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 🙂

 

645. Revisiting My Own Birth

 

 This is a new year, a new decade and I’m surely starting it with quite a massive change coming in our lives soon and all that I can do is give a possible or tentative final chapter to this series of blogs related to pregnancy now since I am officially 37 weeks, and from next week on, baby can decide to be born any time. I didn’t find something that relevant or different to share in the past month since I definitely kept on the same routine and habits I had shared about in the previous blog and everything has been going well and I had been feeling quite fine. I started this new year though with a flu and with that not being able to ‘keep up’ with the routine I have set for myself and then, suddenly I started feeling more discomfort and weight on my belly and more tiredness and aches in parts I had not had it before and that also came as a realization that, well, yes, we’re now officially into the ninth month and so it makes sense that I’m coming to experience that shortness of breath and tiredness everyone was talking about. But, I am still recovering from the flu and I haven’t moved as much and I may be speaking from that kind of context of hitting the nine months and having a flu – nonetheless, I am thankful though that sleeping isn’t yet much of a problem or aching so much. I do seem to have some kind of contractions, but it’s also part of baby gaining more weight and positioning to get out, but I know it’s all quite ‘chilled’ at this point compared to what may be the actual birthing process, but even that, we can’t really know how will actually go.

I want to write about the birthing process and my relationship to my own birth since we’ve had some interesting support from midwives about certain conditions I may have and how it could relate to the way I was born.  Perhaps this is something that may be entirely an assumption or ‘linking of the dots’ in a convenient way, but I do see that it is nonetheless timely to open up about it and walk through any remnants of that as I prepare to give birth and to use this opportunity to heal from my own birthing experience as in ‘how I came into this world.’

I had at some point written about the idea of having had fetal suffering with having the umbilical cord around my neck. I’m recently learning that’s not really ‘a problem’ to be given birth in a natural way, and more like how some doctors may use that as a reason to get the woman into a surgery, which is a whole topic in itself when it comes to the various reasons why some doctors prefer to induce women into labor or getting c-sections without there being a real need for it. In my mother’s case after she explained her labor process with us, it seems that this was the case. That means, I probably wasn’t really having fetal suffering and all the ideas that I created in my mind about ‘having had fetal suffering therefore I have this inherent ‘emotional suffering’ as part of my nature’. What I did go through though is the inducing of labor, which implies this rush to get me out and compressing in time the whole labor process that my mother could have naturally gone through, but was sped up artificially. How could that have affected me? There were some lines drawn to certain experiences that ‘could be’ linked to it, and I’ll share about them here.

I’ve noticed how up to this day in certain conditions I may show some signs of lacking air, feeling a bit claustrophobic for example if being in a bus with too many people – or having little to no space around me empty – suddenly seeing myself almost gasping for air or wanting to open up windows because of perceiving that ‘I can’t breathe’, almost like claustrophobia and having this urge to ‘get out’ as soon as I can. I actually even recall this kind of experiences quite vividly whenever I’ve had them, including the time when I didn’t know how to swim as a kid and I ended up at the bottom of the pool and having that same anxiety of ‘wanting to go to the surface’ and not knowing how to and feeling quite desperate and afraid of not being able to ‘get out’ and breathe. I end up having similar symptoms when having low blood pressure, all of a sudden getting tired and yawning after having been just fine the moment prior to me thinking : ‘I’m in a packed place, it’s hot, there’s little oxygen, I have to get out quickly’.

Well, the suggestion was made that this could be a remnant of my birth experience where I basically was pushed to go out through chemicals that induce and rush contractions in an unnatural way and even though this was happening, my mother didn’t dilate. I didn’t know this, and this was essentially medical negligence because then it simply meant it wasn’t my time at all but, it was all forced to fit a certain timeframe and with the assumption that me having the umbilical cord was a sign of fetal suffering = therefore I had to be taken out.  What happened then is that because mother was having contractions, but there was no dilation, I felt most likely trapped, being pushed to go out but having no way of going out.

It also reminds me of the kind of panic I would go into, like petrifying fear whenever I would play with my sisters and they would lock me in a closet, I’d go into some kind of trauma in those moments because of not being able to get out as well and start crying desperately, also gasping for air even if I was say locked in a bathroom or a closet that had sufficient oxygen. Well, it all sounds a bit similar to what I could have gone through at the moment of birth and that being the cause of my fetal suffering: being pushed to go out but having no way to go out and so having had to be taken out surgically through a c-section.

So here, also clarifying that it’s not about the c-section in itself that was the problem, but the conditions around it that (mis)led to it and what I most likely went through within my mother and what my mother went through as all the worry, apprehension and stress of having these heavy contractions but having no ‘opening’ at all.  I was suggested to make peace with what transpired at the time and instead focus on being grateful for having being born, being alive and healing that birthing process within me, so that it doesn’t reverberate into the experience that’s coming up for me next in giving birth myself.

I am aware that what I experience as let’s call it the ‘claustrophobic’ experience may or may not be related to the birthing process, but since understanding things usually leads me to the ability of making peace or making amends with things, I decide to for now take this ‘connecting of the dots’ to self-forgive it, walk through it, understanding what happened, what was done, why it was done and let go of it, not harboring any bad feelings around it either since it was a different time back when I was born and there might have been mistakes made. But hey, I’m here and alive so, now that I’m aware of what actually transpired, I can stop creating stories or reasoning about it and simply heal from it, let it go, understand it and focus on what’s here for me to look at now that the birthing time is coming closer, and so have a blank slate on how a birthing process can be.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to harbor an experience of claustrophobia as in going into a physical perception of lacking oxygen, lacking air to breathe, not being able to breathe, feeling suddenly weak and sometimes even having cold sweat pouring out as signs of distress that could have originated from the time when I was ‘induced to be born’ through chemical means that would try and accelerate the birthing process, yet not having a ‘way out’ naturally as the opening of my mother’s vagina to actually have a way out, and in the end, having to be taken out through a surgical maneuver that may not have been necessary if proper time was given for me to be birthed.

I realize that at the time, my mother and doctors did what they thought was best for her and for me as a baby having the circular around the neck – the umbilical cord around the neck – and believing that was a sign of fetal suffering that they had to act on, and that my mother followed doctor’s orders and perspectives because of not knowing any better, and with that comes then my own forgiveness to doctors and my mother for not knowing any better way to deal with that situation and doing what was common to do at the time.

I realize that currently I have the opportunity to live in a different time, different era where a lot of the misconceptions around pregnancy and giving birth are being opened up for discussion and clarifying a lot of beliefs that would usually lead to surgical births for example, and that are now not considered a reason to induce labor, speed up labor, doing c-sections or intervening mothers in other unnatural ways to give birth – and that I now have sufficient information and education about it to make different decisions on how to give birth, what is doable and what is not and having this opportunity to perhaps prevent my own child from going through what I went through in my own birthing experience, and with that, allowing myself to be birthed again with her in a more suitable way.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to in any unconscious way harbor resentment or anger towards my mother and the doctors for the way that I was born, for the experience that was perhaps traumatic and claustrophobic as I was pressured to go outside of my mother’s womb, of not being ‘respected’ enough to allow me to naturally show signs of wanting to get out, but instead be intervened because of a belief around fetal suffering at the time, even if it wasn’t yet my time to go out.  

I realize that they all did what they could in my best interest with the knowledge that they all had at the time and that if I had been in their exact same shoes and responsibility and with the same amount of information or education they had, I would have done the same thing in the consideration of what I would know to be best.

Therefore, all that is left for me to do is to prevent such same or similar scenarios in my own process of giving birth to our child now that I have access to more information and education about the real contexts or complications where I’d have to go into an emergency c-section surgery and knowing when not to worry to be unnecessarily rushed into one, such as having long labor or not dilating as quick as it would be ‘ideal’ or having a circular around the neck or losing the mucous plug ‘long before due date’ – but mostly realizing that now I’m also in the hands of people that have their best interest on me having a natural birthing process and that we could only consider a surgery if it is strictly necessary – and this is then the trust that I can give to myself and to my baby to be fine with either outcome based on how things evolve on the birthing process itself.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to recreate the same suffering or traumatic experience I had in my own birth whenever some elements I’ve defined as ‘distressful’ are in my environment, such as when feeling like there’s a lack of oxygen in the air, when feeling like I don’t have enough space around me to move and so feeling like I have to ‘rush to get out’ and in general the experience of ‘having to rush’ constantly and not being able to slow down may even come from that experience of having to ‘quickly’ move somewhere or go out and not being able to be just stable and calm even if having a small limited amount of space around me in certain environments, or if seeing closed windows and perceiving that ‘I need some fresh air’ in moments when going into this kind of physical distress that may – or may not be- related to the experience I had when being forced to get out from my mother’s womb as a baby.

