I have barely had any sleep in four days. I usually fall asleep as soon as my head hits the pillow at night, but recently things have kept me awake – thoughts, and emotions, and plans and worries – future ones and present ones– real ones and imaginary ones – for sure.
So there I am in the bathroom at 6 am. I’m knackered and exhausted, sleep-deprived, hair is a mess, wearing a milk-stained t-shirt from breastfeeding the baby, eyes still more closed than open. My three-year-old bouncing up and down in front of me: “Mummy, mummy, can I take this teddy-bear downstairs with me? Can I? Can I?” At that moment, some very sleep-deprived cells in my brain can’t take any of it anymore: “If you carry that teddy-bear downstairs with you, we need to throw away three others. I’m so tired – I don’t want to tidy and tidy and tidy anymore.” She stops bouncing and just stares at me. What? Wait. What did I just say? Where the heck did that come from? Keep that one – throw three others away?! Sweet lord! “I’m sorry baby,” I muster. “Of course you can take your teddy-bear downstairs. It’s yours. Mummy is just really tired,” I manage to say. Big hug. Faith restored.
My babies crack me open – they break me physically, mentally and emotionally every single day, and I love them with a love deeper and truer than I have ever loved ever before: with a wide-open, unguarded heart. So scary! I didn’t see this pain and mess, and beauty and love coming, but it’s here, it’s real. Sometimes the love I feel inside my body is so overwhelming that it spills out all over my edges – it expands beyond my body and seems to solidify in front of my very eyes into a big fat heart-shaped balloon that is about to pop and sprinkle stardust all over the whole wide Universe. A balloon so gigantic I can’t wrap my arms around it. A feeling so vast that I can’t put it into words.
I pray to God every day that my grumpy teddy-bear murdering moments won’t break my tiny babies’ souls before they get a chance to fully explore the world with all its beauty and pain. That they won’t think that I’m the mum from hell or worse, that there is something wrong with them that might have made me snap. Then at the same time, I’m thinking, “well wait – your children, their hearts, their souls, are much more potent and capable than you could ever know – how dare you fathom that you could ever break infinite spirits and their infinite souls with a ridiculous comment like that.” I know. I’m instantaneously humbled. I know people are so so capable and resilient –children all over the world have endured and are enduring famine, disease, wars, abuse, sometimes all at once, and they’ve survived. True, but people everywhere are also suffering from PTSD and need psychiatrists. So?! I’m still really torn.
There is always this tug at my heart – this desire to keep my babies warm and safe and whole – shielded from life’s horrors, tiny or real serious ones – and from “teddy-bear murdering me” mornings.
I want to protect them and be real at the same time. I want to be sweet mum all the time and yet allow myself to have shitty mornings and show it. I want my children’s world to be just perfect, but I don’t want it to be too perfect at the same time either to prepare them for all of what is “out there” and yet to come. The world is a “brutiful” place says Glennon Doyle: beautiful and brutal. I want my children to see that at times this brutiful world breaks me with fatigue, with worry, with decisions – the ones I can take and the ones that are taken for me – with loss, with death, but that it rebuilds me too – us – with friendship, with love, with support, with a random smile. I don’t want to be accountable for my children’s welfare, and at the same time, I just love being accountable for their welfare. All those thoughts and emotions – all rolled into one. I’m trying to be the very best version of me, and I am failing at it every single day. And yet I keep trying – insanity. I would have quit any other project by now under those circumstances, but this one I keep sustaining with all my might. I guess that’s what real love does. It keeps whispering into your ear to try and try again because it’s worth it. After all, you care. It makes you want to keep trying and trying and trying even if you know that you’ll always fall short – mostly falling short of the expectations you had of yourself. And actually, you know that in the end, it doesn’t really matter if you are your very best version or just any decent version of you, because this you that you are is the you that your children call mummy.
