647. The Birthing Process: Patience and Perseverance

After we had made our decision to give birth at home, we continued to get educated on the topic watching documentaries and learning from other couples that had gone through the same process recently, which gave us further strength and trust in ourselves and in our capacity to do it. This is something I consider is very supportive for first time mothers, to get acquainted with other mothers to be and get a firsthand share of how the birthing process was for them. In my case, the pregnant ladies I met that gave birth during the time I was expecting, didn’t have favorable outcomes in their intent to have natural births, which did initially moved me in the sense of thinking ‘what ifs’ but, I have to thank my partner and the midwives that were able to explain why such complications took place so that I could see the reasoning behind it and so, not fear, and get myself back to trusting myself and my capacity to do it.

 

One interesting thing is how upon getting to meet our midwife Minerva and getting more informed, I became quite settled and tranquil within the process and fears dissipated, because I saw how much I had been brainwashed to see birth as something painful or terrifying even. And that was awesome as well, because then I wasn’t fearing getting to the delivery time, I had other resistances that played out as I will share here, which were of another kind.

 

So the story begins… It was January 14th, I had gone to my yoga class that morning and then had a family meeting to celebrate my father’s 70th birthday and I actually was feeling quite alright but already having some of what I had understood were the famously known Braxton-Hicks contractions, which interestingly enough I started noticing in a more defined way on January 1st. That same day at night, I was eating some left overs of the chocolate cake I had made for my father and one of those contractions came and I told my mother: ‘come and feel this!’ and she placed her hand on my belly and she was shocked by how rock-hard it felt and she was like ‘how long have you been feeling these?’ and so I said that I noticed them from the beginning of the year – actually on the 31st to be precise when we were at the movies watching Parasite, lol, Minerva really disliked that movie chair – and she explained how there’s this theory that 2 weeks after these contractions begin, well, labor also begins. I didn’t pay much attention and just said how this was nothing to worry about.

 

The midwife, Minerva, had explained to us how from the 11th on, anything could happen. Well, I was still kind of holding the idea that first time mothers deliver mostly close to the 40th week or even later, I was in the middle of the 38th and I thought I ‘still have time’ and actually was kind of being lax about buying some of the stuff required for the whole home birth experience. Actually on the 10th we were still going to shops to buy stuff and we were foreseeing to start packing and moving things by the end of that week… well, that night we came home and close to midnight I saw that the mucus plug came out. I kind of freaked out even though I knew this was something that would happen before labor started. I also held on to some information of how some women lost this plug and ended up having their child some 2 weeks later, I thought this was going to be my case.

 

I told my partner, I wasn’t feeling anything after that, so we went to sleep and all I can say is that in the middle of my sleep I was feeling this quite heavy or hard contractions throughout the night, but I kept sweeping them aside as if they were just the Braxton-Hicks ones and nothing serious, however the pain was getting definitely more than the ones I had felt the days before. So, it was at 4 am when I decided to wake my partner up and explain the situation and from that moment on, contractions started happening quite frequently. I downloaded an app to keep track of them and man, it turned out that they were happening every 10 minutes and then, gee, every three minutes! lol the app was telling us ‘you need to rush to the hospital right NOW!’ lol well I laugh because I also knew this could happen and how it didn’t mean that labor is starting ‘right now’ but I still called Minerva – our midwife – at 5 am and let her know about it, she simply said to keep her updated and let her know whenever we wanted them to come to the house.

 

I called my mother and she obviously freaked out because, yes, like me, we weren’t expecting this to happen ‘so soon!’ and my reaction was that of rushing and worrying how I didn’t get to have or ‘leave’ everything ready, I was still expecting to have some time left, some more days to go swimming or to my yoga class – yep! I had such kind of thoughts in the middle of these continuous series of contractions at 5 am on that Wednesday morning. But, in the middle of my disbelief, we started packing everything we needed to temporarily move to my parent’s house where the birth and my postpartum time would be spent.

 

By that time, I really thought that our daughter was going to come in the next following hours, but! what actually happened is that the contractions receded, they essentially slowed down in frequency, oh and I was also having some of the amniotic fluid coming out, but not entirely, so midwife explained how this was a partial rupture of the membranes, so that kept me ‘on guard’ so to speak as well because of having to keep an eye on that and ensuring the liquid remained clear- if not, that means attention, you need to go to a hospital soon.

 

To make the story shorter, contractions kept happening that day, sometimes an hour and a half would transpire before I had another one, sometimes they happened every 20 minutes, and that’s how most of the day went. At night, they spiked and so, I would wake up to manage them – because it’s not particularly nice to experience contractions while laying down in my experience – and my partner would assist me in every single one of them. We would sleep in between the contractions and to make the story even shorter, the same happened in the following two nights which means by the time I got to the day of giving birth, I have had four nights of really bad sleep with contraction pains… not cool, but that’s how it went.

 

The next day on Thursday, we got the first visit from the midwives after me telling them that contractions were still happening just not as frequently to call it an ‘active’ labor phase. So they came home, checked baby’s vital signs and did some acupuncture on me, some massaging and some rebozeo, which is a very traditional technique with what is called a ‘wrap’ in English to help the baby position herself better to give birth and also to assist with my hips and in general also to relieve some tension in my body. That was great, it all was aimed to ‘start the engine’ on the giving birth process. They explained to us how most women go into ‘activity’ at night due to some hormones, and so I was expecting that action would begin that night, but it didn’t. We had another long night with multiple contractions but nothing too painful to call it an active labor phase yet.

 

On Friday, both midwives came home again, this time they gave me a series of homeopathic stuff to induce labor and here comes the most interesting part, they also have a set of questions to check up on some of the emotional stuff that could be clogging or delaying the active labor phase. So when Minerva asked ‘are you ready to give birth to your child?’ My Ms. Correctness answer was ‘yes, as ready as I can be’ but my partner was like ‘hold on, that’s not true’ lol! Grateful for his ever bluntly honest perspectives and feedback because he then explained to me how I was still doing my work in the past days, how i was still doing chores and the ‘regular stuff’ and in essence not really focusing on the birthing process at all. I had to admit that was in fact true and how my sense of ‘responsibility’ was killing me because of not having ‘everything ready’ at the time and still holding on to that idea of myself having to ‘get to do everything’ and not really giving myself that space to realize: you are about to give Birth! How about focusing on THAT!

 

Well, that was my first point of admitting I was preoccupying myself with all kinds of stuff instead of realizing: it’s time, baby is about to be born. And then, there was some kind of question related to the end of pregnancy, and that’s where the nail was hit on the head as well. As the conversation opened up, I realized how pregnancy had become my comfort zone, I was feeling so well and was able to do ‘all of these things’ like going out and exercising and I was sleeping well up to the contraction-night time that I just kind of wanted to prolong that phase because, hey! it’s easier apparently, you don’t have to actually take care of the baby outside of the womb, don’t have to feed them or get to be awake at night, baby goes everywhere with me and I didn’t have to do a thing to care for her… this was my point of resistance and what also delayed my active labor phase.

 

It turns out that I was holding on to the pregnancy and as such, I was holding on to keeping the baby inside me, I hadn’t essentially let go and ‘detached’ in that sense of her. And, as I was sitting cross legged on the mat with my partner next to me and I started opening up all of these things about me ‘holding on to the pregnancy’ and having her within me… I seriously hadn’t realized this if it wasn’t for those questions that led me to find this out. And the moment that I said: “I need to let go, I need to detach” bam! The ‘water broke’ or the membranes were ruptured and liquid started flowing for real this time. I started crying, it was such a ‘magical’ moment, it seemed that’s what I had to realize, to really recognize this time as ‘this is IT! Baby is coming’ and in a way then also embracing that this was the end of this ‘sweet time’ that I made of pregnancy to be.

 

Was it the homeopathy, was it the talk, was it all of the above? I’m not sure or all of the above, but one thing led to another and so this time contractions continued ‘as usual’ throughout the afternoon and then around 10 pm at night on that Friday night, contractions really went up in intensity. I started experiencing them every 20 minutes and I kept tracking most of them. I am eternally grateful for my partner that would wake up with me and step out of bed in every single one of them throughout the night to assist me with coping with the pain, now that was some more intense stuff I couldn’t just ‘laugh’ through as I had done in the previous contractions. I had to be swaying from side to side holding his hand and holding myself from a piece of furniture that was in fact Minerva’s diaper changing zone 🙂 Well, once we saw that the intensity had reasonably augmented and that this time they didn’t seem to slow down in time, we called the midwives to let them know it was time to come home.

 

I still can’t fathom how we managed to do this, we would sleep some solid 20 minutes and like clockwork a new contraction would begin, then we would go back to sleep and so forth. By the time I kept track of the last series of contractions before midwives arrived at around 5 am on Saturday morning, I had logged in more than 235 contractions since early Wednesday morning when I started tracking them. God knows how many more I did on the rest of that Saturday when things got really intense and then we certainly knew it active labor time.

 

That Saturday is kind of fuzzy to me, time ceased to exist and I just remember having a lot of contractions, being on several positions, holding my partner’s hands in each contraction, holding the midwives hands when he had to leave to eat or go to the toilet. I was assisted with many natural means throughout the whole process, I had a heated bag of salt on my back to relieve the pain. I had homeopathy, aromatherapy, essential oils, massage, acupuncture all done throughout that day to assist with activating the process and relieving pain.

 

I was also able to eat whatever I wanted to, this apparently is a no go when going to a hospital. I had my aunt sending me some chicken soup and I even ate a bit of a hamburger throughout that day lol along with all the usual nuts and seeds that I eat, dried fruits, lots of electrolytes and a natural mix of lemon, salt, baking soda and honey to hydrate myself. I had some really rough moments where I thought

I wasn’t going to make it, I felt like fainting, I hadn’t slept in the past 4 nights and I was in pain. I got a tact done by Minerva and got to know I was half way dilated, there was progress, yay, but still had a long way to go. After some more hours of constant contractions, I got another tact done and voilà, I was fully dilated, yay, but I was exhausted.

 

This was a crucial moment because the birth tub was getting filled with water but there was a general concern to use it or not, because as much as water helps to relieve pain, it can also slow down the process and ultimately take it to a halt if one gets ‘too comfy’ in the water. Well, I decided I wanted to do it anyways and give it my all to make it work.

 

Now, entering that birth pool was a heavenly experience to me, seriously, I don’t know what I would have done without that water embracing me in that moment, I am grateful for having chosen this method of giving birth, which also btw can only be used once that one is totally ready to give birth, so it’s meant to be used for a short period of time, but! in my case, I spent more time in it than expected because, It did happen that things came to a halt at some point, I lost focus, I was really tired and I had to essentially be ‘re-focused’ to it through a guided meditation, to essentially give myself the necessary awareness of how close I was to giving birth now and how I had to gather my strength to do it. At this point I was really in pain, I was screaming out loud with all of my lungs and I was also continually directed to refocus it, to not go into the ‘pain’ experience but to channel that through vocalizing it, with my whole body instead of just ‘screaming out of pain’ type of thing.

 

Something else that I got to actually take as a big lesson in all of this is how I am not entirely IN my physical body, meaning aware of how every muscle works and how to direct my body in fact when it comes to something like giving birth where I couldn’t really focus on pushing as such where I needed to push; instead, I would tense my whole body and that of course only prolonged things once again. This was getting everyone’s nerves to the top, to be honest, I could see everyone’s face how they could see the baby’s head and I even was told to stick my finger up to feel her head and I couldn’t believe that ‘this was it’ that it was in fact Minerva’s head, I thought it was some trick to keep me in good spirits and keep pushing, lol, but it was in fact so that she was only a few centimeters away from the outside. Well, those few centimeters took a couple of hours of constant pushing for her to actually come out, yes, it was intense and by that moment I was having contractions like every minute or god knows how often, all I remember was having a contraction, holding my legs up so that Minerva, the midwife, could do some aid with her hands to have the baby come out and then I would go back into the water and drink electrolytes. Yep, I ended up drinking like 5 bottles of it that day, all definitely needed because, I was truly in that marathon experience I had considered it would be, only with some ‘extra’ days added of relative hard work.

 

I was getting desperate by the very end, I kept pushing and everyone kept saying how close I was but the baby wasn’t coming out. I have to admit I said – almost at the very end – I give up, I can’t do this anymore. In that moment, my mother stepped up and reminded me how this was definitely not the time to ‘give up’ lol and how I had to give it my all. She actually had to directly explain to me how to breathe and direct the force of that breathe to push the baby out. It turns out I just wasn’t really ‘connecting’ with that innate way that women have to give birth, it turns out my intellect, my rational mind has more of a hold of me to the point that I wasn’t really surrendering to the process. And that was in fact one of the key words that also assisted me to finally give birth, to surrender to it, I was still trying to ‘manage’ the pain by tensing up my body throughout the contractions, instead of giving myself to it, surrendering to it, offering myself to the process so to speak, fully opening myself up. And that’s something that I finally did in those last moments of pushing when I gave it my all, it didn’t matter anymore if all of my insides would come out in that moment, I just wanted Minerva to come out and end this whole marathon for myself, for her and for everyone that was there and not there that were also stuck to their phones trying to find out any news about the birth, making their prayers and sending me good vibes essentially for everything to go well.

 

The moment came when I did one of those gargantuan efforts to push and with Minerva’s hands as aid, the head was released from my birth canal and a fraction of a second afterwards the whole body just came out like a torpedo in the water. I couldn’t believe myself and as I type this, I still can’t fathom how that was possible. My partner was in tears throughout the last phase of the process because he was seeing how much I was in pain and suffering, but I kept calm in that sort of trance that one goes into when giving birth, I can’t honestly recall if I cried at some point, I probably did, but the moment that Minerva came out it was just this giant relief, because I was just about to be ‘out’ when it comes to lacking energy to do another effort like that.

 

She was finally here, on my chest, spewing some phlegm out and mustering her first crying. I recognized the feel of her vertebrae because it was the same I would feel on my womb, I said how I was glad she was finally here, but I was mostly ‘out’ of myself by that moment. Giving birth to the baby doesn’t mean it’s over yet. Next came the placenta and I wasn’t ready to have more contractions for it to be delivered, I wanted to have some ‘rest time’ lol, but it didn’t quite happen, after some 20 minutes I had another big contraction – though less than the actual final delivery moment – and the placenta came out also with quite a force.

 

The next thing was to step out of the pool, which I didn’t want to do, but it was something I HAD to do since I was already at a very weak state and staying there was only prolonging getting back to the regular pressure of the outside and getting some actual rest. While the midwives and my partner were helping me to get out of the pool, Minerva was carried by my mother, a very happy grandmother that got to carry her first while still connected with the placenta that was kept in a crystal container next to her, that was definitely something new to her for sure as well.

 

As I went out of the pool, I felt the weight of gravity, I felt like the air wasn’t enough for me, I felt pain just everywhere and as I was walking next door to the room where we would be sleeping, I was ‘gone’ for a second. This was very creepy for me as well because that moment where I essentially ‘fainted’ seemed like an eternity for me. I was awaken by Minerva with the words ‘Marlen, wake up, you are here and now’  with a very direct voice and as I opened my eyes and saw her face, it’s as if I had been born myself again, like having that fraction of a second recap of what had just happened ‘Oh god, I just gave birth, Minerva – our daughter – is here, I made it, we made it’ and then after a few steps, same fainting happened and was brought back instantly again with their ‘magic’ lol – and I was awaken.

 

This is significant, this is something that happens to women where there’s like a really big shock after birth, and sometimes there’s this unconscious desire to just not wanting to ‘wake up’ to the new reality of having a child, of becoming a mother, of now having to take care of a child. I do see some of that in my case considering how I had interestingly enough placed ‘the birthing process’ as some sort of an end-goal, instead of taking it as the beginning of a new phase in my life that it actually was.  Fortunately, I am alive to tell, lol, it’s not like I was dying, it felt like a rebirth certainly, a new phase of me and my life of which I still had to go through some more ‘mourning’ because, I hadn’t really placed too much attention into ‘what’s next’ after the baby is delivered… yep, that is correct and so the next phase came with the challenges that emerge when one is stuck with the heroic feeling of ‘delivering the baby’ and forgets about actually taking care of oneself mentally and physically for that which starts right after the baby is out.

 

Fortunately enough due to all the labor done, colostrum came out with ease and Minerva started sucking it up right away with all her might and strength which has characterized her from the moment she was in the womb 🙂 We had a very special moment to cut the umbilical cord, a little ceremony to release her from the placenta that had given her all the support she needed to be born alive and well, which I ended up also consuming right after giving birth  in a milkshake as well as taking it in pills throughout the quarantine to take some of those nutrients back into my body – and some other medicine that was made from it as well as the actual dried placenta, which serves as an aid to restore tissue in any kind of injuries in our bodies. Well, I share about this to be aware of all the benefits of using the placenta, instead of perhaps leaving it to the hospital where they most likely sell it on the black market to companies that make some ‘stem cell’ health or beauty products. Own your placenta, women! I learned to be thankful to it in realizing the essential job it has to keep my child alive in the womb.

 

Once the cord was cut – with an obsidian knife by my partner – I was just wanting to rest, and there is nothing like being able to get out of the ‘birthing room’ – as we now call the TV room hehe – take a few steps and be in bed at the comfort of your own home, not having to deal with any other ‘hassle’ of measurements or vaccines or lousy treatments for the mother or the baby, just pure skin to skin contact with myself and with her father. I ended up sleeping afterwards and my partner slept with Minerva on his chest that whole night. That is priceless when it comes to the first hours after the baby comes out of the womb, to have the warmth of her parents as a bed to sleep on, no need for separate beds or incubation.

 

The next day, I was feeling ‘really well’ like surprisingly well – all things considered in terms of all the postpartum aches and bleeding. I sure would get the usual contractions while breastfeeding and bleeding quite a bit as is normal after giving birth, but I felt well, perhaps some of the hormones still having an effect on me at that time that I kind of ‘forgot’ to eat well, I ‘forgot’ to sleep more during the day. We were just ecstatic about the whole odyssey that the birthing process had been, we were just happy to see Minerva alive and well and have her in our arms and I forgot to do those very basic self-care points even if people offered them, I didn’t quite ‘realized’ that I had to be WELL fed and rested to be there for my child, to feed her, to take care of her.

 

Minerva was born at 6:35 pm on Saturday January 18th, and I went to bed at around 11 I think. The next day I didn’t sleep throughout the day, I have had some bad nights of sleep the previous days but I didn’t seem to care, until the second night where I felt the effect of staying up several nights and I felt so weak that I was losing it, like closing my eyes and perceiving I was going to ‘leave’ type of thing, it was scary for myself and my partner who didn’t know what to do in the moment other that telling me to go to sleep while having a baby that craved to eat but still wasn’t having enough of what she was demanding at the moment, so that was a stressful time for the three of us and got to learn the lesson: I have to feed myself well enough, I have to rest well because I am now feeding my daughter and I have to take care of her and so, I have to be well for myself to be there for her as well.

 

I share this because, it may happen that someone overlooks this kind of basic things and one can prevent such ‘overdrive’ by learning from others’ experiences as well.  After that, I made sure I eat more than the usual because I am breastfeeding Minerva, also resting well even if at times it is hard for me to go back to sleep after feeding her at night, since I have ‘programmed’ myself to ‘wake up’ and be fresh like a lettuce quite easily upon opening my eyes, but that means I start my mind and brain’s engine and then it’s hard to fall asleep again, even if I’m tired, so I’m still practicing breathing at night to be able to sleep. I’ve never had any problems to sleep at night, but I definitely have a hard time going back to sleep in the middle of the night, and that’s been a bit of a challenge because, Minerva is actually really calm, she wakes up at night, eats and goes back to sleep, there’s really no hassle with that, but it’s all now on me to be able to go back to sleep in fact and perhaps it has to do with my constant ide of “having stuff to do” which is also a form of anxiety I have to work with and will share more about in time.

 

Well, up to there the birthing process odyssey. I am entirely and eternally grateful for the two midwives that assisted us – Minerva and Maria Luisa – who were some genuine pillars of support throughout the whole process with their strength, courage, bravery, wisdom and essentially coaching me throughout this journey and life changing moment – a rite of passage in fact – which was giving birth to Minerva and me becoming a mother. Omg, yes it took me some days or perhaps a week or so to actually ‘change the chip’ in my head to realize ‘I am a mother now’ lol, but I’m getting better at it 🙂

 

We are also eternally grateful to our family and friends that were in spirit with us in that moment. We decided to only have my parents present in the birthing process, so my sisters and the rest of my relatives waited some days or weeks to visit us to meet Minerva, which we appreciate in them understanding this decision, giving us time before coming to visit, which is also different from how things usually go when having a baby delivered at a hospital and everyone comes at the same time. This was also something different we did to give ourselves a space to recover and get to know Minerva as well since it is quite a new thing to enter that parenting phase right after the birth process, which I will expand on in blogs to come.

 

The current aftermath is that I recovered quite well and I’d dare to say, surprisingly fast. This is from my experience and doing some constructive comparison to my sisters for example with c sections, I was back on line so to speak with ease. I sure was drained for a week or so to catch up on some sleep and eating more than well too. But I then was fine, had no complications thankfully, so I’m grateful to my body and the organs, tissue and bones that were involved in this process, well, the whole of my body actually. I’m currently quite fine and almost the same as before the pregnancy, which is awesome and another proof of how natural processes take in perhaps most cases less time to recover from.

 

I may also add I was glad I got to do exercise and get a better physical condition during the pregnancy because! It was definitely like a marathon that I experienced and I’m not sure I would have been able to deliver this way without building some physical condition to withstand the amount of effort I had to put in this whole ordeal. However again, I’ve heard of stories of women that don’t really do any physical training and get to deliver with ease, so nothing is set in stone, as I was saying, it all depends on our bodies and getting to know ours is a primary thing to do in any case.