I realize that I’ve been explained how no matter how ‘tight’ a place can be with people, the idea of lack of oxygen is mostly a belief in my mind and that the experience of ‘having to rush to get out’ may also be a remnant of that initial experience within my mother’s womb that I can now let go of and instead direct myself to practice remaining calm, learning to breathe properly as well, deep enough so that I can actually replenish my body with necessary oxygen and at the same time, to use that breathing process to settle myself down in my body, to not fuel ideas of ‘having to move or go somewhere’ but instead to embrace that moment where I can redirect my focus and attention from ‘lack of oxygen’ to ‘I can breathe, I’m here, my physical body has what it needs, there’s no rush to go somewhere, I can slow down, be here, I’m here’.  

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to recreate a sense of resentment and anger towards medical professionals that have and may continue to induce labor to women for unnecessary reasons, causing more babies to go through the kind of experience that I went through – or worse – and within this to realize that my own pain, suffering or emotional distress now that I know how these things work only do a disservice to my own body and the baby that is growing within me, therefore I let go of the emotional stress about it and remain calm.

I realize that the real path to change is to be informed, to get educated about what really goes on in the birthing process so that I can know how things may be, how ‘complications’ may be approached, how to handle certain obstacles during the birthing process and how to also make peace if intervention is needed in case my body does require it and it is in fact the best option for everyone involved, myself and my baby.

I also realize that I have to be open to the unknown in this birthing process and that a lot of ‘stuff’ may open up that day that I need to physically work through and go through, and that all that I have for now as a preparation is knowing that I can trust myself. I also have to listen to my body, to not get ‘hooked’ on a particular idea of ‘how I want things to be’ but to always place our wellbeing as a priority.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to mentally resist and fear the idea of having to go through surgical procedures or further intervention to give birth, instead of realizing that if I resist and fear it, it persists. Instead, I need to embrace that as a possible path if it is necessary to go through it.

I realize that as much as I’ve set myself to do it in a natural or less intervened way, things may not happen the way that I could prefer them to happen – therefore, I embrace the possibilities of what may be needed or required to be done when the birthing process takes place.

I realize that flexibility and being open to ‘the unknown’ is a key here considering that we may sometimes want things to be in a particular way and create expectations about it, which may simply not turn out to be the reality that we create and face and so, that becomes the origin of resentment, guilt, dissatisfaction and even anger for not being able to ‘accomplish’ certain birth plan, as it is called. I’m making peace with whatever has to happen that day and time whenever baby decides to come out into this world.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to fear that my body will not handle this kind of process properly and that I won’t be ‘strong enough’ for it, not realizing these are fears from times when I would actually have this kind of ‘lack of air’ in certain physical situations and feeling like ‘fainting’ which might be once again related to this belief that there is something ‘wrong with me and my body’ and ‘I don’t have a physical body that’s suitable for demanding exercises’ or situations – however, I have been physically challenging that idea and I have to make peace with the fact that anything can happen, but I can have the certainty and can be proud of myself of how I have invested on my physical wellbeing to be prepared for that birthing process and for what’s to come, regardless of the outcome and regardless of how my body can handle things and how baby decides to come into this world.

All that I can be and focus on is on my own trust, strength and confidence to do what it takes to walk through the birthing process, something I never thought of going through in this life to be honest and that I can also feel now proud of being willing to go through and have the courage for it, after having been so fearful of anything related to giving birth for most of my life, mostly because of hearsay, misinformation, lack of proper education and will to learn more about it, because of fears really. I now see the capacity to turn things around if I decide to do so with awareness, dedication and willingness to do this with all of my being, a once in a lifetime process for sure, because even if one has more kids, no process is ever the same, and that applies for everything really.

As a closure, first of all, this is all a result of walking the Desteni process, I do not know how I would have handled something like this without the support and tools to break through some of the main limitations I’ve had lived in for two thirds of my life. I also can be glad and satisfied with how I have carried this pregnancy process on, for the most part it became quite enjoyable to be honest after the first three or so months. It’s perhaps the kind of challenge I consider I wouldn’t have taken on with full awareness or deciding to do so explicitly – as that worst of me was overriding my ability to see beyond my initial fears – nonetheless it has been an opportunity to grow as a person, and I’m extremely thankful for it, we both are.  And even though it has its challenges, difficulty in making certain decisions and even if discomfort emerges from time to time, I embrace it as part of the whole actual miracle that creating a baby inside me is, without me being aware of it at all. And on top of that, the time that’s left is really nothing to go through some more ‘slowing down’ processes, some more ‘weight of life’ to carry on in order to give birth to the new part of us that is coming into this world J

All the best for us and for all of you, let’s see how life unfolds J

Happy new year 2020

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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639. Reconciling with the Artistic Expression In Me

 

It’s been a while since I shared a blog. I’ve been on a ‘writing diet’ where I write at least 3 pages on a daily basis in my personal diary or notebook which is something I begun as part of a process I’m embarking myself on to reconcile myself – yes, once again and yes embracing the process – with my artistic side or artistic interests which I’ve been basically focusing on investigating and aligning throughout these past months. I’ve been realizing some of the most ‘shady’ aspects that I’ve allowed to get in the way of me continuing to express myself and I decided to write self forgiveness on these points along with some realizations and share them, since I’m aware many can be at a similar situation with any given aspect in their lives too.  

I forgive myself that I haven’t accepted and allowed myself to realize I created a sense of being unworthy when it comes to expressing myself through creative means simply because of being told that no one would buy that, no one would like that and that I had to do stuff that most people liked in order to be paid for it, which then became a way to constantly create a hellish experience within me while creating, having to satisfy these invisible people that I believed I had to please and within that, causing that split within me where expressing myself in a more intimate and unconditional way – as it was in the beginning when I started – became a thing of the past and I then had to ‘use my skills’ to ‘be bought’ by others, and in doing so eventually wanting to once again distance myself from doing anything creatively.

I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to hold a negative experience to the idea of my work being valued in a certain amount of money where I’ve judged such amount of money as ridiculous and just not worth the ‘thing’ that I created, which I then believed was something good or positive but slowly with time I allowed that notion to sabotage me from continuing to create because I then would be having to ‘think in money terms’ when creating, which became a departure from myself – because art for me was not intended to be a ‘product’ but it was a very personal, unconditional and dare I say innocent form of expression with and for myself that I then allowed to be influenced on ‘why I do it’ and ‘what kind of stuff’ I should do, missing out the point of it which has always and should always be Me and the process I’ve been walking, which is what any form of expression for me is really about.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to create a silent inner war in relation to art and monetary value where I slowly but surely sabotaged myself from creating anything as a way to not have to see it as a product – instead of seeing that I could have simply realized that I was  attaching some monetary values to something that should be first of all a point of self-expression and communication, where an economic value would come only if and when I would decide to offer it for selling it and only when and if there could be any potential person interested in buying it, therefore leaving all of that as a secondary purpose to it, not ever forgetting that my main purpose and value is for myself, for my own satisfaction, expression and enjoyment – otherwise I now see I corrupt myself by thinking in ‘money terms’ other than me expressing me and sharing unconditionally.

I forgive myself that I haven’t accepted and allowed myself to realize that the moment that there was a struggle in my head because of having others’ opinions, views or expectations of ‘what I need to create’ I should have stopped and not allow myself to go there, since that is not the reason why I signed up to do anything creative in the first place, I did it as a point of curiosity and exploration for myself, to communicate myself with myself and then it became something I would have to do as a profession to be paid for and satisfy others with it, which is not a ‘wrong’ thing to do either, but that’s not where my true passion is for in it.  I totally buried myself under those ‘expectations’ I projected upon myself even when I believed I was doing something ‘for me,’ I would still be having ideas of ‘having others liking it’ in the background and in that, I corrupted my own expression which I see has of course nothing to do with the ghostly voices in my head of ‘others eyes’ on it,  because they were entirely brought up by myself and it then became in a bundle of  fears around it that I now see I used as a justification to not continue doing anything creative for a while.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to many times create a dissonance, a split between ‘what’ I had to do instead of asking myself who do I decide to be and according to that direct myself, because of having fallen on the usual ideas where I would have to choose one thing to become ‘something’ in life– like having a certain title, career or diploma – in order to perform certain tasks which show me the extent to which I have been mostly perpetuating the same kind of labels and boxes wherein we have defined ourselves to be just ‘one thing’ and only be that ‘one thing’ throughout a lifetime, instead of opening up the endless possibilities that are in fact possible if we tap into that source of what and who we really are and so expressing that into any aspect of our lives, regardless of ‘what we do.’

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to split myself between the idea of supporting others and making that my living purpose and my own natural tendency an d interest on artists and artistic creations as a source of both enjoyment and understanding to me, and in doing so, I ended up creating a division from this natural expression and judging it as selfish, as a waste of time, as shallow or without any consequence in others’ lives, without realizing  that in doing so, I was cutting up, chopping off a part of myself in such judgment process wherein I then created a constant push and pull friction game towards that inclination that emerged from a very young age in me and that I judged later on as frivolous and part of my ego-creation.

