know me. I squatted down to her level and just started chatting with her about what ever she wanted to chat about while she made little piles in the dirt. After a while, I needed to go inside, so I told her that and started to walk away. She grabbed my hand and wanted to come with me and said “I need you”. Then she came with me inside and seemed to want to follow me and do what I did.
Blessings to all.
Oof. Once again, this blog is so timely. Things have been messy the last few weeks. My husband and I were apart, each away for one week without connecting in the middle, which isn’t normally a problem however it was made all the more challenging by his feelings of depression and dissatisfaction and my subsequent feelings of helplessness. And during my week away I had some experiences that brought up old, deep trauma which then catapulted all my orphans together in a vibrating huddle of panic in the centre of my body. For 3 days I thought I would throw up, or bawl or both, all the while at a workshop. Thank goodness it was an ceramics workshop and I could work with my hands. I felt the reverberations of panic for a week. Talk about an earth-shaking birth. I just kept up my visualizations and listening to my body (in fact at one point, as I was trying so hard to keep the panic at bay with my head, I just turned the whole business over to my body and asked for help). I went to my acupuncturist and asked her simply to support my sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems. I have been able to listen deeply and not catastrophize my husband’s suffering (which I never did outwardly, just silently but still kept me from being totally present with him) but be a resource in a new way, after identifying and supporting my own needs. That is a big shift. And since he is having trouble talking about what is going on for him, last night I just pulled out our meditation benches and sat, silently inviting him to join. He did, and after sitting was able to open up about his feelings. So yes to messy! And yes to birthing!
Thank you, Julia for this short but potent post! Our blocks as being doorways to our next emerging self is such a beautiful way of perceiving them, and really the only one that makes any sense. That said, it’s not always easy! While I find it much easier to now hold my orphans with greater compassion & love – and I can understand why they are there, and also why to view them as a disaster is not supportive to me – what I find more challenging is truly releasing their thought patterns. My most prevalent orphans are the ‘I’m not good enough’ one & the ‘other people have it easier/it’s not fair’ one, both of which I know (rationally) are rather limited & are certainly not entirely true ways of perceiving me or my life. I long to truly shift both of these so I can be someone who celebrates herself fully and also celebrates others fully, and is not sitting there comparing herself or her situation to other people’s. I definitely have plenty of moments where I’m just doing my thing and enjoying my life and not in the head space of judging or comparing, which is great. .But then something will trigger me and the Os rock up in their full glory, and need lots of TLC! I guess this road is not a straight A to B kind of road in any sense, and the journey will inevitably have its twists and turns. But luckily we have you, Julia, and this wonderful community to help us to keep walking.
Hello Fertile Mamas! I haven’t been able to join the calls or write because I was away for a while visiting family. I was less stressed when I was away and now I come back to being an emotional mess. I was able to better deal with my orphans while we were away but now I’m at rock bottom. I’ve had a rough day and I’ll spare the details, but I just can’t seem to get out of this funk. I have a lot of toys/clothes/baby stuff that I kept from my first child through the years and it’s taking up too much space in the house and in my head. I have donated some of it over time but there is more that needs to go. It’s hard to part with it and I get very emotional. I have an orphan who thinks that if I give it away, then I won’t be able to afford new stuff and won’t have another baby. My visionary thinks this is ridiculous. I’m going to attempt to clean more tomorrow but it’s very very hard and draining both physically and emotionally but something I need to do. I shared my day’s emotions with a friend and she said that I’m focusing on what I don’t have, instead of focusing on what I have. I get that, and realized I should be more grateful. But I’m human and not perfect. The more years that pass since my daughter was born, the stronger the orphan gets who says that the age difference would be too huge so what’s the point and my husband is getting older…blah blah. Oh My friend also made a comment about my husband’s age and how if he’s tired now then how could he be there for another child if this one is too much. I am so drained today emotionally and physically that I can’t see a strong visionary right now. Thanks so much for your support! I miss the calls too!
I am reminding my messy self that I am not perfect – nor will I ever be. So lets not put that pressure on ourselves anymore. It seems to be a constant orphan I work with. The orphan who tells me everythign I am doing wrong and the other orphan telling her to shut the F up. It has been quite a muscle I have been working but bringing the visionary in to lead them to discipline and realize alot of what I am working on doing is for my best self. Allowing the orphan who wants to beat myself up all the time – to allow this self care and to stop trying to sabotage it is one I continue to work with. She is a tough little cookie!