 

Thank you for reading if you got up to here. I wanted to share this as close to the reality as possible to perhaps assist other women to realize that labor, the birthing process can be lengthy, yes, and that there’s no reason to be alarmed and be rushed into hospital if it’s been one or two days of ongoing contractions and nothing happens… it actually takes patience and perseverance to get it done in a natural way without any artificial ‘accelerators’ like artificial oxytocin that’s given at hospitals, which make contractions feel a lot more painful and accelerates the whole process because there it is about hospital time and doctor’s time. In my case, I’m almost certain no hospital or doctor would have had the patience I needed to give labor in a natural way, I probably would have been induced at the first signs of having contractions and most likely citing al kinds of risks (not real in fact) about losing amniotic fluid, having the umbilical cord around the neck (which she had as well) or being too big to fit and probably doing an episiotomy – when in reality I was able to deliver without any tearing 🙂

 

Thus it is also relevant to realize how a lot of the “complications” that may be commonly cited by doctors “at the last minute” while being at the hospital about to deliver – a very, very vulnerable moment for the woman – might just be the usual tricks and ways to get you to agree to “speed up” the process or “just get over with the pain” so as to consent to get a C-section instead. Again, this is in cases when the woman is fit and healthy to have a natural birth and had planned or desired to have a vaginal delivery, which takes time, patience and perhaps not many have it when it comes to, say, 4 days in passive and active labor like I did.

 

Here I also want to say that it is OK if one wants to instead go to the hospital if one doesn’t feel like doing it ‘al natural’ anymore, or if something goes off in the body or if one is seriously too exhausted to make it. It is OK as well to have moments of rest and just keep at it and trust that things will be alright with proper monitoring of the situation of course – like keeping track of baby’s vital signs etc. I have learned how for some women it can go as fast as a couple of hours of labor and having an easy delivery s well, each body is unique and so different and this is then my story with most of the variables that influenced the outcome, so it is definitely not something to measure anyone’s birthing process against.

 

This is a tale to perhaps encourage women considering natural births or perhaps prevent having to be ‘rushed to get a C-section’ for those that do want to have a natural birth or just have unnecessary procedures done onto themselves. Know that there are ways, even with the umbilical cord on the neck or any other seemingly inevitable obstacle. So, consider questioning your practitioner or midwife about any possible obstacles or complications and how they handle them, so that you are on top of things and are aware of every decision made in your birthing process. It’s your body and your child’s wellbeing, so, be aware and use your ability to decide How you want to give birth wisely.

 

I can lastly say that I am humbled by the whole experience. I was able to see how much I have yet to really BE my body, which is something I want to continue focusing on developing. And at the same time, I am humbly proud of myself for this, I turned one of my ‘greatest fears’ into a successful self-empowerment story, and may I say: this is just the beginning 🙂

 

646. Choosing How To Give Birth

It’s been over a month since I gave birth so, it’s time to share about the actual big decision we made when it comes to giving birth to Minerva, our daughter.  I’d like to first of all clarify that what I’m about to share is a very personal process and decision that doesn’t imply ‘is the right or correct way’ to do things or ‘how it should be.’ I respect each woman’s and couple’s choice of how they give birth, and as such I’ll share the story of how we got to choose ours, which we were really glad and satisfied to do after all.

 

From the 5th month or so we started looking at ‘where to give birth’ and few names of hospitals came up, I went to visit one and even if it was an entire hospital just for giving birth, something didn’t quite sit right with me. I had initially considered that I would be having possibly the usual C-section like most of the women in my family and that would be it. However, as I was in the spot looking at the rooms and the list of instruments and stuff that’s used for the ‘birthing package,’ I got calmly freaked out, I couldn’t really fathom myself being at a hospital giving birth, though I thought I had to ‘suck it up’ because ‘there was no other way’ apparently.

 

Well, I kept having such hospital in mind, trying not to think too much about it in the subsequent weeks, but then a few things came to my awareness as I started investigating more about the birthing process that led me to become aware of alternative ways to give birth and by this I mean both in and out of hospitals, beginning with the idea of having a natural birth, which I had sincerely not considered before seriously enough because of the idea of how painful it would be.

 

One day my cousin – who is now pregnant by the way, lol – told me about the documentary ‘The business of being born’ and that opened up my eyes to what actually goes on with doctors and hospitals in terms of how they essentially benefit from sending a perfectly healthy woman to get a C-section by making up all kinds of stories that lead the mothers-to-be into a path of apparent ‘no other way around other than C-section’ or ‘no-other-way-around but to get an episiotomy’ and a bunch of other so called ‘problems’ that are in fact rare in nature that could make a birthing process difficult.

 

Around that same time, we had a chat with my friend who is a neonatal care specialist and she made us aware of all the things we would have to be aware of that are routinely done to newborns in hospitals… there were quite a few things that we got to understand could disrupt the bonding and feeding initial processes that are so relevant to do in the moment right after the baby is born, along with other shots and intervention that I had seen in the hospital’s TVs when my nephews and niece were born, which by the way horrified me and I couldn’t understand how everyone would be so joyful at seeing the newborn being treated like a piece of meat about to be sold while I was shocked and almost cried of seeing how they were being handled by the doctors. I didn’t want this for me nor for our child at all, but this is ‘how things are’ apparently.

 

I also got to chat to my friend Anna and she expressed how she would have liked to have a woman accompanying her birthing process – a doula to be precise- and that got me pondering how is it that I ‘really’ wanted to give birth, because I was just superficially looking at that significant point as if it wasn’t relevant enough, but it all was due to me not being informed about ‘how things go’ in fact at a hospital and the potential of having either natural or C-section there, and the relevance it has for both the mother and the baby. All of this peaked my curiosity and interest to actually try and do things differently than how I had observed people around me would do with their pregnancies and birth processes.

 

So, I avidly started investigating the benefits, the pros and cons of C-sections, natural birth at hospital, the procedures etc. I still couldn’t fathom me going through this at such a place, but I was ‘settling’ for it because I thought there was no other way in hospitals where I live.

 

Then, I stumbled upon the ‘humanized birth’ concept and some doctors trying to sell that for many thousands… well, talking to them didn’t sound like they were totally ‘humanizing’ after all when including all kinds of expenses for anesthesia even if I didn’t end up requiring it. Then I got to watch the birthing process of a yoga teacher on YouTube which really peaked my interest in finding a way to do something similar. I had been following her yoga lessons throughout pregnancy so that’s how I got to see that she gave birth at a birth center and voilà, that seemed like an awesome thing to do: giving birth in a tub, in water. Hmm that looked so nice and peaceful, away from this spooky hospital place. I thought how that would be so awesome and I did further research on it, but I only found some costly services from Mexico City, which seemed like a lot and improbable due to the preparation required for it, and I was already getting to the 7th month by the time.

 

Well to short-cut the story after watching a lot of information on water births, investigating ‘who’ could do it and not finding anything, I went to my first actual prenatal yoga birth class and there I met a woman that, in our 10 minute conversation, told me about her plan to have a home birth with midwives and in water! I was like ‘what? you can actually do that here?’ and so I finally got her midwife’s contact and that changed the course of the birth story and something I am entirely grateful for, perhaps I just hadn’t done a proper search on Facebook for it, lol, but I found the right people at the right time.

 

Oh, I had also known of another friend from my qi gong class that was choosing to give birth at home with midwives, it sounded too ‘hippie’ to me lol, of course this is a  prejudice I’d then clear up with proper information on my side, she was 3 months more advanced than me in her pregnancy, so I got to know about her – also – lengthy birthing process and it turned out it was the same midwife that assisted her 🙂  so that created more confidence in our choice. I also remembered Joana’s birth at home and I remembered her having a tub, so I kept considering that there should be a way to do that here, and perseverance played a role because I got to find the right people to accompany me and actually do the whole process that we both had by then considered would be the best way to give birth to our child.

 

Talking to the midwife -whose name is also by coincidence Minerva -was refreshing in the sense that she explained to us the way she does things and that’s exactly what we wanted,  we were in the same ‘wavelength’ so to speak and at the time we still were going with the regular doctor who would indicate to us – as I have shared in previous blogs – how everything was going just fine and without any complications, which of course then was like a ‘green light’ to pursue doing things in a natural way.

 

Here it is relevant to say that this whole process of ditching the hospital idea and going for the home birth plan is entirely a personal – and as a couple – decision that doesn’t mean ‘it’s the best way’ for everyone. I’ve met women who didn’t feel at all at ease with the idea of having a child at home and went to the hospital because that’s where they would feel most at ease and safe, some others just can’t have natural births due to medical reasons or any other physical complication, even though I’ve also now gotten to know more about the medical tricks used to entice women to get C-sections and so forth, but that’s another story and something each women would have the responsibility to investigate to not be, essentially, tricked and fooled into believing they can’t give birth in a natural way, The reason for this? Easy: money.

 

To me, choosing to give birth this way was like a 180 degree turn again, where I went from being very vague about a birth plan and sort of brushing off the idea of having to go to a hospital to give birth and postponing looking at those – gory to me – details because I actually didn’t want to, and circumstances led me to find other ways with which I was definitely more comfortable with. And this to me was also a revelation, because… the idea of giving birth without any ‘painkiller’ is probably something I feared the most in my life, the sole idea of giving birth was one of the reasons why I didn’t want to have children to begin with. However with sufficient amount of YouTube testimonies on natural birth, several documentaries about midwives, births at home, births in water, learning about the multiple – horror – stories of obstetric violence at hospitals and women’s accounts of their terrible experience at hospitals was enough for me to realize that this would be the best way for us, and that we’d have to work a bit hard on it, since it wasn’t going to be easy, so I set myself up to have this ‘mountain-hiking’ like experience that giving birth resembles, according to Minerva, our midwife.

 

The most interesting part of this is how ‘uncommon’ and ‘dangerous’ and therefore feared this way of giving birth is for a lot of people.  When we talked to my mother about our home birth decision and asking her if we could use their home – specifically their TV lounge – to be the space for our choice of birthing process, man, it was very difficult, she reacted a LOT and it’s all because of fears and misinformation that we’ve gotten throughout the past decades about a birth process being some sort of ‘illness’ or ‘complication’ that needs a whole medical team to do it… this is of course in the majority of cases false, however, as with everything, we have been brainwashed to think the other way around and have forgotten the thousands of years that women have given birth without the ‘clinically sanitized’ hospitals, when in fact there’s a lot of evidence on how counterproductive this can be for both mothers and children – yep perhaps not in everyone’s case, but there’s still a lot to fine tune when it comes to giving proper aid and support to a birthing mother in hospitals to prevent a lot of the mistreatment that causes emotional stress and many times even influences the infamous postpartum depression.

 

We kept this plan under the radar for the most part precisely because of considering how most people would be fearing the worst by us doing it this way and possibly talking us out of this ‘crazy’ idea, so, it was our first choice anyways, but always also kept a plan B in case anything could possibly go wrong, and that’s also very relevant because there were certain conditions that ‘in the last minute’ could in fact be sufficient reasons to go to a hospital and get a C-section. I am entirely grateful that wasn’t my case, but I will detail as well in the following blog how the whole birthing process actually took place.

 

So with this all, the learning point is to not settle with what the majority of people do around you even if it doesn’t really ‘sit right’ within you. Once I asked my mother about how I’d like to have some ‘freedom’ in the positions to give birth. and this was way before our choice of home-birthing – and she was like ‘no way, you are doing to be in one of those beds where you put your legs up and that’s how you deliver a baby… that in itself already sounded like an unnatural ‘must do’ where my palms would start to sweat just by the thought of seeing myself in that situation with all the white bright lights and screaming my lungs out without being able to move… well that was enough motivation for me to look at doing things differently.

 

Secondly, to not back down with making this kind of choice even if multiple ‘worst case scenarios’ are presented to oneself by different people in an attempt to ‘do the safe thing’ according to their views, perspectives and experiences. It’s also understandable how a lot of people do this out of actually wanting the best for oneself, but, it’s also important to consider that without having proper information or education on the subject, any idea that goes out of the ‘norm’ may simply be feared because of not being the most common thing to do or having misinformation about it. In this, we learned to understand people’s fears and concerns, but we also take them from ‘where they come from’ so as to then investigate their claims and truly make sure that those fears are addressed with proper directions of ‘what one would do IF’ this or that complication takes place.

 

Thirdly, realizing that the thing one feeds throughout one’s life as ‘the thing I feared the most’ is probably something that one needs to actually do to then come through on the other side and say ‘hey, I made it! I’m alive’ and yes, this by no means down-sizes the actual rough process this was, but I also see how my disposition to stop just fearing and instead looking into a better way  – to me- to give birth, making an informed decision and choice and preparing myself for it – not having anyone telling me ‘what’ to do – empowered me to own my decision, in a way, knowing that yes, this will probably be hard but hey it’s my absolute choice and decision, and that actually helped me to get rid of fears of ‘not being able to do it’ and instead, entirely trust the process and trust my capacity to do it, along with the indispensable help of professionals to do so of course.

 

As a result of this, I actually felt a lot better in the last weeks and days leading to the birthing time, because I knew I wasn’t going to a hospital, I wasn’t going to go through surgery, I wouldn’t have to worry about extra expenses and charges that these places usually do – and doctors – and instead pay a round fee for it which included the whole attention and support needed throughout the whole birth labor process. This also was a settling fact, because I’ve heard also the stories of how hospitals kind of take advantage of couples being in this ecstatic moment of giving birth to their child and any ‘extra’ expenses are just unquestioned because ‘well at least my child is here and safe’ and bam, there goes some 25% or more of the cost on top of the initial expected fees… yes, yikes, there’s a LOT that needs to be changed in the medical realm and specifically in birthing processes, but that’s just my perspective from what I’ve researched so far.

 

All I can say for any woman expecting a child or looking for alternative ways to give birth or just having a regular plan at the hospital is to get informed, at least on the basics of how you will be ‘handled’ and how your baby will also be handled from the moment they come out of the womb – regardless of the way you deliver – so that you are the most aware possible of how things will go. I share this because of watching many women having sour experiences after birth because of not informing themselves or being tricked ‘in the last moment’ to do something they didn’t want to initially but believing there are ‘no other ways’ so, going for it without a question. In this I might sound as if I am encouraging people to do it the natural way, to have a home birth or with midwives, and that’s how i would do it if I had to do it all over again – not that I plan to either, lol – but I am simply suggesting to own your choice and decision so that whatever the outcome is, one can be settled with it, embracing the outcomes and consequences of such choice. I guess this applies to everything really, but this is just my experience with choosing a way to give birth 🙂  

644. Strengthening Confidence

 

 It’s been some interesting and very active past 2 months, time seems to go flying to me and it seems that the more that I have expanded my view on how to get things done in relation to ‘having a baby’ and more specifically on ‘delivering’ a baby, a lot more has kind of opened up within me to ‘integrate’ the realization of soon having a new little person in our lives that we have to completely and absolutely take care of, and embracing that fact by preparing myself the best that I can for it. This is a practical way to create confidence within myself which is a word I’ll be writing quite a bit about today, considering I’ve made two words to live by the focus of my current living time which are: confidence and strength.

I have previously written about and understood confidence to be the result of doing something many times, practicing something a lot to the point where you feel at ease, comfortable in doing it, trusting yourself that ‘you can’ because you have done it so many times. However, when it comes to something that will be a ‘once off’ situation like in this case having a baby – and yes no matter how many one may have, each time will be surely different and unique – one cannot really ‘practice’ that process to the point of getting comfortable with it. One can play a simulation, get some exercises and movements integrated at a physical level to become more aware of the body parts involved, become more aware of breathing, understanding the ‘theory’ behind the birthing process, strengthening the body to the point where one can withstand such a demanding and strenuous process – or so I’ve been told/heard/read it is – but that’s as far as one can go.

In this case, there’s that complete aspect of ‘stepping into the unknown’ and something unlike anything I have felt or gone through before, the complete newness of it surely brings uncertainties, doubts, fears and the usual thing that emerges with anything new are – most likely – all the ‘worst things that could happen’ and I will say that, to a certain extent it is OK to be informed in all things that ‘could go wrong,’ but knowing is not the problem: worrying, preoccupying oneself about that IS the problem. And that’s something that I have also been working on by instead focusing on living this process of ‘preparation’ day by day and having a focus on living the words confidence and strength, and I’ll explain how in this blog.

I consider I am directing the diligence and discipline that I may have for more ‘mental’ tasks in a more physical-body level currently based on what I’ve informed myself will be required for me to deliver a baby naturally. The words that got me to consider this were: “it will most likely be like climbing up a mountain” and well, considering I’ve not been that proficient at doing such a thing before, I considered it was a bit ‘too late’ to get prepared for that, but people in these preparation processes have encouraged me to think otherwise and to rather be able to trust myself in being able to do it. But only ‘thinking’ I can trust myself is definitely not enough for me. 

Interestingly enough, I have kept a somewhat constant physical activity for some 15 years – yes before I was a coach potato for the most part and ‘loathed’ physical exercise – in some phases I’ve pushed myself a lot more than in others, but I never really considered myself as having some kind of ‘athletic wood’ so to speak, and I’ve realized that these were also self-imposed limitations based on ‘the genes’ I have or ‘the family I come from’ where physical activity wasn’t really inculcated, etc. All excuses, to be honest. Well, enough with the excuses. Today I’m on my 31 week, yep that means less than 10 weeks now to give birth and I’ve been feeling quite well to be honest.

I know I have ‘pooped’ my emotions here about those first three months and surely, they weren’t pleasant at all, perhaps if I could have done something different it would have been to push myself to do some light exercises and stop fearing ‘miscarriages’ altogether, because it wasn’t supportive or healthy to have that in mind the whole time, so there, that’s my point to advice and perhaps learn from, so from pre-occupying myself I decided to rather strengthen myself and my resolve to walk this whole decision of having a baby and becoming a mother the best way that I can, not only for myself, but for my baby’s wellbeing.

Ever since the fourth month kicked in and I started to get back to being active, things improved a lot within me –mentally and physically – and I haven’t stopped talking about the importance of physical exercise to really support the body through all the changes that it is going through with the pregnancy. I’ll share here how I went introducing that because as much as I don’t like to say ‘this is how things should be or go,’ who knows? Someone might give it a try and integrate activities that might assist them in their body and maybe explore others that may ‘resonate’ or be more aligned with themselves in terms of exercises or activities to keep oneself active throughout the pregnancy. 

On the fourth month I started doing some light prenatal yoga from videos on YouTube, which were a nice way to get myself ‘back on track’ after – really – doing Nothing for 3 months. Ugh, I feel a bit of frustration about that because I definitely saw how the lack of my usual walks and exercise definitely had an impact on my mental state – and I know there will be a phase like that after our baby is born, so I have to be gentle and understanding on that and know that ‘it is a phase’ only and to embrace it as part of the  recovery process.

Then, I got into swimming, I originally only wanted ‘free time’ in a pool, but I decided to actually take the classes and have some guidance on my time in the pool, so I’m taking swimming classes and aqua fitness which apparently is quite recommendable for pregnant ladies as well. This is where the ‘surprising’ factor comes in based on how much I’ve been enjoying that – as I mentioned in my last blog – but also how I thought my endurance would diminishing as baby grows, but the contrary is happening, I would say. I enjoy how there’s some strengthening happening in my body and surely, yes, I take it ‘slower’ perhaps, but the drive and commitment to be there every single time pushing myself a bit more has been quite an awesome experience for me, considering that I thought that those qualities were mostly like ‘mental’ qualities for me, but taking them to a physical level, has been quite rewarding in terms of the result of all of this is  feeling quite well physically, and consequently having my mind, my body quite well and aligned I’d say, feeling at peace with it, which is surely supportive for both of ourselves in the body J

I also got back into doing my usual walk which is like 3 kilometers a day at least, perhaps not ‘every day’ but 5 times a week if I can. I did have a flu that lasted some 3 days and I didn’t go out then, but on the fourth day I was back on track and that also supported me to recover faster. Then, I only started prenatal yoga at the end of last month and that I definitely regret not having gotten into before, but as they said: it’s not too late and so I’m there. That has definitely been quite ‘on spot’ for me to strengthen the muscles that will be involved in the whole delivery process and also encouraging myself to get better at it withstanding those yes, very demanding poses at times – lol – but knowing hey! I am getting better at it as weeks go by, regardless of baby bump growing or me putting on weight, which interestingly enough hasn’t also sky rocketed because of the exercise I guess and surely, watching out my food intake as well because! I did see the consequences of going into all the ‘dia de muertos’ treats like the sweet bread lol, where I gained an extra kilo by indulging too much into it, and I immediately noticed there was some swelling going on so that was a ‘red alert’ for me to cut out carbs and not over indulge. So that was also me listening and paying attention to my body, something I thought I just ‘wasn’t able to do’ or couldn’t ‘connect’ with, this whole pregnancy process has definitely assisted me to get more intimate and integrate more with my body, that’s for sure.

And then last but not least, continuing with my qi gong classes which have been overall supportive in integrating myself more within my body, learning to breathe and so become more aware of breath throughout the day and integrate some more of my strengths and core capacities by acknowledging what we are all made of, who we really are as living matter and what we are meant to live and do here on Earth. All of these activities also involve getting to know and meet people that have a similar vein of self-support, self-improvement, self-development and that’s awesome without a doubt, because many times one can feel a bit ‘alone’ in some processes so getting ‘out there’ and meeting people in doing physical activities together has assisted me a lot as well.

I guess one of the satisfactions I have is how from the let’s call it ‘dread and fear’ I had at the beginning of the pregnancy, I set myself to turn it around into a process of self-empowerment – both physically and mentally – through practicing ways to live the words confidence and strength, which to me have come from the physical doings which in turn remind myself of such confidence and strength at an ‘inner’ level, which is what we are all capable of being and doing, but we don’t remind ourselves of it enough or we ‘placate’ those attributes by focusing too much on fears and mental distractions that lead nowhere but to disempowerment. And that usually comes from fears and oh, we know where fears lead us…… to the grave.

It has also been a cool confirmation of all of this when going to the doctor for checkups and have him read a whole list of possible problems or symptoms and say ‘nope’ to all of them. My main discomforts have been related to having to pee constantly and some heartburn or acidity in the esophagus, for which I was told it is ok to take antacids, and so that’s what the prescription was about. That’s been about it for my pregnancy discomfort so far. What’s the reason for this? Again, I attribute this to physical activity and a change of attitude within me towards the whole process.

Meaning, when I decided ‘I’m going to FULLY do and embrace this pregnancy, that means doing the most that I can to be well in my body not only for myself but for the baby too, which is also being reflected in how things are developing with her, which is awesome and satisfying as well. Again, I got told so many stories of all things that could go wrong, and it’s OK to learn from others’ mistakes and experiences, but I have also taken all of that feedback as a way to challenge it and myself within it, and trusting my body in its capacity to do this, which it already does without me being able to be at all aware of how my body, my life, is developing another life within me, I’m just doing the ‘balancing and maintenance’ so to speak, and preparing the ‘mothership’ as best as I can, but also not going by the idea that ‘I shouldn’t be doing all that physical work’ and so forth, because, the results are the results so far, so that’s a physical proof that the more I keep at it with strengthening my body and keeping confident that I will know when to slow down or change routines, I will then make changes accordingly, but not out of fear, but out of consideration for my body and for the baby, which is a physical assessment by the day.

