My unspoken words of motherhood

My version of the Unspoken Words series where I share what is hard for me to admit about this season of motherhood.

Welcome, read to the end for a few updates and announcements.

Before you dive in, I invite you to feel into these questions…

What is alive for you as you sit down to read?

Can you locate your breath in your body?

Can you feel your connection to the whatever you are sitting or laying on?

I had every intention to sit down and write this beautiful piece about everything I have been working on behind the scenes this summer…but then I heard wisdom rise within and say…what am I rushing for?

Summer has brought a ton of inspiration, I feel the pieces of a puzzle of what I am here do clicking together. The past few years I have felt lost and aimless, and things are coming together. Each day I see how a past step led me to this moment. I was not lost, I was building something before I even knew what I was desiring to create.

It is scary to start again. Please know, I am not trying to be coy because I want a big reveal later on, truth is I am not ready to share. I am holding myself, uncomfortably, in the seasonal energy of nourishment. I am nourishing my ideas as I move in a new direction.

While I am moving with intention in this new direction, I keep finding myself needing to slow down. What is the rush? I want the things I build in my life to be built on solid foundation. Life can change, dreams can shift, and if I am going to follow this new inspiration, it needs to be done slowly with intention.

Unlike my journey into motherhood…I am going to share with you a play on my Unspoken Words series. These are the things that are hard for me to admit in this season of motherhood.

I dreamed of being a mother my entire life. I am not sure if it was true desire or blind hope I would be able to correct my unpleasant experiences with my mother. I intended to be a mother someday, and I never thought much about what it means to become one, then I surprisingly found myself pregnant.

I spent my entire pregnancy preparing. I read books, I bought things, I attended therapy with diligence, I had conversations with my husband about what sort of parents we wanted to be. I talked about motherhood, I focused on what my little human may or may not need, and I did not think about myself.

A historical pattern of putting other’s before myself deepened when my son was born. Resentment grew, rage boiled, I could not contain myself and I often ended up alone crying from sheer dis-regulation.

I thought being a good mother was about being calm,

I thought being a good mother meant I would know everything,

I thought being a good mother was knowing what choices to make about sleep, eating, and toys.

I did not know my experience of what was happening in my body had much to do with motherhood.

Well, I knew, because I was in school to be a therapist, so I knew about regulation, I knew my son’s young nervous system was relying on mine. But what I did not know was what to do when I did not feel okay inside my body. I never learned how to be in my body when I did not feel okay.

I learned to disassociate, to disconnect, to hover above my body. I learned to protect myself through these mechanisms. I learned I could face anything if I chose not to feel the feelings present in my body and escape instead.

This is how I approached early motherhood. I disconnected, I pulled away from the discomfort and focused on being perfect. I thought if I knew everything, my son and I would be okay.

The gravest pain I’ve ever known

I kept following this path, even though I was wildly uncomfortable. Sometimes this disconnection from my body allowed inner children and wounded parts of me to take over.

My son not sleeping was a trigger for me. There were many days and nights where I cried and screamed at him and myself because I could not get him to sleep. Because a good mother can get her child to sleep. I didn’t understand this good mother (who I was trying to be) was not present in her body, and her sensitive son did not know how to relax with that.

This went on for the first year of my son’s life. He would struggle to go down for a nap or bedtime and I would lose it. I would snap. I would hand him to my partner and go cry in another room for hours. I would come back at times and yell at my husband, and sometimes my son.

I did not know how to calm down. I did not know what was happening to me. I was hovering above my body and I would try to come back, but I couldn’t. All I could do was cry and rage, cry and rage, cry and rage.

I held shame at first and with inner work, it has shifted into compassion. Eventually, I found therapy and practices to help me figure out how to have a relationship with my body. Honestly, the shift started when I admitted I needed help.

As a child, I would have huge meltdowns, similar to the ones I described above, I would be left alone to deal with them. I had no one around to help calm my nervous system, the presence of a regulated nervous system can ease a dis-regulated one.