I realize currently how yes from a very innocent and instinctive move to paint and draw, I then turned it into a an expectation of making it my profession and then buying into the idea of that having to be my way to ‘climb up the ladder of success’ and feed my ego with dreams and ideals of fame and recognition, where – even though I had the idea of ‘doing so to help to save the world’ – the motivation was still the aggrandizement of my own persona, which is why I then took myself to the opposite side of not wanting to show what I do, not wanting to share it around and judging others that would dare to do so as egotistical or seeking others’ approval, which only stands as my own projection of my own judgments and what I’ve done towards myself, which I realize is a product of tainting my expression with the norms and ways we have created the current system wherein art has also become an industry which is not wrong in itself since it can be considered work itself, but to me art does go beyond the ‘final product’ but I’m definitely more interested in the person that is behind the work of art which is where I see that lies my interest on the artistic field.

I forgive myself  that I’ve accepted and allowed myself to taint my expression with the ideas of ‘what I would have to do’ in order to sell or in order to have other people like what I do, which I realized has been a rather painful process considering that it doesn’t mean I have to make money out of what I decide to express in a very personal way of communicating with myself, which I can share unconditionally without having to make it ‘fit’ certain market standards or having certain ‘qualities’ which is what I’ve then come to experience an inner conflict with, because my aim is to use art as a way to communicate and to see myself, to understand and learn from myself and enjoy while making it and making that very personal and sacred moment where it’s just me expressing and communicating with myself.

I realize that the moment that I place ‘others’ or ‘the public’ as the ultimate outcome, I distance myself from myself, I move away from that very core point that got me into wanting to create art in the first place and it becomes a job, something I have ‘to do’ for money or to be able to be ‘sellable’ and in that, losing my own essence and shaping myself into whatever I am believing ‘others’ want to see and get from me, which is entirely created in my own mind and as such, there has never been ‘others’ or any form of exigencies, it’s all been me allowing my own judgments and ideas to influence and maim my own creativity over the years .

I realize that the various comments and opinions I got over the years were all standing as expressions of their own views and standards, and to me they represented moments where I would have had to fully stand as my expression – but I didn’t. And that’s why every time I would succumb to certain demands, I would feel a little more lost in it all and ended up feeling meaningless and purposeless – shallow – in the whole process of making anything related to art, even doing any form of indoor decoration because of then tainting it as shallow, superficial or non-substantial or supportive to life itself – defining ‘life’ outside of myself as ‘others’– instead of seeing that I am the source of it and the ultimate end point of it, if it exists in me – and me being part of the whole – there should not exist any limitation to this point of expression that is intended to see ‘what comes out of me’ as an individual, simply to see ‘how I am doing’ and express it in ways that I may not be able to do so through words at times, and so seeing that it has been essential for me to draw and paint things that are just inside of me and come out as an extension of myself, that are devoid of a certain ‘receptor’, which I consider is the actual essence of what any form of art is, an externalization of the creator because of the sheer will of the creator itself to have it happen or just ‘be’ for its own sake.

In my case I have decided to make of that art not something that I ‘have to do’ but something that I can decide to express as part of my self-communication, self-enjoyment, the creation of that me-time that I now know I have to give myself and create for myself since I have shaped my life and time around all of the other doings that I require to do as a way to survive and as a way to relate to others, which simply require a balancing point so that I can in fact give me and create more time to do it and stick to it the same way that I stand in a disciplined and responsible manner to any other responsibility and duty I have.

I realize that If I cut out this limb of mine, this part of me that has continued to be a relevant aspect of my life, I’ll end up feeling forever frustrated for not having had the guts to give myself the time and courage to do it, to make it actually OK and acceptable that I create time for me to continue developing any form of creative expression that satisfies that self-communication and self-understanding beyond the usual self-writings, because that stands as something that can break the mold of what I regularly do on a daily basis and what I dare to say to myself through words only.

I also understand the importance of creativity, it is that ‘creative germ’ that is needed in all of us if we truly want to ‘break the mold’ and create a better world because otherwise, as I’ve seen for myself, we can just fall into the comfort of how things usually are and have been and not having any new things or challenges coming our way and getting too complacent and obedient to whatever we have all collectively come to believe is how ‘we should live our lives.’ And I know that it takes courage and a real sense of authority and will to decide to not fall into such expectations and categories and live differently, which then doesn’t become a constant ‘against the flow’ rebellious type of process as I used to do it before, but it becomes simply living the realization that this is the actuality of myself that is no longer seeking to be liked, appreciated or conform or fit in, but embraces that individuality devoid of judgment and expectations, and simply decides to get back in tune with myself, to be ‘here’ rather than seeking to be somewhere else or be accepted by others here or there.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to maim my own authenticity whenever I allowed others’ comments, opinions – or the lack thereof – about what I do creatively to affect and define the way that I relate to my works of art, where I then stepped into the realm of valuing opinions and judgments and forgot to look at myself, asking myself why is this important or relevant for me to do, what it means to me and why it satisfies me or not to do it.  

I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to become too concerned with monetary values and I realize that it is not about saying that selling my art is wrong or an act of self-interest, but that should come as a byproduct of me first standing fully in absolute congruence with my creation, where I can be sure there isn’t any noise implied in its creation while having thoughts about possibly selling it or thinking what colors would be liked more by ‘the majority’ of people, or what kind of stuff would be ‘easy to appreciate and like’ and hang on a wall or have around – and instead focus on simply being me, expressing me because I can see how I have been living that within myself and I have stood up when realizing I’m about to enter into a ‘shaping’ process that doesn’t respect me – but I haven’t done that with my own artistic expression.

I realize how easy it is for me to get into that shady space of not sharing or showing myself, all having to do with holding ideas about ‘who I am and have been’ in relation to a particular ‘personality system’ of having been placed in the spotlight at a certain time in my life, creating and building expectations upon myself that I then couldn’t fulfill because they, of course, came from a place of separation, of arrogance, of superiority and idealism that can’t be in fact satisfied because it’s not coming from the truth of who I am and who I want to be.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to define me according to people’s opinions and values given towards me, where they all in fact felt phony to me ever since being a child and receiving accolades, it became a great nuisance to be told all of these good things and being praised where I eventually wanted to ‘not be singled out’ and hide in the background, to not stand out and in doing so,  I ended up diminishing myself because of having created a negative experience to being the source of opinions and critics, even if they were favorable, it seemed unfair and unreal for me to be able to define someone based on numeric characters or only a few characteristics that were ‘worthy’ within a particular system, like in schools.

That’s also why I wanted to do something that could enable me to see myself outside of values and titles that we are supposed to get in society, that define ‘who we are’ and that’s why I started doing what I did within an artistic expression – that I later on ‘vandalized’ with adding all kinds of judgments, opinions  and expectations to it and I perverted it and turned it into just another ‘thing’ that one ‘does’ in the ‘system’ and that’s it, it’s like taking the life out of myself by turning that which was once very personal and unconditional and a point of enjoyment to me and turning it into a show ‘for others’ and to find ‘my value and worth’ in society, which I then failed to do as I should, because it would have led me down to another rabbit hole if I had been successful at that.

I also realize that it’s not that ‘others’ are the problem in fact, since they are me. In any case each person stands as a good mirror where I can look back at myself and see what I can learn from it to either expand  myself or try out new things, without any longer seeking to be liked, accepted, valued or appreciated that way, because I realize that such values are in fact standing only in the eye of the mind and can only serve a way to ‘see’ things, but it’s only me that will ultimately know WHO I am behind WHAT I decide to do, whatever it is.

I realize that we lose ourselves many times in the eyes of others and allow ourselves to get quietly and deeply hurt and don’t dare to speak it out in the moment, because of fearing to come through as sensitive or immature – but opening up about those aspects that were impactful for us is the first point, to realize that many times there have been assumptions, misunderstandings and a general projection of who each person is in relation to their opinions and comments. I realize that I also have been able to consider certain constructive aspects from what others say about my work, but even with that, I realize I have to define what I will accept and allow as feedback and what I won’t because to me, artistic expression is that one sacred place where no others’ ‘laws’ or ‘ways’ apply and where I can in fact transcend myself and my limited views, beliefs and morals. I desecrate that space, that part of myself every time that I use someone else’s words as a reason or justification of why I should do something a certain way or why I should just give up trying to do anything creative.

I also realize that in my mind I have been the only one that has decided to give such amount of focus and attention to what others may or may not say – critically and constructively – and that I am the only one that can allow that to affect me in a negative or emotional way.  I realize that as one goes strengthening that sense of self-worth, self appreciation and being congruent with the expression of ‘who I am’ and ‘who I decide to be’ and what I focus on continuing to create and express no matter what may come my way, it should not change who I decide to be in that expression.

I can use the feedback  to make myself grow and expand and consider other perspectives, but reacting negatively towards it is entirely a self-created decision that I now realize I have the total capacity to work through and release myself from, which can leave me with a better understanding of who the other person is in their words and their way of seeing things and their relationship to what I do, but ultimately to not take it personally.

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to compare my own expression, the unique actions and movements and expressions that I have to any other human beings’, which has led me within a never ending unfulfilled experience where I became the outflow of my own judgments and allowing that to maim my creative expression by giving up on it.