There were a couple of days after I hit the 30 weeks where I thought ‘uh the discomfort is kicking in now’ which was a thought linked to hitting the 30 weeks mark in gestation, but I said to myself, it’s only more weight on the belly, you can get used to it, might take some days but then it will be the ‘new sensation’ only – and yes, gladly it was temporary as well. So, a change in attitude has also been a key point as well when it comes to it, because it’s easy to get influenced by others’ stories and experiences, but also the more you hear about people that have pushed themselves beyond ‘perceived limits,’ it inspires you to do the same and test it out with due caution of course.

A part of me didn’t want to share about all of this because there is that tendency in all of us to compare and believe that ‘if she can, then I can’ and that’s most likely not the case either.  Each one’s physical and emotional process will be entirely different based on the fact that no ‘two’ individuals are ever exactly the same. What I am seeing at this moment is also the result of all the work done first at a mind level within this process with Desteni, learning how to handle my emotions, my fears and now integrating more of a physical aspect to it, integrating more with my body through the exercises and practices, which yes many times lead me to wonder ‘Why on Earth hadn’t I done this before?’ but hey, I can’t live in remorse about that, it’s here, I’m here, I’m doing it, I’m enjoying it and that’s what counts to me.

It’s also very supportive to meet people going through the same process – in this case pregnancy – and seeing how they handle it, that has been mostly inspiring and opening ideas and doors to try things out that were completely ‘out of my radar’ before, investigating, learning more about our bodies as we go through pregnancy and during labor and all that stuff that I simply wasn’t interested ‘at all’ before. And that has also led me to appreciate and be in more connection and comfort within my own body, yes, even though that belly is getting bigger by the day, there’s an appreciation of how the body can ‘handle’ that ‘weight of life’ as I like to call it hehe and still be functioning well, without me giving it ‘orders’ of what needs to be done, and that’s also how that confidence exists at a very primal and pure physical level of ‘my body knows what it’s doing’ and I am like a care-taker that ensures I give it proper rest, nutrition, exercise and mental support as in self-checking what is ‘moving’ as things open up and happen as we prepare to become parents.

One of the main topics have also been standing our ground in terms of how we want to do things, despite the fears or warnings we may get from others around us that I’m sure have the best intentions to provide certain information or experience as a form of care, but! There’s also an importance in doing things the way that resonate the best with where one is in relation to one’s body, one’s life, one’s partner in this case and assessing what would be of course best for the baby to come, even if that involves more challenges, perhaps more pain if you will, some ‘risks’ like with anything, but ultimately the more we ground ourselves with this strengthening of confidence, the more the ‘what ifs’ and ‘fears’ go dwindling.

In my case as I’ve discussed in my very first blog about pregnancy, I noticed that ‘it all’ was ‘the greatest fear’ I had: to get pregnant, to deliver a baby – naturally or through surgery – and to become a mother/parent. And it’s been quite cool to look back and see how I’ve set myself for it without half-assing the process or leaving it in the hands of fate to see ‘how things will be’ so to speak, meaning, doing nothing to get prepared, informed and as much as I can ready for what’s to come. But as with anything, that’s as much as I can do and as far as my certainty can go. There’s also the understanding and awareness that we may have certain plans and ideas of ‘how things will go,’ but I’m also totally aware this is the unknown and uncharted territory for us, so, I’m also integrating the flexibility, the ability to understand that if things can’t go as expected, if something happens ‘out of the foreseen,’ I can trust myself that no matter what, I can go through it, there can be solutions, there are always ways to walk through something and that in the end, things will be alright – and this may not mean a ‘desired outcome’ – but rather understanding how things happen and one can only buckle one’s shoes to walk that path and learn as one goes in the moment as it happens.

Perhaps something I will say is to not ‘conform’ or ‘settle’ for something that one is not 100% comfortable with or certain about. We live in a great time where any and all kinds of info is at the tips of our fingers and in our pockets, so it really takes that will to say ‘nope, I am not satisfied with this plan/idea of how to do things, let’s see what other options there are’ and that unravels perhaps a whole new path and way of doing and approaching things that in turn, can be a lot more satisfying, grounding, supportive and beneficial than if settling for the ‘not so great but at least known’ or ‘settling for the comfortable’ so to speak, which at least in my book is not something I want to do in my life.

This is also where I can remind myself that even if things do not go as expected, I can be satisfied with myself that I made a decision and have lived it all the way every single day with the best attitude and effort, discipline and commitment that I can, because yes I knew I could not ‘live with myself’ if I had remained in say, the physical and mental state that I was in when I walked those first three months… sure the nausea was just endless every day and all those abrupt physical changes but, I know that also my unsettled fears and what ifs may have aggravated that. So, for me what worked is physical activity and through that balancing out whatever else may come at a mind level to deal with. For some others it might be the other way around or not need the physical activity at all – but this is my experience thus far.

And yes, who knows, it’s interesting how it goes when others share their experience, it’s almost as if hardship is expected, like ‘oh you will see how it goes when you hit the third trimester’ or ‘oh you won’t be so light about it when you can’t sleep or tie your shoes’ and so forth… but, even those comments and experiences I’m taking as a reference to perhaps challenge them – or confirm them in any case – and really getting to see how truthful they are or if they are just an outcome of perhaps not having remained active enough during pregnancy to keep a relative level of functionality. And again, this may not be a possible thing to do for each one based on previous health conditions, so, not to be taken personally, but if one is sound and healthy, then surely there is no reason to not try out some of these suggestions out.

Also watching YouTube videos of people that have kept a good level of functionality throughout their pregnancy has been quite supportive and inspiring, but not only on YouTube because it has been very encouraging to for example meet a lady on my first day of prenatal yoga and ask her ‘hey how far are you in your pregnancy?’ and her replying ‘Oh I’m on the 9^th month, I could give birth today actually, who knows! I’m feeling kind of weird today’ and still go through the entire – yes –physically rocking session of prenatal yoga. I actually sent her a voice message to thank her for her example, which cheered her up after some complications that she had upon delivery and nursing. This was also a cool reminder for me to not keep quiet when I see strengths in others that may need to hear about it in moments of weakness or disempowerment, she thanked me for it even though I only met her once and talked to her for about 10 minutes in total, but that contact was also crucial for a number of reasons, and perhaps someone that I will continue to relate to as time goes.

Why hadn’t I written before? Things had to be walked real time for me to share with confidence about it, it’s easy to write words and ideas of what to do, but walking them, living them and sharing back the results is what counts the most for me, since I then have a tangible reference of how things are going  and how it all seems to be working well for me, which is satisfying – and perhaps it assists in ‘what’s to come’ as in strengthening my character and getting ready for the life changing event, which will surely rock my world around for good.

Another factor is that baby doesn’t like me to remain sitting for long periods of time – and yes even if I switched my office chair for a bouncing birth ball, she likes activity for sure, so she starts kicking when I’ve been sitting for longer periods of time, so I’ve had to move things around in my day to still keep at it with my responsibilities, but also attend and listen to my body and my baby to get food, movement, exercise, sleep and so forth. Right now I skipped my daily walk because we had a pregnancy circle reunion during the morning to meet other ‘to be’ parents and discuss about the general doubts and learn some stuff for the delivery process, which was cool, but then, that involved being out and traveling a bit further away so, I decided to stay home for the afternoon and write this out.

At some point I thought I was going to write more about ‘standing up to others’ fears’ but, I realized that would have been more like a ‘defense’ mode or ‘attacking’ mode to people’s fears that I did allow myself to feel conflicted by at some point when it comes to deciding to give birth naturally, but then I realized that fears are just fears. I have to understand why they emerge, why some people hold them as ‘truth’ to their heart and simply understand that it might also be a cool process for them to see how things can go without fears or ameliorating their fears even with say natural remedies – or plain meds in some cases – to assist the body to walk through some of those fears. In this case it’s more in relation to my mother for example in how she presents this pattern and I’m learning to not take it personally or be influenced by it, but more so understand it and also see myself reflected in them in order to see what I have to also change within me to not follow through that ‘fear path’ that she has – which has definitely also ‘poured through’ into the rest of the family. I realized that I do not need to ‘stand up to fears’ but more like focusing on strengthening our resolve, our will, our determination and our confidence to walk through something that, well, should be as natural as eating for the most part, otherwise humanity would have gone extinct a long time ago, isn’t it?

So I’m learning to not get influenced or ‘determined’ by others’ decisions, comments, ideas, beliefs, perceptions, but rather strengthen my decision, my will, my body, my determination along with my partner who has been a major pillar of support from day 1 in my life, and who has definitely been a key and very relevant person in supporting this current process I’m walking with myself, my body, our baby within and the decisions that this life changing event is bringing to our lives J And we are quite satisfied so far with it, and that’s definitely awesome.  There is nothing like being completely aligned with your partner, your husband, your life partner, your agreement person when it comes to how to walk a pregnancy, a delivery process, a post-birthing process and then the rest of the life of raising a child together with that commitment of bringing someone that will continue to be what each one of us have set ourselves to bring to this world: a point of change, of authenticity in expression, of creating new ways of doing things that are more beneficial to life on Earth and in general, to give a continuation to that decision to live the best that one can, regardless of how ‘the world’ may look like. I’m learning lots from this and I’m sure this is just the tiny peak of the iceberg, the beginning and yes,  who knew I would say this, but I’m definitely enjoying it all – I’ll leave it at that and yes, embracing whatever comes in these last two months that I’ve left until the birthing process with this same approach and attitude I’ve described thus far.

If someone wants to discuss something in relation to what I shared or has questions, comments, please share, I definitely consider we are all in this together and there is nothing more humbling than knowing that this that I am sharing may be of support perhaps even for something completely different to a ‘birthing process’ – but in any other ‘birthing of life’ process that one may be involved in.

Thanks for reading J

643. Being Ready to Have a Child

 

 Someone asked me in my previous blog about when would one consider to be ready to be a mother? And at first I had no clue of what to respond considering that my decision to be pregnant was definitely not a conscious one, even though I may have been preparing the soil so to speak – which is my body/mind – to it, which I considered I did in a tandem where I focused on a process of healing from some of the most ‘challenging’ aspects of my past that I had been ‘dragging around’, learning to let go and in that, re-directing my focus and attention to myself, my physical and mental wellbeing. 

In conversations with my partner and some of our friends, they were pondering how come things seemed to come ‘so easy’ to us as a couple, where we don’t exist in what may be common for most couples like fighting, being in perpetual contempt towards one another and having a hate-love relationship essentially. Perhaps this is not the case for most people reading this, but, I’ve come to find how unfortunately common it is to have the kind of – as they call them -‘toxic relationships’ and how people do embark on – let me say it – daring to have children in that kind of relationship context. Well, back to the question they asked us, the answer I gave is that I had a lot of self-work to do before being able to be in a relationship in the current terms that I am in, that it didn’t come ‘easily’ as it may seem, and that I actually had to go through quite a few trial and error situations where I kept bumping my head against ‘the same wall’ so to speak, where compromising myself and ‘who I am’ would emerge in one way or another over and over again. Of course the problem weren’t ‘others’ but who I was as the starting point of being in a relationship.

The difference this time around is how I approached the person that is now my partner. It didn’t come from a point of desire or need, but more of a genuine getting to know someone that seemed like an interesting person that I wanted to get to know and understand, a curiosity in how ‘he functioned.’ My approach was of providing some support in what he did, which led me to get to know more about him, his life, the kind of ‘wood’ he has through our communication.  Another difference is that – because I wasn’t having any particular ‘interest’ or ‘hidden agenda’ towards him –  I was totally and completely myself – I didn’t have to pretend or portray or ‘handle’ things in a way to keep things ‘flowing’ – which I noticed he also did, like he does with anyone else.

As things progressed I also got to understand how this was a person with a strong character that would not allow much of my usual ‘ways’ in relationships which may end up looking like ‘I want to support you’- which in reality it meant  ‘I want to support you because I want to change you so that you can be the person that I want you to be for me in a relationship’ type of manipulation, which in the end of course is always self-manipulation, nonetheless.

This meant that I stopped trying to ‘change the other person’ or ‘hope they could change this or that in time’ or having things going on that I would just react to and suppress, because! These eventually end up smelling like rotten food that you can’t really ‘overlook’ as time progresses in a relationship – and sometimes, as it’s happened to me, because of not speaking up and letting things continue, one may create an engagement of sorts that then needs to be broken apart for the best of both involved.  That’s the kind of situations I’ve had to walk through and learn from in the past. So now being with a person that is mostly upfront and ‘whole’ in himself allowed me to tell my story as is, have no qualms about it and still find an embracing being that didn’t judge me for what I had judged myself for being like ‘multiple’ faulty decisions or mistakes, but instead embraced me completely.

When it comes to considering someone to walk your life with – and perhaps in consideration of that couple or partnership becoming a parenting team – this was certainly something new and a healthy approach to a relationship, having someone let you know that they only want the best for you no matter what I chose or did. And I did the same towards him. Perhaps this is a bit too personal but there is something quite worthy in someone that can tell you ‘I’m completely fine if you decide this is not for you, but if you are up for it, then I’m completely here for you and we can make it work.’ All the ideas and experiences of relationships I have had were created upon a need and dependency, me deciding to be ‘someone’s joy’ for example, creating a deliberate dependency by ‘giving’ or ‘being’ for another something that they weren’t living or expressing themselves yet. That’s where compromise exists and it is basically impossible to create such kind of dependency when you got a person that’s ‘whole’ within themselves, that have never had a desire for a relationship or wished to be ‘liked’ by someone or anything like that. That to me was something entirely new as a starting point in a relationship and seemed like a very supportive stance and person that I could learn from and also grow with.

I consider that even if this point of compromise is something that I still have to continue keeping an eye on, I’ve gotten better at it. I realized that in the context of relationships it’s easy to go into a fear of loss if one decides to do this or that, and when there’s someone that even though they love you with all their being, they let you know that whenever ‘this’ is not working out for ourselves to be the best that we can individually, that it is completely OK to let go and pursue that for ourselves, that, is something that definitely became a new thing for me to appreciate coming from the mouth of a partner, to no longer live in the idea of ‘bondage’ to someone, but to rather first honor myself. And this is precisely – perhaps – why I am getting to the bottom of this whole point in terms of ‘being ready’ for something, being in a supportive relationship, it’s mostly because and related to learning to genuinely CARE for myself and yes learning to LOVE and appreciate myself individually, first of all.  

One of the things I appreciate about my partner is that self-love and self-regard he has for himself. Some may see him as conceited because of this – I see it though how it is just ‘awkward’ for most people to learn to love themselves and how that translates not in fluffy positive self-talk, but actual actions, changes of ‘life-plans’, changes in one’s daily routine and in the way one decides to be better at whatever one does, doesn’t matter how seemingly ‘menial’ it is. I hadn’t had such example before to be honest, so to me this attitude ‘rang a bell’ wherein I realized how many times we place ourselves in certain relationships to ‘cover up’ or ‘fill in the holes’ that we believe ‘others have,’ so that there can be some kind of codependence formed. And that’s how each one fears end up leaving or losing each other in the end, because one is not actually ‘whole’ first individually.

Back to the chat we were having with our friends, my partner explained this point that I just got to here, that we were two people that were ‘whole’ and saw the potential of kind of working together, sharing a path together, we saw how we could make each other better with our specific skills and innate abilities, a complementing that becomes more of an example, a guideline, rather than ‘doing’ or ‘being’ something for someone else. The ladies in that conversation asked ‘But how do you get to that??’

My partner has his own specific ways which may seem way too ‘simplistic’ for most – to me it seems like it takes a lot of will, courage, drive and self-motivation to make things work, to adapt, to change one’s plans to also consider another- which are not simple traits to develop from the get go, but also not impossible. I shared how to me it has been a process of many years, many mistakes, many falls, many rather unsupportive relationship contexts that I had to go through in order to get to be where I am now. To learn to be ‘whole’ with myself, to be content with and by myself first and to then see how to enhance that with someone that could be in their own way ‘whole’ as well, someone that I can trust would be ‘okay’ by themselves and that there are no ‘knots needed to be tied’ so to speak.

Well, the last point is now different considering that we are going to have a baby which joins us in this journey together – and frankly really  happy about it being with him – and I also consider how somehow we were looking to do this together – or was in the back of our heads – but didn’t really accept it or admit it or thought of it possible. I’m sure it will bring many new challenges to ourselves individually, as a partnership and as a new family, but there’s also a trust in how ‘we’ve gotten ourselves this far’ in a relative short amount of time I’d say and so, we both trust each other that we can do this.

He was mentioning yesterday how it is actually quite the miracle that we can be alive here and today, and not in a fluffy positive way, but more like considering the state of affairs in the world and with life in general, how ruthless it can be, and how we basically can be grateful for what we are, and the opportunity we currently have to be alive and even more so to be preparing to bring another being into the world. I also considered this when I recently had my birthday and I made my Spanish podcast on that day and what emerged to share was gratefulness, gratitude for the life that I currently am, the life that I am bearing, the opportunity we have with our lives even if the world seems to be ‘upside down’, and to keep focusing on how I can ‘give back’ to life that has been given to me unconditionally in every single breath that we take – usually – for granted. This is what has emerged within me, a sense of wonder if you will of what I can get to be, of what we can get to be together as parents and how we can BE the Best of ourselves – as we are continuing to work on doing with ourselves individually and with each other – and for our little one.

Another aspect to share about is the ‘preparation’ that has emerged within this at a physical level in my case as well – well in my partner as well in terms of having better living habits, but that’s his story. As I mentioned in previous blogs, I started this year with the full decision to support myself at a physical level, which I honestly had kind of ‘taken care of’ but hadn’t really linked it to an actual process of healing from the things that were causing continuous deficiencies and sickness in the past year. So, I placed myself in ‘self-creation’ mode. I looked at developing a project based on what I wanted to focus on doing to support other people, then I started getting alternative support for my body like homeopathy and acupuncture, which at the same time led me to start going to Qi Gong classes that have become quite a source of physical support and integration of breath awareness along with physical movements, finally getting to actually be more aware of my body and slowing down, which is something I tried doing only at a mind level, but I was missing the body integration. The progress is definitely something one can notice after several months, but today it was quite enjoyable to do, along with the group of people that go there where we had a nice breakfast reunion after the session. I basically decided to create the time for this and I frankly don’t know why on Earth I was suppressing such desire to explore this kind of ‘exercise’ or more shall I say discipline, so that has been a change as well, to focus on physical support and wellbeing.

I also changed some stuff in my daily nutrition, I stopped taking some ‘mixes’ that I had been using supposedly to get a lot of nutrients from vegetables and fruits, but found out that they were causing a problem in my gut, so I started eating other stuff that I now see as more supportive when it comes to feeding myself. Interestingly enough I also diminished my drinking of coffee – the last ‘stander’ when it comes to my self-defined addictions, up to the point where I just couldn’t stand it at the beginning of the pregnancy and have stopped drinking it ever since. I started taking some vitamins as well which were also something I neglected a lot before to do, so as ‘small’ as this action can be, it became a significant difference for me – and thanks for the support to Ingrid S that also assisted with this. I guess the only constant physical support has always been walking, I wanted to start jogging again, so I also started jogging every now and then but not making it a ‘must’ like it was before, but more like listening more to my body when and as I saw it would be doable and up to the point where I wasn’t hurting my joints and it was genuinely enjoyable while it lasted lol.

The first three months were the hardest I must say. I don’t want to paint a horror show for any lady out there, but in my case I had to really slow down and barely went out of my house and yep that was quite a shock and difficult considering I’ve always been able to just go ‘wherever I want’ and have no limitations in terms of mobility. But it also prompted me to appreciate having more stability and feeling generally ‘well’ after that time to get back to walking, which I started doing bit by bit to see how I would ‘handle’ the situation – up to now that I can walk the usual length without a problem. And then I decided I wanted to swim. My partner gave me a membership to go to swim twice a week as a birthday present, and that was something that brought tears to my eyes, because I really enjoy swimming and this was basically a very supportive kind of gift that I am currently enjoying. I had been ‘desiring’ to get some swimming time for years, but I kept placing ‘money’ as an excuse or time as a constrain, which interestingly enough with the pregnancy, I have kind of ‘given myself permission’ to be more attentive of myself, giving myself the necessary care in many ways and yes, I have been pondering why I hadn’t done this before, for myself?

So, this is also something that I share because basically I see that I could have created this kind of foundation of self-care not only because of being pregnant and preparing my body to be a household for our baby, but because of being that household for myself first of all. I definitely want to pass on an example of self-care and continue with it in whichever measure I can once our child is born, because that’s basically what matters the most, that’s basically the foundation of who we are as individuals as well in this relationship and that’s the kind of message we want to give to our child too.

When sharing with my partner about this question I had gotten in terms of ‘when is one ready?’ he mentioned that it’s essential to be aware of being able to ‘handle’ oneself properly, like taking care of oneself, being able to be whole with oneself, being able to ‘deal’ with oneself effectively. I add to this having that foundation of self-support is essential, because even if what may come is generally uncharted territory, one can certainly stand in self-trust to be able to handle things as they come if one has already been practicing and applying ways to support oneself. 

I basically wouldn’t have even understood the gift that becoming a parent can be, I wouldn’t even be probably pregnant because who knows the kind of decisions – probably not very good ones – I would have made in my life, if I had continued that pattern of self-compromise and following certain ‘ideals’ of ‘who I had to be’, which contained ‘zero’ references to settling down or forming a family. The latter only started becoming interesting to me in the past years when I began investigating more of my ‘programming’ in relation to how I would see myself in the future, and how that contained a lot of ‘garbage’ created through the kind of ‘culture’ I thought I wanted to be a part of. Now I’m kind of on the opposite track of that and actually enjoying it, which is something I never thought of doing or becoming, but hey courage is something one has to gather and decide to live, it’s there, just have to pull it through.

