The Journey of Motherhood

THE JOURNEY OF MOTHERHOOD: AN OPPORTUNITY TO HEAL YOUR OWN STORY

“The image that continues to persist is that of the romantic and idyllic motherhood that we all yearn for.”

And even so, the author offers us an account of the complexity of her first months of motherhood, reminding us with her experience that shadows arise, yes, and that with consciousness light also emerges.

I believe more and more firmly that it is the history of each one, our history, that can condition us in our motherhood. Obviously there are other factors, such as the personality, preferences and life values of each person, which can condition us in the choice of one type of parenting or another. But in the depth of this choice, it is our history that can mark our motherhood. I have been a mother for a little over a year, and a doula for six, and during this time I have had the privilege of being able to accompany precious motherhoods and motherhoods.

Some more fluid, others more complex, and all unique in essence. With the arrival of my own motherhood, I have been able to verify that the parenting patterns that are integrated from baby, secure or insecure bond, emerge strongly when you become a mother or father. The surrender that accompanies the person who has had a secure attachment pattern does not manifest itself when the attachment pattern is insecure… As a mother or father, you feel flow in this surrender, generate a secure bond with your son or daughter, but it does not come naturally to you.

At every step of the way you must think about how to do it, strive to create it, so that an answer, a look or an attitude that does not correspond to the chosen bond does not arise. You can get… but it generates much more effort. Bonded parenting is essential for children, and the first two years of life are transcendental for their own life story. Despite knowing it and having chosen this type of upbringing, I have been able to see how our history directly affects the mothering of our children. Deeply. In my case, I am certain that the lack of affection linked to my birth, which I have dragged with me all my life, has marked my motherhood. It is a lack that is cared for, accepted, worked on… But the scar is still there.

People who have had a complex childhood, for whatever reason, have a scar, a sign, that reminds us and evokes what we have experienced. If we have had the opportunity to make amends, either with a family or a loving environment, and have been able to look at it and be aware, the work of healing and reparation is, in a way, easier. Still, it is our story, and it will always be with us. Personally, I am convinced that if I had not walked this path of transmutation my daughter would have lived a completely opposite upbringing. Because I would have fled from the bond. For profound, for everything that this model of upbringing in which I believe comes to stir you and make you resurface.

If we add to the history of each one of us that our society is individualistic and not given to making a tribe, we have the necessary factors to increase these complex stories of motherhood. Because we are very lonely and alone parenting, and that does not help to penetrate our own shadows… quite the opposite.

A HISTORY THAT MARKS

My life story, possibly like that of many other people, has not been very easy in some aspects. I was adopted when I was eight days old, which I spent in a hospital, alone, without my mother, without any mother.

I’m often told, “You’re going to be lucky, you were very young and you didn’t know anything.” It is true that she was very small… but it is not that I did not know anything. We already know the importance of the mother’s experience during conception, pregnancy and childbirth. The importance of the bond, of the first hours of life… Eight days are many hours of uncertainty, loneliness, fear, crying… of abandonment.

I arrived at a house where not everything was easy, but where they have given me all the love they have been able to, and I feel deeply grateful to have received it. A house in which over the years I have been able to understand that what they have given me was what they could give me, and that it is perfect as it is, because my life story has defined me: who I am, how I am, where I am.

The generation that precedes us is marked by many affective and emotional deficiencies, and unfortunately that is what they have transmitted to many of us, since before it was much more difficult to find spaces and environments where to care for and express oneself emotionally. It is our generation that has reconnected. Ironically, we have disconnected from many human relationships in favor of technological connections, but we have also connected with the shortcomings that some of us carry over from the generations that preceded us. And this connection has made us realize that there was something wrong.

This revelation was what marked my path as a doula. After working in several daycare centers, and seeing how babies were sometimes left to cry, often because there were no more hands, no more resources, I connected with a deep and wounded part of my life, and that marked a before and after in my story. Along with resilience, the mere ability to transmute a negative experience into a positive one that allows you to integrate learning to turn it into evolution, I have been able to move forward, creating a project to pamper and raise awareness and look at the importance of bonding.

For seven years I walked with the illusion of being a mother one day, to be able to flow and enjoy that dedication that I saw in many mothers, that dedication that I was so happy to feel. A great illusion to be a mother like the mothers I was having the honor of accompanying in their motherhood… But, my motherhood arrived. So different from how it had been dreamed… Those expectations that you have told yourself so many times that it makes no sense to create, and that although you know it appear again, once again.

SHADOWS EMERGE

And with my motherhood all the shadows of my childhood emerged. For a few months I even heard the need to get away from my mother. My little girl came back from somewhere unhealed, and showed her anger. Towards her and towards the other mother. To all the mothers in the world, to myself as a mother. And if I still didn’t have enough with the waves that my daughter’s upbringing was stirring, that wave came, the strong one, my childhood exposed. It shook me, it left me in dust, and it was very difficult for me to spur the sand from my skin. I came to feel exhausted on a level that I never thought I could feel. Exhausted from having to feel that motherhood was wonderful. That it could only be wonderful.