I realize we all – each one of us – is part of the whole that expresses in a unique way, which doesn’t make it more or less than or ‘better’ or ‘worse’ than – it is about embracing the multiplicity and learning to see it as that unique expression that it is, where I realize that I have made and turned myself into my own worst enemy when constantly deciding what is ‘good’ or not in my own eyes and then ending up projecting those judgments towards my own creations, which results in self-sabotage.

Currently I realize looking back how what I’ve done just IS and they are all testimonies and registry of the various phases in my life that I don’t have to feel ashamed of, since they were a relevant and important aspect of who I was at the time, a part of me, a reflection of me in that space and time and if I don’t embrace and accept myself and decide that such expression had its right to be at the time and represent me, who else will? No one.

I realize that my curiosity and general inclination towards some artistic expressions like music and visual arts have been a form of food for my beingness, which at some point I tried to simply distance myself from within the belief that they were just distractions or my own way to ‘escape’ from my reality. And I realize that at times, it might have been so in the past, but I surely realize that is not my starting point at the moment but the other way around.

I now see the potential in art and artists as part of what’s worth living for in this world, because I’ve gone from loathing humanity to appreciating every person that I get to know more about and seeing a lot of valuable things that I can learn from which I’ve come to do through watching documentaries, reading about artists lives and any creative genius, which I ultimately see as one of the reasons why I want to continue being me and developing my expression,  not only to support others but to get to contribute back in the ‘creative pool’ from where I’ve been nurturing myself from as well, because that’s how I’ve gotten to appreciate the life that is in each one of us and that manifests in all of these multiple ways that are worth getting to see and appreciate for who and what they are.

My starting point is not to feel ‘original’ since we are ALL original since we all come from the same and one origin point that we all express in a variety of ways that actually makes this life worth living and so, it’s absolutely worth getting to know one another and getting to connect with those that may be walking a similar path and living purpose to the one I have, which I’ve seen is quite feasible as well.

My current starting point to develop myself in relation to any form of artistic creation and developing communication and comradeship with fellow artists is because it’s proven to me how this particular sector of people in the world that, according to how I see it, dares to live ‘outside of the norm’ within their minds and so in their lives and dare to share that in any way that reflects their inside world, that reflects their particular inner experience are the front runners of changing the way life is lived and how new structures and ways can be created that benefit more of humanity and life in general.

 I’ve seen how easy it is to connect to that same common sensical level with people that are working or have experience in any cultural or artistic field, we just can click in one moment because there’s that same or similar understanding of who we really are and what’s worth working and living for in this life.

I was discussing with my friend about art in itself and it got me to think how I don’t have a particular fondness for certain works of art based on taste, but I surely get to appreciate the ‘who’ is behind that work that got to master themselves to put in the practice, effort, dedication and willingness to do something that perhaps was completely ‘out of their norm’ and did what they had to do in order to get it out of themselves and manifest it as a creation in reality; some others might have done it from a more natural talent that they just could effortlessly express, but in either case, there is a willingness to express and to me that is implying that there is an awareness of the creative potential we all have and can use to benefit our lives. How?

To me it is a primordial and basic point of nurturing your being, of expressing and so sharing it if one’s up for it. They are all bits and ways in which we go stepping out of the ‘usual patterns’ and dare to cross our own limitations and in sharing them, we assist others to do so as well. I also had to let go of the ideas of wanting to share or inspire others or wanting it to be ‘seen’ or ‘liked’ by others. It’s very similar to this process and writing where, whenever I place myself in a position of wanting to ‘share with others’ I miss out myself as being my own point, my own source, my own end of such creation. So now, If I find it supportive, then sharing becomes simply an extension of that self-support being in fact something that I see could benefit others because it is benefitting me.

This is where I can decide to own me and my every step of the way in my own creation, which I also relate to the way I’ve been able to own my decisions and choices in life and all the mistakes I’ve made, because they now make me who I am and I can look back and see that they are all part of the building blocks that I can now constructively use as part of the experience that makes me who I am today that may become stories of support to share to others as a way to learn from my own doings and wrongdoings and get to express the better version of ourselves.

 

Thanks for reading

I absolutely recommend listening to this series to anyone that’s interested in this kind of topics and specifically feeling meaningless, purposeless or feeling like there’s something yet to satisfy within oneself as a living purpose

1. 
   

   Meaningless: The Undefined Self – Atlanteans – Part 346

2. Meaningless: Searching for Meaning – Atlanteans – Part 347

3. Meaningless: Redefinition – Atlanteans – Part 348

4. Meaningless: Self Forgiveness Challenge – Atlanteans – Part 349

5. Meaningless: Standing as a Self Directive Principle – Atlanteans – Part 350

6. Meaningless: Giving Yourself Meaning – Atlanteans – Part 351

7. Meaningless: Fulfillment – Atlanteans – Part 352

8. 
   

   Meaning: Finding Meaning in a Cruel World – Atlanteans – Part 353

 

 

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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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626. The Freedom of Shared Responsibility

 

Here I share an update to my previous blog which will be my personal reflection and reading of a situation like this in the current world we are living in where social media has become in the individual press or medium of communication that enables us to create awareness of basically anything in our world, and at the same time consider the ‘greater scheme’ of how things that will emerge and will be coming through as scandals or online viperous content are also part of a very bumpy – yet necessary – ride to create further awareness of the effect that our actions have upon others, while also learning to discern what is truth and what isn’t based on facts and within that, learning to essentially stand in truth because nothing can distort that, because it is self-evident, and that’s essentially our real freedom, to own and take responsibility of our participation in the co-creation of reality and know ‘who we are’ within it all, so that one can then decide to change the ‘problematic’ actions and attitudes within myself  – that’s self-honesty to me.  

So, without giving too many details for obvious reasons, I was part of the conciliation process that took place in order to create a form of ‘justice’ to the person that felt aggravated by the actions of other people that were professionally involved with my partner. My partner faced his own ‘charges’ directly with the person that felt aggravated by him. To me it was quite an example of how one can be the living expression of ‘your truth sets you free’ because there was nothing to fear when you know exactly what you did, how you did it and the starting point of it. It took an apology to realize that his actions and words simply had an effect he had not considered could cause a negative reaction in the other person, and that was essentially about it. The whole ‘exacerbation’ of the situation essentially deflated when he decided to talk to the person face to face and clarify the situation. This involved the acknowledgement of making mistakes and how we can learn from it, how to change from now on.

The ability to come to an agreement exists when people are placed face to face to talk things out without having the ‘he/she said this/that’ over social media gossip only. The whole thing changes when you are there talking to the person that created a certain image of you online and start laying out the facts, recognize the mistakes, ask for forgiveness and move forward to create a peace arrangement, recognizing the responsibility on the ‘aggravator’ side in this case.

I personally tried to share the concept of shared responsibility where it always takes ‘two to tango’ in any situation, and how the person remained in such work relationship by their own choice. I was vehemently ‘shut down’ with my remark, because the whole set up was of having a victimhood and aggressor type of polarity in the conversation. This is one of those moments where I realized there was no opening to this kind of concepts when you have emotionally ‘enraged’ people and certain laws being used to treat a point of awareness of responsibility as ‘adding fuel to the fire.’ I had to keep quiet after that realizing I could stir up more conflict in a situation where conciliation was aimed to be made.

Here I’ll be sharing my perspectives on what I’ve observed not only first hand from this situation, but also in the context of what’s going on in the world in the realm of ‘political correctness’ and all of these attempts to ‘make people pay’ for past situations where people that felt aggravated didn’t speak up – or where people are currently taking offense much easier than before, where even now trying to make a simple joke can give you labels of the worst kind, where even mentioning a word has led people to lose their jobs as CEO’s of big corporations, comics have been kicked out of colleges for ‘telling the wrong jokes,’ and world leaders are being a constant source of internet bullying because of not providing a ‘politically correct’ view of people… and the list goes infamously on. That simply shows ‘where we are’ as humanity, that’s our current mirror.

I’ve mostly been observing and seeing what the ‘climate’ of all of these accusations, ‘revelations’ and ‘me too’ movements have created and have become. Each person has the ability to use their words and the media of their choice to say what they feel they ‘have a right’ to say. The problem is we don’t consider our responsibility in it all and the way that we affect each other, and at the same time how to learn and realize that no one can make you feel bad, feel less, feel down, feel offended unless one allows it or unless one ‘identifies’ with certain ‘label’ or word that may trigger an emotional reaction in us. That is part of this process as well where I’ve learned to see where and how I used to identify with certain judgments – essentially standing as Self-Judgment – and from there realize that any reaction I get from anyone ‘calling me that’ is simply because I accept and allow such word and a reaction to it to exist within me. I know it sounds difficult to do, but it’s work that’s worth doing for the sake of personal growth and change.

Currently writing or saying something about ‘taking responsibility’ on the side of the ‘offended’ one becomes outrageous in a climate like the one we are living ‘out there’ where people are deciding it’s quite easy to accuse and become a victim – and in that blindly supporting the victims – which is why the world is becoming the kind of ‘you said he said’ circus of misinformation and gossip that are dividing people more and more.

