As I have been joined on this Journey to Life by a New Life, which is my daughter Celest, I have decided to start focusing again on my journey to life blog. I have allowed myself to wander off-course, focusing on other things, like the end of a rope frayed in many different directions. I've been trying to tend to all the ends instead of weaving them back together into one main line, One Focus and stronger for it: Who I Am - where everything flows from this point and focus.
Having given birth to Celest has been the catalyst to giving myself a second chance and a fresh start. After I gave birth, I got many congratulations and people telling me they are proud of me and how well I've done. This felt really good to hear, but getting pregnant and giving birth is not exactly an accomplishment - it's not necessarily something to be proud of. It actually involves very little on behalf of the parents - it is the physical body takes on the task and does all the work. So if anything, I am proud of my body for what it accomplished, now THAT is quite an amazing feat. What I did was to support my body, and I can be proud of that, while my partner created an environment within which to place my body, he relieved the stress in my life and so in my body, and he prepared a home within which we could bring a new life, and he should be proud of that. Come back to me in about 18 years if you want to know if I am proud of myself as a mother. Only then will I really be able to look at that!
I use the word 'catalyst' to describe the pregnancy/birth process, and now having a little one in my care, because I do not place the responsibility of 'how I feel about myself', 'what is my value' and 'my worth' onto this child that is now in my life. It is not 'because of her' that I have felt worthy of my own forgiveness again, but the pregnancy, and birth and now having her has shown me and reminded me of certain parts of myself that I had forgotten about or had been denying myself.
I had, over the years, gotten to a point of feeling 'unforgiveable' and 'unchangeable'. This is after years of having nothing really work out in my life and according to my assessment. The experience of giving certain jobs, projects or commitments my All, and then falling apart and/or having the thing fall apart as well, failing over and over again at times where I should have known better, feeling betrayed and believing I deserved it, and other such examples of the things that bring us down in life (things we ACCEPT and ALLOW to 'bring us down').
Within and towards the end of all of this, I had several miscarriages. I was fighting feelings of shame and feeling undeserving of such a gift as a child. There had been events in my life occurring at and around the same time which part of me was digging myself int a deep dark pit about, and the miscarriages were like the kick while I was already down. I began to access a certain morality about it, thinking things like 'only those deserving of it will be gifted a child by life '- which apparently meant that I was obviously undeserving, as I was only experiencing miscarriage after miscarriage. All to say, I was at a pretty low point.
I say that only "part of me" was digging myself into a hole, it's because there was always that part of me that stood (or sometimes barely held on) - that part of me that trusts myself, that believes in myself, that holds myself dear. It's like this understanding that, as low and dark as you can go in your mind, you know that that is not all of you, and when those parts of you are brought to the surface, you have the opportunity to forgive and change them. However, when I stopped writing for myself, I went into a point of 'too much-ness' - as if too much had accumulated and it is 'too much' and 'too late', and there is no way I can now catch up and get my bearings within it all. It felt as though I just went blank and started to live day by day with this giant boulder on my shoulders, and that all I could really focus on was getting through the day.
However, the events that took place in the months before, during and after my pregnancy and birthing process allowed for a point of opening up and remembering, slowing down within myself, like my feet touching down on the ground and within myself again. You do not have to go through the actual birth of a child to give yourself a fresh start. For me, the birth was simply a catalyst. with the pregnancy and then the birth, and now having a daughter where the element of 'choice' is taken away in so many ways.
I will share about this experience more, but for now I herein recommit myself to my Journey to Life.
