I write, sitting in the sunshine, loving the feel of warmth and spring in the air. I feel change happening all around me and within me.
It is a time of shedding the layers and preparing to rebirth.
Winter can be likened to the hibernation period of cave man times. It feels like many people have been taken into the darkness of the cave and had to sit in their darkness over the last little while, particularly the last three weeks.
Sometimes when we emerge from that transformational cave at the end of a long dark winter, where we have shed so much of ourselves, our old stories, old pain, old programs and old emotions, we come out the other side somewhat depleted. It takes time and space to integrate those big changes.
In today’s world, we rarely give ourselves the time or space to integrate changes.
I was having a discussion on the weekend with my mum and sister about the mothering experience and how it has changed over the years, from the time my mother birthed us to us birthing our own children. Sadly, I feel, these days women do not give themselves the time and space to integrate the huge change that occurs physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually that occurs when we transition into motherhood.
Societal expectations around what new mothers should do, has deeply programmed so many of us. I realised that I was wearing almost as a badge of honour that I was ‘back to normal’ cleaning a house, doing grocery shopping, cooking, running around to activities within 2 weeks of having my little man. Four pregnancies, one miscarriage and three Caesarean births in under four years, and I still didn’t give my physical body, let alone my mental, emotional and spiritual body, the time nor space that I needed to integrate the huge changes that I had experienced.
Nope, just get on with getting on!
Isn’t that what we are told to do these days? No time for rest, not only do you have to be back to normal ASAP, you have to have that bikini body ready to go within weeks too!
Seriously how far have we taken things!
Becoming a mother is a sacred experience. And like most sacred transformational experiences in life, we have bastardised it. We have lost the sacredness of not the birth as such, but the transition into motherhood. Once upon a time, and it wasn’t that long ago, women were given the time and space to move into this new form. This new person. Integrate the deeply profound changes that are activated when transitioning into motherhood.
Once, there was a village that supported the mother. Who allowed her the time and space needed to replenish to integrate and to fully transition from one state of being to another. And here is where I see we are making huge mistakes as we transform. Societal expectations have changed so much that we do not allow ourselves what we need to integrate our changes.
We head back to work when we are sick before our body has finished healing.
The loose ends left untied.
We jump back into life after having a baby before our body, mind and spirit has settled into becoming a mother.
The loose ends untied.
We jump deeply into personal growth and healing work and jump straight back into life after a treatment; yoga session; meditation before the integration has had time to settle
And when the loose ends are not tied, they can be pulled. And you can quickly get pulled out of the new version of you, back into the old version of you.
And where are you then?
You are neither here nor there – and that feels really uncomfortable!
If you don’t allow yourself the time to metaphorically settle into your new home, the place where your inner being exists, then you will never feel completely settled here. You will continue to get pulled into there ie. where you used to be.
When we move house, whilst somewhat challenging and exhausting, we create the time and space, to completely move house. You don’t leave some things here and some things there if you want to make a clean break. Start afresh. Create a new life. Truth be told some people don’t make that clean break, for example when people move out of their parents’ home or when people move from the family home during a separation. When this happens, their energy is not settled in either place, as part of their energy remains in that space.
It just doesn’t make sense to leave remnants of your wardrobe in the place that you have moved on from, or are trying to move on from, because then you will just have to keep going back to that old home. Where you used to be. Who you used to be.
Taking that extra time and creating that extra space to complete the transition and the transformation of your energy from one to another is vital in tying off those loose ends and cementing in the changes.
Every client I work with has work to do following their session and this work is equally if not more important than the session itself. Because it is in this time that the integration of the changes takes place. And sometimes this requires specific things to be done to cement these changes. Simply coming in for a treatment, taking a ‘hit’ of energy so to speak and not committing the time or space to the next part of the transformation, is wasteful.
The changes won’t hold.
You will regress to your old patterns and behaviours.
You have to do your work.
And to do your work, you have to honour the experience, by creating the time and space to do whatever it takes to cement yourself into the new version of YOU.
I didn’t honour the experience of becoming a mother the second and third time. I absolutely did with my first baby. I relished the bubble that I was in, basically because I wasn’t working after almost a decade of intense full time work. And I felt I had permission to be in the bubble. No one had any other expectation of me, and if they did, I didn’t allow myself to hear it.
And that still feels like the happiest, freest and easiest year of my life.
Sadly I didn’t take that into my next phases of motherhood. I have previously written about my challenges here. And as a result of that, there were a lot of loose ends left hanging, that saw me constantly pulled back into old programs, beliefs and way to many shoulds, dictated to me by fear programs. My long and somewhat turbulent relationship with fear was previously dissected here.
But I have learnt from these experiences and I choose to share my learnings with others.
And what I am seeing at the moment, is lots of people coming out of periods of big change. The last couple of weeks have been particularly transformational. Yet, I am seeing and sensing so many people coming out the other side of these changes, weary and depleted by the experience and yet not allowing themselves to do what is needed to replenish, integrate and cement in the deep energetic reprogramming that has occurred.
I urge you to listen to your body, listen to your heart, listen to the wisdom that exists within you, and as you move through your changes, as you transform into YOU, give your SELF whatever it asks to complete your transformation.
Riding the wave of change is one thing, whether you hold on and ride it through to the end and tie up those loose ends is another!
