Friday
May252012
Hard truth
The fourth trimesterThe Fourth Trimester: Breakdown (through), & what remains.
I have had pieces of this running through my head all day. Now, with the blank page before me I feel intimidated, yet there is a small voice within me that says, “Show up, be honest.” That is what my intention here tonight is, to show up and be honest.
It is always hard for me to return to this space after quiet time has passed, after so much swirling about and rearranging, within and without. How do I possibly close the gap of what has been? I recently told a dear friend that at times communication is extremely difficult for me. This is due to a few different reasons. I am a deeply introverted person, and I am coming to learn that this is not an impediment or a weakness, yet there are some aspects about it that do lend themselves to differences in the way I engage in the world around me. One of those differences lies within the way I communicate. In conversation or more serious discussion I take things deeply within myself and process them thoroughly, examining how I feel and think about them before I am able to begin speaking. This is not how the majority of the human population communicates, and even more so now that everything seems to be getting faster and faster. I listen a lot; I am quiet a lot. And when I do speak it is after I have mulled things over quite extensively.
The second reason that I find communication difficult is that I am growing to be more and more a spiral person, that is I am finding myself less and less linearly minded. There doesn’t seem to be as much point A travels to point B and so on. In my being things spiral, lessons are learned over and over, I see patterns and themes and interplay. All life entwined. Everything is so much more intricate and complex than what lends itself to traditional linear thinking, therefore the depth by which I seek to understand and communicate about a matter has a tendency to plunge well below the surface.
So this is me, tonight, doing my best with the tools I have within. In the dark of my living room I lay quietly on the couch. There is soft music playing in my ears and I hear with in the tap of the keys. I do not know how long this moment will last. I nursed Analee to sleep a bit ago. She is beginning to teethe and has been in upheaval. I had forgotten how grueling teething can be. Yet, even with these growing pains my sweet girl is all light. Analee, her name means “From the Valley of Grace.” And she is all grace. She has a smile that sends me to the moon, she is soft and joyful and I am completely in love with getting to know her.
It is a paradoxical truth that I am coming to accept, that it is due to the presence of shadow that we are able to understand and experience the Light. I was scared when I was pregnant with Analee. I was frightened of the breakdown that follows creative action. It is present in every creative cycle, we only must observe the fecundity of summer and the lavishness of autumn, followed by the death of winter to know this as truth. Furthermore I have experienced it in my soul’s journey before.
After I birthed my son, Arlo, I spiralled through post-partum depression. To be honest I do not know if I have ever written it so blatantly or in depth in this space before. It is still tender for me to reflect upon and in many ways I believe I am still healing. As I grew ripe and full with Analee I feared the darkness that could possibly settle upon me after she travelled to this earth through my body. I took measures to try to prevent that for happening.
After Analee’s amazing birth everything was looking good. I remember my midwife remarking about how quickly my body recovered and how at 6 weeks there seemed to be no sign of post-partum depression. Sure there were strong emotions, tumultuous ups and downs, but not the abyss of depression. Then things began to slip.
I can’t say exactly how it happened, the stress of keeping up with a 2 year old, a household and a newborn began to wear on me. I am highly sensitive by nature and I hold myself to an extremely high standard. When I do not meet that standard I fall into despair ridden with guilt and shame.
My courage to show up to the requirements of every day began to wane. I found my self care lacking and in its absence I turned to previously habituated addictive patterns. There was a lost week, I slipped away in its shadow finding myself needing a glass of wine every few hours to keep the extreme anxiety I was experiencing at bay. Then one day the wine bottle was empty and I made the decision to keep it that way. By the end of the day I felt as though I was falling off a cliff. The anxiety had me reeling and I couldn’t find my voice in it.
I put a call out to my soul sisters and some of them called me on the telephone to help talk me through it. One voice, she who has been called to midwife, understood to speak with me keeping the possibility of post-partum depression in mind. She asked me if there was anyone nearby in the physical that I trusted and could call. I knew of one; the one who has pressed her hands to outline both of my babies’ bodies in womb, the one who witnessed my first child slide into this air, the one who delivered me unto myself after I showed up crying on her front porch one week after birthing my second child. My midwife. I emailed her and explained where I was at and in all grace and gentleness she said she would come to me.
And so she did, the next day she came and sat with me on my floor as I cried and spilled. Snotty and sobbing, with my sweet 9 week old baby asleep beside me.
I went into the shadow alone, and I emerged encircled by loving hearted women.
Analee is now almost 4 months old, though I can hardly believe it. And while I would love to say that the shadows have been vanquished and I am walking in light that would not be the honest truth. And I am being honest here.
It is a daily struggle. It is moment by moment. Some moments are good, some moments are bliss; some moments are mundane and some moment are excruciating and I find myself feeling so lost and confused that I hardly know what to do.
This is my story, this is all I have and I am beginning to believe that it is enough. That I am enough, to show up here and tell you this. I am trying. It is hard, but I am wholeheartedly trying. That is my offering, to you, to my children, to this greater world around me— I am wholeheartedly trying and I am doing so in Love.
