Lisa for Real

Today is significant

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Today is significant.

It is the last time that I will be a year postpartum.  I will never be able to experience again much of what has happened in the last 366 days. (Through modern science, we can replicate a lot of things but childbirth is not one of them.) I have tried to archive every memory of this past year in technicolor detail but I have already forgotten more than I can remember. 

It is no wonder our youngest children always remain babies in our eyes – because we want to hold onto that feeling, always.  That feeling when their tiny hand first grasped our finger.  That feeling when we saw their first smile. When we received that first drooly kiss.  When we saw their first steps. And so on. 

The final firsts.  How incredibly bittersweet they are.

They are a reminder that motherhood is a constant barrage of beginnings and endings. At a pace unmatched by any other wonderment of our lives.  Highlighted with intense highs and lows as joyfulness and sadness gleefully tag each other in and out as they please. 

As I mourn and celebrate this final first, I also examine this re-emergence from postpartum.

Today feels very different from the other two times.

Today is significant.

Through a biological lens, this current life stage I am in are my fertile years with puberty and menopause as the bookends. And long ago, this life stage would have been filled with lots of babies. This is the time of life when Woman embodies the power of Creation.

My body, having already returned to its cycles, is overflowing with intense, creative energy, but I have no desire to add to my brood. 

Instead, I feel that energy driving me to write again, to coach again, to create projects again. Redirecting my focus to bringing about the change I want to see in the world.

Just as I am clearing my bookshelf of my pregnancy and birthing books for new material, I feel my heart, body and mind re-calibrating, shifting and shimmying about to make room for my next creations and projects.

As I hold white-knuckled onto that first year of postpartum, I also feel propelled forward to a different kind of potential. Such is motherhood, a barrage of beginnings and endings.

Today is significant.

It is the start of the rest of my motherhood.

Inspiration: Every significant moment and milestone of this past year has had an echo sometimes whispering, sometimes SHOUTING, “Savor this because it’s the last time!” Today’s echo is the loudest and one filled with incredible sadness. But at the same time, I feel a need to, an urgency to, create. To create for good, for change, for me and for my family. And so here I am, one foot trying to stand firm in the land of postpartum and the other foot trying to make marks on the rest of the world.

Kindergarten Graduation in the Time of COVID

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Yesterday, I was a mom to a kindergartener.

Today, I am a mom to a first grader. 

Just.like.that.

No pomp. No circumstance. No big party with her classmates with treats and hugs from her teachers. No end-of-year clean up to bring the experience of filling the room with her creations and laughter full circle. 

Instead, we received her belongings, worksheets, and artwork in a black garbage bag. 

Instead, there was a final Zoom class with 20 classmates. Twenty six year olds individually voicing their mix of feelings about kindergarten ending. 

As the children bravely and innocently shared, tears fell.

I mourned.

I mourned for the moments that my daughter doesn’t know she missed. I mourned this “new normal” that has replaced inperson connections with abrupt electronic contactless transactions. I mourned that no proper goodbye exists during this time.

As a lump in my throat and a tightness in my chest grew, the sadness flowed.

My emotions were not only of the moment but bottled up over the past three months of quarantine. Fermenting and bubbling under the surface while I scrambled to keep it together as employee, wife, daughter, sister, friend, neighbor, teacher, and mom. 

I mourned the robust and engaging lessons my daughter would have had instead of my husband and I playing teacher. I mourned her friendships that never got a chance to truly blossom. I mourned all of the what-if’s. 

I mourned the inability for me to change any of it.

Change.

I realize, above all, I am mourning that everything is changing. The changing that is inevitable because our children do nothing but grow and change and we have no control over it. After six years of constant change, I am again reminded that I will be battling these emotions for all of motherhood – in times of COVID or not.

I will mourn again and again the change from old normal to new normal. 

After these emotions flow, I will be ready to embrace the change.

I will be ready to embrace being a mother to a first grader.