In the end, it’s also relevant to say that I wouldn’t have felt ‘ready’ for this – ever – because of the plethora of fears I had created around it and beliefs of ‘not being up for it’ or not being ‘the kind’ of person that’s ‘suited’ to ‘become a mother.’ All of it a bunch of beliefs that I decided to let go of because now it’s the real deal of it and yes, not saying it’s like an instant ‘switch’ where I changed my mind, I explained in my previous blogs about these fears and uncertainties, so here I am sharing mostly how I’ve changed my approach since then. I still get a bit astounded when feeling the first movements inside my belly and realizing wow, this is really REAL! Lol. I’ve also been essentially walking what I proposed myself to do in my last blog, embracing this all as a blank-slate, a blank page, a new point of creation and being aware of not ‘clogging’ it with ideas, expectations, fears and whatnot.

I’m taking it ‘day by day’ essentially and more like enjoying the self-support I can give myself, which I wish every single woman in this world could, because it definitely sucks that the majority are not able to have the time or resources to take proper self-care – physically and mentally – and because of that, well, we have the society that we have where many humans from the womb to the grave live lives of distress, lack, improper education and the list goes on with various deficiencies, which in turn become the society we live in. We definitely have to change that, and I realized that such change started with me, right here and right now, so I’m doing that and getting to enjoy it to be honest.

Now, as a general update, how am I feeling or doing? I’d say quite alright really, sure I am noticing a diminishing in my stamina and that means also being considerate and understanding of why that’s happening, and so to not judge myself for having to take naps or take things ‘easier’ – seeing it as ‘ugh I feel lazy’ – but rather reminding myself: I am creating/baking/growing a new being inside me! How else would I expect to feel? Also embracing the actual ‘shocking’ aspect that it can be to see your body get heavier and grow a belly that augments by the day, lol! That’s definitely something I still can gasp at when looking at myself in the mirror, but then, remind myself why it’s happening and how it is also temporary.

Perhaps one of the things I would change from the first months is pushing myself to move a little bit more around, being less grasped by fear of loss and try some gentle exercises and stretches, because I definitely became idle and that had an impact on me physically and mentally, so it’s been great to move a lot more again – but then again, as I reach the last trimester and baby bump grows, lol, new challenges will emerge in my mobility perhaps and other kind of preparations will take place, but, I’m up for it.

Another thing I would say to anyone that may have been similar to me in terms of being the kind of person that always said ‘no’ to having children or never really openly ‘wished’ to have children, to embrace the opportunity if one decides to go for it, to self forgive and let go of fears or beliefs of ‘not having what it takes’ – and instead replace them with creating or continuing to create and build a strong foundation of self support, so that no matter ‘what’ with the newness of this phase in one’s life, one can have that pillar of support in oneself, in that foundation of self-support – like to me it is Desteni and everyone involved in with whom I have walked with for over a decade – a supportive partner and a supportive family – if they decide to and are willing to be involved. In my case I’m quite grateful to have their support and yes, this is when one gets to realize how important it is to have others’ experience and willingness to help because they have gone through a similar situation. So, this is a learning point for me in terms of being able to ‘be that’ for others whenever I get to be able to do that for others too.

I understand that there may be women that are up for having babies without the father, or without the support of a family – and, well, that’s quite courageous, but I’d say even then, it’s probably preferable to find a network of support. Nowadays you can find lots of groups of people with children or willing to support each other in the absence of a partner or family, or because of work. So, yes there’s a way, perhaps I would be more wary of the point of deliberately choosing to not have a ‘father’ for a child, but that’s another story and I have no direct experience of any of it, so I will simply not go there here.  There’s always a way, so this is something that I’ve been keeping in mind ever since deciding to have a baby and yep, embarking myself in total uncharted territory here, but that’s part of life and in my life, I basically have had more of an ‘easy’ life so, I’m looking forward to it, because I am aware how it will become a catalyst for more changes, more challenges and I’m kind of looking forward for that, lol.

So to wrap this up, I guess that there can be a myriad of ‘ideal’ scenarios of ‘when to be ready’ but, ideals rarely come to exist in reality. So, I would rather boil it down to being able to be at a point of stability and having that foundation of self-support – physically and mentally speaking – and as I say ‘stability,’ it may seem elusive for some, but it is not, it does require self-work, and sure one cannot wait to be at a ‘perfect stability’ because that’s more like ideal again, but not necessarily a reality. It’s more about being at a point where you are mostly OK with yourself and not having major ups and downs in life… or who knows perhaps taking such a decision like having a child creates such ‘time-to-pull-up-your-pants’ type of effect where one then gets serious with being the best person that we can, I guess it can work in different ways with as many people as there exist, but these are some of my humble opinions, and who knows? I might be missing out some other essentials or underestimating the whole situation, but, that’s  also ok, I will find my way as I go, so that’s the current approach that I have.

This is all also in consideration not only of oneself – one’s life and one’s body – but about the partner that we joined our life with in a very physical manner that means a new being, a new life that’s to come, that’s why I emphasize on the importance of having a solid and supportive relationship as well as preparing one’s body to give the best support one can as a mother to a child – and the supportive relationship. But, I understand how that may not be possible for some, but whatever you can do and handle, make sure you are entirely ‘up for it’ with whichever may come from it all – this is relevant. Otherwise, there might be backtrackings, regrets and so forth – this is totally about learning to be unconditional for another being and that requires full awareness of what that practically entails. I can be preparing myself for that, but it’s only a concept for now, so I’ll see how it goes once baby is finally here J

Ok so, this is it for now. Nothing of what I share do I imply ‘has to be that way’ of course, I can only speak from my current situation and experience and ‘who I had been’ in relation to this topic, and who I am now as my new approach to it.

If there are any other comments, ideas, questions, suggestions, I’m all eyes to them.

Thanks for reading!

 

 

641. Early Stages of Pregnancy: Doubts, Fears, Worries and Getting to Own the Decision

 

 This is a long overdue blog, but there are a couple of reasons why I wanted to write and share about it once that there were certain points ‘in place’ for me to openly do it. This is about the most important decision I’ve made and am still actually learning to walk in my life and to get to a point of owning it, which will mean stepping into a new phase in my life, stepping into ‘the unknown,’ into what throughout most of my life had defined as ‘the most fearful thing’ I ever could think of doing – or the ‘biggest fear’ that I could name whenever anyone asked me ‘what is it the think that you fear the most?’ and one that I thought myself to be quite certain of when it came to ‘saying no’ to it – and yes, I even may declare myself as a ‘culprit’ for having also at times attempted to discourage people from doing, since I also went through a phase where I considered overpopulation was ‘the problem’ in our world – and not the nature of who we are and so ourselves being the solution, not the ‘quantity’ – but, I’ve learned my lessons and have given myself the chance to evolve from such limited mindset that was part of some brainwashing I went through when being a ‘concerned teenager.’ And yes, I truly thought that it wasn’t going to be something I’d have to go through in life.

Well, as always, Life says ‘here I come’ and change knocks at your door and….! I am now four months pregnant (!) and the idea of bringing a child into this world with the best person I’ve known and have had as a partner is an idea that is now sitting quite well within me and I am embracing more and more as days go by, where there is actual joy and gratefulness emerging as we continue to establish the foundation of who we are individually, what we would like to provide to our child and the benefits that we can create for a new person coming into this world, for ourselves and better so, for society and the world at large… but! This wasn’t my immediate experience and it’s been a process to get to that point – I’d say it still is – so this will be about sharing the experiences I’ve been having throughout these past months.

First of all, I didn’t want to share how fearful I was and still not having walked through those fears in a way that could be supportive for others to read and possibly learn from. So, this will be a detailed explanation of what I went through when finding out I was pregnant and being open about the fears that emerged, the uncertainties, the comparisons, the prejudices that yes perhaps I didn’t even dare to confront within myself, but that I deeply experienced and had to eventually work through within myself with the support of others to as well to it, which otherwise would have probably made this a lot tougher.

I found out in May 22^nd that I was pregnant with a simple pregnancy test. I had my suspicions since I’m quite regular with my period and there was already like a 3 to 4 day delay, and there were other unusual ‘symptoms’ that I wouldn’t get in my regular period. This is not my first ‘am I pregnant?’ type of ‘scare’, but this time I was doubled-troubled about it, I feared it more than other times if it turned out that it could possibly be a ‘yes.’ Somehow in the back of my head I kept the idea of ‘possibly’ perhaps, maybe, somehow having a child later on, but interestingly enough somewhere last year I had made a very ‘clear’ decision to not go into the ideas of having a child – at least for now, or so I thought! Lol. Even though being honest, the thought did emerge based on the relationship I have with my partner, but then I simply went into a more ‘rational’ view that included certain fears about finances and being able to provide for a child up to the time they are  capable of supporting themselves. Yep, since then the money concern emerged as well.

But I have to backtrack a little bit because the whole context of myself throughout this year is quite interesting to look at in what I now see almost as a ‘preparation’ of what would come almost in the middle of the year. I decidedly started the year with what I have defined now as a healing and self-creation process, which involved walking the decision to support myself to work on some points that I had just been dragging around and that could ‘possibly’ be linked to causing some health issues – which were actually intermittently happening throughout the past year – and I decided to look for alternative ways to support myself instead of only resorting to taking medicine and hoping that I ‘eradicate’ it that way. In a ‘shout out’ to get support,  I took the offer from my fellow life-processer walker and sharp-eyed friend Leila to have a Life Alignment session with her for support, and I would say that such session at the end of December of last year  turned my life around for good.

 Leila’s support and session assisted me tremendously to become aware of certain patterns I was still defining as ‘having to carry them’ to finally come to understand, forgive and let go of them, which were most likely the emotional issues causing the consequences I was facing at a physical level. Through opening up all the points that came up in that session and taking the route of the suggested alternative support, I was able to open myself up to a healing phase and at the same time, to really step into a point of self-creation that I had kept ‘on hold’ because of, in a way, still ‘torturing’ myself with the past and not really forgiving myself completely.

So, from January on after that session with her, I visited a regular doctor to find out what I had – which yes had to do something with the reproductive system – and decided to go to alternative therapies to assist with the healing and body balancing process, while knowing that there were very clear points I had to work with and process emotionally as well, which I did as well and it definitely turned my life and inner presence around as well. I started taking Qi Gong classes which I definitely enjoyed, as well as getting to hear these other two alternative medicine specialists on ‘my case,’ which assisted me a lot as well to have that understanding of how I created my own symptoms and recurrent illness – and in a way, reinforce the perspectives that I had been ignoring: being able to self-forgive and let go. Yep, at times we can be stubborn in believing we have to ‘hold on’ to something as some kind of ‘pay for the sins’ – not recommended at all, folks.

I started focusing on what I wanted to create and do this year. I started working on developing a workshop related to developing self-introspection and self-creation through the creation of art. Here my friend and terrific Life Coach Joe Kou assisted me personally with grounding these plans and projects, along with my workshop partner to ground and refine this project we had and getting to define what we wanted to actually give to do and provide to others. I was quite excited about the whole process and I’m still grateful for everything that I got to learn and – most importantly – get to define for myself in terms of ‘who I am’ in my ever ‘doubtful’ type of relationship with art. The project may be on hold, but I’m quite certain that all of these talks with Joe also assisted me to tap more into my personal potential and getting back in touch with my creative capacity again, lol, perhaps the creative capacity emerged just in a ‘slightly’ different way, lol.

I consider that all of these initiatives to support myself and the changes that I embarked myself on at an internal and external level – like setting myself into a point of self-creation and ‘breathing life’ into myself again, gaining a new perspective on life – contributed to ‘opening the gates’ to something else that I had not necessarily planned or expected, lol. Interestingly enough all the alternative support I had was also focused on getting my reproductive organs and general hormonal system balanced out. I also did some changes in my diet, but I still had some deficiencies like feeling sometimes very weak and so on. Interestingly enough, I actually didn’t want my ‘next period’ to come, because of the last massive blood loss I have had, and what would I know? That such period never came… Lol! Well my body is wise after all.

So back to the point of finding out ‘the news’ and how this time around I felt very different to go and get that pregnancy test, I was actually fearful, I even got a bit pissed on the way back from the pharmacy which is a pattern I ‘thought’ I had already ‘nipped in the bud’. I recognize that I was simply quite fearful. Well, I came home, did the test and hoped that the faint line that appeared was simply a mistake, that it wouldn’t mean a POSITIVE result. See, I actually thought I was having some delays because my body had been quite wonky in the past weeks prior to my ‘period date,’ or I thought that all the homeopathy and acupuncture sessions would be destabilizing my period a bit, but it wasn’t like that. I asked Leila about it and well yep, she let me know that even if the line is faint… it is a YES. Lol, I had not read the pregnancy test instructions properly either it seems, since I later on read that was a common thing to happen even if it was ‘very faint.’

I called my partner right after I found out. I was quite shocked and didn’t know what to do, it’s almost as if I just wanted to ‘go back in time’ and avoid it all. We decided to talk it out at night when he came home. And his response – as always – is that of taking absolute responsibility and supporting me in whichever I decided. Yep, this was tougher in a way because he said he would be ok with whatever I decided – to have the baby or not – because of me being the one that would actually go through the whole physical process of birthing the baby, and yes understanding the role of the mother in it all. He stood firm in his disposition for whatever I decided, because he simply wanted me to be ok with it.

But, as he explained this, I saw that I just didn’t have it in me to say ‘no’ to this – and his calm and assertiveness to receive the news definitely gave me an example of how one doesn’t have to ‘freak out’ as one may expect.  This is where the notion suddenly hit me: a new LIFE is taking place now in your body as we speak and this is not a matter of chance. This is a result of me also having a relationship with my partner and acknowledging that, ultimately, there’s always that chance of getting pregnant even if there’s protection involved. And at the same time, I knew that it was only what I in the moment called ‘the worst of me’ that would say ‘no’ to it, which were a bunch of fears, self-definitions, comparisons, self-doubt and general uncertainty that would prevent me from saying ‘YES, let’s do it’. In other words, I knew that only ‘the worst’ part of me – or the weakest one – would say ‘No,’ because everything else can be worked out, like in terms of finances which was one of my biggest ‘fears’ around the idea of having a baby, but that has also changed as time has progressed and we’ve both opened up this point and I am very much learning from what I could say is more like my ‘partner’s process’ which has everything to do with entrepreneurship and financial education – which actually also touches on very similar principles that I’ve walked on for these past 11 years.  Money hasn’t been my ‘forte’ but I am learning a lot from how my partner currently approaches it, therefore I am learning to not only see fears and lack in my relationship with money, but rather learning HOW we can make things work and genuinely decide what is of real value, which we both agree on is not a ‘ton of material things’ in that sense, but rather seeing the actual wealth there is in the education that we can provide for the child as well.

Before this moment condensed into a reality, I actually have had a dream on April 16^th where I would realize I was pregnant, and it felt extremely real, or dare I say ‘frightfully real.’ I would think something like ‘Oh oh! I’m pregnant, this is actually happening’ and I would kind of move to making a decision about it and I would think to myself: ‘Well, I guess it’s time to grow up now’ And my presence and nature would be that of embracing it, of actually accepting it and being ok with it. Only afterwards did some financial fears emerged about ‘how I would go on about it’, which I guess is one of the most common fears that emerge whenever you start planning to have a child or are already pregnant. I woke up from that dream and said  to my partner ‘I had a nightmare! And proceeded to share what the dream was about, Lol! But I let it go and didn’t make much of it.

So once that we were discussing about the pregnancy that night of the day we found out, I remembered that dream and how I had afterwards assessed that it had been ‘the best part of me’ that had stood up in the dream to be ok with it, accept it and embrace this maturity or new phase and ‘letting go of the childish me’ so to speak, which I know is also quite the problem in my generation, which involves not really wanting to take responsibility for ourselves, and ‘worse off’ not for any other either.  I also knew that in a way I was holding on to this belief that I had always said to everyone when asked about wanting or having kids and always saying ‘No, no, no… Me? No! that’s not for me, I won’t have kids. That’s the most important decision in life and the most important job in the world, and I respect parents a lot, they are really brave, hat’s off, but that’s just… not for me.’ But deeply inside knowing this was in fact cowardice and so in a way I realized that the time had come for me to face one of those ‘greatest fears,’ which I opened up about – to a certain extent – to my partner.

There was a sense of responsibility as well but also of understanding how I just was very scared of assuming now my decision and responsibility. I can definitely say that such discussion was assuring for me from the perspective that he assisted me to dispel some of the most immediate fears around money, about ‘not being capable’ of doing this and rather seeing the possibilities and how this kind of challenges would actually support us to grow more and to give ourselves another purpose to our lives together and in our personal development. I realized later on that, as he said, this was our chance to actually create some change in the world, which it certainly is. I’m glad as well how this is something I came to understand some years ago where I went from seeing kids as ‘a burden to the planet’ to more like the opportunity actually change the current state of affairs in humanity over the generations, and what a better way and opportunity to do so than with being able to raise a child.

At that moment I decided to say ‘Yes, let’s do it’ but it wasn’t a FULL decision made with the wholeness of my being. I still had the fears, the uncertainties, the fear of losing the baby in those first 3 months of gestation, the fear of going through problems that would not enable the proper development of the child, fearing that my body wasn’t ‘fit for it’ yet, etc. These fears plagued my head for weeks – and yes I accepted and allowed it. I knew that I had said YES and went on with it, but a part of me was simply fearing that ‘it would not happen,’ that my body was not ‘at its best’ to be carrying a baby. I also feared letting go of the plans I had recently created, I feared letting go of the ‘ME’ that I’ve known and the idea of just having to ‘do what I please’. Yep in essence, I did go through a mourning process in a way of having ‘my plans’ changed and then at the same time not having anything certain yet – nothing is, still – but in my mind at least it is now ‘safer’ to say that I am pregnant because of the amount of time that has transpired and because I’ve seen the baby developing really well in the womb J Who knows, yes anything can happen, but then I also walked another point that I will describe later on in terms of not being defined by the outcome, but walking a decision regardless of it.

So for me in general, finding out that I was pregnant, that WE are going to be parents and bring a human being into this world wasn’t immediately met with enthusiasm, happiness,  joy and jubilee – as I had perceived ‘I should have done’ but why? Because of my fears, mostly of the pregnancy actually ‘not sticking,’ of my body not being ‘fit’ enough to develop another life within me, not having ‘what it takes’ to bring a child into this world. These were mostly the fears that became an incessant type of doubt and uncertainty throughout most of the first weeks. And the fears then sparked up more and with some pains I had that demanded me to be ‘taking it easy’ most of the time and minimize my activity – like barely going out for 3 months – and then on top of that the nausea started kicking in… I just felt like in a limbo. That’s all I could say to my partner for some weeks ‘I feel like in a limbo’ of not being able to truly say ‘this is certain, we are having a baby’ or not, and yes there is that ‘weight’ over me to in a way ‘make it happen,’ but fortunately enough my partner was always supportive and considerate and not really concerned if it couldn’t get to form and ‘happen’ as expected. But he also taught me to stop expecting ‘the worst’ all the time, which I am still learning and frankly once again getting to step out of, since it’s almost as if my old-age pessimism kicked back in.

The nausea so far has been the worst of the pregnancy process up to now, I mean I don’t want to discourage anyone with saying this, but I do want to be as realistic as possible because this is my experience and I really felt like a zombie, like constantly ill for weeks on.  I also felt ‘odd’ for not being so ‘happy’ about the news at first  – even though when sharing the news to those closest to me, it felt like there was a sense of joy in it, but that I couldn’t just for now ‘take it for granted,’ so I would just go back to the limbo-phase of smiling but deep inside me, not really being certain of what I was ‘getting myself into’ nor if it would physically ‘work out, or that I had ‘what it takes’ to pull it off.  

I must say that abortion (miscarriage) had not been in my mindset or radar before, this I mostly got as a ‘real scare’ because of knowing of a situation from someone I know that went through it and that kind of placed it in my awareness and, yes, what can I say? I moved the least I could because, it would hurt and be painful to just go walking to the store close-by. I felt like crippled because of not having my ‘me time’ every day to just go out and about with my long walks and generally longed for ‘feeling fine’, but I also realized this was part of a process and decision I had agreed to go through and that I had to actually care about another’s life developing within me, one that me and my partner had planted as a little seed. And because yes a 20 minute walk ‘at my usual pace’ had detonated a pain that actually got me in pain and therefore in crying and fearing that I would be placing this baby’s life at risk, I decided to keep myself resting and that was definitely a tough time where even writing became very repetitive and somber with describing only the worst of the experiences, and found it difficult to see any ‘light at the end of the tunnel.’ I knew that this was taking a toll on me, so I reached out for support again.

Once again, it was through Leila’s support with her Life Alignment session that assisted me to actually open up this ‘limbo-mindset’ and get to face it, even though I had seen the fears moving in my mind and me demonstrating it and acting them out in what became, I would say,’ the pessimist me’ that was ‘waiting’ just for the time to pass so that I could have ‘some certainty’ of actually being pregnant, actually having a baby or not. More like desiring to have some ‘control’ over the idea of being pregnant or not.  Through the session I was able to face and open up the fears about ‘it not really happening’ and I actually allowed myself to realize I was in fact fearing not having the baby, and that I was at the same time in a way mourning or letting go of ‘the old me,’ and I got to see the ‘big’ point that I’ve seen comes up in my life when having to take care of another being: selfishness. And that whole idea of ‘me, my time, my life, only doing what I want and what I like’ and having that self-definition printed on me like my creed, a very limiting one to be honest. I actually cried out when realizing through the session how I was in fact preventing me from embracing, being happy and joyful about the pregnancy because of not wanting to create ‘a bond’ with someone that I could ‘lose’ or see not ‘happening’ if something went awry.

I’ve also taken this as if Life was also throwing this ball at me kind of like saying ‘So you speak of supporting life, and life in equality, and wanting the best for all eh? But you don’t want to actually have a child and see what it takes to actually care for another life as yourself?’ Well, this is my characterization of it lol, but I saw my own principles and words ‘staring back at me’ and this also led me to see that it was – again – only the worst of me that could be fearing stepping into a new phase in my life. Leila assisted me to realize there was a mourning process of letting go as well of ‘the me and my life that I’ve known up to now’ but most importantly, I was able to admit to myself that I actually wanted to have the child, I just feared not having it and having to go through the loss and the pain that goes with it.

In a way, I was creating a detachment  as a defense-mechanism to the whole idea of being pregnant because then my logic was ‘If it doesn’t ‘stick then I would not feel ‘attached’ or already ‘hyped’ with the idea and having let everyone know about the news.’ It became something like a ‘safe spot’ to be at, to not be so defined by the idea of having a child, because I still ‘could not be certain.’ Well, it then became obvious how then how my decision to say ‘Yes, let’s do it’ contained this whole point of uncertainty and fears in the background – and selfishness as well, making it about ‘how I feel’ instead of actually rooting and being up for giving it my all and being my best at it for something that I am deciding to do along with my partner.  So this also took some time for me to assimilate and actually open up to the new and actual change in life.