It seems ‘easier’ for some to not create any form of awareness of responsibility or perhaps not even deciding to consider it because it basically would destroy every single accusation or offense claim done, because one would realize ‘whatever I feel or experience from these words, I create within me, no one else can get inside my head to cause me to feel bad about it.’ But these seem to be still ‘superhero’ concepts as in them being ‘out of reach’ of any regular human being, when they are not, we are doing it as well in this process at Desteni. This doesn’t mean that some people may in fact want to inflict abuse, harm or extortion on others, that definitely does exist as well, but then it takes us to another reading, to understand how a person came to be the kind that would want to deliberately harm, abuse or vex others. That is also something that can be understood to take responsibility  – as in assisting to change it within self – and forgive it, not taking it personally and creating more problems about it. Sometimes simply talking to the person to know ‘who they are’ leads us to understand why they do certain things, and this also assists in realizing one cannot take personally others’ wrongdoings either. But this is also part of this process where one willingly decides to live the word Understanding, rather than going through the seemingly ‘easy’ path of blame and victimhood.  

So unless the person is devoid of all of their mental and physical capacity to think for themselves, every single person that stands in any form of victimhood needs to assess this first point of responsibility: how did I come to create, accept and allow this in my life and reality? What kind of steps, decisions and choices did I make to get to where I am currently? This is one of the main things that have made me a ‘freer’ person. I’ve written in countless blogs how I used to stand in blame towards every single human – hypothetically speaking – for ‘how fucked up we are as humanity’ and how I saw no way out other than completely ignoring the world – well, trying to – but ending up with a very pessimistic and nihilistic view about life and of any future for ourselves.  This led me to feel anger, resentment and feel completely disempowered to change anything, because I kept blaming the world system, ‘those in power,’ those that apparently made all the ‘wrong choices’ that affected my life and those around me.

Deciding to step outside of victimhood and blame is genuinely empowering and this was only possible due to studying the Eqafe.com material where I truly got to understand the ‘greater’ picture, and I mean ‘greater’ as in existential-level greater, where I got to grasp that any form of abuse is always Self-Abuse, because we are all in fact one and equal, and this is not in the nice and fluffy sense that some aspects of spirituality or religion portray, but this is at a matter level, where we are truly one and the same, we have just separated ourselves into oblivion, not only as individuals, but even within ourselves where we have our mind, our being and our body separated ‘within ourselves’ which is why we don’t realize what we were – and have been – doing ‘it’ to ourselves all along, which is self-evident now that we witness the truth and reality we are in.

Even though a lot of ‘shit’ seems to be hitting the fan, and cans of worms seem to be opening up everywhere – which is something we also knew would Have to happen in order for the old to go and the new to emerge – there are also great things happening in the realm of ‘waking up’ and taking more responsibility and creating more awareness of who we really are, and that’s also why some events are causing the scandals we are now seeing in the media or on social media every single day, people coming up with past stuff to blame people and in a way believe that it is that way to create any form of solution to the problems, when it is genuinely not and it is causing much more harm, violence, defamation and unnecessary paranoia around it. However all in all, it does serve as a point of awareness to the kind of abuses, harm, violations to life that exist which are things that have been kept ‘inside’ each person throughout human history.

We just now happen to have things like Facebook, Twitter and other places where each one can share themselves to whichever intent. But in all of such expressions of accusations, I haven’t yet read or seen one single person admitting to have placed themselves in such positions to be on the ‘receiving’ end of any form of abuse. And it is rare at the same time to find people that assume full responsibility for their aggravations without fear, understanding the situation and committing to change themselves for the best. I personally am fond of my partner for being one of them and serves as a great example of how things can be sorted with self responsibility, and how there’s nothing to fear when you know exactly ‘what you did’ and why you did it.

As a side note, it was also interesting to see how a publication with ‘scandalous’ content got shared thousands of times and commented on endlessly, while another publication with a signed agreement of conciliation of peace between the involved parties got only ‘a few likes’ and a few comments of approval. It does reveal a lot ‘where we are’ as a society and this has saddened some of my friends, but, I stick to the point of seeing the greater picture of not taking it personally but move on with the solutions as planned, because I know that falling into despair is just another outflow of reaction that leads nowhere but personal disempowerment, thus, we need to acknowledge, understand and move on standing clear on it, even being willing to support others that may be affected by similar situations which is something that I am open to do as well.

I initially also felt limited or ‘violated’ in my right to speak about shared responsibility in such conciliation process, because I was essentially told to ‘shut up’ or I could aggravate the situation. That’s a moment where I had to see my reaction coming up and decide to slow down and take one step back, breathe and realize that there are and possibly will be situations where the actual truth of the facts cannot be fully embraced or even mentioned, because there are factions that are completely entrenched in a sense of entitlement  that prevents them from hearing any form of common sensical approach to a situation such as where the two parts are considered as co-creators of a situation. It was baffling to me, but in that moment I realized that I could indeed do more harm than ‘good’ by trying to ‘create awareness’ about something that could destroy a ‘conciliatory’ process in the making. What I did instead after the whole more ‘serious’ part of the conciliatory process was done is to extend a hand of support for the person that was aggravated, to share how I do this as part of my living and how I am interested in people’s wellbeing regardless of anything. So that’s where I decided to stand in relation to ‘the other side’ for the sake of giving a name here, it was my way of living forgiveness in that simple moment as well.

This I share as well as a cautionary tale, where one needs to learn how to read the matrix so to speak, the context of the situation, the political and social ideas behind these kind of accusations, the laws and how the people on the victim-stance are expressing – such as if they are enraged, angry, nervous, etc. Because then it is my responsibility to know that saying something can ‘detonate’ them further on, so that’s where I have to take that step further and not step on my ‘high horse’ so to speak, which could have caused more conflict.  It is also well known that our current legal frameworks do not cater common sense or the consideration of shared responsibility. It is a polarized system where the only sense of ‘justice’ that exists is placing someone in jail or sending them to death penalty or asking them for money as a form of conciliation. That is of course only handling consequences….

But how about creating spaces to genuinely converse and admit the simple fact of ‘it takes two to tango’ and assist both or more parties to step outside of the disempowerment of victimhood and offender – that in fact attracts more dissent, polarization, violence and rage – and in doing so, assume a more responsible and wholesome stance where each person involved is assisted to recognize their participation in the co-creation of the situation, to understand the mental processes that led to the creation of ‘the problem’ and from there create a conciliatory process where one can understand the other and commit to a process of learning from the mistakes to change such habits, attitudes, actions or ways of being in order to prevent further mistakes and so further problems or accusations. That’s living forgiveness and that is not currently in any legal framework to my awareness.

In a way it is sad that one cannot say such things in the moment, because based on the situation where there’s almost like a victimhood standoff, it is almost impossible to hear any form of shared-responsibility concept. But there I said it, perhaps I planted a seed of awareness, perhaps not. But at least I didn’t keep quiet about it, couldn’t say all of what I’m writing here today and that’s also how I see the importance of using the tools we have of sharing ourselves, of creating blogs, sharing our perspectives within self-responsibility. Here I am making the best that I can to ensure that my words stand as a perspective that is geared to support ourselves as human beings – not taking any sides here – to face conflict, to prevent conflict, to handle conflictive situations in a way that can honor each other and ultimately life itself.

This is how I see we need tools of support at a legal level so that the labels of ‘the victim’ and the ‘perpetrator’ are removed for a moment to look at where each one stands and how the situation came to be, so that there is an awareness creation of each other’s participation in the event, and so create a mutual process of real reformation if you will, which doesn’t come with a sense of vengeance or punishment or ‘compensation for the damage done’, but in the intent of actual change and restoration of the individual, for any ‘other’ is also ‘us’ that have gone astray in one way or another, they are also the product and result of the whole society/world we have co-created.

And this is why blame is lame as they say, it prevents us from acknowledging that we have all created the world as is, we have all been co-creators all the way, we have just blindly and comfortably forgotten, and that is what’s currently being used with greater force in certain factions or groups that create an identity point based sexual preferences, gender, race, nationality, ideology, political inclinations, religions, all kinds of paraphilias and the list goes unfortunately on, missing out the fact of how any form of label/tag divides and conquers us further. It truly saddens me to see how we have separated ourselves from the basic humanity that we all are, devoid of creeds, beliefs, postures, colors, dogmas. It is indeed sad undoubtedly how much ‘shit’ we can talk about one another, how easily we can attack and blame and not even care to investigate the facts. I’ve been there myself as well and can’t claim innocence at all in the past, but I’ve been committing myself to change that within this process for the past 11 years. Sometimes learning the tough way is what we need, a huge ‘wake up call’ to see how we are participating with each other person in this world.