Oh man. Lightbulb! I didn’t realize the one who told the annoying/frustrating/sad/etc. orphan to “shut the F*** up” was another orphan! That’s how I often treat most of my most troublesome orphans. I want to “tough love” them, but really what I’m doing is engaging in an orphan-to-orphan conversation. Whoa. I never saw that before. I thought I was being visionary by telling the orphans to shape up. Would I treat my kid like that? No. When she is misbehaving or panicked or upset, I don’t tell her to shut the f*** up. Never! I may need to be firm with her, but always loving and almost always calm. Thanks for the insight!
GutsyMama and Butterfly – I totally hear you. I have been reassuring the hell out of my orphans because they can be totally out of control in making me feel like I am spinning my wheels of futility. They are fear, exclusion, envy. I realized that since I was little, I have always needed to reassure my mom as she has a lot of anxiety and lashes out a lot. It has led to me being outwardly calm and very reassuring to friends, family and patients, but essentially devoid of reassurance for myself. So, over the last month, whenever I worry about something, instead of going down the rabbit hole of hours of self-deprecation, I have basically reassured myself, even sometimes to the point that I feel a little ridiculous. But it feels like what my orphans and I need.
My husband I had dinner with his son last night. It was fun and he is a great kid. I found orphans popping up everywhere as dinner ended and on our way home – you will never have a child, you are not part of his family, you will not have grandchildren, you aren’t a part of anything they were saying. I stepped back (and am still doing this this morning) and said why am I worried about things that may never happen? The only one who is excluding me is me, as both my husband and his son were very inclusive and kind. But this is a lot of work, kind of reprogramming the way I talk to myself and think about myself.
Hi all,
a week ago that a part of me is emerging that is not afraid to say to my husband: “We have such a rich life!” and he answered “that’s so nice to hear, you never say such things!” And I realized it is truly a new part of me that has been silenced. I always said what wasn’t happening, or nagging, we don’t have kids yet, I don’t know if we ever will etc. I was really hurting him by saying these things, but it became a point of view through which I saw everything in my life. In passive aggressive sort of way. It really surprised me to hear myself say as we went swimming to a lake last weekend, how rich our lives were, but even more, how happy he was to hear me say it. And I meant it.
Yesterday, at a weekend with a friend of ours and her two daughters, Emily asked me if I ever had a baby. I said “Not yet” She said “then maybe you will have a baby soon” as she pointed to my belly that is a bit fatter now. And I agreed, “maybe I will have one soon” It was so touching to have a six year old remind me to look at my life as a possibility, not a lack. I am enjoying to also be more aggressive when I ask people for favours. The emerging Eva is the one who dares to ask for favours, and who accepts invitations, both of these weeks have been lived so fully, that I don’t remember last time I lived with such vigor.
I also went to see my gynecologist, whom I haven’t seen since November. I have been taking a retest of my immune markers, that remained high. She said, since we don’t have a recent test result, it may have changed since your last test..I was so happy for her attitude, and really appreciate she doesn’t push me into anything. She prescribed Clomiphene, but I said I didn’t want to take it, and she said, ok, you don’t have to take it. Somehow I left very happy and don’t dread the next visit.
Yours,
Eva
My emerging next self appears at times to be crashing around clumsily grasping at all these new tools and ways to finally nurture ALL of me, that is to say all of my orphans (and there are many)… and yet at other times, on reading this blog for example, it falls into place and everything on this beautiful journey makes wonderful sense. And the spirit is soothed. I’m very grateful to have found FertileHeart and looking forward to the call later today with the other visionary mums and of course Julia – what a treat! To hear your calmness of both voice and spirit, helps enormously. I love love love when you say: ‘let’s just breathe on that’ or ‘let’s all take a breath’ and I have been incorporating that in my life, to just give myself a minute or more to be with it, to be with life, to take it more lightly and yet at the same time so much more in depth. Many thanks for this blog and l’m looking forward to later.
Oh I so love that too When Julia would ask us all to take a breath together. Felt so relaxing and reassuring. Like everything can wait. First, we need to relax :) Just one deep breath can have such a huge calming effect, isn’t it? I also have been using that at various times when I find myself getting anxious or irritated.
Life is such a beautiful and mysterious journey. Life brings a lot of challenges (including the fertility challenge) and it does not help at all to be negative and to see oneself as a failure. Challenges present a unique opportunity to give birth to our next self. Striving to create a miracle of life is like trying to qualify for the Olympic Games. The Olympic Games are a source of inspiration and empowerment. Athletes who make it to the Olympic Games have strong body and mind, are fearless and patient, and believe in themselves. Choosing to see oneself as a “work in progress” that can do better and achieve great things is the halfway to success and happiness. It is important to be a believer and to see every challenge as a gift.
Dear Julia and FH friends.