Because it is true that motherhood entails wonderful moments, the ones we all know: the first dream, that first look of recognition, that “it is you”… and those other more intimate moments, which no one had explained to you, but that happen, and that make your heart beat stronger, and you understand from the inside everything that you had seen and accompanied from the outside, that deep love that is born when you see and look at your baby. Still, I felt, deeply… that it was not only wonderful. My greatest exhaustion came around twelve months of my daughter’s life, when she began to wake up even more at night. He asked for a boob, he asked for a mother, he asked for arms… And I couldn’t take it anymore. All the accumulated fatigue of those months will arise, and I felt that I had reached my limit. Because the road there had been really intense and exhausting…

The journey began after the pregnancy that had already begun to stir deep aspects of my being, with a labor that was very intense. At home, yes; respected, yes; as we had always wished, yes; but very intense. A birth in which all of us who lived through it knew that the only alternative to what we were experiencing was a cesarean section. It was a birth that pierced me, and that I would go through again, but that has marked me deeply. Because my birth was painful, but it also garnished experiences from my past. With my partner by the hand, and Blanca, the midwife, wonderful Blanca, holding, I was able to give birth, pierce, heal. Because it can be done, because women can. Our beautiful daughter was born, and the first look arrived, desired for so long! At that moment I felt that everything was fine, that everything would be fine… until my daughter started breastfeeding.

WHEN BREASTFEEDING IS PAINFUL

We enter into the depth of breastfeeding, that breastfeeding that I had been able to accompany so many times, that breastfeeding that from the outside is of a color, and from the inside has all the colors you can imagine. I felt pain. Again. I cried for the pain I experienced in childbirth, for the pain of my daughter when breastfeeding, for the pain of the loss of the idea of easy and fluid breastfeeding. Because breastfeeding doesn’t have to hurt. That’s what they say, that’s what I’ve said many times. But it has hurt me. With my resources, and the resources of the people who were close to me, professionals, companions… Even so, our breastfeeding had been very hard. The third day after birth, at night, marked a before and after in our breastfeeding; nipples with cracks, milk rise… My body could no longer sustain any more pain.

And we decided to try nipple shields, in one of the cases where advising them may be an option, to soften the pain, and give the body time to heal the wounds. And I’ve been lucky. I was able to rest a little, and the intensity decreased. They were our allies, and we were able to reaffirm what we had said so many times with my colleagues: a nipple shield does not work for everyone, but when it is appropriate it can save a breastfeeding.

The nipple shields at first led us to a truce, days, until the week after her birth or so, when she started crying. I cried day, night, at home, away from home, in my arms, in the baby carrier, in the car, in bed… She cried proportionally as I overflowed, and my partner did his best to hold on. I was panicked about everything. Panic of any change, I was blocked, I felt incapable of anything. Just the thought that I would cry again in that way, that visceral way that only a mother understands from the crying of her own child, terrified me. She let the days go by, between the intensity of breastfeeding, the panic in her crying, her crying itself… I have very blurred and not very sweet memories of the first weeks. Those days that are the “skin moon”, which must be many and sometimes they are but many other times not, a deep puerperium, are some of the hardest days I have lived in my life.

HANDS ON OFFER

It was not easy at all. Actually, until the first three months I got to be deep in the darkest cave. I was afraid to do anything that might make her cry again. But she needed to cry. And when we accepted that she needed it, that we could try to accompany her in that crying, although it was not easy for us, little by little we were able to come out of the darkness. And there were wonderful people by our side during that time, who tried to accompany us, give us options, proposals… But I felt so lost, so sunk, that I couldn’t hold on to any hand. I feel grateful to have felt his presence nearby, even though at the time I know I couldn’t show it, as I was surviving day by day. The radical change that my relationship with my partner experienced was also a turning point those days. It was hard for me to understand that we could feel so far from each other, at a time in our lives when everything should have been magical and deserved.

Before becoming parents, we were proud of our relationship, a relationship that was cared for emotionally, with a look, attention, time… And when our daughter was going to be born, for a long time I missed my husband. Fortunately, although from another place, perhaps more real, little by little we have been finding ourselves again.

And so, at twelve months, I reached my limit. Holding my daughter and my inner child, both of us asking for boob, mom and arms… I was exhausted. Exhausted from twelve months of containment, of hiding, of feeling that I should flow with that upbringing in which I believe, of putting more and more pressure on myself, of feeling lost, of missing my husband, of missing myself. Exhausted from seeing my precious daughter and feeling that I was not up to the task, because I knew that she felt that I was struggling, that I was exhausted, and that there was a part of me that wanted to escape. I wanted to escape from this bond, from that bond that moved me in the depths of my soul, and that is why I was living it, and I knew it, I knew that everything was fine. But it was one thing to know it, and another to feel it.