What opened up in that session also enabled me to discuss these points with my partner, and he was able to understand what I meant when I would say ‘I still can’t believe we are going to have a child’ – which he would understand as some kind of pleasant surprise statement, but to me it was a real ‘I can’t still be certain of it’, I still can’t ‘wrap my head around it,’ and also because of the early stages of it. So that was yet another very supportive talk we had, where we got to open up one of my most ‘ingrained’ traits, which is yes, pessimism and almost expecting the worst of all things to happen at any moment. So I got to open up about these and other fears, which is also where I got to see how my own mindset was generating this sense of uncertainty and fear, and how I wasn’t allowing myself to fully LIVE the decision of having a baby and instead, being almost like ‘leaving it at the hands of life to decide what would be or not be.’ And here it’s very relevant to make a distinction as well because sure, it could have or could still happen that it doesn’t work out, and that then would be something for me to get to understand, learn from, embrace and move on with. But I no longer fear having to go through it as I did at the beginning.

The main point here is how I was creating this whole fear and uncertainty because of not realizing that I could decide to be OK with either/or scenario as well. I was defining myself already by the idea that ‘losing the baby’ would be a bad, negative, painful process and that would ‘define me’ somehow – so that’s how I then would ‘prevent’ going through all such ‘negative things’ by remaining in that limbo = not being truly standing in and as my decision to have the child, because then logic said “If ‘something happens’ = It would not be something that I was already ‘attached’ to, or future projecting about.” Well, this was quite revealing to me in how I was in fact standing only in fears and prejudices. I had to stop. My partner was awesome in discussing this with me, he is in fact the most supportive partner I’ve ever had and has been an exemplar pillar of support for me since day one, and he was able to assist me to face these points and to realize that I didn’t have to be defined by either outcome, that either way: Life goes on and we will be fine at the end of it all.

An interesting thing though to realize is that at that stage and having walked our first months with the pregnancy together, I realized that based on how enthusiastic he was, how he pushed himself to from the get-go get himself ‘moving’ to do things he needs to do to have sufficient time and financial support for when the baby arrives, and how every single day he would wake up with a smile in his face and saying ‘we’re going to have a baby!’ that even if this didn’t ‘happen,’ I would still go through the whole thing again to try it again. Lol! I can’t believe my words, but it is so. Based on the values that we share, the ‘who we are’ that we can share with a new being definitely becomes an attractive idea that overrides everything else that I also feared like the actual pregnancy and birthing process, the incessant crying, the growing pains, the discomforts when they are little babies etc.… that goes to a secondary stage when placing ‘what we both have to offer’ to a child, not to mention that he loves children and is quite a natural with them, treating them the same way as I do, not from an ‘I’m an adult and you are a child’ type of starting point, but one of equals and talking to them as the fully formed beings they are. And so that does fill my heart with joy in a way, to work together now on someone else based on seeing how well we get along and how supportive and loving we are to each other, as in really assisting ourselves to be the best that we can as individuals.

What has emerged within me therefore is an actual gratefulness of this opportunity to bring a child into this world and I basically turned my stance around from indecision, fears, what ifs, future worst-case scenario creations to rather being able to trust myself in this, to know that we can together handle this because we got the foundation that’s most important – from my perspective – a solid, supportive and loving relationship where we each have demonstrated each other to support ourselves to live the best that we can be, and that we haven’t ever ‘pushed us down’ to become the worst of us, but quite the contrary, and this has been a daily living thing, which has shown tremendous results in both of our lives.  

I am not fearful or ashamed to say that this time around, I wasn’t the ‘strong one’ with this whole new path and decision in my life, I wasn’t the one that would ‘help the other’- as I was used to – to come to terms with something. I was definitely the one that was supported by my partner who stood solid and quite optimistic about the whole thing. It was definitely another point of ego for me to let go of, because I had always believed that in my relationships, I’d always be the one to ‘help the other out,’ and I am actually glad and grateful to be with someone by your side that is there to support you when one is crumbling in fears and in a general low. So, it is also safe for me to say that as much as the decision was placed ‘on my plate,’ I knew that this decision would not only impact me of course, that this was part of my partner’s life process and a point that was opening up for both of us in the path we decided to walk together J And I couldn’t be happier about it now that I’ve come to assimilate it, embrace it and root for it as the days go by. 

But, who knows if I haven’t had a supportive partner or someone that was as pessimist as I was, or as fearful or only focusing on ‘financial problems’ or seeing it as a ‘load’ or doubting themselves in not being able to ‘pull it off.’ I guess that things would have been a bit different, but this is also a general point to become aware of when being in a relationship and not having a super secure method to avoid pregnancy – if not desiring to have any children –  to be aware of the possibilities of getting pregnant and making sure that one is in a supportive relationship, that one can actually step into that possibility of having a child together and know exactly where each other stands in it. Otherwise, this is also a problem in humanity where people just ‘get together’ because they ‘like each other’ or have some ‘fun together,’ but have no idea of where each one stands in the ‘hypothetical’ yet very possible scenario of having children which it surely is a life changing situation.

In my case, that is something I considered, I observed and assessed and ‘tested the waters’ on with my partner to know where he stood in such potential situation. It would have been quite different if ending up pregnant with someone that perhaps really dislikes children or wants to just have a partnership relationship forever. So even if this wasn’t planned, I sure knew where my partner stood about it and now I embrace that unconditional support that he has become for me in my life and receive it in gratefulness, instead of perhaps going into regret for not having stood up and being ‘my best’ from the get go – this is part of the things I probably had to learn and experience firsthand to then be able to root or ground myself in this life changing decision.

There are so many other things that have opened up in relation to walking now into a bit of a more ‘certain’ phase of the pregnancy, like looking at how it will change our lives, the ‘letting go’ of ‘me/my-time’ for some years, but at the same time actually being glad about it because it is in fact an opportunity to test myself in a whole new terrain, to learn more about myself, to learn to work in a team with my partner, to learn to live that unconditional love and care towards another being, and be that which I would want every newborn child in this world to have: a supportive environment, a supportive family, a pair of individuals that are preparing themselves to do the best they can to bring up a life in this world that can continue our individual paths to become better human beings in all that we do. It is fascinating how to me this is what excites me the most and knowing that this is a child that will contain both of our lives and paths to in a way, re-birth ourselves into the best, to assist in the process of possibly getting to correct the things that we both know is the worst of us and to be able to in essence create – perhaps – a better version of ourselves and of our parents in this forthcoming phase of our lives.

So in essence, now that the nausea has subsided, now that I’ve seen how the baby is doing, there’s more of a sense of certainty around it. And even with the process of planning, placing ourselves in the position of ‘preparing’ to the next year when baby arrives, is opening up so many cool discussions between us where I get to be more and more certain and actually quite happy and grateful to be carrying a life that contains my partner’s life as well, because he is quite an extraordinary human being that has demonstrated, in a rather short period of time, to be able to turn his life around in ways that few people I know have been able to. That assists me in my own trust and confidence to walk into this new phase in life.

It’s also very relevant for women to have that kind of support in a partner considering that I have seen how there are emotional upheavals, there are changes one goes through in the body and that having a partner that doesn’t react to my ‘emotional upheavals’– but understands it’s part of the process –  that gives comforting words and caresses, that doesn’t judge my body as it goes through its changes, that helps me to see that the discomforts and so on is part of the process for something better to come is something that I am truly grateful and learning from, and absolutely relevant and a great example as well for me to see how it is possible to face even the ‘difficult parts’ with a better sight on things to come. So if you are a male reading this, it’s best to also do your part on getting to understand what women go through in pregnancy, which is what my partner has done in his spare time, even to the point where he has now gotten to explain certain things to me, because he’s made the decision to be there all the way to support me and wants to be, what he calls, a ‘second mother’ lol, and not be the typical father role that is portrayed in pregnancy books-  or at least the older ones that I got from my sisters J

So to me, as important as it is to be taking physical care of myself, having proper nutrition – after a few of the rather not so supportive ‘cravings’ I gave into in the first weeks – gaining more confidence in going for walks, stepping out of general fears and doubts of ‘being able to do this,’ and more like embracing the being that is growing in me it is also important to have that equal stance from the other in the relationship. So as with anything, I guess for anyone reading this my suggestion is to yes prepare the body and one’s mind as much, but to also fully, fully disclose and talk things out with your partner first and know ‘where he stands’ in it all, because it does require great courage to embrace this in the best way possible. Sure we all got our points to walk, but that’s where having that support in one another comes in to face such experiences. Well, I say this, but I bet my partner would simply say that any challenge in life is an opportunity to motivate himself more, a challenge that makes him just push himself and see the benefits that it creates, which become a well-rounded purpose in life and that to me is quite an example I am learning from and grateful to be walking along this new path with.

To me this whole process has taught me how I don’t have to play strong all the time, or still fall into the belief that ‘I am the one that should save or assist others,’ but rather recognize my own weaknesses and be ok with receiving support from those that are around me and to ask for specific support when needed, otherwise, who knows where I would have been without the support I got from my partner, my immediate family, Leila, Joe and the people that directly worked on myself and my body with the alternative therapies, which I am also grateful for having the opportunity to have.

I realized it is also OK to not be initially happy, ecstatic, joyful and jumping up and down about the idea of being pregnant. I understand that I don’t have to compare myself to how other women – specifically – have faced their pregnancy or motherhood process, and I kind of knew that I set myself up to this kind of uncertainty and fears because of me having fed the fears of ‘having a baby’ or ‘becoming a parent’ for most of my life, it was ‘THE’ most feared point in my existence, and I held it as a very ingrained belief. So this is another learning point to become aware of what we say ‘never to’ and realize that Life may have a different plan for us and that we may actually end up facing such things we ‘fear the most’ and that it is actually not something to fear, but to rather take on as a challenge, an opportunity for growth, for change and to embrace the opportunities and paths that it will entail.  And that it is ok to not be all smiles about it, but take it as a very physical process of growth and development that it is and eventually as the very real responsibility and opportunity to challenge myself that it will represent with all that entails to be a parent, and be definitely fully UP for it – or at least knowing that I can trust myself to work on the bits I may go facing and being uncertain of, or the mistakes I may make. It’s all part of life.

I wake up every day aware of being pregnant and that is quite something to see growing in my body, but more so enjoying as well how this has opened up so many potentials in our lives in how we can best support a new child coming into this world, how to best prepare us, how to be also OK with making mistakes and facing the unexpected too, to not try and have everything ‘under control’ or attempt to ‘know as much as I can’ either. I am also allowing myself to simply take it easy with it, focusing on our physical wellbeing and continuing building the bond with my partner through it with the expectation of a third person coming into our home J He says we will be having so much fun, and I’m so glad he sees it that way because it is contagious how he can talk about what I would’ve defined as ‘tough things to go through ahead’ and he’d see it as something funny to go through, something challenging that can push one to the limits of seeing how much one can stand through. Lol, anyways it has assisted me a lot to have a different outlook on the idea of becoming a mother, becoming parents and yes, why not, also leaving that ‘selfish-me’ phase behind, which sure might be challenging, but hey, this is what Life has now placed on my plate, so that means I’m ready, I can take it, let’s do it J

Thanks for reading if you got up to here! I’m open to any feedback, questions or comments – or any topic that may require going into some depth.

For Spanish speakers, I’ve been sharing my weekly process within the pregnancy and reflecting back on how things apply to anyone else in their lives in my Encausarte Podcast from Episode #23 on.

Recommended series! Parenting on Eqafe.com

 

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638. A Redefined Spirituality

 

 The following is inspired by the writings of a life  colleague –  as I am now deciding to define him – who shared a lengthy letter to me as a response to something that I wrote him in an intent to assist in seeing the blueprint of the points that I consider were veiling him from seeing through the steps to get back into an ownership of his self creation and self awareness,  which he has walked in his very own set of paths of ways – but interestingly enough, we have found each other having the same intent and purpose in our lives which we will be joining in an common project where we can share more of our personal experiences and processes with many more that might find themselves in the same kind of ‘holes’ in our creative processes that we have both acknowledged having been limited by in our creative paths of inner and outer creations.  

To give some context to this self forgiveness, this is a reflection of what I see of myself in his words and speaks to anyone that can identify themselves with being ‘a seeker’ or someone that seeks meaning to one’s own existence, to one’s own creation in many ways and paths and if not getting to live their potential, it becomes a source of emotional and detrimental experiences such as falling generally ‘ill’ in the form of lacking direction and purpose, being stagnant in expression, losing sight of the ‘bigger picture’ in life, being veiled by emotions such as dread, depression, sadness, despair and in a way blaming everyone else that doesn’t seem to care for life and the world as oneself as the source for our own apathy and frustration, not realizing we are ‘it’ ourselves too in living out that character of disempowerment and helplessness and victimization.

 To sum up, it reminded me a lot of the path that I’ve also walked and that it’s still part of me and I have not forgotten it, I just have in a way stepped out of the cocoon and see things quite differently now, but it is as if I am embarking myself in this new project and walking with him in this project in this phase of my life because our will was mightier than the limitations that we many times fell into, and I’m genuinely glad and happy to see him slowly but surely realizing these things and taking on his creative path again, which I recognize that I have to do myself in my own self imposed limitations as well, and it’s great to have someone to walk such path with, someone that understands the seemingly ‘similar’ kind of patterns that some of us ‘creative’ people go through, but many often give up half way and get lost in the midst of ‘the fog’ and don’t persevere enough to see through the illusions to remain ‘with the finger in line’ as he says, living one’s expression and will, despite the nature of everything and everyone around us as it currently exists, but being courageous enough to understand things at a deeper level and hold that little flame alive within us no matter what, and let each other know ‘hey I am here, I understand, I walk with, let’s work together’ which is quite priceless and unique to find seemingly ‘out of nowhere’ and here is to say as well that coincidences don’t exist, only what we determine ourselves to be and do which eventually takes us to where we need to be to fulfill that which we set ourselves to live.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to keep quiet and wait for someone else to make the decisions of what I should be and do and within that, diminishing bit by bit my determination to express and take responsibility for the decisions that I make and what I live in my life, which I realize diminished my ability to live me and bit by bit dried the flow of the abundant river that I have always been aware exists as me, as the life that I am.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to neglect myself into experiences of despair and arguing for my limitations in neglect cultivating my own confidence and stance that has always been here as myself, it just got clouded by the emotions that became the comfortable way to justify not living the potential of who I really am as life.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to make of my mind my own obstacle that created shame, anger, despair, uncertainty and sadness which I realize is the way in which I now realize are the ingredients to create resistance,  which my mind creates in greed of energy and in allowing that, I stepped further and further away from actually getting to do what I know and have always been aware of is the truth of my being, what I can and need to direct myself to be, live and express.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to create a comfort zone in remaining skeptical and not want to intervene in my own life in order to not have to take responsibility for myself, not realizing that this seemingly ‘comfortable zone’ led me to sink deeper in a hole where I alienated myself from my own wholeness, from my own power as the capacity to direct myself, to intervene in my own life, to decide to change if something wasn’t working anymore, to innovate in the way that I can decide to live me and within that acknowledging the work, dedication, consistency and will that it will require to create and live myself as the best that I can be. That’s what self-creation is all about.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to be-lie-ve the statement ‘nothing really matters’ as a way to avoid myself in taking action in all the things that I knew I had to take action on in my life to be and become the better version of myself.

I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to have been in great thirst of knowledge and information in an attempt to find a way to change the way that I am and how I see and understand life, not realizing how I only inflated my mind with it, but I wasn’t really learning and applying how to really nurture my soul and being in the daily actions, words and habits that I realize I have to take action on in order to live the best of myself.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to deliberately over complicate myself with theories, ideas, beliefs and philosophies which I realize may assist in our paths, but can also create new excuses where we miss out the common sense that always exists within ourselves, we just have to decide to let go of wanting to ‘seek out there’ and instead start getting to ‘what’s inside of me’ and write myself to see who I really am, what I really want to do, defining my purpose, defining my drive and take the first steps to do so in my reality.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe I know many things but not really getting to understand the steps, the process it takes to interiorize, to integrate, to live the awareness of the things I realized in my life. I realize it takes actual change, work and effort to live the words that I get through realizations.

I forgive myself that I had not accepted and allowed myself to realize how ‘realizing’ and understanding something invariably leads to the next step which is to take action on it, to not only be infatuated in an enlightening idea or momentary experience, but to embrace and direct that impetus to create the actual change in space and time and take the necessary steps to do so in order to honor the path that took me to get to realize, see and understand what I now see, realize and understand.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allow myself to define me and allow myself to be dictated by the construct and concept of time, by the illusion of having to remain ‘current’ according to that abstraction which time is – which we have created in means to control ourselves. I realize we create time, we decide how we live time in this reality, but I no longer allow myself to be dictated by it and what I should feel or experience according to the idea I have around it.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to isolate myself in a bottle of complexities where I believed no one else cared, no one would understand or listen and in that, miss out the many opportunities to connect , share and get to know others, because of becoming my own living judgment of seeing everything as ‘lost and pointless’ and not seeing that in doing so, I wasn’t getting anywhere else but became more detached from myself, from my own reality and from getting to understand ‘the other’ as myself too.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to become lazy and apathetic to continue discovering the wonders of who we are and can be and become, and instead to become sad at the apathy I saw in others, not realizing that in doing so, I became equal to what I was only seeing in them.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to become the epitome of hope in despair, where I gave myself up in the wait for something or someone else to show me the way, to tell me what to do and not take responsibility to be my own director, my own guide, my own master that is self-created – not following, not taught, but simply learning from others’ experiences and making them my own by testing them out to see if they work or not.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to use the idea of lack as an excuse and as a determining factor of my being where I placed myself into a survival mode  that turned me into a selfish and ruthless being, becoming fearful, anxious and angry at myself for knowing that this ‘lack’ is entirely self created and that no one else is doing this to myself, but me.

I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to not give me the gift of Understanding another, because I realize that I can’t hate another if I understand how we all have created this in separation of who we really are as life. I now realize that Understanding is one of the most profound and liberating gifts we can give to ourselves.

I forgive myself as everyone else in our weaknesses and fractured beingness because as big as the weaknesses and fractures are, these cannot override the virtues that we actually are and can develop as the new nature of our being. This is self-creation, it is not born from perfection, but from the decision to overcome the complexities, the falls, the mistakes, the wrongdoings, the self-neglect.

I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to neglect the dedication it requires to get to understand how we function in our minds and our being, because that in itself reveals our truth and as such, it becomes the most useful thing to do and dedicate our lives to cultivate.

I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to not continue cultivating my own understanding to direct and create my own healing process and within that, cultivate my own self-awareness,  to no longer be defined and limited by survival in this world as a justification to not live the wholeness of myself in  my day to day and in every moment of breath.

I forgive myself that I haven’t accepted and allowed myself to redefine spirituality as a sincere and grounded way to define and create my own being, to create the habits and methods to continue developing my self-awareness in every moment of my existence, to be in contact with my being, my body and to create an awareness of the effect that my thoughts, words and deeds create in my reality. I realize I can do this without the need of crystalized dogmas and instead can be lived by a simple and consistent dedication in developing these supportive habits of being in contact with myself and taking full ownership of my capacity to define, reinvent, innovate and reconstruct myself, because no one else can do this for me, but myself.

I forgive myself that I haven’t accepted and allowed myself to live determination and do the hard work that it takes to live this process of creating my own life and self awareness, because I realize it requires courage and determination and I believed myself to be devoid of these. Now I realize we all have what is needed, that we all can live these words and that’s the living faith in which I decide to live in, to be the driving force of my capacity, will and determination to do that which I know and realize are the building blocks to the creation of who I really want to be as the expression of the wholeness that I go creating and expressing in my life.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself for having been ashamed in being the one that is not following the same path as everyone else, but instead decided  to swim against the flow, going into the opposite direction while everyone seemed to not care or see where they are being led to.  Now I realize, see and understand that this very will, determination and decision to keep going ‘against all odds’ got me to where I am today, where I now open my eyes to see that there is no shame at all in living my own truth even if no one seemed to care or understand, because it’s not about others but about my own decision to live me, to express that care, that love which is sufficient to live the truth of who I am.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to give up many times in the many creative ways that I pursued at some point in my life, not realizing that I can work things, that I can implement changes and innovate in my life to keep that living flame alive even if it only seems to lighten up my own face. I realize that this is what living me and expressing me means, to do it because of myself and for nothing and no one else other than the expression of the potential that is unleashed when one decides to live unconditionally.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to regret the perceived’ wasted time’ when I neglected the essentially creative capacity that I am and that I have. I now realize that such ‘wasted time’ was part of the process and the many roads that have led me to be and become who I am here, that I can start where I am – in every moment, in every new breath – and to realize that in any moment, I can only be the one that drives me or becomes my own worst-enemy and limitation to do this as an expression of myself.

I forgive myself that I haven’t accepted and allowed myself to realize that frustration is a symptom of the incomprehension of my own self movement, and that stagnation is no more than the nature of all sickness that manifests when I don’t allow myself to flow and be the water that flows, that reclaims its natural will to express, to flow, to be, to adapt, to move and embody the realization that its movement never ceases, because I’m not defined by a measure of time – I embrace the creation of the potential that I decide to live and cultivate as the everlasting self that always remains here, just like the water in the world.

I forgive myself for living out my weaknesses and for allowing them to affect others in their own lives. I now decide to work on the changes, the habits, the actions that will turn them into actual strengths.

I realize that I can only get through in my life if I place my own faith back on myself as the recognition of my capacity to change my reality and the outcome of my life through the work that I can dedicate myself to do every day in order to honor the wholeness of my being, to no longer be trapped in the experience of lack and all its unfulfilled concepts that I had allowed myself to believe and be enslaved by.

I now take ownership of my own discipline and self-creation moved by the love that I realize I can express in my work and the enjoyment that I imprint on it and on myself in doing so.  I commit myself to become the author and creator of all of this that celebrates the manifestation of what and who I realize I really am at a fundamental and existential level as life itself.

I understand and realize that time is only a measure of earthly oxidation, however even if I deteriorate, it does not define my stance and who I am as I keep my finger at it, becoming and living the drive that has got me to where I am here today, because no matter what: I remain current.