I loved this blog entry and have enjoyed reading the comments. It feels good that it is okay to be a mess. Sometimes I eat well and many times I don’t. I don’t like myself when I don’t eat well. But it is also guidance. I need to work in this area among others. I am learning to adapt when things don’t turn out as planned and I may not have all the ingredients I need to make something or I may not get to the grocery trip i wanted to make on the day I want. But I need to adapt and not be hung up when things don’t go per the plan and be creative, improvise.
Julia invited me to engage in creative ways in my life. In the first half of this week, I wrote a poem that came to me as I was thinking of it in my commute. Here it is. With love and healing thoughts to all.
A mother’s musings
————————
There I was groping in the dark
Popping a myriad supplements
Clueless confused fearful
I was frozen in my tracks
One day I saw a lighthouse
Was it an answer to my prayers
Or a blessing from my ancestors
That’s when I started walking towards you
I now know that alone I’m not
And No. I don’t have a disease
It’s taking a lil longer for our union
But be rest assured I’m walking towards you
I huddled in her basement with your aunts
Waiting for her to hand me a cure
For all my ailments mystery and pain
She bestowed me authority over myself instead.
She is feisty creative enlightened n passionate
Dare to dream and keep walking she says
The alternative is simply not acceptable
For I long to hold you in my arms
Day after day I enter an imaginal world
Healing countless past memories
And doubts and choosing my next first step
I’m learning to have fun along the way
One day when I wake up I will find myself
in a reality More beautiful than one I ever imagined
Everyday I’m grateful to you Julia for being my lighthouse.
Give me one burning question she says
I falter and hesitate and sometimes just stare
But I’m waiting patiently while birthing you and my next self
Today I am taking the next step towards light.
– Harmonious Life
Absolutely brilliant this is HL. You really are very creative. So nicely put. I can feel every line of this poem. Love and hugs to you.
To think that you thought of yourself as not being creative. Those little orphans, we really must do whatever it takes to set them straight. Such lovely lines in this poem, that reflect your generous, tenderhearted nature. Thank you, it’s a pleasure and an honor to be sharing this birthing adventure with you, dear Harmonious Life!
Thank you dear Julia for your encouragement and for believing in each one of us when we have a hard time doing so ourselves.
Thank you for the call this evening. It is nice to get to make and receive new friends on the circle.
Thank you Gracelife and Chopin for your words of encouragement. I was thinking about my not yet born baby when I wrote it. And was thinking of everyone I have attended the two workshops with and have been on the circles with. This community is really a gift.
I took my visionary outreach action today after the call and posted on a new forum about this work and the books.
Love.
xxxx
Thank you, Harmonious Life, for writing this poem. I love reading it, and I love the title too. And maybe one day you will be able to show it to your child and say This poem I wrote to you before you were even born!
Beautiful inspiring poem!!! Thank you for sharing it with us, it is so heart felt I can also connect with many lines in it. Lots of love!
This is so beautiful Julia. I’ve been reading about birthing stories and labor and this post reminds me about the pushing stage. They say when you are finally pushing your baby out, it feels like two steps forward one step backward every time you push, meaning, the baby comes out a little, then goes back half the way into the mother, until he/she is finally out.
Two posts ago, the blog was about saying “no.” The visionary I’ve been trying to give birth to is someone who will validate her needs and ask for what she wants, without second guessing, without waiting for someone to recognize her needs and provide them, just going for it, because she knows she deserves it.
So these past few weeks, I’ve been feeling how I am almost birthing her, then she fades away, then comes back stronger.
A big part of my journey has been to trust myself, to trust my body, to trust life overall. When I read these stories about women birthing their babies in a natural way, fully aware, how they let themselves go and trust their bodies and their own power, the love they express for their babies once they come out, nothing can move me as much right now. I want to live that experience so bad. There’s a big orphan who fears medical intervention (once again), how they can ruin my chances of having this natural birth, how they are the “enemy.” The same old orphan who mistrusted everyone and everything ever since I started trying to have a baby, I am sure even before that.
Then something happened. I’ve been having dreams and signals from the ultimate mom that are helping me birth this visionary who will have the experience that she wants because she will be able to validate her needs and ask for help to have them covered. She can totally have the same experience regardless of the details, all she’ll have to do is trust and she’ll be able to be present and love her baby as much as any women in those stories.
Trusting that she and her baby will get the birth they are supposed to have because that’s what they’ve been getting so far. I never expected or planned to experience anything that happened in this journey, and looking backwards I feel so blessed. I’ve been hearing stories about people getting pregnant the first time they try, or planning their lives because they know they will get pregnant right away, it is just so different from our experience but I still would not change I thing. And that is what I love about this work, I probably would never be able to see it before. To love my messy self and my messy life because I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Dear brave caterpillar,
thanks for writing this. I can recognize the fear of medical intervention and I like the idea of reading stories about births.