Glennon Doyle wrote something along the lines of “as long as you are in there battling, you are doing this living right.” The ones with no heart-break are already numb and dead. Well, seen from that perspective, I’m mightily alive with all those badass emotions and thoughts keeping me awake at night. I guess what I’m trying to say is that this tug at my heart and this inner back and forth leave me with no clue when it comes to being a mum – when it comes to being a wife, a friend, a daughter, a teacher, a woman, … – any and all of what makes me me, really. I’m taking one moment, one emotion, at a time and see where it will lead me – all of us, as individuals and as a family. That’s all there is to it really.
And those are the thoughts swirling around in my head at 6 am after 20 minutes of sleep all night – no coffee yet. “Damn, I can’t have a cup of real coffee, see: breastfeeding.” Fuck that. Break those parenting rules. I’ll have my cup of coffee—just one. So here’s to all the milk-stained mummies out there, to all the ones trying to be their very best – mummy or not – for the ones they love – failing and trying and failing all over again, to great books that keep you sane in the middle of the night and to friends who laugh at your text messages, also in the middle of the night, when irrational worries keep you awake, and you can’t fall asleep.
love, Linda.
Feel free to share if you found meaning in those words
If you are anything like me, you probably had a million plans for what you were going to do during the recent lockdown. I hope you accomplished to do what you set out to do because I did fuck all. On social media, I could see people baking bread and creating beautiful art and decluttering their homes, and I was confined to the sofa, frustrated that I had been robbed of my sovereignty. This pregnancy really hit hard, and while my previous pregnancies were all about only morning sickness, now the early stages of this pregnancy bore the title “all-day sickness.” All I wanted to do and craved was pizza and sleep, and being able to get up without fainting.
So talking about challenges and boundaries, currently being pregnant with baby number four has brought about a new level of challenges for me that I had never experienced before. I could barely get up off the couch and into the shower, for three months – now that’s confinement. During the summer 2019, when I met my dad for the first time after more than 30 years, I had one meltdown after the other for weeks – one moment I was thrilled and exhilarated. The next I was in tears, thinking about all the lies and secrets that I had been confronted with my entire life, and I felt heart-broken and betrayed. I couldn’t step out of my emotional turmoil back then, and this time around, I couldn’t fix my bodily pandemonium either. A body is so magical, and yet so fragile all at once.
– song from the movie the fundamentals of caring –
At the forefront, my pregnancy made me deal with my physical shortcomings heads on. But physical and emotional distress are intrinsically linked, so when I say that at first sight, I had to deal with my body’s issues, I have to say that I was also exposed to feelings of guilt and shame and feeling disempowered. I was so miserable those past three months – miserable because I had believed my whole life that if I’m not productive all the time that I’m a failure. Babies, when they are born, don’t contribute to a household either – they just demand care and food, and love and cuddles and human contact and genuine love and we give freely with full hearts. It makes me laugh to picture a baby lying in its crib, contemplating how unfortunate she feels for not being able to do the washing up or the laundry. It’s absurd to think of such a thing. And yet, what made me think that I am less than, because I couldn’t get up without feeling sick and fainting. I’m growing a tiny human inside my body – for the fourth time. That shit is epic, and it should be treated as such at all times. I hope that I will be able to help my babies preserve their innate feeling of being enough, of being a welcome contribution to the world. Also, I hope that all mothers reading this will be reminded of how lucky and incredibly strong they are and that they are allowed to rest whenever they feel like it, because I forgot to appreciate myself, but you shouldn’t.
you have been criticizing yourself for years and it hasn’t worked. try approving of yourself and see what happens.
louise l. hay
As much as I resented my helplessness and pitied myself, and ranted, and cried, nope, nothing could take the sickness away and restore my productivity and vigour. So I started to delve deeper and to look closely at my symptoms and the possible causes of my physical ailments – and the state of the world in general because I had plenty of time 🙂 Inevitably, the thought crossed my mind that I admire those people that have been suffering from severe illnesses and limitations for years and that are still battling on. Man, I have utter respect for you, because, at some point, I just broke down crying and thought I couldn’t take this anymore – I couldn’t take it anymore, not being in control of my body, not being able to make myself feel whole and well again.