At the time, it seems things are ‘getting out of hand’ in the world where virtually any wrong word may get you on the spotlight and be labeled as the worst of the worst…. We are on a learning curve as well on how to best make use of this current notion of ‘free speech’ and the ability we have to publish whatever we want. I believe it is only our truth that can set us free, and that truth doesn’t mean always doing things ‘right’ or ‘correctly,’ but it also means being able to stand in the front of the person and the totality of the world and explain ourselves, recognize the facts, the context, explain the wrongdoings and commit to change, to live forgiveness, for that is a far more valuable act and a much less ‘explosive’ than going through social media asking for revenge or simple slander to defame others and causing multiple effects that at times we have no consideration for, because we see it as ‘part of the consequences,’ but I see it now as another source of conflict even for people that haven’t been personally involved in the events.

This is also another rather ‘disastrous’ process that sure, can break us further apart, but in the cases that we do care to assist each other to ‘open eyes,’ we can take the time to share our perspectives on a controversial topic or situation like this to present a more common sensical approach to things, to learn to read things properly, to not take immediate ‘sides’ to a story and to formulate a personal stance in relation to all things that we may become aware of in the world. Doing this can in fact make us grow as humanity, but remaining divided – and so conquered – only adds up to the plethora of problems we have to sort out.

Based on the situation I explained in my previous blog, I became aware of people that came in contact with the information and created a conflict with one another for not agreeing on how things were taken by each. This is also part of seeing each others’ ‘truth’ if you will, it will disrupt the way that we believed we liked or agreed with each other to reveal the truth of who we are and yes, that’s part of discovering self-honesty too, it is not nice, it is not pretty, it will be something quite radical and may seem polarizing and disruptive, but it’s part of the necessary ‘opening’ of the cans of worms as I see it, where only – once again – one’s truth will set ourselves free. Actually if one stands clear within oneself, there is nothing to fear, and this is the way to debunk any claims of wrongdoings that one is certain one hasn’t done. IF one has, then, sure, there we go! It sure is time to step up and assume responsibility and commit to changing what one has done and focus on how to stop recreating the same in the present and in the future, because it is what’s best for all, it will prevent further harm, abuse or offense towards others.

Something that I also see is happening is a sense of false empowerment when accusing others, and this is also something that can only happen if there’s no acknowledgement of shared responsibility.  I’ve been there and done that in the past as well where, as I’ve shared countless of times in this blog throughout the past years how I used to ‘rejoice’ in speaking shit – sorry but that’s what it is – about governments, and the ‘elites’ I thought were to blame for everything going wrong in this world, about religious leaders and organized religions, and basically anyone else I judged as evil and wrong in my previous mindset, the one I had before starting this process of self-awareness with Desteni and the mindset I AM still working with whenever it rears its head within me day to day.

I cannot be any more grateful for the ability that I have now to recognize my co-creation and co-responsibility in the creation of this world, our lives, our bodies as they are. It has assisted me to change the very fiber of my being that used to stand in that sense of ‘entitlement’ to feel like a victim, believing I was ‘empowering’ myself by pointing fingers at others, never realizing that in blame and in that position of victimhood I was in fact the most disempowered, I actually felt the most miserable because I thought that punishment and ‘bringing others down’ was the only way to create any restoration of justice. I was in fact recreating the same problems I was complaining about in this world, I was wishing ‘the end’ of those I believed to be the problem. I never realizing I was ‘digging my own grave’ as they say here, I was doing it all to myself.

Walking the Desteni process and the Eqafe self-support material have enabled me to recognize the actual obstacle that blame and victimhood are, and so rather realize the potential and the actual power/capacity I have to focus on changing me, in stopping blaming others and feeling like a victim, to owning my thoughts, words and deeds, to be willing to recognize my participation in the ‘fucked up’ reality we live in and realize that the one true power I hold is to change ME, and that seeking revenge or ‘justice’ as punishment would truly get us nowhere as humanity but further down the downward spiral.

I have realized that I have to be the change, and stop focusing on pointing fingers at others, because that was causing more harm in my body, it was in fact like an ‘anger’ sickness that made me depressed and hopeless and yes, it has taken quite some time to change it, but every single moment I decide to stand in understanding of a situation within this consideration of who we are in our minds, the consequences we’ve created as a society, the role that each one of us has in creating the outflows we face and no longer taking a unilateral approach to things that I face in my life has been like healing a long lasting ‘wound’ of ‘feeling empowered’ when blaming others and believing that ‘that was the solution.’

Again, it’s not, but it also takes courage and a process to stand in self-honesty, to dare to see who we are, who we have become, to own our choices and decisions made that have taken us to walk through every single aspect of our lives, no matter how ‘fortuitous’ they may seem, if we are experiencing them, then we can own our responsibility in it, which simply means to respond, to own our actions, to be aware of the situations we might possibly create if we act or speak certain words – and to always consider what is best for all involved, to learn to do others as we would like to be done onto, to consider ‘the other’ as myself.

These are key principles that even in the face of moments where I believe that I am being ‘limited’ in my expression about something I believe ‘makes sense and is right’, assist me to take the ‘next step’ which is to read the situation in its current stance, to understand that some people are not yet at that position where they can be willing themselves to understand co-creation yet, to consider that for some people might take longer to understand a more holistic approach to any form of problem creation. To consider as well how blinded we can become by our own emotions or characters we take on that we believe empower us, and can’t see the reality of how they are in fact disempowering us.  Within such understanding of ‘where each other is at’ in their lives, it makes it easier to let go of wanting someone to understand something that they simply might not be ready or willing to acknowledge yet, and that’s where I remind myself of my only true power as well: to be an example of how to best handle the situations, how to stand in the face of conflict, how to take responsibility but not ‘enforce’ change or certain ways on others.

Here is also where trusting myself and trusting life comes in. At times I’ve seen how I can be quite pushy in wanting others to understand something that I see ‘benefits them/everyone involved’ and how this can cause further reactions and realize that such reactions are an indication that there is no ‘opening’ yet in the other person to see what I am seeing/saying. It also might mean that I’m ‘reading’ the situation completely wrong and that I need my own words and actions to be cross-referenced, because they can be in fact out of place and not clear. The reactions also allow me to read ‘where a person is at’ and also see myself in it, to see what still ‘disturbs me’ so that I can work with it and in so, seeing what I haven’t yet forgiven as my own experience, as my own creation. Doing that enables me to ‘move’ as in speak, act, direct accordingly.

I’ve met people in my life, including one of the persons that I’m grateful for has created the opportunity to create this moment of conciliation, that in an almost instant manner we could see that we were ‘on the same page’ so to speak in the reading of the events and the greater scheme of how these things are going on in the world.  This is actually quite cool because! It gives me hope in humanity to find people like that. I can also say this of a person that I met in the most seemingly fortuitous situation and eventually realized how ‘aligned’ we are in order to work together in a project and basically be on the same page about how we view ourselves, our lives and the potential we see in people. That is also another example of how upon communicating and learning to ‘read’ people through their responses I’ve been able to establish relationships with people that I know ‘are there’ in this world and are doing ‘their thing’ and in their own way yet within the same principles.

That’s comforting because, as crazy as it may seem, it is hard at times to walk this process at the level we do within Desteni and at times one feels a bit isolated, as if ‘no one else’ could see and understand things the way we do. Thus it has been comforting to find people that do see life/things in a very similar way and how it IS possible to create that understanding and common ground no matter what their ‘background’ is; it’s a confirmation that life and living principles stand on their own, no matter what ‘road’ you take to get to them, and that’s awesome and it is actually cool to know people like that outside of the group that I know and am aware of are people walking this same process with me – even if living in very distant countries. I am also glad that ‘they are here’ and walking with, even if not ‘in my environment’ at the moment, but always ‘there’ in the virtual world, which is something I am also very grateful for in times that may seem difficult and we need to reach out for support.

Ultimately what matters to me is to go establishing connections with the people that do care, that have eyes, ears and a body ready for the new living reality that we need to co-create, and this is something that ‘comes to the surface’ even from ‘unfortunate’ or bitter events like this one.

I share this because it is also a comforting point for me, to know that besides what may seem like ‘the worst of the words’ surfacing on our ‘daily feeds’ and knocking at our doors, there is something actually way extraordinary to be living for. For me it is a way to keep connecting and meeting people that are taking these steps ‘forward’ in their life, while it also reminds me of the necessity that I have to keep sharing, to not ‘back down’ and become a silent vigilant of the things that are going on in this world.

To sum up, as ‘atrocious’ as it may seem for many, these cans of worms are here for a reason and they sure may lead to temporary conflict and polarizations, but eventually out of all crisis there comes an opportunity for recreation, reinvention, and reconstruction – this is what I’m here for. To learn how to stand in the eye of the storms, to strengthen my resolve, to know that my truth will set me free, to be grateful for those that I can relate to and know that are also ‘here’ on track with the new path for life in this world of which I have vehemently decided to be a part of, because my intent has always been to ‘change the world,’ and from there I went from being ‘angry’ at the world for not changing and blaming everything and everyone around me – lol – to externalizing that eagerness to see ‘world changes out there’ to now internalizing, focusing on my own self-change which start in how to handle situations like this and then spreading some seeds again with others that may be ready to read and listen and share back how they see things themselves.

