Last week I was broken for a while. Ted and Maggie didn’t know what to do with me as I was writhing in pain on the sofa and crying from this infection in my tooth. The only relief was the first hour after taking a pain killer then having to wait out the pain until I could take the next dose.  To say the least… It. Was. Intense.  It was all I could focus on. I half-jokingly compared it to labor pains only no kid was given as a reward for enduring one of the worst pains in my life, for days. In my attempt at humor I did compare it to labor but hey, we all know, (well at least us ladies) no one actually remembers what that pain feels like you just remember that you hurt.

Little did I know my body was trying to show me something bigger, I was being offered a chance to heal. Not just physical pain but the emotional ones.

I am grateful to have the opportunity to work through things that I didn’t even know I had held onto but were affecting me and how I feel about myself.  April Burge Dodd  did her amazing belief coding process and helped me discover what my spirit already knew, that these two events were in fact related.

While this was not what I went into this session wanting to work on this is what spirit brought me, and this is what broke through.

As women we go into pregnancy and parenthood thinking we have to be perfect because it’s what has been programmed into us. 

I don’t want to screw up my kid and don’t want to miss a precious moment with my kid.

We have these ideas of all the things we need to be and when we don’t measure up to these impossible standards we set for ourselves then we feel like a failure.

I didn’t get to hold Maggie after she was born....for literal hours. Ted held her before I did. We went in for a natural birth and spent 26 hours in unmedicated labor and 10 hours with an epidural that I didn’t really want, all to end in a C section.  I felt like a failure as a mom right out of the gate.

When I finally did get to hold her, my body was filled with meds, on top of that so much loss of sleep.  I was afraid to hold her because I was afraid I would drop her. I was afraid I didn’t know how to hold this precious baby and I didn’t want to mess it up. These are my memories from her birth.

I was holding in terror from this experience that I never even realized. I was terrified Maggie would grow up to hate me. I was terrified of being a bad parent. I was terrified to do this without my mom. I was terrified to do this ALONE. Not just birthing a child but raising one.

Even though I had a wonderful and supportive husband, he was gone for days at a time because of work. For me I felt alone alot, and there were times when I felt like a complete and utter failure.

So often it was just me and her and I didn’t always know how to do all the things, like calm a crying baby,  or breast feed her when every single time she nursed for the 1st 6 months I was in tears because it hurt so bad. I didn’t know how to handle an 80 lb dog who was paralyzed from the waist down and a screaming toddler…who would stand on the porch and scream bloody murder because I had to take my paralyzed dog to the middle of the yard to pee. I didn’t know how to get this precious child to sleep when she wasn’t sleeping or tired. Or how to potty train a kid who doesn’t want to.

There were many times I was afraid that I didn’t enjoy the fleeting time enough because I was so stressed out about if I was being a good enough parent. “They are only this little for a short time so enjoy every minute” I worried so much that I wasn’t enjoying every min. Often times lacking the patience that I wished I had. Hoping and praying that she felt loved enough and hoping that I was giving her everything she needed. ALL of this while my wonderful husband was gone. On top of it all worrying something would happen to him and he would die like my mother did.

Even when he was there he didn’t always understand why I felt this way, that I was terrified I was failing as a mom.

No one tells you how hard it is to lose YOU… in trying to be a good mom, a good wife, a good friend, a good person.

I am not the person I was before my sweet girl, and I am figuring out who I am after her.  The journey is different for everyone and yet we all have our lessons that are being given to us, either we accept and learn what is being given to learn, or we push it away and save it for later.  No worries either way the lessons come around again until we are ready to work through it.

The process April walks you through let me bring all those failing ( in my eyes) Jennifer’s together and let her help herself, she helped me be my own friend. Instead of saying you have to love yourself and be your own friend first, and leave it up to me to figure out how…..She helped me to feel through how to do that, she walked me through the process to get me there.

You see this pain wasn’t about my birth experience, or my infected tooth.

This pain was about learning to love myself and be there for me, to know and understand that I am a light, that I am fun, that I am endearing, and I am a worthy friend.

I know I am a worthy friend.

I am worthy of a friend who treats me like I matter.

I am a friend to myself. So I need to start acting like a friend to myself..