I decide to trust myself in my decisions, my actions, the paths that I decide to walk, embrace the ups and downs it may entail because I decide to trust myself in being able to learn from it and expand my expression through that, because I realize that that’s what living life is all about.

 

 

 

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629. What I’ve learned about Self-Punishment

 

The previous blog I wrote about Self-Devaluation and The Body contained one aspect that I’d like to focus on in this blog, because I merely mentioned them summarily as self-aggression and how I called it self-flagellation. This is about in fact the concept of self-punishment and what one can ‘gain’ from it – yes, as ‘weird’ as it may sound initially.

Part of the Unlocking yourself process that I described in my previous blog is to open up to consider other people’s views, perspectives and ways of approaching a situation, which can be very enlightening and it’s been the case when taking on this subject to our group chats at Destonians.com. Last Wednesday, we discussed “What do we stand to gain from self punishment?” and it was eye opening to get to know the many ways that people can understand and see this point of self-punishment and how it is lived, why it is lived and the constructs or beliefs behind it that lead us to do such a thing to ourselves. 

I bring through something that Leila shared which was “it’s like we rule through punishment/sin instead of compassion/forgiveness” and that’s part of the points for me to take on and integrate as a realization, because upon judging myself, the idea is that I have to feel bad, feel tense, feel anxious, feel ‘within an upheaval’ about it, IS already a form of punishment as well. We’ve allowed ourselves to be wired in a way where we fixated more on the problems rather than focusing on the solutions. Self Forgiveness is the way to Understand the situation that we participated in, take responsibility in it and lay out the foundation to change, to live the correction and solutions.

But! Even if I thought I was doing this, the reality of my situation has proven me that one aspect of morality kept me blind from realizing that I wasn’t in fact self-forgiving and letting go for real, and that prevented me from Living forgiveness, which is living the ways in which I see is best for me in my current experience and life decisions – not hooking on fears of the past of what I did or didn’t do.  Therefore compassion I can redefine as being understanding of the situation, not being hard on myself, being able to also stand in the shoes of whoever is involved and not feel ‘bad’ about it because feeling ‘bad’ doesn’t sort anything out either, while also realizing that I can only focus on changing me and being the best that I can for me and those currently around me.

She also expressed there: “and punishment can be taken quite ‘broad’ — any type of tension or discomfort you create, why  do we punish ourselves with anxiety, what do you stand to gain from it? what do you fear more than anxiety that you wouldn’t give up your anxiety? do we fear freedom?”  And that is in fact THE point that I had to realize which is eye opening and a point of self-honesty: it isn’t nice or beautiful because it does create an awareness of ‘WTF why have I done this to myself? And the reality is that ultimately, in my case the whole reason why I reacted in this form of self-punishment is because of a belief that feeling bad and sorry would make ME seem like a ‘better person,’ someone that ‘cares’ because of how I have defined ‘care’ as ‘worry’ – when it should definitely Not be that of course – and as if I could ‘clear my sins’ through punishment; I could see the traces of religious constructs there as I explained in the chat too.

But beyond that, the ultimate point is exactly about our freedom, our actual ability to be self-directive, to take one’s authority to create, to have a blank slate of creation, instead of focusing on ‘the past’ and ‘what is there to Fix-Ate on’ or ‘feel bad about.’

This is ultimately one the big habits I’ve seen within me and that I have observed in others related to me genetically. It is as if ‘something had to be happening all the time’, something that is wrong, or something to ‘feel bad about’ and if one realizes that one is creating that, then it’s as if everything can suddenly be stopped.  The canvas of self-creation is unveiled and emerges for us to walk on. And because we actually don’t decide to act to live words, to focus on self-creation, we– by habit, by patterns and by ingrained acceptance and allowance –  bit by bit, step by step, allowance by allowance, just ‘roll back’ to the commonly ‘accepted forms’ of existing, which are mostly related to being in perpetual forms of emotional or feeling experiences, fear for the most part being ‘the mother of all other reactions’ like anxiety, sadness, depression, anger, guilt, shame, remorse… you name it. It is an energetic experience that as BAD as it can get within our bodies and the effects it creates within it, we keep blindly participating in it, creating any other form of story to give ourselves an excuse to almost ‘keep ourselves busy with’ trying to kind of remake a puzzle that is already framed and hanging on the wall, it is that useless to keep living in fear related to past issues – but not limited to the past for sure.

The story that I told myself to justify living in such self-punishment is ‘having to pay for something I did’ and so, having to suffer in a way to ‘demonstrate’ that I cared or that I wasn’t too ‘cold blooded’ about things. Lol when in fact I could have lived it in a more sensible manner by genuinely introspecting and forgiving myself for it and embracing my ‘mistakes’ and move on with my life.  I created what I am experiencing at a physical level, and embracing that realization is a rather ‘uncomfortable truth’ that I had to process for a couple of days until I realized that reacting in sadness about it or anger towards myself is yet another way to keep ‘burying me alive’ so to speak, because any other distress or fear or judgment causes further oppression, tension and damage to my body, to OUR bodies.

The best way is to simply acknowledge it, almost like nodding to it and taking it in humbly to really realize that: I truly now have to let go, stop punishing myself, stop causing all of this dis-ease within me, this discomfort and ultimately this habit/addiction of worry and preoccupation to focus on my self-creation.  So far been applying this since I got ‘hands on’ for it these past couple of weeks and it’s been going good.

That question Leila posed ‘do we fear freedom?’ is a very, very relevant one because I’ve seen time and time again within me and others how it’s seemingly ‘easier’ to keep focusing on feeling bad, feeling emotional about things and believing one can’t ‘sort it out’ unless we are ‘given the green light’ by something or someone out there and because that won’t ever happen, it’s as if we just keep waiting for ourselves to truly let the ‘punishment’ go and lift up our own veils – which we have placed upon ourselves – and walk out in freedom.

There are some lyrics that I’ve been appreciating lately in Mexican music, and one song says “we are like prisoners and we think like prisoners’ and it talks about how we are ‘pulled by forces’ that seem to take us ‘wherever they go’ and have no self-direction. It is in fact the prisoner mentality that I was in, and it is through understanding how I came to create this, how I decided to ‘label’ my actions and how I decided to react to them – based on these constructs of morality and what seemed like reasonable to do ‘at the eyes of others’ – defined my experience in relation to this situation.

What happens once that one is done sorting through the repetitive ‘inner conflict’ about any point or experience – no matter how big or how subtle it may be – is that what is left is an open path to genuinely Live and be in all authority for self-creation.  The reality that I see is prevalent within us human beings is that, it’s ‘seems’ easier for us all to talk about the problems that are happening in the world, in how this or that politician is a corrupt or not or how things seem to be just ‘going nowhere’ but have no proposal to be participating in changing the tides that we’ve been ‘imprisoning’ ourselves into for far too long. It is a form of self-punishment as well because it recreates the problems, it just spreads the sense of despair as if nothing could be done about it. What I do then is to focus back on what needs to be looked at which is self-education, the values, the principles, the common sense as what’s best for all that is needed to be understood and lived and so, the need for parents to have these principles to educate their children too.

I would certainly want more people to become aware of this. I’ve been going to certain therapy and I can hear people around me constantly worrying about this or that pain. I have a genuinely good example in my life of what it is to be healthy in a very round sense of the word by NOT participating in any form of energy-trips related to any form of reaction, basically not participating in fear. My partner is that person and through my interactions with him my ‘habitual’ antsy patterns fueled by all kinds of seemingly ‘usual’ fears – no matter how ‘subtle’ or big they are – have been exposed to the nth degree. I can even say that my whole ‘self-punishment’ deal is a way for me to have that as a ‘constant point to be dealing with’ as an excuse to not deal with the very real and very present opportunities I have to break through those – yes – very ingrained habits (read addiction) that I had defined as ‘normal’. It has been through his constant feedback that I realized how much I can be in fact TENSE and fearing and worrying.

This is another aspect that pertains to my personality. I can be a very ‘intense’ person. This has its pros and cons. I can be a very intense person in a ‘good’ way so to speak wherein I can be very passionate and diligent and walk firm decisions in what I do and how I live it. But I can also be very Intense as in literally being IN-Tension about just anything that I may accept and allow myself to be worrying about or preoccupying myself with. This is precisely where the kind of person I am is basically also formed through the ‘learned ways’ I adopted from people around me. This has to do with being commonly worried, being rather dramatic about things, and it’s funny because I often would get annoyed and irritated by what I perceived as ‘dramatic people’ but, I’ve been seeing how I am precisely that. And this whole pattern of self punishment is a consequence of taking things TOO intensely. My partner helps me out to become aware of this by joking about it lol I then laugh and realize what I’m doing. But as I’ve said so before, I can’t go through life depending on him letting me know what I’m fixating on as a worry point.

I was talking with my cousin yesterday and we talked about driving cars. I have no intent to drive because I was involved in a car crash and even if I was not the driver, I took that as an excuse to create fear. I still again feel the fear as I write this and the same goes with bicycles and relating it back to an accident I had 10 years ago. These fears ‘gnaw’ me because I am over vigilant when being in a car or even when seeing people driving bikes on car lanes. I must admit that thoughts of the car crashes come up when I’m riding with someone in a car and even more so go into a rather intense reaction whenever we may come to any ‘close’ point to crashing. I get agitated and I Know I can change it and it IS a matter of perception and deciding to no longer exist in fear about something that happened some time ago already.

Something that I’ve been telling myself in those moments when being in a car – not driving – is one of the principles that my partner lives by. I tested it out the other day to see if it assisted me to deal with these fears while being in a car and that is ‘always expecting the best of everything and everyone.’ What comes to mind is…. Well that’s disingenuous, we KNOW people are not all good, we know there’s evil, we know shit can happen!! Etc. but even in that response, there I already ‘revamped’ all the sources of fear that can mainly exist in any given moment in one’s daily life, regardless of even defining certain activities as ‘dangerous’ or potentially harmful. The other day while driving in the back of a car and noticing the driver was speeding a bit, I noticed the fears coming up again and this time I breathed and reminded myself: expect the best of the situation. And that was supportive but I do honestly need to work more on grounding myself to reality in those moments and learning to not participate in the ‘what if’ fears.

I realize that I can’t also be externalizing these fears every single time I am driving with someone in a car, because that’s not really the point as I then implant the fear and idea in the other person that’s driving. This is about me practically letting go of ‘worst case scenarios’ which have become a way to ‘spike’ my mind into a reaction in any given situation. And yes this is not only when it comes to cars, but also when crossing streets and dealing with any form of traffic. Can I continue living that way? No.

Even in walking I am extra cautious, extra vigilant and perhaps there’s tension accumulating because the background to that hyper-vigilance is fear of cars as well.

So as I was saying, my cousin said with a big smile ‘well you just have to stop fearing driving a car and that’s it!’ like taking it very lightly. The back of my mind could have reacted like ‘oh it’s so easy to say it!’ because that would be a way to revamp all the reasons and justifications of ‘why I should remain in fear of cars and driving’ and that would mean being free to actually perhaps take the steps to be ‘free from fear.’ The simplicity with which she took the whole thing amazed me, the solution seemed simple and it really is! The ‘hook’ that keeps me ‘hooked on fear’ is made out of reasons, excuses and justifications of why I should remain in fear, and that’s in fact a point of self-limitation that I’m holding on to, no matter how ‘bad’ or ‘credible’ my inner-stories are: IF they are causing any form of tension, discomfort, fear or even anxiety as it’s been happening around that topic, Then I have to let go of it. It is as simple as that, and yes it may be challenging due to how I have also been ‘justifying’ these fears in terms of how there are some reckless people driving on the streets, or how ‘badly’ some people may drive, on how everyone speeds, on how many people die in car crashes and yes, I could spiral myself out of control and really bury myself with all kinds of fears around driving or being in a car… but that’s not the way to exist.

I even realized that one of my last videos on YouTube was about walking through that fear of driving and even if I was getting to enjoy the driving in the lessons, then the crash came and I crawled back into my shell of fearing driving or cars in general and I feel somewhat stuck in a rut about it, because I haven’t been able to transcend that fear. Huge limitation, yes. Do I have the willingness to sort it out? There are other factors around that. Perhaps if the car was available, I would, but it’s not, so for now I leave it at the point of focusing on precisely letting go of punishing myself with the ‘bad memories’ around cars and walk through it. I get somewhat jealous of people that have been involved in crashes were they have been injured, perhaps even badly, yet, they keep at it. What do ‘they’ have that I don’t have? The decision to live without fear.

Now, someone else commented in that group chat about living without any fear… and that’s something that sounds to me like a constant ‘battle’ against fear as if ‘fear itself’ was the problem. To me it’s not so. Fears can also be a real indication of aspects that we have to take into consideration, to have basic common sense in how we act or do certain actions, that’s basically precaution. For example the Mexicans that got killed on Friday by a gas pipeline explosion were possibly ‘fearless’ in stealing fuel because of how ‘habitual’ it had become to them to the point where possibly one of them decided to ‘lit up a ciggy’ in the meantime and forgetting about the hazardous task they were involved in. Point is: not about living ‘without fear’ but definitely learning HOW to live in the way that one can handle things the best possible way, handling the results or consequences if things go awry, learn from the mistakes and genuinely live the saying ‘life goes on!’ and move on.

These fears that I’ve mentioned here and in the past blogs have been crippling me to say the least, not only mentally but physically. The point is that they didn’t seem ‘that bad’ but have been quite present in a constant basis and that’s how the cup got filled drop by drop so to speak. Something that I want to change is precisely being the paranoid person that I see I have become. And yes I can see how this may come as learned habits even from both of my parents, and I’m witnessing how it has affected their physical body as well to live like that…. And I also have a living example  as my partner of what it is to live without this paranoid-type of fear, and to see that it is possible, and to see how a body can exist in a rather good stability when a person decides to live without fears and taking risks and finding that whatever outcome it may bring, it is part of what life is about.

Going through life with fear is yes, the most basic form of self-punishment I can identify, because we do it to ourselves. I early on in this blog wrote about all of us practicing cannibalism, all of us humans, because we consume our physical body every single time that we think in a reactive or emotional – or feeling – way.  This is the most essential form of self-punishment, self-flagellation, self-inflicted harm or ‘eating yourself up’ in a rather literal way. I became aware of this through the education I’ve gotten through Eqafe.com and it’s about time that I tackle this very ‘primal’ way of existing which is that of fear and paranoia in the seemingly most ‘subtle’ yet ever present manners.

Letting go of this fear-habit is perhaps an addiction that I had yet to pin point and decide to work on, because of all the reasons, ideas and excuses I had allowed within me to ‘hold on’ to such fears, as if the fear, the emotional reactions or the paranoia could fix or prevent anything in reality, or ‘handle’ the situation better. They do NOT, Ever.

This leads me to look at another topic I wanted to write about which is precisely how I got to identify my ‘personality’ as Intense and how some people seem to be more naturally ‘chilled’ or stable- but not in a suppressed chilled manner where the discomfort at times simply ‘resonates’ or ‘oozes out’ from someone that ‘seems to be’ o ‘appears’ to be quite cool, calm and collected – but may be in fact be a way to suppress or hide insecurities, fears or any other reaction. I’m talking about the chillness that I’ve seen in a few people I’ve met throughout my life that portray a seemingly ‘impossible’ way of being for me. As they come through my mind and I see them and their attitudes, they live words like patience, calm, equanimity, taking it easy, being quite grounded and present, being relaxed and having a general presence of chillness about whatever they have to face or confront. One of them is my uncle who had a very serious car crash a few years ago… they both could have died and their car was full loss, but they were simply happy to be alive and of course he keeps driving and is one of the people that I believe goes through life ‘letting it go by’ so to speak… not carelessly but simply going with the flow if ‘shit happens’ so to speak, always focusing on ‘well we are alive and that’s what matters’ when seemingly bad things happen to him and his family. Whereas I projected myself being in that and kind of car crash and how I would react and use that as a way to justify some form of chronic anxiety or petrification around cars… well that would be the end of me certainly. And this is also not something I could think of doing consciously, but I have lived this very thing in a more subtle way based on what I shared above.

So, I have the living examples of people that have been through ‘worse situations’ than mine and have no fear to go back to driving or riding cars. I have the example of my father saying ‘I don’t’ regret anything’ as he goes through some of the stories of what he’s lived through in his life and at times, the ‘big mistakes’ he made that took him real money and time to recover from. He learned, he got stronger from them, he doesn’t hold the situation or other people involved in it ‘at fault’ or ‘in blame.’

These are all decision to live that I take a living lesson from. There’s also my partner whom I am quite grateful for because he’s put up with this ‘opening’ of this admittance of fears and self-created emotional reactions in me that are here for me to face and it’s for the best, because the moment is ‘ripe’ to see this through, even if facing some physical consequences, this can be a learning point for me to also then remind myself of how much I burden myself, my physical body, with all the literally useless indulgence in my mind as fears and reactions and what ifs and projections and worries and….. All that trash needs to be taken out.

I mostly decide to approach this as a quitting of a habit, an addiction. I’ve seen how ‘addicted to conflict’  as human beings we are, well perhaps many of us, and I even shared other examples of how we are addicted to sharing and giving likes to people presenting conflicts, we almost ‘rejoice’ in some kind of bad news or conflict going on between people, or pointing out the faults in others… but how much attention does a post or process of self-creation, self-support gets? Not many, but the tides are changing and I root for that change in how we support each other’s process of self-change as well.

It’s about letting go of the habit, the addiction to fear, to drama, to anxiety, to have something to constantly be ‘worrying’ about or ‘fearing’ or future-projecting about. I truly want to commit myself to be a different person with the person that I am relating the most currently which is my partner, so that I can stop repeating myself about all of these ‘subtle fears’ and worries that I bring up in our conversations. So I take it on to remind myself of expecting the best, which is not in a way thinking positively or being disingenuous about the reality of things, but as a way to focus on what normally unfolds in a rather predictable and stable way, and how even if things come up that are unexpected or not the way we planned or simply go wrong, I can also learn to go with the flow of it and take the best route to walk it, perhaps sorting it out, perhaps facing with continued consequences, it will all depend on the context.

 Another nice ‘principle’ that my partner holds as part of his ‘pillars’ to exits is ‘everything will be fine at the end, and if it is not, then one knows it’s not the very end yet.’ I take this in a very existential way though, in a way realizing that things may continue ‘flying up’ around us, things falling apart, cans of worms being opened up everywhere, going through distress, drastic changes in our lives within and without. I see it as part of our process in order for the new to emerge, for which the old must go and we are witnessing that at a global scale in many ways, some seem quite drastic and alarming, some others not as much but equally significant and equally part of the same process of existential change.  This is again WHY I emphasize on the importance of getting to understand the ins and outs of self-creation and existential creation, so that one can have a grasp of ‘how things really’ work and learn to trust ourselves as life by Living as Life as what’s best for all no matter ‘what.’ This is the only genuine way to go through whatever things we may experience in our lives and so, instead of reacting in all kinds of self-punishy ways like fear, anxiety, worry, anger, blame etc.… to best practice understanding and cooperating with being and becoming that which we CAN in fact direct and be the authority of, which is ourselves, to be and do what is best in the situation for us and for everyone involved.

For all of this, there’s Eqafe.com to explain it all and I must now honor that source of education and information and live what I’ve learned from there to no longer allow myself to fall prey to my own ‘reasons and justifications’ to exist in any form of self-inflicted harm, abuse, punishment or tension. I now redefine living intensity as the force that I know is within me as the life that I am – and that has been ‘on the waiting’ – to grow out, to be liberated from the self-created yoke of the fears and justifications, to live that passion to apply myself in these very ‘basic’ aspects such as not allowing myself to participate in these kinds of paranoid fears and worst-case scenario situations that come up in my day to day and trusting in myself as life to recover and get well from the consequences I’ve created now that I have realized and seen firsthand the effects of participating in, essentially – and excuse me for my words – my own self-created mind fuck. Let’s call things for what they are!

I thank everyone that participated in that chat and Leila for providing her insights that reminded me of all of these things that I was ‘aware’ of at a knowledge level – through the self-support and educational material at Eqafe.com – but ‘conveniently’ forgot about. Now it IS time to step into self-creation and that’s where the white canvas is and where my focus and attention will be on deciding to live in an equanimous way – yes that is quite the challenge for me as I write it, but challenge taken! – to live my intensity in a balanced way, to yes be intense in expression for self-creation, for all things that are beneficial for me – but no longer take things ‘too heavy on the heart’ as they say. To not take things SO damn seriously all the time – yes things and life are a serious matter BUT I tend to definitely be ‘too intense’ in the seriousness where it becomes a source of affliction and that has to be changed because CARING is not the same as WORRYING about things.

Genuine care is then to support myself first to breathe and slow down whenever I am experiencing any form of ‘spike’ in my heart beat and feel the pulse elevating because of one single thought that crossed my mind. I then live the commitment to be diligent about not leaving these thoughts ‘go by’ but take them on, self-forgive them because I realize they are the result and consequence of having entertained too many ‘righteous’ constructs of why I should be fearful about this or that – and remind myself that fear can’t ever be supportive when it comes to creating anxiety or any other emotion within me. Then, I rather live precaution instead of fear, for that is a reasonable way to consider reality and its potential outcomes, while also being aware that I am not able to ‘prevent’ life unfolding and all the various factors in it, but I am able to face any outcome the best way that I can, trusting myself in being able to act the best way that I can, and that means not portraying a face of strength and composure as if nothing happened all the time, but simply being able to trust myself in facing the momentary expressions of fear or any form of tension and trust myself in being able to take me back to my ‘zero point’ where I’m stable and nothing is moving within me.

I can also commit myself to practice being generally more chilled, realizing that I can’t even think of being the ‘savior’ of anyone nor prevent anyone from being harmed. Even if I cause that harm, I can always admit it to myself, see how I can do things differently from here on and move on with life. But I can’t keep holding myself captive for the ‘what ifs’ and ‘what was’ anymore.

Here I can also remind myself of the principle of shared responsibility so that I know that there are a bunch of factors that lead to the creation of a certain thing or situation not working out or going off or being destroyed. There is more than meets the eye and this is not in an ‘esoteric’ sense of the saying, but simply as a way to not get ‘hooked’ on certain moment and events that I keep ‘seeing through’ the eyes of my mind.

