Mama Mindset® Episode #7: (Part 1): Be Kind, Rewind... Owning the Trauma of Our Birth Stories Video Version:https://youtu.be/AgC7AMAg9Zo What a fun life chat latte! My actual chai tea latte might be super cold IRL (in real life- I don't have a ton of hashtagy worthy acronyms in my repertoire, but that is one of them that I claim).... I can feel the empowerment from the spiritual gym of a workout that was life chatting this episode.
It all started when I was doing a post ride meditation after hopping off the Peloton tonight after a fun St. Patrick's Day Ride (St. Paddy's with the d's I learned it is for all the Irish Mamas out there). Being reverent with my body in the form of cooling down, stretching, and most recently landscaping a post workout meditation into my "workout regimen" is new and feels pretty foreign. But I'm loving it. During this kindness meditation, I felt led and compelled to explore that I am choosing to be kind with myself. And how exploring sadness and trauma that I have endured in my life is a radical form of kindness and compassion. I, like you perhaps, have tended to minimize traumas in my life, often comparing them and then deeming them "not worthy" and not allowing the space to see, sense, hear, experience what my emotions are trying to teach me. Who remembers the Blockbuster mantra/motto/tagline/commandment "Be Kind, (Please) Rewind"?!? Not sure if the Please was included, but the toddler Mama in me is adding it haha. For the Mamas outside the US, Blockbuster Videos was this HUGE chain of stores that was the magical place where movies landed when they came out on VHS in the 90s, maybe beyond, but that's when I remember them. I loved going to our neighborhood store with my parents and perusing the shelves, and remember the anxiety and now humor around making sure (sometimes forgetting and getting the disapproving scowl from a Blockbuster employee who then to their credit and in my Mama empathy likely had to add it to the stack of those videos they had to rewind personally) they were rewound, encased, and returned on time. Anyway, flashback 80's babies concluded... In this episode, I'm being kind and rewinding to the birth story that made me a Mama... of my daughter... and my version of me becoming a new Mama. I've written about my birth story too and I'll link to the blog below: https://www.mamamindset.com/blog/birth-story-camden Truthfully, this was a cathartic exercise for me in claiming the trauma around my birth story, what it is there to teach me, and allowing the sadness and all of the more uncomfortable emotions to sit and to stay a while, and to be sown in and claimed within the context and splendor of my story. I sipped my life latte tonight with all of those emotions on full display, and it felt very transcendent and reverent revisiting them with you.
Full disclosure, my computer battery started running low and I cliff-hangered the story with me in my post-partum room eating a not so delicious hospital meal and waiting for my husband and newborn baby girl tot come back from her first bath in the newborn nursery. I knew all was not well with my body and the postpartum hemorrhage I was experiencing.... not to mention the extensive 3rd degree tears that have changed my body forever. I love my body, what it has done, what it has accomplished. How it shows up for me. And I'm all about rewriting the narrative that it's not about the bounce back, and the toxic pin the tail on the pre pregnant body we tend to play and subscribe to in social narratives. More on that FOR SURE another time. I'm stoked about sharing that ongoing saga and newfound sacred space I've carved out of acceptance for myself (and it's an ongoing practice for sure). Episode #7 is all about re-visting your triumph, your glory, your elation, your transformation into a new Mama or Mama again with subsequent births, and also being kind and surrenduring to the power of it all---- all that we were created to be and experience: Motherhood, our inner artist, our inner visionaries, and all the emotions and hormones that make us majestic. ..... computer shutdown and then I wrote the rest on my iphone (#strugglebustechnologynight), but also so grateful it connects us globallly, Mama. I pray all I just wrote and divine downloaded was somehow saved in the internet ethers as I try performing battery cpr and trying all the cords and all the outlets (I know you've been there). Update: It saved and was recovered. Was a few tense and daresay humorous moments eating leftover chicken pesto from the fridge and waiting in terrifying suspense. This episode is an invitation for you to revisit your own birth story in all of its facets and the faith that you have in yourself. To acknowledge the trauma your body accommodated in bringing that miracle (or miracles… we see you Mamas of multiples or successive births) and other associated trauma you may have endured in your expectant, labor & delivery or postpartum period. What if you were kind and pressed rewind, and from an observer point of view, and am expansive + sacred space, calling in your proprietary blend of radical compassion and empathy--- focused on the faith and fascination, on the play-by-play intimate re-experiencing of your birth story?! Your body and spirit hold the memories. You are safe to experience them all and to rise. You are never alone. And your trauma is not insignificant. So may this be a spiritual snack and an offering into truly how magnificent you are. That sadness and disappointment and grief even of how your birth story unfolded, progressed and concluded do not detract from your experience, they are all a part. When we welcome all the parts of us, empathically embrace all the emotions experienced and open to the hormonal harmony that we are divinely created to come into alignment with.... we honor our ability to heal, our superpower to know, and our resiliency. It’s one of the kindest gestures we can offer ourselves. So dilate with the discomfort, it has served you before. Giving birth to our birth stories in all of their dimensions and trauma might be one of the most empowering vital signs of our Mama Mindset. I’m diving in with you and will continue in Episode #8. I'll see you back in my postpartum room soon- you're invited back to Aug 2016 in this rewind continued. Mahalo for being here, Mama. For the opportunity to go from 0 to 10 cm dilated with our vulnerability and then to push out all of it…. The good, the grief, the gory, + the glory. Oohh I like that. Yes to you Mama, - Anik