While writing this, I am watching the news featuring the current “Black Lives Matter” movement. I can’t even start to imagine what it must be like to feel powerless and not entirely in charge of one’s life from birth on, always being afraid of prosecution, because of other people’s twisted beliefs. I honestly can’t wrap my head around the fact that there are people who believe that they are superior to someone else based on skin colour, religion, or background. And no matter how hard I am trying, I honestly can’t grasp this concept in no way whatsoever.
– me and a childhood friend in the early 90s –
I know that my lack of understanding might come across as naïve and my pregnancy problems as trivial compared to what is going on in the world right now. However, I still believe that a link and universal truth are underlying all of those experiences. Our bodies instinctively and innately know how to set boundaries, when we abuse our bodies by eating unhealthy foods, or by overexposure to stress or to exercise. Our bodies sent us signals and symptoms that eventually develop into full-blown conditions if we are not listening to the subtle hints that are directed our way. Our human design makes us come to a halt and question our behaviour for us to be able to restore our natural health, which is what I have been experiencing those past few months.
When it comes to the current riots or the recent, still present, pandemic, we need to admit that there had been warning signs too, but we chose to ignore them. We chose to keep exploiting our natural resources and our immune systems; we chose to focus on our screens instead of building meaningful relationships with the people in our lives that are most important to us. We chose to engage in trivial activities like watching TV or mindless shopping, instead of taking into account how history is about to repeat itself, and how we can be part of the solution and not part of the problem. We all did it – me too. And I have to say this development scares me. And although the current political eruptions and revelations all around the world are frightening, they are also potentially healing our ignorance and restoring natural balance.
The early stages of a pregnancy feel like “nothing” and “look like nothing”, but behind the scenes, there is utter magic. I want you to remember this: we are evolving even though we might not be able to see or track our everyday growth. During the current health crisis, streets, cities, beaches in the outside world, in the visible world, have all been empty. Nothing seemed to be happening, but the people who are to the countries what our cells are to our bodies have all been evolving and growing and changing and dying and we have all come out of this lockdown different people. We might not be aware of our altered selves and still be hanging on to our habits and routines. Yet, on levels invisible to our eyes, we have undergone some substantial change, which we can either embrace and explore and develop or deny. So personal and global problems, although they might be fundamentally different, are still intrinsically linked with regards to the universal truths of boundaries, challenges, and natural balance that they carry at their core.
we are evolving even though we might not be able to see or track our everday growth
Two nights ago, when I was lying in bed, I had this awareness or this insight, and it made me cry. I was thinking about how much I love my babies and how overwhelming this feeling is at times. It isn’t something that has a beginning or an end – it just is. When you are lying in my arms, pretending to be a tiny newborn, I look at your curvy cheeks, and your long eyelashes and I see perfection in all of your features, and I am wondering how on earth did I get so lucky. Thinking of how fortunate I am, I feel for those mothers and fathers whose children were taken away from them, through the hands of all the injustices there are in this world and that are currently being revealed. My dear darling children, I hope that the future I am leading you towards will be filled with compassion and care and real sovereignty for every human being. And if I say that large-scale battles reflect internal battles, then I can say that I am not innocent when it comes to fighting battles and to contributing towards the hatred in this world. My struggles and fights are tiny compared to the global state of the planet. And mostly, I am arguing with other people inside my head, thinking about all the great things I should have said and how distraught I am because of something someone else said or did. Those quarrels in our lives might be internal, but they still contribute to the conflict in the world in their own way.
– currently listening to this audiobook – I adore Caroline Myss.
Some battles are easier confronted and dealt with than others, but we must look at what is irritating us and resolve it to contribute to a peaceful world. I can say, for example, that now I fully embrace being a mum but it took me almost two years to get to this point. No, just hear me out: you were welcome and loved right from the start, but I wasn’t ready for the isolation and confinement at home that being a mother had brought on for me. What the world is experiencing right now, I had to go through during the pregnancies and right after your birth. So staying at home with you now is not hard for me anymore. It’s what our everyday life looks like anyway – it’s peace. Isolation, over time, has turned into contentment, bliss, and gratitude for what is. Your birth and presence demanded and taught me how to stand still, observe and fully take in – serenity. On a global level, because of the lockdown, our species could observe and notice all that has been absurd for so long in our surroundings, our habits, our governments, and our leaders and rise to the occasion with stronger convictions and more gratitude, but fiercely beating hearts – could.
