A Benchmark Of Healing
August 26, 2017.
I was about 2 months pregnant, feeling alone and holding the burden of responsibility for things that should never be held by one person. Unfortunately, this wasn’t an unfamiliar experience for me.
I had distanced myself from certain people as a way of protecting myself and my growing family. Right on cue, as if the cosmos heard my avoidant exit strategy, the very people I had successfully distanced myself from were suddenly quite present in my life, for reasons I won’t go into here.
I was forced to set some very hard boundaries in order to advocate for the safety of a child. Someone who loves me very much, but who was acting from a place of codependent fear, reacted to my boundary with anger and said, “I’m so disappointed in you”.
Words with teeth. Words that would have normally ripped my heart out or left me gasping for air. Words that had been used many times before to control me and manipulate my behavior to keep me accommodating a very sick family system.
But this time was different. I was a mother now. I was protecting a child, and I didn’t care who I disappointed. The whole world could have spit on me, and I would have kept on. This was a strength I’d never known.
I responded, “Good thing I’m not looking for your approval”, and I hung up the phone.
I was parked at the foot of a hiking trail that I had never been on before. As I climbed the path, sweat dripping down my face, it felt a lot like a metaphor for the uphill battle I was facing with my family of origin. I was intimately aware of the baby growing inside of me. I knew I was having a daughter, and I thought about the kind of woman, the kind of mother, I wanted to be. What kind of woman could raise a daughter in a world that would only accept her if she made herself useful and accommodating to others? What kind of mother could I be when I had no motherly presence in my own world?
In my dirt-stomping rage, I saw a bench up ahead, and I decided to sit my pregnant self down for a bit to breathe, hydrate, and let the present moment catch up to me.
On the bench were these words,
To all mothers and babies, to birth and rebirth and being alive
I sat and cried. I felt held by that bench and beheld by the words. I realized that I was in a process of rebirth, becoming something more than I was before. I felt the death of a version of me who lived for the approval of others, for this is how she knew her worth. This death was necessary for a new way of living to unfold, the end was necessary for the beginning.
And it felt fucking awful.
I cried, I raged, I laughed at the hilarity of a bench speaking wisdom to me. I felt it all. I was no longer alone. I could see no other person; however, there was a presence all around me. I had felt this presence before at a previous painful crossroads when I was 19. This presence always seems to say to me, “You’re not alone. Keep going.”
I was evolving. I could feel the sharp pains of heartache and anguish. It was as if my guts were being turned inside out. Instead of running away or soothing those jagged edges, I leaned in. I welcomed the rebirth process as a kind of baptism, a holy reckoning, witnessed only by the trees and perhaps a few birds. And yet, I knew I was beheld by something much bigger. I trusted the undoing so that I could experience the becoming, and I was most certainly not alone.
I opened my eyes, and felt a soft clarity gently drape itself around me like a comforting shawl. I traced the letters with my finger, slowly feeling each curve of each letter. I could feel the warmth of the sun, I could smell the earth and the dirt, and it felt as if time had stopped in order to hold me present in this profound moment.
I knew the kind of mom I would be. I knew exactly who I was becoming.
I would be the kind of mom who would not shrink from the threat of rejection, because I want my daughter to know her worth is not decided by others.
May we know our inherent worth and not perform for the acceptance of others.
I would be the kind of mom who would dare to disappoint anyone, maybe everyone, before I ever again betrayed myself as a way to gain the temporary approval of others. I would do this because I want my daughter to learn how to live with bold authenticity, radically true to herself.
May we dare to disappoint others if it means living in alignment with the integrity of our soul.
I would be the kind of mother that would commit to life and living, knowing that this commitment would occasionally mean that I would have to let go and grieve. I would be committing to rebirth, again and again. I would do this because I want my daughter to know that being fully alive involves sacrifice. “You can choose courage or you can choose comfort, but you cannot choose both” - Brené Brown
May we commit to being fully alive by embracing the seasons of growth and change.
I knew exactly who I was becoming, and it wasn’t just the mother my daughter needed; it was the person I needed for myself, also.
Disappointing others no longer felt like something I needed to guard against or even become defensive about. It was simply part of the process – a teachable moment allowing me to experience exactly what I needed to step into alignment with myself.
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