This implies also to change how I see or perceive situations, how I take in actions and information, how I have to also let go of assumption as in knowing exactly ‘how things are’ because I most likely cannot know. I can know about my experience, and yes I am even that ‘out of myself’ that I cannot exactly yet know what goes on with my body, so this is also part of the things that I want to now not be negligent about but be considered and attentive of, which is my physical body, to learn to be more aware of its pains and discomforts and not let them ‘go by’ ignoring them, but taking them as a cross reference of who I am in my mind and so, what I need to work on.

The decision then is to not remain a prisoner of my own repetitive thoughts and experiences, of what I did or didn’t do in the past. That’s only another comfort zone to not dare to change, live and express and I am definitely ready and willing to live and express, I just ‘thought’ that I had to still feel bad and drag my past corpses around as unwanted souvenirs lol.

Even daring to ‘be well’ and feel OK, and appear generally in a good stance within oneself seems at times ‘too good to be true’ or ‘how dare I!?’ but it is then also a point about allowing oneself to be OK and to genuinely Be Life and stop living in constant self-torture. I noticed this yesterday at a social gathering, some people that had not seen me in a long time said I looked really well like ‘radiant’… I said ‘oh well it’s supplements I started taking I guess!’ but the moment wasn’t intimate enough to say ‘you know what yes I’ve been practicing stopping existing in all of this self-blame and self-flagellation for the world and things in my life not going ‘the best way’ or how I thought they could.’ But, for those that did engage with me in conversations, I was able to share some of what I do and how I approach things and that is great too, because then they may get ideas of how to work through some of their own problems, confusions or worries.

The best way that I can advertise this process is with my own process, with my own way of living. And honoring the information and message that I’ve been privy to for the past 11 years J

So, cheers to this and to facing the current reality of the world and situations around us in a way that we can be sure, we are not going into panic, fear or anxiety, but cover our bases and act according to what seems most reasonable and best for all to do.

Thanks for reading and thanks to everyone that knowingly – or unknowingly – has supported me to walk through these aspects of myself.

 

Recommended self-support:

• A Cupful of Fear

• The Design of Powerlessness and Disempowerment – Principled Living

 

And be part of Eqafe Unlimited

 

 

Join in if you want to start walking your own process of defining your Self-Honesty

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• School Of Ultimate Living | Facebook

• EQAFE.Com : SELF Education and SELF Awareness Store

• 7 Year Journey To Life Process : People Sharing their Processes of Self-Forgiveness and Self-Correction

• Susan Spies – The Physical And I Exploring the Innerverse

• Get Real with Cerise

• Destonians

• Desteni I Process

• Agreement/Redefining Relationship Course

• Desteni Forum : Discuss and share with us

• Desteni Español

• Creation’s Journey to Life

 

 

 

 

624. Getting Off My High-Horse

get off (one’s) high horse. To stop acting as if one is better than other people; to stop being arrogant or haughty.

 

A lot of what I shared in my previous blog was also inspired by listening to the recent Eqafe recordings called When the Honeymoon Phase is Over  and After the Honeymoon Phase because it describes really well one of the main patterns that I have lived for a long time in my own mind where I have become very picky, deterministic and absolutist when it comes to creating a perception of ‘perfection’ existing in another that stands in the ‘position’ of being ‘my partner’ and creating this high standards about how the person ‘must be.’ In a way, I’ll be describing the creation of this ‘high horse’ character where I have been experiencing a sense of superiority and comparison towards my partners where I have been quite quick to determine what ‘is acceptable’ and what ‘isn’t’ based on forgetting  and not considering a few things that I’ll be sharing here.  

Even if I knew that I am changing this at a knowledge level when it comes to not judging people based on the emotional reactions they may have, but rather step up to create space for understanding them, placing myself in their shoes, not judging but instead, look back at how I can relate to the creation of reactions and how I have supported me to walk through them, I have at the same time held a very blind spot when it comes to the person that ‘occupies’ the role of being ‘MY partner’ and in that almost creating a separate ‘grading’ system for them, because of thinking a bit too high of myself and so considering that ‘they’ should be ‘up to my standards’ in a way, and so I’ll be sharing how this is quite consequential and the lessons I’ve learned by identifying this within me through the support of that couple of Eqafe recordings.

I can totally relate to the description in the audio recording of being almost like this king with his whole flair and absolutist power to simply say ‘No’ to something and make it unacceptable and create zero space for a second consideration about someone or something they are deciding on. This is in relation to how in my relationship there was a moment where I decided to question certain reaction in my partner which wasn’t really ‘new’ because, I had been aware of it since the beginning. The important point that I’ve shared before is how it has been me all the way that decided to polarize the idea or image of the other person into a positive way where all the actual characteristics that I could have ‘questioned’ from the beginning, were shoved aside. This is where I had to realize that there was no deliberate ‘hiding’ from my partner about those aspects before, I was the only one that decided to blur them, place them aside and keep sugar coating those reactions whenever they would come up, in essence, not taking it seriously.

Yes, this is part of what is commonly known as the ‘honey moon phase,’ but it is definitely something I created in my mind where it was only now after several months that I decided to question certain reactive pattern and take it ‘too damn serious’ to question him about it, which was of course a bit ‘out of nowhere’ considering this wasn’t something new in our interactions, it was just me that in a moment decided to get on this high-horse of questioning in a very serious tone how ‘bad’ such reaction is and if I may be able or capable of continuing a relationship with someone that is having this kind of reaction towards other people in a certain moment of frustration.

Well, here is where I need to explain what this ‘high horse’ character entails and what I’ve realized from the moment I’ve been able to hear it in the recording and, to be honest, as I was translating such recordings, I had to laugh a lot when it was described, because that’s exactly how ‘I feel’ inside myself when having this ‘serious questioning’ about someone’s reaction and getting into this absolutist throne where I can put my thumb up or down to say yay or nay to continuing an entire relationship just because of getting to – or deciding to – question a pattern that I had simply left aside, not opened up and not even reacted to before. But based on my own shared experience in that moment – which yes was also that of being fed up by a certain situation that was ‘out of our hands’ I decided that what he said was ‘too sensitive’ and required attention and needed to be opened up.

This turned out to be very cool because all in all, regardless of my high horse stance or not, it was a reaction that assisted us a lot to get to talk about many other things to settle where we’re generally ‘at’ with each other in the relationship. This assisted me to refresh my memory of how I was in that moment projecting ‘how I want him to be’ – which is yes, a very common pattern in me that I haven’t totally changed, I can see that – and forgetting in one moment about the totality of who the person is and the noticeable mutually supportive aspects that we’ve developed in our relationship together.

Yep, it can be a bit baffling how I can get myself in that ‘zone’ where I just zoom-in one single aspect that I find simply ‘unacceptable’ in a single moment and suddenly decide that this is ‘so questionable’ that the entirety of who the person is becomes questionable. This is a common pitfall that I can see becomes like a tunnel vision where one can spiral almost out of control and losing sight of the reality of the person that we are judging and creating a problem about in our minds.

The high-horse character also implied that I was not seeing at all ‘my problem’ or ‘my personality play-out’ at all, because in my mind, I was in fact like this royal person that decides that this/that is not acceptable in MY life. I felt that superiority stance where almost ‘nothing’ or no one would ‘ever’ be ‘up to my standards,’ which means that somehow I have been regarding myself in a very ‘superior’ stance that I tend to mostly compare and project to the partners that I’ve had in my life. I tend to be more considerate to everyone else BUT! Holy, if it’s the one person that becomes ‘my partner’ it’s almost as if they had to be the premium gladiators to be ‘up to the standard’ of what would be somewhat similar to how I am or how I see myself.

Here, there needs to be some point of equilibrium because I’ve been in both polarities where I’ve disregarded myself in the past where I had no self-worth, self appreciation or self love and I went looking for all of that in relationships that, for the most part, were no-good for me – and were quite compromising in fact – which has been a lifelong pattern to be honest. That’s been kind of my weakness, because I believed I could ‘change them’ and within doing so, create ‘the perfect partner’ IF only they could ‘step up to my standards’ – yep, wanting to change someone or asking someone to change in order to be in a relationship is just a No-go, ever. It’s unacceptable.

Even in the most subtle things where one is compromising oneself to do certain things to please another and knowing within that ‘it is not you,’ I now realize that is just a no-go and a recipe for disaster if one starts compromising with certain things to ‘fit’ into a relationship. 

But that’s something I have only been able to see and realize now where I am with a person that accepts me as I am, even with the worst of the aspects that he also points out about myself. We recognize them and I’ve asked him to assist me when I am showing that worst of myself like the control freakism pattern I’ve shared about before and also whenever my ‘subtle ways’ come out to have him ‘be perfect for me’ type of thing, which is unreasonable and absolutely unacceptable, because it would only be about creating ‘my perfect partner’ and have this ‘perfect robot’ that doesn’t get to challenge me or question me at all. Man, that would be awful, because there is something that I am extremely grateful for which is the feedback and support that my partner provides in being very frank about the stuff that I do, how I do it and how it comes through in a moment, because let’s face it, not many people stand in such position in our lives to do that. In my life it’s been mostly my mother, some of the closest people I talk to from the Desteni community and my partner.

So getting off of my high horse happened while opening up the whole questioning of such reaction to him, where I got to actually realize that yes, I was again being too exigent, projecting ‘my ideals’ and only focusing on ‘how I think things SHOULD be’ and in that, yes, getting reminder that no person will be ‘equal to me’, nor should that ever happen because we are all individuals and part of the actual enjoyment in life is to get to know who we are and how we can decide to interact, live and coexist with a ‘world in itself’ in the shape and life of another human being.

One thing that baffles me as I said above is how much I simply became possessed for a moment about this questioning of a reaction, where I stopped considering the totality of the person and all that he has shown and lived with actions – not just judgments or backchat that he may speak out loud from time to time and yes, it was a frightening reminder of how ‘easy’ it is to fall into this pathological way of thinking where one simply focuses on ‘the worst’ of someone in one single moment and starts piling up stuff that one hadn’t worked with/looked at before and suddenly build up this whole sinister story about someone. It actually reminds me of those Thriller books I used to read as a child, where the story goes fine and dandy and then it gets to the climax where all those details and seemingly subtle points through the story build up to expose this huge problem and sinister case about a murderer or a psychopath etc. lol

I mean, really, I saw how in my mind it can easily go into that if I don’t ground myself in the basics. So that’s how what was supportive for me in that moment is to have a moment for myself to let the emotion out in crying and then realizing ok, yes, this is an emotional reaction though I know emotion and victimizing myself right now is not the way out, not talking about it is not the way out. This needs to be talked through and gotten to a point of understanding because! I already know how we are both quite level headed and there’s really no further problems between us where ‘big’ emotions emerge that could make our dialogues impossible, so that was also a grounding point to know we could simply talk about it and realize the many points that I had missed from my sight, where I went into my ‘high horse’ and create deliberate ‘sugar coatings’ as I explained in a blog about memories before. That way he could see where and how I am having a different idea of ‘how things should be’ that he simply takes as very normal stuff based on ‘who he is’ and ‘how he is’, which he has been and expressed from day 1.

So, in a way I realized I created my own storm, but it was beneficial to talk it out because it assisted me to realize how much I was not focusing on the reality of things, how I was holding on to a polarized version of him and of who he is – as I had mentioned some time ago, seeing him in this positive light only – and also how he had no clue of my relationship to certain words and attitudes and what it meant to me, while for him it was frankly normal stuff that ‘everyone does.’

This is where another aspect of the high-horse character comes through where yes, I realized that I forget that I’ve been learning how my mind operates, questioning, observing and working on myself, my reactions, my habits, changing ways in which I would ‘naturally react’ and re-wire myself on a day to day basis for over 10 years now based on the principles I’ve been learning and applying from the Desteni material.  I do realize that because of how easy it was for me to understand myself with my partner and see that he was quite principled in a natural manner, I kind of created the belief that such principles would expand on to ‘changing’ certain reactions within him, certain ‘traits’ of character… and in that forgetting that nope, having such values/principles as a person does not mean that he is working with the totality of his nature to change it.

In fact it is only now through the relationship that we have, that he is becoming aware of many things that he didn’t even question before about himself and his way of being, because of being quite a ‘man to himself,’ meaning where he only would have to ‘respond’ to himself and not having developed any real deep relationships with any other person that could get him to open up about things that he hadn’t questioned or even seen about himself, and I find that fascinating as well! Because I tend to forget who he is, his personal history, the way he has lived for most of my life and in that compare me and ‘my process’, ‘my ways’ to his and create this sudden ‘nah-uh unacceptable!’ finger-pointing type of haughty attitude to something he had not even seen as ‘a problem’ within him at all. In this I also realized the ‘disconnect’ we can create when not sharing and communicating about the way that each one of us sees certain actions the other does, which is something he has done about me pretty much from the beginning, which has been great because that’s what I wanted, a point of honesty that leads to realizing the ‘worst’ of myself that few had dared to question or point out and now I get to be with someone that won’t take any shit either lol, so we are two very ‘peculiar’ beings so to speak where each one of us has very cemented principles and ways of being that at the same time are learning to create considerations for the other and create a middle ground, which is definitely doable, even if we are both very stubborn at times lol. We totally make it fun to do this kind of things, mostly because we love each other and we realize what it entails to live with another. May sound cheesy but! Omg, it is true! haha

So! to make it simple: the opening of this situation where I was able to get off my high horse, realize I was imposing/projecting my own process to my partner – who is not walking this process or the tools I use for self support – and in that, I was in fact not living the words that I’ve committed to live with any other person, like getting to hear them, to consider them, to place myself in their shoes, to understand they are not yet knowing ‘how’ to deal with their reactions and reminding myself that I can only be an example and share how I’ve walked through similar things myself. I was almost like creating a big deal about it as if it was a person that would already know ‘how’ to use tools like self-forgiveness or being in the path to change those aspects within him. He is not, and this is something that I am also fine with, because in general the person that he is, the words he lives, the way he lives and the challenges he represents for me in my life as well are what I need at the moment.

Something that I’ve realized is that it makes it difficult at times to really get to know How to talk to ‘regular people’ out in the world so to speak, because they don’t speak your same ‘lingo’ as when being with someone that walks this process. Not saying this should be ‘the way’ when it comes to relationships between people that walk the same process or people that walk with someone that doesn’t have the same background, but I find that this is specific for me, because I definitely have realized how much I lost ground and ‘contact’ with reality when being too focused on my personal process and only relating to people that are also walking this process. So, this year has also been a testing ground for me to realize in many ways where I am living only as a ‘preacher’ but not really living what I THINK is common sense, and bam, that’s just what I needed to realize as well. While at the same time also seeing how I’ve been able to change many aspects which surely make my current relationship possible.

Part of the ways to get off of my high horse was to focus and remind myself of all the words that I wrote out about him and the reasons why I decided to be with him, which have proven to be a great pillar of support that I’m quite grateful for. I may sound too laudably, but, that’s the reality based on what has opened up for both in the relationship. It’s quite something and I definitely have to create a flag-point whenever I see myself going into these tunnel-vision points where I lose my ground about something I define as ‘negative’ and ‘unacceptable’ in a very absolutist way. I have to take a moment by myself – which I did then – to slow down, let the emotion out so that I could then sit with him, eye to eye and talk about the whole situation which was one of the moments that definitely strengthened our resolve to be with one another, and this is priceless and definitely recommendable to do, because I got to understand much more about him and consider things that I had completely forgotten about in one single moment of reacting to his reaction.

This is one of the many more reasons why I recommend getting to listen to Eqafe recordings in your day to day, like the ones I mentioned which were definitely spot on and very timely for me to look at how I was stepping into this superiority pattern that was preventing me from SEEING reality and was blinding me with this kind of ‘perfection’ light that is definitely not realistic when we are talking about a relationship with two very real and direct people that don’t hold back about things. If anything, I actually appreciate he is ‘speaking his mind’ even if the things that come out are not ‘angelical’ lol, it’s at least commendable that there’s still people that dare to say: yes this is what I thought and yes this is who I am as well, and yes I know it’s not nice or pretty but never said I was. Because it is true, so many people only fake and paint a nice image of themselves in the first phases of a relationship that lead to the inevitable ‘monstering’ phase as some say here hehe where people show their true colors and so the relationship ends around that time when they start seeing the reality of themselves.

On my side, I have to remember my process, especially when it comes to the ‘standards’ I have created towards ‘my partner’  as if that was this very ‘difficult shoe to fit’ and as I mentioned in my previous blog, it sure is, I’m not an ‘easy person’ for most of the people really, lol, I am quite exigent to myself and so to that person that is closest to me. But fortunately I found someone that also has his personal exigencies very established as well, which is why I guess we get along so well. And even if we differ in many perspectives, ways of seeing or understanding the world or in how we deal with our own problems, I’ve also come to realize that such mental-aspects don’t really matter for me. What really matters is the conviviality, the habits, the livelihood and coexistence with a person that lives with personal integrity. I appreciate more that there is no presentation or attempt to ‘fake’ a certain idea of himself to ‘be liked’ or accepted, because he wasn’t seeking that at all, which have created a very comfortable space for us in the relationship, because no one else gets to see us as ‘we truly are’ and say what we truly think to anyone else.  And her by comfortable I don’t mean, ‘easy’ because it’s not challenging, I’d say it’s the other way around, and it is paving a nice space for me to learn how to best relate to people ‘in the world’ in fact.

To me, this is supportive because he is quite an example that I definitely lacked when being in relationships in the past where my starting point was that of lack of personal appreciation, acceptance, self-worth which would reflect back on the people I would decide to be with. He is definitely the opposite of that, which is an awesome example to also take on, where is not in ‘need’ of a relationship, but sees the mutual benefit of it, he is not in ‘need’ of love because he lives that for himself, and yep to be honest I’m learning more about what it means to love oneself with actions, not just fluffy self-positive thinking. And! sure thing I’ve also been able to create an impact on the relationship he has with himself and his self-care too, so all in all, a very supportive and complementary process.

It is as simple as this: I would not have been able to be in this relationship if I had not worked with my own patterns and usual behaviors in relationships. This is STILL work to do of course, which is also cool when being with someone that has no past relationship history, so for him it’s a whole discovery process in itself that I’m quite happy and fortunate to be a part of.

And that’s how the story ends, where one moment of reacting to ‘character flaws’ and deciding to talk and open it up led to having a very supportive and vulnerable conversation that got me to realize ‘Oh fuck, I did it again!’ with being really inconsiderate of ‘where another is’ and ‘how they see things’ and imposing my own ‘change’ and even ‘my process’, instead of really considering the totality of who he is, the life he’s lived and get to also focus on the words, the actions, he has lived throughout the time we’ve been together.

I hope I didn’t spill too much honey here, hehe, but that’s what opens up within a relationship when transforming a moment of reaction, confronting it, opening it up, discussing, getting to understand each other and create a ‘new’ approach to things, which became another level of depth in the relationship.

 

Ok thanks for reading! And if you want to read a very supportive chat I had with fellow Destonians about this situation I share about here, read this chat transcript: Being in a High Horse: Becoming Aware of It and Looking at Corrections however you’ll have to sign-up to destonians.com to be able to do so, which I recommend because there’s no other group in the world where we dare to be that vulnerable in sharing the ways that we are being challenged and how to support each other to face ourselves and create the best version of ourselves. We always learn from each other.

 

 

 

Join in if you want to start walking your own process of defining your Self-Honesty 

• Free Online DIP Lite Course

• School Of Ultimate Living | Facebook

• EQAFE.Com : SELF Education and SELF Awareness Store

• 7 Year Journey To Life Process : People Sharing their Processes of Self-Forgiveness and Self-Correction

• Susan Spies – The Physical And I Exploring the Innerverse

• Get Real with Cerise

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620. My perspective about Politics and Self Change

 

There’s been a series of audios that I recommend everyone to listen to if you find yourself focusing too much on the idea of political change and feeling disgraceful about the state of affairs that is unleashing everyday around us – or dare I say – that we decide to become aware of through our media, through learning to really observe the lives of those around us and in doing so deciding to really become aware of their lives, the suffering, the problems, the neglect, the corruption… and the list goes on.

Sure, it’s all of those things that make us cringe but it’s definitely possible to get past the reactive state into a more proactive and self-aware way to interact with the reality around us: our creation. So these EQAFE audios are of great support for this:

Attracting Consequence vs Creating Change – The Future of Awareness – Part 103
Political Fighting versus Political Change – Future of Awareness – Part 104

What is the Use if Change is Impossible – The Future of Awareness – Part 105

How Can We Be the Future if There is no Future? – Future of Awareness – Part 106

Can’t Look Away from the Horrors of Reality – Quantum Mind Self Awareness

For anyone that has followed this blog and my process within the involvement in an intent to create political change, you may know that I became very vocal and passionate about promoting ways and solutions that at the time I saw as the only way through, a viable solution to stop the suffering, to save the world, to kind of say ‘let’s stop the madness right now, we can create a solution!’ But over the past 2 years I’ve become more and more solid in my realization which matches the explanation to the T of what is shared in the Eqafe recordings I listed above – which are an excellent presentation and walk through to confront this same point within yourself – which is about realizing that we need to stop focusing on wanting to impose a change in the current political and social systems, to understand them instead as a consequence that we are facing, while holding on to – and I’d say grounding oneself in – the realization that even if one is living in the ‘worst’ possible scenario, it is still possible to give birth to the life within self, it is definitely necessary to realize that any form of change cannot – and dare I say must not – be waited on and hoped for on the outside without one doing the necessary SELF work for it.

As I write this, I know I have shared my realization about this before and here I refer to that one blog written 2 years ago that I will continue to refer to where I disclose more of my ‘field work’ on this realization, which becomes more and more clear and cemented as a foundation for me to stand on and changing myself, because I was a person with great propensity to be constantly worrying and depressing about the state of affairs in the world. Seriously, most of the times my life would be alright but simply by living in the country I live in, it became obvious that life wasn’t ‘alright’ and that nothing was as good as it seemed at home when I stepped outside of it. This became a sort of emotional burden, a burden in my spirit if you will because I constantly felt sad, disempowered, hopeless, helpless – and yes early on in life as a teenager I would rant and rage against ‘the machine’ – which are all points that I learned to change and understand through walking the Desteni I Process and my relationship to the world system, to this state of affairs that is in a way – as I’ve learned to understand and see it – a necessary ‘ill’ for us to wake up from what we have accepted and allowed without a question for our entire history in existence.  That has assisted me to stop blaming and instead take responsibility for myself. This didn’t change in one go, it’s taken years to repeat this to myself and allow it to sink in in order to actually act differently while continuing to live in the same world.

