"Strength grows in the moments when you think you can't go on, but you keep going anyway."

My story really begins when I was born, but I am going to start with when I became a mother. After struggling to get pregnant for 14 months, our first pregnancy was lost to miscarriage. Fortunately, I was able to get pregnant again after only 3 months, but that pregnancy was very difficult. At 14 weeks, I experienced a subchorionic hemorrhage due to the placenta detaching slightly from my uterus, which caused a blood clot to be present until 25 weeks. During that time, my pregnancy was marked as a “threatened miscarriage” because my body could reject the pregnancy at any time. I made it successfully to 25 weeks, where I finally stopped bleeding, and enjoyed 5 weeks of ‘bliss’ until I was put onto bed rest at 30 weeks due to constant contractions and a potential early delivery. By the time our baby finally made his debut at 39 weeks, needless to say that I was a nervous wreck.

 

Throughout the next few years of motherhood, I realized how long I had been suffering from anxiety. Everything that I thought or did came from a place of fear. I didn’t even realize how much fear I had been living in until I couldn’t figure out why I wasn't happy. I had longed to be a mother for so long and worked so hard to become one, that I couldn’t figure out why I wasn’t feeling as happy as I thought I “should.” In fact, I spent way too much time feeling angry at my son because I didn’t understand what was going on inside my own mind and I hated that version of me.

 

I spent some time seeking happiness, but the only place I knew where to turn was the church, which is how I was raised as a I child. I tried joining bible studies, going on Sundays regularly, even joining MOPS  (Mothers of Preschoolers) group, but I was still so lost. It wasn’t until I finally accepted that religion does not bring me happiness, even though I am a spiritual person, that I could find peace through other practices, and I truly felt I started to heal.

 

And the healing I had to do was from far before the time I became a mother. You see, at this point, I hadn’t told very many people (in fact I believe the total was a whopping 4 people in this world, even my OB didn’t know) that I was born with a birth defect that caused me to be unable to control my bowels at all. I spent my childhood dealing with a lot of shit - literally - not realizing that it wasn’t normal. I guess I knew that it wasn’t ‘normal’ but I didn’t really understand how different I was until I went off to college and started a life on my own.

 

I lived my entire childhood afraid of embarrassing myself if I smelled bad or fearful of passing gas when the entire classroom was quiet because I couldn’t hold it in. There have been countless times where I have to pull off the road to find a gas station bathroom because I couldn’t hold it. I have struggled with vaginal infections from puberty on due to the exchange of bacteria going on down there… and I know where every bathroom is located when I am out in public. I put a lot of pressure upon myself because I didn’t understand it all. It caused me to end up being a perfectionist with extremely high expectations of the world around me, without the proper strategies to process my emotions.

 

After having my 2nd child, I was closer to understanding my anxiety and also understanding the importance of having a spiritual practice. It was finally when he was two years old that I started seeking further help from a therapist, giving myself permissions & forgiving people in my life, that I realized I actually could feel that happiness I so longed for when I had my oldest son. Finding ‘conscious parenting’ saved me.

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Throughout the past 5 years that I have been on my spiritual healing journey, I have realized how much my anxiety and environmental choices have influenced my physical body and made my conditions even worse. I have learned about the body-mind connection and believe that all of those problems I faced when I was pregnant with my oldest son were caused by the emotions I was feeling and storing inside my body. I now know that if I had someone who could have taught me the right tools and strategies to manage those emotions at a younger age (because we are human & it is impossible to live emotionless), I could have saved myself a LOT of struggle and heartache and pain.

 

I have learned that I can use the symptoms of my physical ailments to tell me what I am feeling and what I need to work on. I have learned how essential it is for me to only fuel my body with righteous foods because I suffer when I don’t. I have learned that when my body is not feeling well & whole, it affects my mood and outlook on my life around me.

 

I now work hard every single day to show up for myself because I know how hard life was when I was showing up for everyone else first. I now know that showing up for myself means having purpose in my day, a purpose balanced between productivity & creativity. I now know that I can’t be the best mommy possible when I don’t take care of my body, don't focus on what I put into it, or I feel unwell and how that affects me emotionally. I now know that I need to make space in my day to seek my higher self, to seek the higher source of all things, because it helps me to find balance and peace.

 

I understand the importance of mind, body, spirit, & emotional work so well that I want to help others either start, or continue along, their own journey. I want to be that resource for another that I wished I had received earlier on in my life… although, I wouldn’t change a thing of my past because I know it has gotten me to where I am today.

 

I am still working to understand my mind, my body, my spirit, and my emotions every day and it’s a journey I will be on until my last. Now having a better awareness of myself, I am able to show up as my true, authentic self.

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