If It Ain't There. Bring It.

Today I realized just how hurt I was. And just how well my mind has done at minimizing that hurt. I’m amazed, actually, as I notice just how brilliant my mind is. How it painstakingly constructed the perfect wall of protection around my repeatedly broken heart… brick by brick. A wall graffitied with the words:

You don’t really want a child.

Look at what they all had to sacrifice. Look at what this culture demands of parents— that they raise their children alone— without a village, without support. That they sacrifice upwards of 300 hours of sleep in just the first year. That they give 24/7 with no one giving back to them. That they go it alone and “figure it out” in a callous society that has no safety net that expects parents to shut up and be grateful.

I’ve watched the demands of this society eat young parents and spit out exhausted, depleted, on-the-edge-of-a-breakdown humans that are afraid to ask for help— and if they did, where would they even go? I’ve watched the growth of the movement towards staying childless— realizing just how sane that choice sounds. I’ve watched women have to choose their baby or their gifts & career. And I’ve watched the ones that choose both… and the huge sacrifices they make to honor themselves while trying to raise a child, not knowing if it’s all worth it.

I’ve seen a lot more in my 42 years than when I started this journey in my mid-thirties. Then, when I was first actually trying to have a child, I was still naive… ignorant? I hadn’t seen the sacrifices. The strain on marriages. The stress on the bodies & minds of the individuals. The silent and often unspoken parental pain shamed into the shadows…

But also, my own pain began to make my vision biased.

As month after month I’d navigate through the pain of another negative pregnancy test, instead of looking for the beauty & blessings of having a child, my vision became biased towards why not to. And as the heartaches mounted… a fibroid that had to be surgically removed, my husbands infertility, one failed fertility treatment after another…. I just wanted it all to stop. I didn’t want to be on the rollercoaster of dashed hopes any longer.

And this is when my survival mind really stepped in… and gave me an “air tight” argument as to why not to have a child. It wasn’t difficult to find the hard evidence to back it up. As the years pass, you see a great deal more pain and heartache. More strained and broken marriages. More of the stress parenthood puts on the bodies & minds of our community. We see the price of childbirth and child-rearing in a culture that centers the machine of consumer capitalism rather than centering the mother. And then I had it…

I ain’t having a baby in this fucked up culture—not me, no way! Not until this world changes!

So there.

So. There.

But what I didn’t realize— until now, was that my outward-facing fuck you to the world, wasn’t really about the world at all. It was about me— and my pain.

That fuck you has done a brilliant job of keeping me far far away from feeling into what I want... and now I can see, that that has been the very purpose of it. To keep me far away from any chance of wanting… and getting my heart broken. Again.

Goddamn, the human psyche is brilliant— every adaptation unconsciously constructed to protect from pain. And this is why we need to look at our repeated stories. Our arguments. Our air tight beliefs. Because sometimes we’ve built them from the most wounded parts of ourselves and they are actually defending against what we truly actually want in order to protect us from feeling that damn pain of not getting it… ever again.

So actually, my “so there” that was meant as a fuck you to this society— was really a nice fuck you to myself. As such sentiments usually are. As the law of oneness dictates, whom and whatever I’m fucking you about… I’m fucking me about at the same time. And this is where the persistent victim keeps a hold of me. It’s got it’s claws locked into the back of my heart where I can’t quite see it. And it keeps my eyes focused outward— at the injustice. The unfairness of it all.

But DAMN if I haven’t learned what that means.

I’m giving my power away with every fuck you. With every you better change so I can be happy! With every withholding of compassion for a world that’s lost it’s way around so many things— but so blaringly, to me— the honoring of motherhood.

My brilliant, sweet, and loving husband says… “If it ain’t there. Bring it.”

So… that’s what I’m gonna do.

First, I’m gonna let my fuck you fall… and feel all the heartbreak and grief underneath it. I’m gonna bring my eyes inside and be here for me— for every loss that I endured on the journey towards motherhood.

And then, I’m going to feel into what I want and allow myself to reclaim the longing that I disowned.

And then, if I find, under all the hurt… that I still want a child. I’m going to try again. With an open heart. With all the messy feelings that come with that journey. And I’m gonna bring what ain’t there.

I’m going to reclaim my power to reframe, re-envision, reinvent, build, create, allow… something new. To center the mother. To mother the mother. To stumble blindly… into a new vibration… a paradigm that this world so desperately needs to realign to. One of centering the mother. Not material wealth. Not success. Not winning at all cost. Not the house & the white picket fence. Not “doing it all.” Not martyrdom. Servitude. Not “getting your body back.” Not over-giving. Or victimhood.

I will start to dream… of a world where how our children are raised matters more than anything else because they chart the new path of humanity. Where having supported parental figures, a village, a true family of chosen loved ones is assumed & automatic. Where birthing and nurturing LIFE are the highest callings there are… and honored as such. Where sacrifice is not held as the highest platitude a mother can strive towards… but wholeness, balance, radiance & embodied self reverence are the norm.

I have no fucking clue how to create any of the above… but that’s a dream worth “bringing.”

You may say I’m a dreamer…

But I know I’m not the only one.