On the other hand, I was very much within the idea that I had to become politically involved to create a point of change. I’ve already shared how within doing that at a level of research and within getting in contact with people that are involved in associations and institutions or just groups with a similar intent to create changes in the world system, I found that as much as the intent was great and geared to something good, I found there was a lot of blame, finger pointing at ‘elites’ or those believed to be handling the system, a sort of a seemingly ‘beneficent’ vengefulness that would create ‘justice’ in the world. I found that the same human nature that we have not dared to accept that we have to change became the same problem even within organizations geared to this kind of social change. That became a very important learning point for me: the change genuinely has to first be walked through within self – maybe simultaneously if you are already involved in those associations and groups – but it just cannot be neglected, or we will simply recreate the same problems of the past, because it’s us that have created it, not the institutions, the state or ‘the system’ in itself. We are IT.

Now, the recordings I mention relate to a situation where even if one is involved in politics, it all seems too pointless or without a way out and within that becoming somewhat discouraged to keep going. The audio describes the rest of the points to face and walk through quite well but here I want to add something else that has assisted me to keep facing these points, aside from what I’ve already shared in yesterday’s group chat where these points opened up.

Something I’ve learned to let go of is the desire to see ‘change’ in this lifetime, and this I’ve also learned through the Eqafe recordings that I get to hear on a daily basis for the betterment of my understanding about myself, my mind, my life and how I can decide to live and create myself, for the better. So this means that I had to let go of desiring a certain outcome or result from ‘me’ participating in this process of developing and establishing my own awareness and my own direction for the betterment of my own life and consequently of what surrounds me/us. What I could see is that many people are in that position of wanting to just give up because of seeing problems just being ‘too much’ and it all becoming ‘crazier’ by the hour. I now see it as part of the unraveling of the old that needs to go in order for the new to grow. I know it’s not a ride in the park, it is difficult, it is disheartening, it affects us personally, but even that I now see as a necessary ‘pain’ for our very necessary growth.

What works for me is to not focus on the ‘effect’ or ‘reach’ of what I do and having that constant intent to ‘change others’ or ‘change the world’ or ‘save the world’ – which were expressions that I embodied for a long, long time in my life, which left me feeling more helpless and disheartened, because! I could not ‘do it’ by myself, lol. It’s funny how we burden ourselves with ‘the world’ as if it was only US that had to save it… nope, not going to happen like that at all. But I was so infatuated with the idea that I – me- had to take certain position or take charge of something ‘big’ in the world to change and turn the tables that it became this drive to achieve something that I wasn’t realistically going to do in my life at the time. I was following an idea of what I could do that felt good – and sure it wasn’t all bad, learned lots and promoted certain principles as well – but the reality is that in the meantime, I neglected a LOT of things about my personal life that I am currently facing the consequences of, not cool either, but again a very necessary process to see where I ‘took off’ and elevated my feet from the ground, of my life, what I have to do and can do to first of all get myself on my two feet in stability in all aspects within this reality, instead of already wanting to ‘live’ in the ‘perfected and changed world’ in the future.

Well, that’s been the learning process for me and in a way – at times painfully, yes -seeing how I distracted – purposely dare I say – from me, my process, my own introspection and directly seeing what I had to do, change, move on to with myself and my life, my career and projects – because it became in a way easier or more comfortable to be constantly focused, concerned and worried on all things ‘outside’ of myself. Again, not all wasted because I learned lots about the systems, society, the ways in which we’ve shaped our lives – but at the same time I also remained in a state of hoping that such change – especially financially and economic changes – could then benefit me and so I would not have to go through the usual ways to make money in the system… well that is definitely not going to happen and I have to step up in really making sure that I can first be best for myself, take responsibility for myself, instead of hoping for a change out there, which is most likely not going to happen in my lifetime – and that’s OK.

The other vital point here is that I’ve learned to do things by principle, not by the ‘result’ I may see. This is easy to say but it’s harder to remind myself of it because from time to time, this same ‘hopelessness’ rears its head about the belief that what I do in the seemingly ‘trivial’ things in my life have ‘no impact’ whatsoever in bettering anything or anyone. Instead of realizing that this is precisely where I need to focus and work on, to develop that self-respect, integrity, passion, dedication, discipline, care and consideration first for my own person. I can now look back and be honest about the fact that I wasn’t at ‘my best’ when preaching about world change, but it felt good to communicate such principles or turn it into a higher purpose, which without a doubt served a role and a function that got me out of my sunken reality of hopelessness, doom and gloom about reality.  However, such passionate intent wasn’t matching the life that I was living in its totality – nor is it now really, but I am on the way to take care of that as well, as we all are.

So, this means that even if one is deciding to get involved in politics or any other group or association that is geared to create changes in the world system or in your community, the point is to do it as an expression and an extension of what you’ve done first for yourself – or simultaneously doing so, if you find it’s easier to ignite that passion to get yourself moving when it involves doing something for others/something outside of yourself. It doesn’t matter where or how that inner fire is ignited, but what is of primary importance is to not lose sight of oneself, especially of the emotions like discouragement, hopelessness and victimization – or even vengefulness – that may emerge as one decides to get more involved, more aware and participative in any effort to create awareness and so change in the world systems. What has worked for me is to focus on the principle, on the actual matter that I am to create an impact upon myself and express that, externalize that through what I speak, do and share.

For example, this means that even if I decided to take on a position in politics at some point, I would do so if I could guarantee that my life would not be in danger, which at the moment is just not an option in the country I live in – not even being a journalist that reports ‘truth’ is safe, so I rather just not risk myself with that and continue focusing on what I can, what is at my reach here: my own life, my own wellbeing, my relationships, my family, the people I support within this process, the work that I do, the words, the actions, the expressions that any person may come in contact with coming from me: that’s the current impact I have and that’s my current ‘enough’ based on the conditions and situation I live in.  This is another great point that was outlined in that interview, defining what is Enough in self-honesty, what one can honestly do without compromising our own wellbeing, because then we’d stop being ‘the best for ourselves’ and end up just becoming another sort of ‘savior’ that intends to create ‘change’ out there, but within self all is chaotic and problematic and reactive and enacting angry and irresponsible behaviors with a sense of ‘doing good’ – which now I understand are the very reactions that I needed to work on and change within me.

One of the key points then for me was to leave the notion aside of having to do something that is ‘out there’ at ‘the eyes of others’ and to become something ‘relevant’ at the level that I see other people are doing in the system. That’s me – myself – if anyone is at that position, that’s great and I’d say it is also specific that some can do that, but for now I keep track of what goes on in the world, continuing to strengthen my understanding and within that my resolve to focus on myself, my own self-education about how we got to where we are in creating the problems and within that learning to see the solutions that would be possible within a longer period of time with my generation and the many generations to come.

To me it is currently more relevant to ensure I am no longer placing a pressure within myself to want to have ‘some impact’ out there, stressing about world problems and instead learning to do the seemingly ‘insignificant’ things that are actually part of taking care of myself, my health, my relationships and no longer see all of it as mere things to ‘get past’ to get to the ‘meat’ of life such as having an important political position and such to genuinely ‘change the world’ or feel like I finally am ‘making it.’ Nope, now I understand that those seemingly ‘insignificant’ things are the gist of what change means, by continuing to create habits, relationships, ways of being and expression that represent the potential that I see in myself as the life that I am and that I would like to see in the world out there.

This is what is the real challenge for me, to not become overshadowed by being drowned in the sea of consequences, but by staying afloat – and why not, at times walking on water so to speak – when it comes to understanding consequences, realizing them and living the solutions within my life and my context that would sort the ‘major’ problems out there if more would stand up and do the same.

I must say that having this ‘standard’ in life in how I now see it has led me to align with people that see the same and live the same principles, which is somewhat difficult to find but at the same time, I now dare to say ‘that’s not entirely so!’ because I’m seeing a lot of people ‘waking up’ to these principles of self responsibility and first learning to care for ourselves, our lives, our environment instead of being distracted with various ‘social causes’ that may lead to more fighting, confrontations, conflict, division, protests, media frenzies and general divide and conquer tactics that a lot of people have become blind to because of holding to a very narrow view of the world and their role in it.

So, all I can say is that I am slowly but surely regaining the sense of strength of who I am and what I can see my potential is – no matter what I do or where I am – because of understanding that I cannot be affected by what I see around, I cannot be discouraged by seeing the very necessary destruction of dinosaur institutions and old consequential ways of coexisting that are slowly but surely starting to change at the individual level.

Therefore I keep pushing at this level of change: focusing on myself – and realizing this is NOT selfishness, but it is now very obvious and clear that if I am not the best, I cannot dare to actually utter any form of solution or attempt of change ‘for the world’ if I haven’t yet honored myself enough to embody these words as who I am in every aspect of my life. That to me is real respect for life as well, to not only parrot words or feel good about apparently doing something ‘good’ for others – but to genuinely get to live that, embody and substantiate my life with that and therefore do it as an extension of what I have lived and done for myself first.

I focus on the matter, the things that are at hand for now, I ensure I can stand on my own two feet and keep the flame ignited of the life that I know I am able to live and enjoy, so that as I keep walking, I can open up opportunities and ways to continue expanding this process of creation of life, even in the midst of the rubble, because what matters is again who I am in those moments, not the ‘effect’ I can visibly see. This is then my principle, where I don’t allow myself to get discouraged by the news or what I see outside of my house, but use those as reminders of how I definitely need to keep standing and keep being that living best for myself, because that’s what I can do at the moment. And interestingly enough, without being too optimistic, interesting things happen when one starts seeing the world differently, as the potential it can be instead of being ‘sunk’ into this depressed state of ‘all is fucked, there’s no hope’ which was my ‘usual’ state of being before.

This is good enough for me at the moment and to me this is what I have to keep learning to integrate as a reminder of what I want to contribute to this world and how eventually we could all contribute to create if each one lives this best for themselves. This is what sounds very realistic, from generation to generation, to keep planting and growing, as long as it is needed – doesn’t matter – because what matters is who I am in the moment, in every day.

Thanks for reading.

 

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618. Being Taken for a Ride vs. Taking the Wheel and Driving Yourself

Or learning how to slow down, calm down and get out of anxious ingrained ways of behaving.

I’ve been becoming more and more aware of the very – very – ingrained aspects in me that have become so much so ‘how I am’ and ‘my nature’ that I had overlooked, that I hadn’t directly intervened because, in a way, I had not been aware of it as much, or had not seen it as something that would ‘affect’ others, because in my mind I was just being ‘the best I can be’… but is it really? Lol

We were discussing in today’s group chat  about the addictive nature that we create towards our emotions – or feelings – and how we have to directly intervene and direct ourselves, actually take the wheel whenever we are being ‘driven’ by something and it’s not us driving, sitting at the wheel and directing where we want to go and who we want to be in every moment of our lives.

The word autopilot is a keyword for me whenever I see I am in such kind of ‘addictive’ patterns which interestingly enough do not involve actually ‘doing’ something in particular hat I am addicted to – but more like a state of being. The reality is that I had not questioned this ‘way of being’ as much before and I am quite thankful that I have someone in my life that is daring to point out all of the various – many – times when I go into this ‘antsy’mode,  yes, a rushing-mode, almost like a state of being where I constantly have to be ‘on the run’ to do something even if I don’t actually have to.

I’ve noticed how I am blind to this for some months now and it is quite shocking at times that if it wasn’t because of my partner saying ‘hey, sloooow doooown’ or ‘what’s the rush?’ or ‘caaalm doooown’ and holding me for a moment – lol – I would not be as aware of it because of being so used to doing things in ‘fast mode’ and it has been so much of ‘my way of being’ that I’ve seen it as part of my traits, a good trait in fact to be ‘always on time’, being fast, accurate, efficient, etc. Nothing wrong with those words though! But I definitely know WHO I am when I am living those words through this energy-driven mode, which actually happens when I consider I am on autopilot mode and being taken for a ride by these ingrained lifelong ‘ways of being’ which I am quite aware I copied from my parents as well.

So, during today’s chat I brought up the analogy of how we have to be more directive in taking the wheel and driving ourselves, directing ourselves to what we want to do and how we want to live those moments, instead of riding in the back of the car and ‘being taken for a ride’ without any awareness of our state of being, of how we may be going down ‘the same old road’ that we know leads nowhere but sabotage, despair, inaction or just problems without solution.

If I look at myself as a back rider, I don’t have to pay attention or decide which way to go or be fully knowing where I am going or how to get there, I’m just being ‘driven’ by something or someone else. Being in the driver’s seat requires my full attention, full awareness on every single detail from how to operate the car, the direction, the way to get there, the timing, the traffic, other cars, fuel, …. Etc. Yes, yes, eventually that also becomes ‘automated’ but the point here is to understand the difference of riding in the backseat within ourselves and in our minds where we just ‘repeat’ ourselves in addictive states of being and experiences that we no longer question – even if we know we are compromising our lives and that of others in one way or another with our actions or inactions – and how we can instead remind ourselves to be the driver, the one that directs, that is intervening directly on the way to go, that tests out new routes if the ‘same old ones’ are leading us to places and states of being that we know are detrimental to our lives. It requires such responsibility of deciding to take the wheel, it’s not limiting, it is expansive.

I was actually discussing that with my partner recently, and we were wondering about how there’s many people that prefer to do the least or stay the same because it seems ‘easier’ or ‘more comfortable’ when in fact, doing the most and pushing to do the best, and developing discipline and adding new challenges to our lives is the one thing that makes one grow the most. This is a bit out of topic but we also talked about how most relationships get into big problems right after the honey moon phase, and that’s because everyone starts the relationship or even prepares to ‘get the person’ by becoming the ‘best version of themselves’ for a moment, to impress, to attract the other person and so ‘play safe’ as they say, meaning they appear to be nice, loving, hard working, kind, responsible, adamant, etc. And once that the ‘prey has been caught’ as in establishing a relationship with each other, bam! The reality – the real-reality unfortunately – of each other comes out in full force, because it becomes quite difficult to maintain a façade of being better than ‘one actually is.’ It is unfortunate thought that this ‘how one actually is’ means the worst version of ourselves, but hey we are here to become aware of these accepted patterns in society and be able to change them.

That’s when people start to ‘show their true colors’ and embark themselves in endless fights with destructive behavior towards one another because one or the other – or both – are not really who they ‘appeared’ to be. Whereas, as he shared, he conceived a relationship as a point of responsibility that would actually, yes, be more demanding and a point of responsibility, but for the best. I like this approach as well because it definitely means one has to intervene, to change, to adapt, to upgrade, to become the driver, to actually truly use that relationship as an opportunity to become in fact a better person, and this is what I’m focusing on.

It is for me –a person that has dedicated some 10 years of her life to develop self-awareness and such – quite a shocker at times to see these very ingrained patterns of rushing, being ‘antsy’ as in wanting things fast, now, being very demanding and exigent with others or within a situation… very controlling to say the least. It’s great that there’s a person that can say ‘yes I knew you were like that, but I decided to be with you anyways’, because this has opened up the possibility for me to become aware of my patterns, to not take it personally or see it as ‘faulty’ or wrong things within me – even if I get shocked at times by it – I do remind myself why I am the way I am, I know my background at home, I am aware how I picked up all of these ‘ways of being’ from both my parents in general, I know there’s nothing or no one to blame but to take responsibility for it myself now. And what assists a lot is to be able to see a person first hand on how they deal with the same situation in such a different way, with calm, patience, in a more ‘chilled’ manner, because that’s precisely the example I didn’t have at home, but now I do in a way so, that’s for the best because one can then look at ways in which the person acts and behaves and learn from how it can be done, test out at least if it works for me to act differently in situations where I would usually be in antsy mode.

Another point is that, at first, when he would point out these things to me, there was a slight reaction of ‘How dare you say that to Me?’ lol, yes because I had this big ego idea of being the one that is working on self, that is a ‘very self-aware person’, but I had to immediately take the guard down and put on my humbleness shoes and admit myself to see what he was saying and picking up from my attitude, and reflect back to say ‘yes, it is so, that’s what I’m doing in fact’ and within that, start realizing the many aspects that I had no way of ‘cross-checking’ before because there had been no one that dared to question those ways of being before, because in my mind I was just being ‘the best’ to my ability – but I had overlooked the tension, the anxiety, the rushing, the impatience that usually accompanies that ‘dutiful’ and ‘disciplined’ manner I can have a times, so that’s not a way to live those words.

So, because I am grateful for having that in my life currently, the least I can do is to share that as well with people I consider I have the ability to give feedback to. Sometimes people might react to it, but at least I’ve said it, it is then something they can look at or throw away. My responsibility is to test out the waters and see with whom I can give that kind of feedback – who is open for it – and where to ‘keep shut’ because at times, yes,  I do tend to be too ‘intervening’ with others – to say it in one way, lol – and some people do get genuinely offended by my questions about what their experience might be in a moment. I can only learn from it, just like with everything. But for now I stick to having that opening of feedback with my partner and also at times with my mother, who actually gives that ‘in the moment’ feedback based on very subtle behaviors that can only be picked up by someone that has been ‘there’ seeing you growing for most of your life – yep, it is so, she nails it every time, so I at times still deny it but that’s when I know I am suppressing something – so, now I’m learning to admit it and be willing to open up about it.

We all can do this no matter what kind of interaction with others we have. Even if it’s only one or a few people you relate to on a daily basis, each interaction with each kind of person can assist us to see more of ourselves. Some may give direct feedback, some may not dare to say it, but we can always cross-reference our experiences with them to take note of what created a subtle ‘shock’ in us, meaning, a moment where something just didn’t ‘feel right’ or ‘sit right’ and made us react, or where we saw that others reacted, so that we can cross-reference how one acted in such moments.

But, I must say that by being alone or being with a person that is not daring to say straight feedback to me would have created more ‘untold’ reactions and consequences, a longer road for me to realize: “man, this is affecting other’s experience around me, I need to chill out, I need to slow down, I need to stop being so controlling, I need to stop being so exigent and ‘right-here-right-now’ type of demanding person that I’ve become.’ So, my suggestion – very personal – if you are the kind of person that is ready for full on – and in your face- feedback about our bits here and there that we need to change or become aware of, then align with people in your life that are on the same page and will take nothing personal about it, but instead be grateful for that kind of communication, because it is something I appreciate a lot, something I kind of longed for in a relationship so, I aligned with someone that would be in the same page of how to take feedback and work with it. 

And yes, at times a hug or a simple point of touch can assist me to ground myself in those moments – yes it may sound like I have some kind of mental problem that needs to be ‘calmed down’ with a pat on the back, lol! – But! I’ve found it is actually supportive to make it that physically visible for me, because it becomes a very visible to myself and others, like a wake up call of ‘Holy crap! I’ve been in autopilot just running the ‘rushy mode’ or the ‘antsy mode’ or ‘bossy mode’ and now I got my wake up call.

Now the point is not to create dependency or even a sort of a ‘relationship dynamic’ to always have to be calmed down or pointed out that I am rushing or I am being demanding, or that I need to chill out. Nope, the point is to be able to direct myself so that I can in fact stand up to my standards which I tend to project onto others or situations outside of myself. If I am indeed exigent, I need to be congruent and apply that to myself first. So I can apply the word in being exigent to no longer have to be told that I need to chill out and slow down, but step into the driver’s seat to direct myself, so that my interaction can also open up to seeing more of myself within the interactions that I have with my partner and others in my life.

All I can share at the moment is to be able to – or dare – to create an agreement with someone that you are close with to say the facts about what one is seeing in another. Sometimes I just say things and I completely assume and misread the situation, but it’s ok, no one takes it personally, I’m just clarified about the situation and I learn to ask things differently instead of asking within assumption. Sometimes I assume too much and don’t communicate, that is usually the worst, so I take that step to ask directly and go creating that confidence to have that open communication with someone in the bits that we notice about one another, and know that we are made aware of these things not as a judgment or a point to be spiteful about, but as things that we know we can become aware of, discuss and decide to change within ourselves.

So how am I changing it? By ensuring I am not tensing up my body when doing things, being ok with not ‘having to be doing’ something I’ve defined as ‘productive’ all the time and enjoying a simple moment of eating, walking outside, watching something in the internet that is for fun or entertainment, to enjoy seemingly ‘silly’ conversations – lol – to become creative in what I can make for food, to remind myself I don’t have to pressure myself to do things, but simply do them, without the energy-rush. To remind myself that whenever I feel like I want to go home already when being outside, it is merely a habit because there is nothing really ‘pressing’ for me to be at home for most of the times, it’s just a habit that tends to kick in as a mode of rushing to get back to some kind of ‘comfort zone.’ Also to not demand to others to act in what I believe is ‘the best way’ because some people are just not up for it and will react to it, and I have to be ‘ok’ with it no matter how it may make common sense – I tend to do this with strangers, not a good idea, so learning to read the different situations better, lol.

So this is about changing the way I live the moments, because in my case it’s about the inner experience, how I become tense within my body when doing things or when knowing I have to get to do something and putting some kind of extra pressure that is Not needed at all. I simply have to take the wheel and direct myself to do it. It is about removing this almost addictive ‘stress’ that I’ve become so used to carrying – shall I say burdening myself with – which comes through in the way I move and express which seems a bit too ‘fast’ or ‘erratic’ at times for some, lol, I do laugh at being calmed down in such moments, but I do need to become more aware of this so as to not make it a part of my personality, because I know my body is not at ease when being in that mode. It happens because I am ‘up there’ in the autopilot – whereas I know when I am here, stable, directive – there’s actually calm, a slowness, an ‘everything is alright’ within me – which is not a sense of delusion, but an actual cross reference of walking my day according to what I have to do and so de-pressuring from the ‘burdening’ sense of rush that I have tended to attach to things.

Ok, so that’s my take on this current point of awareness of where I need to take the driver’s seat and not be ‘driven’ constantly by the rush-mode or have to be driven by someone else to the point of becoming aware of it. So it’s cool to have a cross-reference outside, yes, but then to take the wheel and not become dependent on that to change. Yes, this is part of the result of applying the Desteni support and the Eqafe recordings, some of which I will also share down here so that you can start gearing up to this ongoing process in everyone’s life on Earth.

 

 

How Much More Your Body Language is Saying – Body Language

Self Presentation and the Truth of You – Body Language

 

And my friend Anna’s vlog, which I could relate a lot to:

WHAT IS MOST IMPORTANT IN LIFE?

Join us in our process of Self-Expression as LIFE

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