Once again I would not have this kind of resolve or ‘greater picture’ approach without the support of all things related to Desteni and the Eqafe Eqafe self-supportive material, which I have now integrated in my own skin as a new way to live and approach life. It also allows me to understand the greater ‘cataclysms’ that are taking place and ‘will’ most likely continue to take place in this world where everything will seem really ‘bad’ and consequential and chaotic, but here is where I remind myself and anyone else reading: there’s more to it than what meets the eye.

The best thing to do is to create Understanding, to not take things personal, to not only ‘react’ emotionally to things, to learn to discern, to learn to look back within ourselves and making an informed decision of where we stand about something before ‘spewing’ words about something or someone. To learn to let go and forgive people and situations where one can see that it’s only consequences playing out that one cannot immediately change and can only conciliate in the ‘best way’ that is doable in certain contexts.

What matters, as I said in my previous blog, is who we are in the face of conflict, in the face of admitting our faults, mistakes, falls, it is about learning to forgive ourselves and at times assisting others to do that for themselves if this is not yet considered as part of the solution, which is not limited to simply forgiving and letting go, but comes hand in hand with the commitment to change, to grow, to develop new ways of being now that one sees that the ‘previous ways’ were causing harm or detrimental effects on others. This is to me the real way to create peace, calm and conciliation.

This is our learning curve at the moment, it may seem out of hand, it may seem extreme, but again: owning one’s deeds, taking responsibility, learning to assume the co-creation roles we have in this reality and live the correction of the problematic actions will set us free and will benefit each other substantially. That’s real change, that’s real responsibility to me and that’s a supportive use of moments of conflict, problems and crisis, to be of support in those moments to walk through them the best way that we can, for ourselves and for all parties involved.

Thanks for reading

 

And! Happy new year! Enrich your life with signing up to the Unlimited Eqafe plan here: https://eqafe.com/unlimited_plan also available in Spanish

 

And once you’re in, you can access these awesome recordings from which I got the concept of shared responsibility here:

 

• Sharing Responsibility vs. Abdicating Responsibility – Quantum Mind Self Awareness

• Practicing Responsibility Sharing – Quantum Mind Self Awareness

 

 

Videos by Sunette Spies for Self and Living:

Gossip and Personal Pains

From Judgment to Nonjudgment

From Judgment to Understanding

 

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

• Destonians

• Desteni I Process

• Agreement/Redefining Relationship Course

• Desteni Forum : Discuss and share with us

• Desteni Español

• Creation’s Journey to Life

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.

 

Join in if you want to start walking your own self-discovery:

• 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

• Destonians

• Desteni I Process

• Agreement/Redefining Relationship Course

• Desteni Forum : Discuss and share with us

• Desteni Español

• Creation’s Journey to Life

619. Learning From Relationships

 

I listened to three audios on Eqafe that I find essential to listen for everyone, considering how most of us – or so far I’ve only known one person in my life that was not interested in having a relationship – are usually looking for and aiming to ‘find that ONE person’ to establish a relationship with.  Here are the titles: Fear of Missing Out on a Fulfilling Relationship – Fears & Phobias, Using Relationships to Hide From Myself – Life Review, Time Alone Before Time Together – Life Review.

When I listened to the Life Review specifically, I could relate to what the woman shared with regards to the little time spent without and in between relationships and how that affected her in disconnecting from herself, from who she was and how much the constant seeking for a relationship made her dependent on the ‘other’ person to be complete within herself – this might be a bit of a vague description on my side, so I definitely recommend you listen to her story yourself. But! here I’m focusing on sharing what opened up for me as I was listening to her story.

First of all realizing that I have been in such kind of situation where I would end a relationship and start another one right away, not spending time alone to reconsider where I am and who I have been in the relationship –  in terms of what were my lessons learned, points expanded, faults, mistakes, things I can be grateful for etc. – and instead jumping into the next relationship. This is probably one of those weakest points I’ve had throughout my life and one that I have been particularly – secretly – ashamed of because it is obvious that it involves a lack of honesty towards myself within relationships in terms of what I can accept and allow, what I can commit to and how I have disregarded the consequences and the effect that me changing my mind about relationships can have on the partner and people around as well.

I share this because I do consider it vital to apply what the woman shares about her story, to be able to take some time off from relationships in order to ‘get back to oneself’. I’ve done both things and will share my experience in both situations.

There was a time that I’ve recently in my mind judged as very bleak, lonely and fruitless, this happened when I was living in Mexico City and I deliberately decided to learn to be alone – in a rather ‘extreme’ way to be alone I’d say – being then fully aware of my tendency to become dependent on being ‘always there’ for other people, being the kind of partner that lives the life of the partner and has none of her own – I decided to learn to be by myself –that means without relationships – and learn to know what I enjoy doing, learn to be comfortable being alone and doing things alone, going out shopping, to the movies, living on my own. Yes, maybe I took it to the extreme in terms of the lack of interaction I had with other people – including family and friends – but that’s something I am also now learning to do in terms of not being too extreme in the way that I decide to change things. So, in a nutshell, I call it my monkish period, and as much as in my mind I’ve judged it as a generally ‘bleak’ time, when I recently looked deeper into it to not resent my choices at that time, I see that such years were dedicated to live ‘me’, to know me better, to learn to be alone, to learn to do things that I decide to do – not that someone else ‘takes me’ to do – and there was a sense of independence formed that I would not trade off or change, because it assisted me to see where and how I compromised myself many times for the sake of being in a relationship and existing in fear of ‘losing’ something that I now know was not best for me, was constantly emotional, troublesome and detrimental to my expression and my living.

Then I got to a point where I decided I could establish a relationship again and I did, again looking back not having the best starting point because it did come from having formed an experience of alones at the time, but I tried to make it work nonetheless. I had settled in one relationship believing I could change the person, conforming in certain ways to make it work and taking the compromise lightly to say the least, not fully being aware of the commitment that I was making at the time and the challenges it represented. But I wanted to make it work for both of us, which didn’t happen. At least I proved to myself that I could fully and absolutely commit to another and still see that even if I am doing all that I can to assist and be ‘there’ for another, it takes two to tango to stand on the same page. I broke that relationship even if there were legal formalities formed with it.

After that, I had a few months to yes go through the sorrow, pain and ‘disconnection’ process from that relationship but I did decide to enter a new relationship after that; though fortunately enough did still have the opportunity to be alone and process through all of the things that I had accepted and allowed – created – in the previous relationship. But still, I do consider that I went ahead too fast and without much consideration of the implication of making such decisions not only for myself, but for the other person as well. This year I repeated the same, because of not having had that needed time to ground myself around relationships and one thing I can tell is that unless one has an understanding partner that has full awareness of the previous relationship patterns, it can be a disaster recipe to go jumping from one relationship to another.

I was in a way fortunate that my partner was understanding of it all, not that he approves of what I’ve done and my relationship habits, but again, he is aware and he made a decision to stand with me anyways and understood that I had things to process from my previous relationships at the same time as starting a new one. The thing that I want to share is how it’s not a bright idea to not give oneself time to be alone after a relationship ends, it can lead to not fully considering things in terms of what one is able to commit to and the effect it may have by making a decision without proper time for reflection, for personal assessment of the mistakes, the things allowed, the points that one needs to self-forgive and work through, because it does ‘filter’ or ‘spill through’ to the new relationship and it may lead to ruin if one does not handle the situation with proper sense of responsibility and communicating about it and again, having a partner that can understand and not take it personally either.

So from my recent experience, this kind of situation led to a great amount of stress that I became unaware of – apparently – and I became sick or having certain health issues almost on a regular basis for the past months. This can also be a narrow perspective on my health situation, but this is what I’ve concluded recently, that I put myself under a lot of stress because of the decisions I made in relation to relationships, where not being honest with myself and towards others led me to compromise myself and that became an ingredient to constantly be thinking of guilt, burdening myself with the ‘wrong doings’ while at the same time starting a new relationship and opening up all the potentials that this entails. It’s not a great thing to walk an ending and a beginning simultaneously – point learned.

I would not be able to share this from a clearer view currently if it wasn’t for the process that I did to self-forgive myself for my decisions, my actions and mistakes,  my short-sights and also forgiving myself for the damage caused to others by my lack of consideration or selfishness that this kind of situations entail. However, I also understood that there’s no point in continuing to flagellate myself emotionally, all that I can do is learn from it and know that I cannot repeat this kind of behavior again in my life, or I’d be simply falling again into my old patterns that I’ve worked on already. I did judge myself because of wanting to ‘make things right’ and ‘work through it’ and in a way being in disbelief that I could have managed to ‘repeat myself’ in patterns that I thought I had changed over the ‘monkish’ phase of being alone and without relationships – but, as I now know, I cannot be sure that something is entirely ‘clear’ and ‘transcended’ within me at all, it always takes a daily – constant – decision to act in the way that is right, that is supportive, that is considering consequences, that is responsible and self-honest for myself and for others that I have an effect on.

