Fear & Pregnancy
Pregnancy has been one of the most difficult journies of my life. The amount of trust and surrender pregnancy requires is a spiritual initiation itself.
As I enter my second trimester, I can’t help but reflect on how much I have been grieving. This grief feels very layered to me and it has been hard to get it under control. I am not sure if it is the hormones, my mental health, or both. Don’t get me wrong I am SO happy and excited but with any new love, there is also the possibility of pain.
Losing my sister was the greatest pain of this lifetime and the fear of losing my child feels very similar. I never noticed how much I struggled with attachment after Brieanne passed away. I have been clinging to this baby like the world is ending. I am constantly begging the universe to not take him away. I don’t want to go through that pain again, I am not sure my heart can handle it.
Physically this pregnancy has pushed my limits. I have been bleeding my entire pregnancy. Each time I see blood, I am instantly thrown into a spiral of loss. Even after the doctors tell me everything is ok and he is healthy, my trauma brain jumps to the worst-case scenario. I wake up in fear every day. If you would read my journals these past three months, they all say the same thing, chose love over fear.
So what does it look like to choose love over fear?
It means choosing love in the small moments. Every time when my brain wanders to darkness, calling back to the present moment. In Buddhism, there is a meditation practice called touch and go. In meditation, when a thought comes up, you notice it, without judgment, and let it go. It is the practice of always coming back, no matter how far your thoughts may have strayed. The key to this practice is non-judgment. If we judge our thoughts we are giving them power. This power keeps the thoughts stuck in our minds and body.
If you are in fear, I invite you to place one hand on your heart (and your womb if you chose) and take a deep breath. With each inhale, repeat “I am love” and with each exhale, repeat “ I am awareness.” I am loving awareness.
Ram Dass is the teacher behind this practice. He states, “If someone asks me how to get into their heart, I give them this practice: I Am Loving Awareness. When you concentrate on the middle of your chest - this is where loving awareness lives. This is the spiritual heart. Not the beating heart, not the emotional heart.
If we have thoughts about the past or the future, we are thinking with an emotional heart. We are trying to predict or manage the emotions our hearts will feel. It is understandable to want to avoid difficult emotions but the reality is we can not! We don’t know what is going to happen next, and complicated emotions are unavoidable. At some point in life, we will expereince some form of pain or sadness. Only this moment is real, everything beyond that is an illusion of our minds. Which reality are you going to choose?
This my friends is the work! The work isn’t measured by the moments we do things that make us feel good, the work is in the moments the good feels very far away. The work is always coming back to self, no matter what. Trust yourself, that you will come back anytime you need.
Trust is built by surrendering to control. Trust is a frequency of your own wisdom. Surrendering means accepting the impermanent nature of life and embracing our constant state of groundlessness. Discomfort arises from resistance to the concept of groundlessness. We can’t ever truly get ground under our feet, because we don’t know what might happen the next moment. But what we can do is accept that we don’t know and live life in the present moment. There is a reason the phrase “live like you are dying” is so popular. What would you do differently if didn’t know what would happen next? Suffering is a self-imposed concept. Suffering is to resistant certainty. Uncertainty is truly all we will ever have.
“Like the moon, your greatest magic will come in times of darkness. When you have no choice but to trust your own power.”
With Love,
Whitley