Inspiration: This exact moment in time of quarantine is a tough one. I have competing emotions and emotional priorities. While the world is uniting and dividing around Black Lives Matter, our individual lives continue. Just as our lives continued as the COVID-19 pandemic spread around the world. My daughter graduating from kindergarten is not a small milestone and while I have wanted to focus on advocacy work and writing, these emotions bubbled up and I had to share.

What is wild?

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Wild is the hum of Mother Earth. Generations of chanting, dancing, laughter, and sorrow that she has absorbed into her core and has become the surround sound vibration we feel when we are in nature. The vibration supports us and reverberates through our feet into our souls.

Those who have lost touch with the peace of Mother Earth express their wild recklessly, dangerously, ferociously. They gnaw and thrash as they try to work their way back to Mother Earth’s bosom, fighting back the injustices they feel they have suffered without cause. They use their violence, hateful words, and close-minded arguments to tune out or drown out Mother Earth’s hum, refusing to hear it, refusing its support and love.

Wild also appears in those of us working our way back to Mother Earth, to our feminine, to our power. But the journey is not about provocation, about harm or  fighting or force. Our wild focuses on tuning into that earthly hum. Tuning into that rhythm of the Great Mother and seeing how the rhythm of our hearts fits into hers.

Inspiration: This piece was written as a response to a prompt in Jeanette LeBlanc’s course, 30 Questions To Bring You Closer To Your Wild Heart that asked me to answer the question – What is Wild?
I journaled regularly from fourth grade into the latter years of high school but for the following 13 years, my writing was exclusively academic or professional. I realized in 2015, my Year of Self Identity, that I wanted to find “my voice.” I came across Jeanette’s course and initially recommended it to a friend who was looking to work on her writing. While she didn’t join the course, I realized I would personally benefit from it and decided to embark on its 30 day journey.
I wish I could say I completed all 30 days of Jeanette’s course but I didn’t…even after taking it three times. But what did happen was a fire ignited in me to write again. For the first time, I felt like *I* was writing but at the same time, I wasn’t. Jeanette’s prompts go deep into the soul and lure words to appear on screen in a sequence I cannot fully attribute to myself. I actually came across this blog post in a text file on my desktop. I was not quite sure who wrote it, thinking perhaps I saved it after coming across it online somewhere. But I was very surprised to learn it was my writing and while I am proud, I’m also enchanted with what I am able to write when the muse flows through me.

He is Real and He is Mine – A Bond is Born

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Nine days postpartum, I shed my first tears for my son. And I finally felt like his mother.

As I looked down to see his peaceful sleeping face resting on my chest, I came to the sudden realization that he was real and he was mine and he was here to stay.

I became overcome with throat choking, stomach clenching, tear inducing emotion.

Overcome with all that had happened over the past 14 months. Back to back miscarriages, multiple scares during the pregnancy, and extra ultrasounds and blood draws made it a roller coaster of a journey. I had questioned many times whether I would ever hold him, and now here was this beautiful soul.

Overcome with perfection in my chubby baby. In the hustle and bustle of becoming a family of four, I had not had the time to really take him all in. His complete purity. His brand new skin and toes and nose and smell. His infinite potential.

Overcome with the lessons I had learned and will learn from him. His patience and ability to go with the flow had already astounded me. I could tell he had an old soul who came here with a purpose. (My secret nickname for him is little Buddha.)

Overcome with the possibility that this is my last baby. I had been in a bit of denial about this but it really hit me that I may never have another baby, never have another sacred fourth trimester. I wanted to squeeze every drop of infant goodness during our time together but also scared that I won’t do enough and not have any more opportunities to enjoy those first days again.

This overcome of emotions is pure love. It is the rawness of motherhood. The foundation of a lifelong relationship. A wave that rushes in, nearly knocking you off your feet, taking your breath away with its beauty. No matter how it feels for the mother, it is this love that fuels during those restless nights and challenging times.