Currently I assess my situation on a constant basis when it comes to my relationship, because it has enabled me to see where I could be compromising myself or constructively compare how I have now seen that I was compromising myself before when trying to ‘be’ something for someone else in a relationship.  When I decided to be in this relationship, I did take the time to consider who I wanted to be in it and what would be of myself IF the relationship simply doesn’t work, knowing I could stand on my own two feet as well. So, I might have taken a ‘big risk’ considering  the rushed and somewhat risky decision making processes I’ve taken in the past without much ‘thought’ into my relationships, but this time I did make sure to entirely be ‘me’ making the decision and fully taking the responsibility for what I decide to make of it. 

I did take the time to assess the person, even if it was a relative short amount of time of doing this, there were characteristics that stood out for me enough to consider how this could work through, which included sharing with him the process I’ve walked with relationships, the weaknesses, the mistakes I’ve made, the dishonesties, the repetitive patterns I’ve had and that I still have such points to work through for me, to reestablish my self-trust in relationships – with all the past disclosed – and this is now where I can prove to myself that I can stand in an equal manner in loyalty, honor, respect and integrity that such person has given to himself throughout his life, which I am currently learning a lot from as well.

It is not my position to share his views here, but in a way I do want to do it, because he’s that person I mentioned at the beginning that has been known by everyone – and himself – to not desire a relationship or ‘lust’ over women at all. Everyone had always asked him when he would have a relationship and he always said that wasn’t something he was looking for, explicitly not interested on because he knew himself as a different kind of person that would find it hard to find a woman that could ‘stand’ through his ways of living life and the principles he has. He just wanted to work and focus on bettering his life. Well, that kind of approach led him to learn to live and be for himself the best that he can be. He is probably one of the few people I know that loves himself and regards himself as a self-made man that wasn’t always dedicated and hardworking to get to be who he is now, but made a decision to step out of the shadows and strive to do what he was told was ‘impossible’ for him to achieve. That sort of strength made him aware of his capacity and potential, which is part of the characteristics that I saw made him a ‘whole’ man already, not really looking or searching or being ‘needy’ for anything or anyone to ‘complete’ him or make him feel ‘better’ about himself.

This is how he considers that most people should not constantly go jumping from one relationship to another, but be able to be alone even for the rest of their lives if necessary, because they are not yet the best for and towards themselves. This view is perceived as too ‘extreme’ by his friends, but I’ve come to understand his point based on what he has lived and what I have lived and the consequences I’ve faced because of having held this constant belief that ‘I need to be in a relationship’ and the outflow this has. I’m not saying that this is how it’s supposed to be, but simply different ways to approach the relationships. Mine was more ‘trial and error’ and yes causing consequences for me and for others, his was more of a holistic approach of deciding to be in a relationship if and when the right person would exist for that.

Of course, he is now in a relationship and that may seem contradictory for many, but he explains how this is the first relationship he’s ever had – and took it to the level of absolute commitment and responsibility, which has led him to explore and open up many more ways of enjoyment in life, more than the ones that he already had been living on his own. I don’t want to sound like I’m praising him, but I do want to share  this because I’ve noticed how many strengths are built through deciding to be ‘the best for you’, to learn to be a man – or a woman – for oneself first, to learn to love, care, be the joy of our own lives instead of expecting something or someone to come and ‘save us’ or ‘fulfill’ our lives in one way or another. So, his usual perspective or ‘advice’ to anyone is to learn to be alone and learn to be ok with themselves, letting go of the notion of needing a relationship – and even better, to not participate or create a habit in desiring sex or porn or that sort of mental-masturbation in relation to women – or the opposite sex – at all, which leads to a genuine discovery of physical expression in a relationship, probably something that most people ‘seek out’ through mind stimulation and my take is that this pollutes or ‘disconnects’ us from the ‘hereness’, the physical development of actual touch and clear-mindedness so to speak required in a developing a physical relationship. This is not only related to sexual expression, but also in relation to fully focusing on being with the one person you decide to be with and not entertaining any thoughts, ideas, beliefs or glances at something or ‘someone else out there’ that ‘could be better’ than the relationship one has decided to be in.

What I’ve gathered from my time with him is how it truly takes that sort of diligence to honor and respect oneself and not exist solely for the idea of a ‘relationship’ as something to ‘get to’ or ‘find’ as an absolute goal in one’s life. It seems that as one focuses and works on fulfilling oneself and becoming that person that one enjoys looking at in the mirror – and not only for appearance level – but for the person one shapes of oneself – then one simply aligns with people that are on that same ‘track’ so to speak in their life, and that’s how you meet and realize that it is something that can work as a betterment platform for both, which was my approach as well when deciding to establish this relationship. We both agreed that this was going to be a relationship of two fulfilled individuals walking together, me knowing that if I decide to no longer be in the relationship, he’s not going to be ‘needing’ me as such, but will continue his life and endeavors as usual and vice versa – communication and understanding and assessment at any time.  The relative ease with which this agreement-  as he also called it – was able to be established is simply because of seeing the affinity in our ways of thinking and living and our principles and the way of living as well as our aims in life. I am fully aware some of my views are not that ‘popular’ with regular people, because they may sound too ‘out there’ or ‘difficult to achieve’- but not for him.  Then it is simply like two notes resonating at the same level that consider they can join in and create a harmony that will better the sound in each other’s life – and that’s what it currently is and has been.

There are so many more things that I’ve been learning about myself in relation to him in that have opened my eyes to see what kind of limitations I was making ‘ok’ within previous relationships, where and how I was not being honest with myself and rather molding or making myself ‘comfortable ‘about things that I wasn’t entirely willing to live with, but made it all ‘ok’ because of the idea that no one can be perfect and that I would always have to kind of ‘struggle’ in a relationship – now I know it doesn’t have to be this way. And I’m not saying this is currently perfect, but now I know that there can be people that can be at that same level of self-awareness and self will to live a different life than most people, which is what I’m here to do in this world, to continue cutting through the mold and not limit my expression, my ‘wacky’ way of being that I have come to re-ignite and rediscover within myself, something that makes me enjoy life more and something that I had judged as ‘not fit’ for everyone’s taste and so believing I had to be more ‘accommodating’ for others. In a nutshell, I’ve come to be aware of self-compromise, which is also one  tendency I’ve had in relationships where I kind of sink into the background and mold myself to fit into the idea of who I believe the other person wants me to be – even if this is most of the times my own projection.

The bottom line is that even if one can make ‘mistakes’ in relationships, the point is to always learn more about oneself, to use each opportunity one has to share one’s life and expression with another to learn more about who we are with each person, and yes unfortunately at times getting to also know the ‘darker’ aspects of ourselves – not to be turned into something necessarily bad or evil – simply recognizing that there are things that may be subtle at first but eventually build up or accumulate to compromise, to diminish ourselves even in the most ‘unnoticeable’ ways and I say ‘unfortunately’ – yet at the same time, I would not have known otherwise if I had not made mistakes and learned to see where I truly want to be in terms of standing in a relationship with someone else, first of all checking – on a constant basis – not to limit, diminish or compromise me in order to ‘be’ in a relationship as a need point.

So, having said this, I now realize that as painful, troublesome and consequential it is, mistakes allow us to also see the paths that we don’t want to follow through. Sure, it’s best when we can identify this earlier on and not have situations escalate and have more consequential breakups, but I now see that this is something quite specific for me to face based on the life that I had lived before I started this process with Desteni, my ‘processing’ done in that alone time and how I do realize how easy it is to slip back into old programming if not fully considering one’s actions and acting again on a ‘whim’ so to speak, making decisions without giving myself time to know first of all where I stand and then where I would want to stand in relation to someone else.

Based on my experience and the example I shared about my partner and how he led his life, I see that the best thing one can do is to give oneself time to learn to BE for oneself, to learn to truly love and appreciate yourself first, to be that one person that you can enjoy living with so that no matter who you join your life with – or not at all – you continue being whole and complete by yourself, so that 1+1 equals 2 instead of being existing as a half that seeks another half to create a codependent relationship that most likely ends up in compromise, diminishment and harm towards one another.

A relationship is a platform of support to become a better person, to grow, to learn from each other, to communicate openly without holding back or secrets, to express openly, to test and try new ways of living and expressing without judgment, to walk through disagreements and challenges with understanding – but! to do all of these great things takes a lot of self-work first, otherwise we base our entire ‘wellbeing’ on another person ‘all of this’ for us, and that’s where the fuckup usually is. So! Self first, always, then the rest of the people or situations that may come into our live become opportunities of expansion, a complement that can be beneficial not only for the people in the relationship but also for those that surround the relationship and for whatever is created within the relationship, which becomes an example of what a supportive relationship can be in a world where most exist in consequences and conflict – my personal view and experience here.

Ok so that’s it, again, listen to the Eqafe recordings, they are a great eye opener to understand more of what I shared here as my ups and downs, my faults, my points to learn and correct through relationships.

Can also learn to do this through the Relationship Course in Desteni which assisted me to ground many of the foundations that I now realize have to be lived in a very disciplined way of establishing self-honesty within self, otherwise they become nice principles on paper only – as always, the key is to live it and REALLY stick to Doing it.

Thanks for reading

 

 

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