I would cry alone in my room for hours, I felt misunderstood, I felt alone, and I felt angry. A year into my son’s life information revealed itself as to why this parallel was being drawn, there was healing I needed to face and there was a painful reason why I split off from my body so severely.

For so long, I told myself I was a terrible mother. But who was showing up on those days and nights my son would not sleep was a child in immense pain in need of comfort. She needed me to witness her, she need a mother’s love just as much as my son did.

With time, I learned how to raise them together, my son and my inner child, and face the pain I had been keeping at bay. It was painful showing up to the work. It was painful to feel all of what I repressed in my body. It was painful to reflect on how I hurt my son and my husband with my actions.

In time, I found compassion for myself…this was the only way smaller parts of me knew how to handle big feelings. It was the only way I had learned to cope with what was in front of me. I started to hold all parts of me with more ease and grace. I criticized myself less because I knew I truly was doing the best I could with what I had at that time. I also knew I was doing everything to heal and chart a new course for my son and I.

Developing intention

I quite literally felt I stumbled into motherhood. I did not feel prepared, and I am not sure anyone ever does. I wish someone would have told me what to expect, regardless I needed to walk my journey towards wholeness in my own way.

Now, I mother with a hell of a lot of intention and errors along the way. I do my best to build a strong foundation for my son. I do my best to show up in a way that negates those horrible times between us. I cannot change how I was, I can only shift how I am being moving forward.

Mothering with intention means staying in relationship with myself and keeping tabs on how connected I feel to my body.

Mothering with intention means taking time for myself.

Mothering with intention means letting go of what I think motherhood should look like and embracing what my son needs.

I am not exactly sure why I am writing this to you, it all came pouring out. The grief has been immense lately when I reflect on the hard times of the first year as a mother. Sometimes it feels like it almost didn’t happen because of how wildly different our lives are these days.

But it did happen. Yes, I learned from it. Yes, I change my relationship to my body. Yes, I repaired with my son. Yes, our relationship is entirely different now. No, sleep is no longer a trigger and I haven’t had a meltdown in a year. And it is all still right there, underneath the surface, sometimes.

I do not have regrets, because if that year of pain and agony did not happen, I would probably still be disconnected from my body and causing my son more harm. I needed to heal. I needed to learn how to be here, how to inhabit my body, how to completely feel my feet on the ground.

I am grateful for the journey I was taken on because it made me the mother I never had and spent my childhood dreaming I would someday be.

What is your relationship to your body?

What is your relationship to being present?

What did reading this bring up for you?

Thank you for holding me as I share, I would love to hear your experiences and thoughts in the comments, or reply to this email if that is how you are reading!

Love,

Emma

I sent out an email last week sharing some shifts I am making to the membership I launch this summer, you can read more here.

This month’s themed post going out in August will focus on self-compassion. Each monthly post will include an exploration of the topic, questions to guide your reflection, and practices to support you in integrating.

I invite you to join the membership to practice weaving in more intention and being into your life through reflection and experiencing.

I am honored to be a speaker at the Mental Health and Motherhood Virtual Conference this October, organized by

Chanel Riggle

. The event focuses on helping mother’s cultivate compassion in their mind, body, and spirit. You can learn more about the conference and grab your ticket below.

Recent writings you might have missed…

• How to cope when the world feels terrifying and we have humans to raise - practices I am instilling in my son and myself to help us feel grounded and present as we face this messy world together.

• Rejecting normalcy and embracing how we each are uniquely wired - an exploration on how trying to fit in hurt me over and over again, and how I am starting to learn how to embrace the way I am in all its beauty.

• Read Volumes of the Unspoken Words where mothers share their experiences of what is hard for them in this season of motherhood.

• Read the first Motherhood Musings Collection where mothers share the differences between their expectations and realities of motherhood.