I had just given birth.

I had a full on existential crisis. 

Like all new mothers, I had some idea of how I wanted my (natural) birth to go. I wasn’t under the illusion that things would go perfect however I never anticipated this. My entire life felt completely ripped from underneath me, along with my baby, my insides, my direction, everything I thought I knew. I went from a 3 day marathon of active labor at a birth center to my baby’s heart rate dropping, my body going sepsis into shock to finally having an emergency Cesarean. When my baby girl was pulled from my body she hardly made a sound. 

“Was she dead?” 

The doctors muffled, and without me being able to see her, they whisked her away to put her on life support. Within hours she was put in an ambulance to children’s hospital over an hour away while I remained where I was, in ICU recovering. I wouldn’t end up holding my baby for the first time until she was 3 days old, after repeated requests to let the doctors discharge me earlier than recommended and let me walk out of there to see her.

This began the next chapter of our birth journey in NICU where delicate decisions needed to be made that as a new parent felt like an ongoing nightmare. 

Slowly I begun to turn away from my body, from myself, my mind not able to hold the content of all that was happening. 

“Would she be ok?” 

“Would we be ok?”

I pushed my matted hair off my face, tightening my belly band to prevent my guts from feeling like there were spilling out and the pain of my body subsiding into the pressure of it all, while the rest of me slowly unraveled. 

Nothing had prepared me for the desolation that came next.

Weeks in and back home, I just wasn’t getting this momma thing down. I felt unsure, insecure, clumsy even. Sucking at breastfeeding and unable to properly console my baby or myself in the middle of the night. Day after day. Night after night. My marathon birth had turned into an endless forever fatigue. This became my new state of being. 

In the late nights in the silence of my home, my mind would recount what happened. While pregnant, Capitalism dressed up like the Easy Breezy Confident Mom taking my hand, showing me the ropes and taking me down the path of gathering all I could: the books, the clothes, the gadgets, the plethora of external support. Each thing being an act of moving me further away from the core of me. Subliminally sending the message that this was better than my own inner wisdom.

So now I couldn’t trust my own intuition.

I felt tricked. 

Robbed. 

Deceived.

I gave my power away open handed. 

So no wonder by the time I arrived at motherhood I didn’t know what I was doing. 

I was failing before I ever left the gate. 

I was fucking pissed. 

And it was in those late nights, I began looking at photos a year or two prior — I could feel my heart break. My Maiden of honor, my wild me, was not even invited to the fucking main event of her own ending, her own dying to the birth of the Mother in me.

Instead she was slaughtered on the sacrificial alter of Motherhood. 

This sacred rite of passage was snuffed out long ago like vapor into the primordial thin air of the Patriarch. 

No word. 

No mention. 

Not even a whisper that she ever passed here.

My Maiden was left for dead in silence and left invisible for anyone to care.

She died alone.

I felt like a shell of myself.

I deeply grieved my old life, my wild me.

No one gave a fuck about what I just went through…except other mothers, where we only shared in our own company as if we were a secret society tucked away from the outside world for fear of being crazy.

My anger began raging like a hurricane under all my shame. Societal shame served me a silver platter of “how dare I think so much of myself”. That shit sandwich didn’t include the modern day shaming that came around co sleeping with my baby. Then more shaming about not sleep training my daughter. Painting the picture that the physical and mental hardships I walked in, were irresponsible rather than it being met with respect and curiosity that I might know something.

There were a thousand things that tried to divorce me from my intuitive knowing as a mother so much so I believed at one time that mothering wasn’t even natural to me. It was such a fucking fight to be the beat to my own drum and though most days I lost, I never gave up.

In mending the pieces of my new life, my own tending became paramount. The keystone being the gift of the ceremony I deserved finally honoring who I had been so that I could become who I was meant to be. 

The power of this deep tending allowed for healing and being seen. So that coming home I could finally hold my babies in my arms and think of no other place I would rather be. My restlessness could have a home and I could be at peace. Nothing was missing anymore.

I could mother without question. Take in the wisdom within me and mother from a place of feeling well resourced not because I minimized my own inner voice and gave myself away. 

I began to mother from my well of deep knowing and hand in hand with other mothers, mentors, teachers and caregivers. Weaving all of this into the modern day village without losing sight of myself and my daughters being the center stage of where life happens.

I could finally lean into trusting my abilities and knowing that perfection it’s real. The shaming could finally leave and it is completely ok for me to not know how to do this mom-thing all the time.

And, now, sister momma I am here to support you in making peace with what was and what is.