I've Jumped

Guess what?  I am going to be a Yoga Teacher.  How exciting is that??  Every Sunday I am a human pretzel from 8:30 - 5:30pm, working my way toward first set of certification for teaching yoga.  It is a challenge and every bit what I want it to be.  The stars aligned and propelled me into doing this right now.

"There's only so much you can learn in one place.  The more that I wait, the more time that I waste."

I'll be very honest and exposed when I say that the past few months leading up to the decision to start something new were filled with anxiety.  Not for any particular reason.  Rather, something inside of me switched gears and often my thoughts were randomly going back to Layla's birth and the sudden realization that there was something "wrong" with my baby.  Something that made her different and off the mark.   In an ocean of "normal" with it's own variety of crops all around us, there was an unknown about this new person that made everyone in the hospital press to understand what exactly went wrong and how that wrong was going to translate so that somebody could tell her parents in terms that might make an ounce of sense.  Because, emotionally and physically, how could anyone put into words the sense behind a genetic anomoly and the impact on your newborn baby.

I was anxious for weeks for a point not too long ago.  It was disturbing and turbulent times.  The most significant hit of anxiety came at my Thursday night parent group.  One of the moms was talking about the death of her baby in terms of letting her child sail away, off on her boat to the next life and how she was in the process of letting go of all of her daughter's belongings.  The image was of Layla on a little boat, wrapped in white cloth, sailing off into the horizon on a tiny little boat carrying her little angelic body away.  That moment, the room started to move in on me and a pair of hands grabbed me around the neck.  I gently excused myself with one of the facilitators and darted to the door and drove home.  I went to the baby and gave her a bath and cried.  Telling her over and over that I had to leave to come give her a bath.  I bundled her up in her pj's and blanky, gave her a bottle and tucked her into bed.  That was it.  I was so confused and felt like my head from that day on was spinning like a top while still barely attached to my body.  Maya and I had to go shopping for supplies for Sabrina's birthday party and I had to get out of the store.  Again, the sensation was that my head was spinning and that my senses were disconnected from my body.  It couldn't be controlled.  So, I held onto Maya's hand for dear life (she had no idea, I just moved fast) and got the hell out of that place.  I had to get back home, I had to get back to Layla.

This was strange and I was a bit of a wreck.  It was back at the parent group that I brought up these events and a trusted friend mentioned "post partum depression".  I breathed a sigh of recognition for something I knew nothing about.  She is a nurse and suggested from her pool of knowledge that I bring this up with my gp.  The long and short of it is that I did.    Then, very quickly after that, grabbed my lululemons and got back into my practice.

The rest is turning into history.  I'm better and aware that anxiety is a layer of my being as a result of something birth process related.  Hey - I'm allowed.  Throw me a freaking bone.  18 months later of Layla's life and I still can't look back and really sink my teeth into it all.

Her life is different and it has changed mine.  I've got to experience all of it.  The work, the perserverance, the hospital visits, the therapy, the busyness, the beauty of having her in the family and the dynamics, the tired, the pureness of the love.  You put it all together and you've got a pretty snazzy cocktail.  It is a big pill to swallow.

I acknowledged that I never closed the door to the grief.  I won't and it shall sway with the winds of time.  It's not a door to close, it's life to push through so that you can put the grief to good use.  And then, the grief changes form to something else, something pretty and frillier than grief.  It happens, I know first hand because it is happening to me.

The Power to be

Hello out there, to everyone outside of my head.  Right now, this morning I don't have a care in the world.  I think I'm meditating without even trying, it's the pre caffeine experience of feeling quite raw so I should seize this opportunity to share.

Last night I am giving Layla her last bottle before bed time and I'm tired.  My homework time has been anywhere from 11:30 - past midnight so I'm in a hurry at 11pm to get this milk down her.  She knows when I'm being hasty and instead of drinking she'll sit there with the bottle in mouth and make glug glug glug sounds as if to pretend to drink with a little but certain smile on her face.

So I stop and bring her up to face me and hold her head in my palm and try to make eye contact - it's what I'm working on with her these days, working on her visual attentiveness. 

I held her head up really close to mine and massaged her head while humming to her really softly.  She looked somewhere close to my eyes and I took that opportunity to take her eyes right through me. 
Without any magic or hocus pocus bogus, I moved energy around her and to her, using our connection as mother and my child as the source of this energy.

I have the power to heal and I also am seeing more clearly these days than ever before that I have the power to hurt. 

We can't change who we are, in fact, I honour my flaws knowing that they are my challenges. 

I choose to heal and be healed.  I have the capacity to lead with the example of my intentions. 

My intention is to work on my anger; it is not going to be my legacy.   

I'm glad I let that out.