A bond between mother and baby is as individual as a snowflake or a sunrise. With my rainbow baby, it took a little longer to realize and feel it – perhaps because of my previous losses or the fact that I had a demanding toddler to take care of as well. But I’m so glad that it came.

I’d love to hear – do you have an exact moment where you felt that first bond with your child(ren)?

Inspiration: I decided to write about this moment because it took place so strongly and unexpectedly.
The birth and first days postpartum with my son were very different than with my daughter. With my daughter, we had a long delivery and then were able to savor our first 48 hours together at the hospital. My husband and I didn’t tell anyone we went to the hospital to deliver her and did not have any visitors until my mom came to help out when we got home two days later.
With my son, everything was a little rushed (birth story to come soon!). I labored at home for quite a while. I ended up being 7 cm dilated by the time I went to the hospital. Delivery came only ~3.5 hours after getting to the hospital. We only stayed 24 hours after the delivery because we wanted to get home to our daughter who had spent her first night ever without me. And those 24 hours were jam-packed with tests and paperwork while trying to get acquainted with our little guy. My husband and I enjoyed a few hours total of just being the three of us but in the back of my mind and underlying many of our conversations was our daughter at home. We wondered how she slept, how she was at daycare, how she ate, etc. It was like another half of my heart and brain were somewhere else.
Leaving the hospital with my son, I didn’t feel the same as with my daughter. I was there for half the time and both my husband and I felt that the care was not as good as our first birth. The nurses did not offer to wheelchair me down like they did last time which really left a sour taste in my mouth. Additionally, I felt rushed and anxious to get home to see the new big sister.
Three and a half years ago, as I was waiting for my husband in the hospital lobby with my daughter all wrapped up in her cocoon of a swaddle, I sat down in a chair and stared down at this miniature bundle and tears fell down my cheeks onto her little body. I couldn’t hold back the intense release of emotions from the past 48 hours and I was overwhelmed with the love I felt for her. I felt like a mother – her mother – right then and there.
As I waited in the lobby this time around, I stared down at my son a little disappointed not to feel the same way. When this moment of finally feeling like his mother came at home 9 days postpartum, I felt compelled to capture it.

This Is Not My Story

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Have you ever had a true eureka moment?

I have had many and one of my biggest was a life realization that I made ten years ago.

I was getting my health coaching certification through the Institute for Integration Nutrition and was practicing my health history intake with a local student. I was the client and she was the coach. Being that this was my sixth practice session as a client, I was trying my best not to just go through the motion of answering the questions but to really imagine I was doing this for the first time so that my partner would get the most out of the practice session. Little did I know that that would serve me more than her.

I remember distinctly, I was sitting on my bed answering the first general questions about my weight, menstrual cycle and digestive system and then we started talking my childhood. She asked me about my father who had passed away three years prior. See, my dad and I never had a “relationship” where we shared stories or he took me fishing or taught me about boys. I honestly can’t even remember a true conversation we had aside from figuring out what was for lunch. His verbal communication was impacted by his epilepsy which he developed as a child, and because he never worked and stayed at home, I never really saw him as an authority figure (Yikes! Just realized I may have some issues about work and authority as I write this. I’ll have to come back to this topic another day). Due to his disability, I ended up having to take care of a lot of things in my household that normal children wouldn’t have to. I have learned since, that as a survival mechanism, I took on a lot of these responsibilities in stride and hadn’t thought much of it.

As I was explaining this to my partner, she said, “Well, it sounds like he’s had a huge impact on your life.” And before I could automatically downplay it and really minimize his role in my life as I always have, I had a huge light bulb moment.  I realized that I had been equating the lack of relationship and connection with my father to a lack of influence on my life when in reality, I could attribute almost everything to him.

Imagine you have been telling yourself one thing all of your life, whether consciously or subconsciously, and then you realize in one second that it is completely false.

I felt like my whole world turned upside down in that moment.