When you were born, I stayed home and all the diapering and feeding and doing the laundry felt so monotonous and repetitive. I observed you develop a bit more every day, and rejoiced in it, but I didn’t have many people to share my newly found wonder with. I didn’t call any of my friends, because I figured they were all busy – they didn’t call me either – I guess they figured I was busy. In hindsight, it hurts to think that we didn’t reach out to each other, but the Universe knows what it is doing, and my loneliness back then helped me grow into being comfortable with my own self, my own thoughts, my own company. And it also helped me to now come to the conclusion that I chose to withdraw into my own little world, instead of strengthening loving friendships. Remember to reach out when you feel like removing yourself from your circle of friends.
remember to reach out when you feel like removing yourself from your circle of friends
Now, after having read Dr Henry Cloud’s book “Boundaries”, I have realized that my lack of healthy boundaries didn’t allow me to “keep the good in and the bad out.” Recently reading this book has been a real eyeopener in so many ways for me. Despite my many years into personal development, this book has helped me gain genuinely new insights into why I have been and am operating in the ways I am. Feeling so sick for the past few months has made me look at my boundaries and the ones that I have and have not been setting. The barriers I had not been setting have depleted my energy, and the pregnancy has not been the reason for my physical breakdown, but just the final straw that broke the camel’s back. And in the current crisis, people have subconsciously or consciously, but still ignoring their truths, been avoiding limit setting, but now we can’t avoid it any longer. On a personal scale, there are many injustices and boundary trespassing that I have endured without saying anything. Internally, I used to get angry, but instead of expressing my anger and addressing the problem, I used to bottle it up and avoid conflict. On a global scale, what we are experiencing now is centuries of repressed anger and battles that have been fought for way too long internally instead of out in the open, where they can be discussed, cleared, and healed.
So, how do I choose to contribute to restoring small scale peace? Well, for one, I am telling myself that instead of allowing anger to fester in my guts, I am going to express it and to address those people that have crossed my boundaries. At the same time, I am willing to be more careful and understanding when it comes to other people’s boundaries, meaning that I am trying not to be offended or feel rejected when a friend of mine cannot make it to a night out or a cup of coffee. I was once rebuked for not attending a dinner and cancelling last minute – rebuked for setting boundaries when I needed to. We should remember though that it’s our healthy boundaries that preserve our sanity and allow us to steer clear of bottled-up frustration and resentment for being forced to do something. When we crave something else, like a quiet night or solitude instead of a social gathering, we should be allowed to express that freely. If we manage to respect our boundaries and each other’s boundaries, then those boundaries will add up to collective boundaries and strong internal values.
supporting people and still letting them have control over themselves builds limitless potential. it is the recipe for greatness.
the power of the other – the startling effect other people have on you, from the boardroom to the bedroom and beyond – by dr henry cloud
For most of my life, I didn’t share any of my thoughts with anyone. (read the power of the other, by Dr Henry Cloud and find out about the four major ways in which people relate to each other). I very quickly learned that when I shared my hopes and dreams and aspirations that the world didn’t embrace all of me, but that I had exposed myself to the possibility of jealousy, cynicism, or ridicule. Soon enough, I stopped talking about what mattered most to me. Probably that’s why all those words are bursting out now. While being engrossed in my little world, books and stories had become my friends. Reading and studying psychology books and all kinds of specific and non-specific literature has helped me to make sense of my and other people’s behaviour and to see how differently our psyches choose to deal with our experiences and realities. So when it comes to positively contributing to the world and keeping “the good in and the bad out,” then I feel that learning and insight aren’t of much use if we keep our ideas solely to ourselves. Let us educate each other and allow each other a glimpse of our experiences and struggles and how we managed to overcome them.