My being clung to that abyss to the limit from which I had taken myself. I desperately needed to flee, to escape, from that emptiness, to resist the fall. It broke me inside. I was so scared… But I finally let go. And I fell. I allowed all the resistances, the fears, the shadows, the darkness, everything that I had been covering, slowing down, trying to control, hiding for a year to embrace me. And as long as I wanted, as the emptiness enveloped me, I felt peace again. For the first time in a long time, I came to feel peace. The words began to come out, the tears flowed, the blank pages began to fill up… And I was able to heal. Because when you act, you modify.

When you express, you raise awareness. And consciousness helped me to accept, to accept that we can feel that way, to accept our motherhood as unique in its very essence. Because that awareness and that look, that even if it costs us, we put into our mothering and heal. And they will be a light to our sons and daughters when they become mothers or fathers.

RAISE AWARENESS

Living this experience has been an opportunity and a learning experience. And it has helped me infinitely. To understand that motherhood is not only pink. That although you may have someone to accompany you and offer themselves, we start from very great social, generational and emotional shortcomings, which can overwhelm you and make it difficult to take the hand they offer you, because the loop in which you find yourself does not allow it.

I understood a doula friend, who was talking to me about the importance of being able to “compartmentalize”. Feeling as good as being a mother as being a teacher. Going to dinner with friends or at the cinema with your partner. Compartmentalize without feelings of guilt, without feeling like a bad mother for doing it. Accepting that it is also fair for us, if we need it, to be able to give ourselves some spaces for ourselves, as women, partners, daughters, friends… Because when there is a good fusion between mother and baby, when the time comes, there can be a differentiation in a healthy way. To understand the great difference between accompanying from the outside and living from the inside. I have been able to feel this deeper and more complex motherhood, often stigmatized and little talked about, since the image that continues to persist is that of the romantic and idyllic motherhood that we all yearn for.

And despite all this, there are certainly fluid and pleasurable mothering as well. If your own history has allowed you to grow up with few shortcomings, that upbringing of secure attachment arises naturally, flows, innately. Another good friend wrote an article in which she talked about the surrender of motherhood(2). When I read it a few months ago, I was able to live my motherhood from that maturity, from that serene and conscious surrender. It is possible, fortunately these maternities also exist! I have also been able to understand that I needed to share my experience. To bring a little more light to this darker side of motherhood. Thus opening the door of opportunity a little more to women and mothers who need it, to express our vulnerability.

To be able to express that motherhood is wonderful, yes. But it is not only that. Express that we can give birth and that it is an intense birth. And breastfeed, if we want, even if it is with nipple shields. And losing your husband and finding yourself again connecting with him. And feeling exhausted, and wanting to run away sometimes… or many times. Express that you may feel overwhelmed by your own history, that you may be afraid to pass on your shadows to your children, and feel guilty about almost everything. Expressing and feeling that, although you have an ideal of parenting, your own history can condition you, and that the social expectation of the perfect mother does not help us. Because there are no perfect mothers, but human mothers; each one of us with our backpack and our path traveled, who do what we can with what we have.

This first stage of my motherhood has led me to understand and affirm that, with awareness, words and looks, as long as you feel it, you can modify and heal your own story. And this is where trust arises. The confidence in thinking that every time a mother is healing, through the very opportunity that motherhood offers, is opening a door of light for the motherhoods that will occur.

Finally, I’m excited to share that my relationship with my daughter has changed. Something very profound has been healed by being able to express and accept my vulnerabilities and shortcomings. The scar will always be with us but our bond has been strengthened. Now we enjoy breastfeeding, she doesn’t wake up so much at night anymore… And I feel grateful. We have crossed this tunnel together, with my partner always nearby, accompanying each other from unconditional love. And inside me resonates the certainty that my daughter also feels that way. Because of how she looks at me, because of how I look at her. And for the first time in many months, we smiled. We smiled, and kept walking.

Notes 1. The secure attachment bond, according to attachment theory, initially formulated by John Bowlby, is the result of establishing a healthy attachment bond during the first months of life. It is considered to condition future emotional well-being to a large extent.
2. Raquel Guimerà: “The option of surrender. A testimony on the feelings of motherhood”, in Living in the Family, no. 63, May-June 2016.

The Journey of Motherhood (March 28, 2018) VIURE EN FAMÍLIA 68
Text: NÚRIA ALSINA PUNSOLA. Doula and Early Childhood and Parenting Specialist

The journey of motherhood

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The journey of motherhood