My first instinct was denial – I tried my very best to maintain the belief I had held for twenty-plus years. But as every argument against the idea was broken down, I started to incorporate this new truth. And would you believe it that my life made more sense than ever?

We live our day-to-day lives and our interpretations of what happens to us are the stories we tell ourselves. They shape our character and create our “truths.” But our truths are not the ultimate truth. They are the laws and standards we may live our lives but like real life laws, they can be challenged and change if needed.

A couple of weeks after my miscarriage, I was trying to process everything. For whatever reason, I though the worst of my life was behind me, that my challenging childhood had happened and it had shaped me to be an awesome person living an amazing life and that I finally had control over everything. If that isn’t a red flag, I don’t know what is!

My miscarriage was trying to my ego. My life was not following a plan that I had set out for myself. I got pregnant with my daughter right as we started trying and I thought I had this whole baby making thing down pat. But as I lost not one but two pregnancies, I was sent spiraling. I started saying to myself, “this is not my story – this is not what is meant to be happening to me.”

Like a well-written story, everything in our life stories happens for a reason.

Details are not to be overlooked as they can foreshadow something later on in the story or they perpetuate a theme that the author wants to share or they create conflict that the protagonist must overcome. It all serves a purpose. I have believed this ever since my eureka moment during that health coach practice session.

But when life throws us off a path that we are comfortably moseying down, we want to believe it wasn’t meant to be, that is it not a part of our story. As children, we are still forming our truths. We take in our life experiences and those form the foundation for how we interpret our lives and the world. And I have found, as we get older, our truths are challenged. This can either send us into denial or into an evolution where we incorporate new truths into our lives.

With the miscarriage, I was searching and searching for the lesson in why it happened. I kept coming up against a wall, telling myself that this was not meant to be, that “this is not my story.” But I realized as I was processing everything happening – what a damning thing to say! If it’s happening in my life, it IS my story. Whether or not I have control of it, I have to own it. Denying it will not make it any less of my story.

Life is not just about the things you can control.

Life will throw you curve balls, fastballs and change-up’s. You will not always be in able to tell what’s coming. And you do not have full control over it. But never, for a single second, claim you are better than the circumstances. Never disown those moments because they are perhaps the most pivotal in your story.

Growth can certainly happen when we challenge ourselves but how often do we push ourselves so we are teetering on the edge? So that we feel if we breathed the wrong way that we are done?

As much as we’d like to believe we are strong enough to push ourselves to the brink, we are not brave enough to do that to ourselves. Growth and expansion happen in those curve balls and fastballs. You may come out swinging when you are pitched them or hunker down and take the ball. What you do in the moment is important but the lessons are actually in the replay. Incorporating those challenges into our lives enable us to continue to live our story, to continue swinging.

I’m not sure that this was the ultimate lesson of my miscarriages but at the least, it has been a micro-lesson, a reminder that I need to own my story and it is only when I accept my circumstances that I can make the best of them.

Inspiration: I created this image and a short write up for an Instagram/Facebook post as I was starting my healing journey after my miscarriage. I wanted to expand upon it and add it to my blog so I could reference it instead of sifting through my feeds. As I was thinking about how this lesson has appeared during other parts of my life, I pulled in the story about my dad.
The evolution of this post in a few months shows that ideas aren’t something that are formed and then become stagnant, unless you want them to be. They are ever changing, morphing with new experiences and as we make more connections between what is happening and what has happened to us. I very much follow Elizabeth Gilbert’s philosophy in Big Magic that ideas have a life of their own. We have a choice of whether or not we keep them around. Sometimes they will float away or disappear as quickly as they come. I tend to hold onto ideas like my possessions, hoarding them and refusing to let them go even though I know deep down that the idea isn’t right for me. This is something I continue to work on and what I’m finding is that as I let go of more physical things, I can also let go of more mental and emotional things. This will be a lifelong challenge for me (bless my husband who initiates most of our spring cleanings) but as I get older, I’m starting to see the value in having less in my physical space as it allows me to have more freedom in my mental space.

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