Let us invite each other in and encourage each other to shed light on our shortcomings and darkness so that together we can face our inner demons and alter our ways of thinking and being in this world. At least that’s what I hope. And I wish with every fibre of my heart that you, my babies, will be able to define your boundaries based on your core values and universal laws of love and compassion. I hope that you will manage to protect those fiercely and lovingly, contributing one step at the time to the bigger picture. I am currently learning how to do that. There will always be limitations in and to our lives – limitations because of choices we make and constraints that we can’t influence because other people or circumstances place them on us. So don’t limit yourself when it comes to the things you feel passionate about. Go and freely explore, access, and express, because you never know when some outside force might come and limit you and confront you with boundaries that you didn’t know existed, like viruses, racism, hatred, jealousy, or unexpected illnesses. Choose to set your boundaries and set them firmly and lovingly. Keep the good in and the bad out.
Feel free to share if you found meaning in those words
Yesterday, at 5 a.m. I woke up with excruciating stomach cramps, and I couldn’t get out of bed without fainting. We called an ambulance, and I was brought to the hospital. The paramedics arrived wearing face masks, and I had to wear one too. I had taken a pregnancy test the previous day. Positive. Elation was followed by fear. What a stark contrast.
I was wondering for a long time, whether I should write this post or not because we are in the very early stages of my pregnancy, but then I changed my mind in the blink of an eye. Of course was I going to write this post. All of me just has to, and here’s why: When I was pregnant with our first daughter, Catherine, I had kept the pregnancy a secret until the end of the fifth month. I had done everything according to the “unofficial rule book.” I had been hiding my morning sickness at work, and I hadn’t talked to anyone about our growing joy. So it took me until the beginning of the sixth month before I posted a picture on social media saying “it’s a girl” revealing our secret and finally being able to openly share our fantastic news. We were elated.
Then only three weeks later, things started to go wrong. We discovered that our beautiful baby daughter, our firstborn, was suffering from a fatal heart disease, very rare, and that she would enter this world stillborn. We hadn’t seen that coming. At some point, I thought, “damn, I wish I hadn’t posted that picture on Facebook, because now I have to tell everyone that we lost our tiny, perfect baby.” Silly me, because it turned out that whenever anyone asked or addressed our loss we managed to openly discuss what we had experienced, and our sharing led to many other people opening up about their past losses and grief – things they hadn’t dared tell anyone before or pain from the past that had been buried deep down in their heart of hearts for decades was finally being partly released. It was the beautiful amidst the ugly that managed to raise its head in that safe space of mutual trust and respect.
baby Catherine – born 24.03.2016
So now, four years dowm the line, my only regret from that time when I was carrying our first child is that we didn’t start celebrating every single moment right from the beginning on and that instead we had been worrying way too much about trivial stuff and thinking about the perfect timing for the big reveal. We had been wondering for so long if everything was going to be alright, until all of a sudden it wasn’t alright anymore.
Why keep a baby a secret when it is more than welcome in your life? Why for three months or even longer? Who gets to make all those arbitrary rules in the first place? Losing a baby is just as bad three weeks into the pregnancy as it is after seven months or three years. Sure, the emotional and physical connection has gone through different stages of development, but what all those losses have in common, no matter at which stage they occur, is the sudden break down of hopes and dreams that had started to emerge on the blank canvas of our imagination. Stories we had started telling ourselves since the first positive test about all the adventures we were going to experience with our babies and indulging in speculations about their hair or eye colour, their looks, or character, all screechingly brought to a halt.
What I learned in the past is that in case of doubt, or uncertainty or if you are in a position of really not being able to know what will come next, then maybe choose to focus on the joyful now and share it with others. Brighten someone’s day with your joy. Radiate it out into the world. Then at least the “now” is joyful, even if the “next” might not be. I choose to tickle our babies until they have a belly ache from laughter – I choose to look at my husband and repeat over and over again with a smile on my face: “we are going to have another baby” – I consciously choose to share our happy news in dire times; not with one or two or three, but with as many people who want to share in on our joy. You are so welcome to be part of our journey.
love. gratitude.