Literally every time a FH blog pops up it seems to be exactly what I am feeling or the place I am in head-space wise. Literally… every time. I was feeling weepy this morning. 10 years ago I would have chalked it up to stress.. know I think… hormonal imbalance, low progesterone, peri-menopause .. and I start doing what I refer to as an orphan based flat spin. I need to love this part of my birthing process and as Amy mentioned above.. birth is messy but it is birth, something new emerging into the world to be loved and tended to.
Friend who teaches positive parenting classes emailed yesterday with a note about the Olympics. Her favorite event is gymnastics. She has been watching the events and she realized that there were mistakes. Tons and tons of mistakes. Glorious, beautiful, out of this world “perfect” athletes making mistake after mistake and STILL standing up on the podium with medals. Because they are HUMAN. And so are we. I make tons of parenting mistakes with my 4 years old son. The self that’s waiting to be born is the one who is okay with mistakes, specifically parenting mistakes. I’m not the Ultimate Mom, im a HUMAN mom. I get tired, i get sad, i get angry. And that’s okay.
Few days ago I decided to have a “being grateful” marathon. Throughout the day, I kept reminding myself and feeling thankful for all the wonderful things in my life. From the water that flowed out of the tap when I brushed my teeth..to the amazing team that works with me.
Then Julia came to my mind and I realised what a blessing it is to have her and have this community. I too was alone and dejected. How scary it was to feel that there is no one who will understand me. I also felt like a total ‘mess’.
Then I discovered Julia and her work. And through this work, I am discovering so many aspects of myself. It’s like a training school preparing me to become the mother that I would like my child to have. It is also helping me heal my relationship with my mother. She too had a difficult relationship with her mother. I didn’t want to continue that legacy and I can see things changing.
I’m out on a holiday with my husband. It’s ovulation time for me. And guess what? I don’t care whether we are going to do it or not. If it happens, great.But I’m just going with the flow :) I’m pleasantly surprised at myself. I’ve driven myself (and poor husband) crazy about dates and conception month after month after month.
Looks like I’m finally learning to release control and hand it over to God or whatever else we like to call it :) It will happen.
Gracelife,
I love when you say ‘preparing to become the mother I would like my child to have”, can you be more specific about what you imagine? I wonder about this myself, and my husband sometimes says what a wonderful mother I will be. This is a new thing to be hearing. I too, notice, how my relationship with my own mother has been developing. She even said to me that her mother didn’t love her. She said some things that were hard to hear. I would say, “she loved me. I am her granddaughter.” Because I did feel loved by my maternal grandmother. So, in a way, I am noticing their own relationship healing, although she has been dead for twenty years, retrospectively. I am creating an image of my own mother that I wish I had – and she has the best of both my mother and her mother. It is like a collage of the two.
Enjoy your vacation!
Dear Chopin,
Before I started this work with Julia, I suffered from a lot of guilt of having disappointed my parents [just a story I told myself] and I also focussed a lot on my shortcomings than on my positives. I would always bend backwards to please people and felt very underconfident about birthing and raising a child. I did not even trust my body and had a fear of child-birth. Many of these things I did not even know I had, but they came to light gradually.
During childhood, my mother was often unavailable either physically or emotionally and for a long time I held that against her. Now as I am looking forward to welcome a baby in our life, I realise I have professional aspirations which I would like to see fulfilled. It would worry me that I am going to repeat the same thing my mother did, and be unavailable for my child.
But I realised the folly in my attitude. There is a line in the song “Affirmation” by Savage Garden. It says “I believe your parents did the best job they knew how to do” I love that line. There were a lot of wonderful things my mom did for me and still continues to do, things which only a mother could have done. She may not have been perfect, but she did her best. One thing I know for sure, I will also do my best. This is something that I don’t allow myself to forget very easily. Every time I feel ticked off about something that my parents say or do, I put myself in their shoes and try to understand what’s making them do this.
I stand up for myself, I am more vocal about my feelings, I am in charge of my health and even if I indulge myself when I feel like it, I don’t allow anyone to make me feel guilty about it. I like this version of me much better :) When I say I was a mess earlier, trust me, I was a real mess :)
I look around and see so many women beautifully managing their mommy life and their career and I would like to be one of them. That’s what I imagine. Thank God my daughter [ I really want a girl!!] gave me more time to work on myself. Now we feel ready to welcome her :)))
This reminds me of when I was going through a major emotional transition in my life and a dear friend said to me, “birth is messy, my dear.” Yes, yes it is, perfectly, horribly, wonderfully, frighteningly messy – and so full of life force. So many of these truths are simple, but not easy.