Friday 15 July 2011

The flow of life; the golden life force and Creativity

I am the Creator of my life. I am the creator of my world. My World is your World. Today I feel excited and engaged. I race on my bike, aware that I am taking risks yet my eyes and ears are open. I am moving in and out of connection with drivers, cyclists, buses, traffic lights and yes sometimes get distracted by the magnificent trees and the smell of linden blossom and people walking along. 

On such days I love the whole world, I feel compassionate towards myself and I feel grateful for being able to partake in this amazing amazing flow of life, the golden life force, Creativity. Every single moment is a nugget to be explored, every single moment is a new moment where I can make amends, make a u-turn, feel a new feeling or think a new thought. Doesn't matter if I make a mistake now, if I have missed something now, for the next moment is here already where I can do it differently.  

My girls have discovered singing in a group. They are very excited about it. One of them said 'you know I love this bit of this song because it gives me this feeling - of freedom'. Ah how amazing, how amazing that my little big six year old can already feel and comprehend this. And the little one is discovering his own little freedom: just now he found a paint brush and crawled in the garden up and down the stairs, clutching it, giddy with joy. 

So we live. So we move. And are moved. And what comes to mind is the prayer of the new age by Maitreya. 

I am the Creator of the Universe
I am the Father and the Mother of the Universe
Everything came to me
Everything shall return to me 
Mind Body Spirit are my temples 
For the Self to realize in them
My Supreme Being and Becoming

Blessings to you all. And I love you.




Tuesday 12 July 2011

Does my anger make me a bad mother?

This is not an easy one to write. Anger is a bad thing, right? And anger and women is very bad; she historically was labelled as hysterical and out of control on the brink of insanity who needs straightjacketing. A dominant message for a woman seems to be 'be nice, smile and get on with it'. 


Of course we feel the anger. And I wonder, how and where does it get expressed? What's the damage and cost of the silent simmering anger cum rage? 


Man and anger is not unfamiliar and the display of public aggression is a common occurrence. It seems that they are allowed, from childhood onwards to express, bash, destroy and thrash - the response mostly is a shrugging of the shoulders with a comment along the line of 'oh it's a boy - oh it's a man thing'.


Two examples of male aggression:
1) When I was laying in the hospital bed after the birth of my twin girls I was suddenly feeling very alert, pricking my ears as my heartbeat quickened. What was this noise? I was feeling alarmed and slightly scared. It sounded like a collective roar of voices and for a moment I was convinced war had broken out. I went to the window to see and guess what, it was men playing football!
2) The other week it was school sports day and at the end the parents get to run too, of course women and men separated (why??). I swear I have never ever seen anything like it when the men were running. It felt like they were running for life, that winning was a matter of life and death. Eyes were bulging, bodies were thrusting forward. Momentarily their raw energy and resolve made the air shiver as if a herd of wild animals had just run by. There was definitely aggression in there. And ok some women took it equally seriously but for the most part the women had fun, didn't mind looking ridiculous and it was mostly boobs bobbing up and down!


At least this is a manifestation of anger/aggression of a type of man that seems perfectly acceptable. 


My anger the other day manifested in the morning when first the baby wouldn't eat and I felt frustrated and let vent by letting out some guttural sound like 'aaahhhrgggg'. He didn't seem to be bothered and I managed to feed him in the end but I noticed the girls eying me suspiciously. The next one, and that's the one I would usually feel ashamed and not talk about, was when we got to the usual hair-style discussions that go on every morning these days. The hair style is a big thing at the moment, taken to a real heights the other day by the girls mentioning another girl at school who was wearing a real flower in her hair! (It was probably fake!) One of my daughters asked me to do a hair-style and after it was done, she decided she didn't like it pulled it all apart and blamed me for not understanding her instructions. I lost it - I shouted at her, she started crying and said stop shouting and I then walked away from her throwing the hairbrush on the floor, which broke in two. I felt immediately pretty stupid, and ashamed.


I told my husband in the evening and he said that breaking the brush wasn't such a bad thing but that he found it interesting that I didn't express my anger directly towards her rather than channeling it through an object. Maybe he has a point. 


Perhaps it is more acceptable for men to show anger and aggression directly and we women are expected not to and therefore go on a detour to express it?


These days I feel a lot of anger and frustration and I notice that it feels like a problematic thing. Many women report anger and rage in the premenstrual period and I am similar there. Again I wonder why it's regarded as such a bad thing. I know that any display of anger of a mother with child makes people around go quiet and everybody retreats embarrassed, pretending that it's not happening. A lot of mothers admit and say 'oh I have been shouting again this morning'. But there rarely seems a display of that publicly. If it is, like the other day in the park, I noticed that there was an us and them narrative going on whereby she was this bad mother from the housing estate and we were these proper educated good mums definitely not from the housing estate! 


Perhaps this undercurrent of fear is bubbling away under the surface for all of us where we are terrified that someone will judge and label us as a bad mother. I know I do. Yet it is vital I feel that my children, perhaps particularly my girls because of the socialization of gender, get that anger is a normal emotion. Of course we don't want to be destructive and we don't want to hurt someone (although in relationships that's sometimes inevitable, we are not saints) but I want my children to know that why I feel angry and realise that they have an impact on me. Equally I would like them to be able to express their anger and not eat it! 


Ultimately perhaps it is about need. So often I find we women are afraid to ask for what we need and want and the anger simmers away until it finds a trigger and we explode. 


So maybe, forget about the good and bad mother, it's a construct anyway, and try and tune into what I need and express my feelings when that need is not met, there and then, not tomorrow. Then perhaps the anger does not have to become rage and hate but can be expressed as a positive catalyst for change!

Sunday 3 July 2011

The placenta is coming out of the freezer

Yesterday it was my little boy's first birthday! What excitement, and sense of achievement, and amazement - that a little babe can grow to such a lively active almost toddler! And so we sang happy birthday to him at the exact time he was born - 16:43 - and then .....the placenta came out of the freezer.


Some data: the placenta weighed exactly 400 gr and the placental sack, was an amazingly stretchy membrane cuddling the baby within. It could sit comfortably inside my two cupped hands. It smelled strongly of iron. And it was, well, a piece of meat. And since I am a vegetarian I found that a bit challenging. I touched it several times, but had to wash my hands in between. 


When I told my mother about the placenta coming out of the freezer, she said sarcastically but really with admiration; no doubt you will dance around it naked! We didn't but it is time to say thanks, and no not to eat it, but to give it back to Mother Nature. 


And if she has still some goodness left she can nurture other creatures around her and the yellow new rose bush I bought for the occasion. 



I am happy. I am grateful to have a healthy lively child and grateful that I was able to birth him and the placenta without any intervention, any medication, any invasion. I did it. Just me. With the help of Mother Nature. And what a force that is. The birth was like thunderbolts coming from above shooting through my body into my pelvis and pulling downwards into the ground. 

I entered the tunnel, I was scared, fearful at times that my husband and my doula would abandon me, and sometimes I felt I was doing everything wrong. 

And at the same time, I have never been so sure of myself. I knew I could do it, I knew I didn't want anyone to touch me, I knew that everything was going to be alright. The pain was unimaginable, it was very very painful and I have still a memory of it. But not senseless pain - meaningful pain. It is you together with your child going through the first of many crisis together, it is I feel the first bonding experience. 


So I give thanks and bow to what an amazing unfathomable process nature can take us through.