If I am deeply honest with myself, I do feel a lump of fear in the pit of my stomach – a tiny one – it’s there. It’s undeniable. I do know, and I am fully aware of what is happening all over the world right now, and I don’t intend to trivialize all of that grief. What about the baby – will we be able to get the regular check-ups? Will all of this have calmed down by the time the baby will be born? All of those questions are of course crossing my mind, but at the same time I stubbornly refuse to let the fear creep in and get the better of me before my physical health, or my loved ones’ health has actually been impacted. It’s tricky at times to keep the darkness at bay, but we keep choosing the sunshine, and the tiny new baby, and our children’s laughter, and our peace right now. A tiny ray of hope that is bravely saying hello amidst a world of the unknown.
– thank you klein laetitia. sweetest, most enthusiastic photographer –
When we lost our first baby daughter, one night my grandmother called and she kept saying: “Why do all those tragedies happen to us? To our family?” But I had never ever considered losing our daughter, or losing my mother, or growing up without a dad, or experiencing my grandfather’s death to be some sort of divine punishment. In the midst of all of this – of this current crisis – and of personal past and future crisis – maybe there is no “Why me? Why my family? Why our country?” in the way that we understand it as some sort of punishment for whatever so-called past sins we might have committed. I am adamant that no matter how excruciating the emotional pain might be, there is and will be the aftermath of unexpected support and emotional and psychological evolution and deep insight, healing, and understanding too if we allow this growth to take place.
– serenity –
After our daughter’s passing, I didn’t see all the trauma and the “why did this happen to us?,” but I saw the messages, the phone calls, the cards – our loved ones reaching out to us and we experienced doctors who deeply cared, beyond their medical duties. We found our gynaecologist call us on his day off, just to make sure we were okay. We had our wedding to look forward to, and we had us. How lucky is that?
Losing our daughter didn’t “happen” to us. She brought us joy and lots of experiences. Yesterday, I listened to a podcast, and there was a stage four cancer survivor who explained that from his point of view, there are no positive or negative experiences – there are just experiences full stop. Our soul came here to experience all of what we are going through, and it’s how we handle our gains and our losses that defines our time here on earth.
Before my first pregnancy, I didn’t know what to make of doctors really. I had this vague stereotypical idea of what a doctor was like, but experiencing our daughter’s heart condition brought us lots of new insights and understanding. We asked lots of questions and discovered that experts are all too willing to answer our questions if we ask. We learned that we were the odd ones out because usually, people weren’t asking that many questions. At least apparently not in our country. But asking questions is imperative. The gynaecologist who delivered our stillborn baby told me: “I’m always wondering why my patients are like sheep in a herd. They never ask any questions. They just sit there, numb, quiet, motionless, like deer caught in headlights.” I guess people being hesitant to ask questions boils down to a combination of several things: fear of the unknown, fear of getting answers that we don’t want to hear, but would rather avoid if we could, fear of coming across as stupid or uneducated, or fear that after asking, we are being left with even more unanswered questions.
If anything, I learned from what we had to go through that we should collaborate with our doctors and medical staff and ask – ask plenty of questions to help them help us. I was confirmed in my belief when I was in the hospital two nights ago: When I was lying in emergency care, waiting to be wheeled up to the maternity ward for further check-ups, the doctor opened a dose of paracetamol and wanted to administer it to me. She went through her motions without any explanations. I stopped her in her tracks, asked what she was about to do and declined the treatment. At first, she was perplexed and went on to say that she couldn’t leave me in pain while I had to wait for further treatment. At first, I was annoyed that she had not even attempted to let me in on her medical plans for me, but then I realized amidst the chaos and hushed voices in the hospital that this doctor too was acting out of fear: I realized it was standard protocol and she didn’t want to be blamed in case anything had gone wrong in the end. All of us want to feel safe and do the right thing at the right time. Especially if it comes to other people’s lives and happiness. In hindsight, I should have emphasized that I’ll take on full responsibility for my medical choices and that she will always be safe. Sticking to our own decisions is so empowering for us and relieving for people who usually need to be fully in charge.
By the time I was wheeled into the maternity ward in the hospital. I had tears in my eyes. The stress in the hospital was palpable, and I felt so sorry that I had unintentionally added to their stress. But then and there, one of the nurses looked at me, I mean, she really looked at me and said: “That’s why we are here. For personal stories and personal emergencies like yours. That’s what nurses, and doctors, and hospitals are for. The world is not all virus right now, although it might feel like it. The world is still also new beginnings and new life and very personal worries.” I loved her for that comment. She had said exactly what I needed to hear. In times of crisis, it’s wonderful nurses, and beautifully calm people, that make all the difference. I felt so lucky. Thank you so much for your kind words, Diane. Thank you to all the doctors and nurses. Due to the circumstances two nights ago, I could experience first hand the pent-up stress and fear regarding the uncertain future events. However, at the same time, I felt confident that there is a capable team in charge that we can rely on in times of crisis and that there are people that go out of their way to brush their own feelings of fear and uncertainty aside to help fellow human beings in distress. Those miraculous people have outgrown their former selves. I am so very grateful to have experienced this comforting side of humanity too. I admire your bravery! Thank you!
– Thank you. Your presence matters so much. You are valued and appreciated. –
So why am I writing all of this? Currently, I am watching a free video series released by Hay House (thank you Hay House , the videos are amazing!). The series deals with the phenomenon of “radical remission,” which is when people beat the odds and fully recover from a usually terminal disease. There are ten practices that radical survivors seem to all have commonly applied after their diagnosis. One of those practices is doing shadow work and walking once more through all those moments that have caused us pain in the past. But this time around consciously – really looking at what had happened and processing the feelings, hurt, and emotions. I have been writing blog posts for a few months now, and only after the launch of the series did I discover that what I was and am doing has a name: shadow work – processing past, traumatizing experiences, and turning them into positive life lessons, using every tiny inkling of hope there had been in those episodes and turning them into life lessons, providing future personal guidance, values, and standards. I hope for all of us that we manage to use the boulders that were put in our way and that we laboriously had to work through to pave our future roads with resilience and memories of growth and goals and expansion – for us and for future generations to come, like for our tiny baby.
“all creativity requires some stillness.” dr. wayne dyer
We might not know the “why,” but we can apply the “what.” What am I going to do with this newly added experience now and in the future to make my time here on earth more joyful – to turn my loss into gain? Well, we, my husband and I, for one, transformed losing our first daughter into celebrating every single pregnancy that came after that right from the start on. No shame, no regret. No “what if anything might go wrong down the line? It’s still so early…” So what? What if it might go wrong? At least we laughed and rejoiced and got all caught up in positive momentum and revelled in the happiness of the moment for a minute, or a week, or for as long as it might last and hopefully all throughout the pregnancy, and way beyond. For what people forget is that even if you make it through the pregnancy, then there will be your child’s entire life that lies ahead of you and him or her and at any given moment an unexpected tragedy might strike, like the one we are in the midst of. And in times of darkness, we will be so grateful for the amounts of decisive moments and joyful memories we have been able to bag in the past, for it’s our sunny moments that are the bridges we can choose to walk on to get to the other side of this. So do you postpone celebrating life’s joys for fear of anything negative interrupting your happiness down the line? Let’s hope that the answer to that question is a fervent “no.” Let’s hope that we will all find within us the courage to celebrate a new life, or newly found love, or a new friendship or a new hobby, even if there might be a potential disappointment or heartbreak, or full blown crisis like the current one lurking down the line.
To courage. To joy. To tiny babies. To laughter. To medical professionals. And to all that is still good in this world, because there is.
Love, Linda.
catching up with some reading. started this yesterday. thank you wonderful Fabienne for recommending this to me. several times. I finally picked it up.
Feel free to share if you found meaning in those words
