The Baby Inside of Me

Yes.  I wrestled with the title of this blog for a minute or two. How vulnerable do I really want to be?  Oh and by the way, if you think vulnerable, deep, and primal are not your thing, don't read more.  If you want to feel less alone in your own "stuff" then keep reading. 

What is happening inside of me right now?  I can feel a deep sorrow  - like a 100lb weight on my chest, the need to cry from a guttural primal place and yet holding in the tears in my low back all the way up my spine, like everything is twisted in tight there in my back, holding my heart up so it doesn't have me fall forward, flat on my face.  My back is counterbalancing my heavy heart perhaps.

Probably after I write this I will go sit and tend more to feelings. I have been tossed about on a wild sea today of obsessional thoughts that all boil down to "there is something so inherently bad about you that you will never be loved or loving."  I have all the diagnosis lined up, all the proof points in the way of relational interactions, facial expressions, lack of responsiveness, past screw ups on my part and then my whole being shifts from feeling body sensation and holding down the fort inside to obsessional thinking.  Of course, the obsessional thinking is so confusing the only thing left to feel is hopeless. 

In my attempt to find a way out, I called a psychiatrist, my husband, and three of my closest friends.  What triggered it all this time?  Well, I don't think it really calmed down from a week ago, first of all.  But, today I learned of some chaos in our larger playgroup that I have been a part of for 3.5 years now - a mother and father pair who were closet alcoholics and whose wounding has always been palpable to me have been outed because he has been arrested.  On the outside, these two look like the average American couple.  Of course, this stuff is taboo to talk about so no one is.  I guess it happened nearly two months ago and I am just learning about it.  I have been on the confidential receiving end of  two miscarriages inside the playgroup.  One mother has been quite public, another only told two of us and is holding her pain in silence.   And then lastly, a mother is moving away and despite my challenge getting close to her because I was always feeling less than, inside I did always "KNOW" that she had my back when push came to shove.   We shared a nanny together for a year and a half and she always had this magic way of reaching for me right when I needed her to.  We teared up a bit as she broke the news to me today.  A lot of emotion for her to show.  All of these "other mother" things are triggers and each has its own massively symbolic meaning for me that I won't go into here because I don't want to shift so radically into my head now that I am in my body. 

Of course, once I did initially get a whiff of this underlying stuff, I shot up into my head (hyperaroused) and started the mad hunt for "what other mother had left me" and started obsessing about recent relationships that are unsteady and blamed myself for their unsteadiness. Choosing a few, in particular to obsess about.  This heady obsessing about being left, diagnosing myself with mental illness.  One of my dear friends who was most able to hear me out is a friend, like me, who is woefully under mothered but who, like me, has done some deep and profound primal work on this wound.  Rather than unpacking the whole story she just said, "I really want to know what you are experiencing inside.  I don't see how diagnosing yourself helps you." and as she said that, just the invitation that someone would want to know about the pain that was going on underneath my heady interpretations and obcessing, well I burst into tears....of the primal nature.

Here is what I discovered after going inside my body to my body sensations, breath, bones, muscles, movements while my friend listened on the other end of the phone; you see, being in the presence of mothers ignited my whole trauma system. This whole "becoming a mother" has taken me for a loop because frankly, while a bit perfectionist, I thought I was pretty well on my way to being "healed".  Not too many blips on the psychological map in a while and then whamo.  And no, it wasn't having the babies or parenting that has been the hardest part for me about becoming a mother it is doing this all in relationship to other mothers.  It happened gradually. 

What I felt and what is still inside my chest as I type is a baby.  She is so tiny, still wrapped up and she is really quiet and really still.  She is waiting and waiting and waiting and waiting.  Not saying anything.  This baby is with me all the time but she has been tucked way far away for a lot of years but she is out now.  She sees all these moms and her wick has been lit. She is waiting for one of these moms to scoop her up and tell her "I see you are in pain.  I see you can't speak, you are just frozen in there." and magically take her pain away.  Long long outbreath. Long silence right here.  Being around other mothers makes the baby in me come alive with longing.

I can't express how profound it is to FEEL this as opposed to think about this or diagnose this.  There she is.  This baby.  And for whatever reason, the last few weeks, I have hated her with a vengeance.  I don't want to pick her up and hold her.  I don't feel she is entitled to feel these things.   I also blame her for making relationships so hard for me.  Why does she have to be so intense?  Why can't she just make light banter?  Why must everyone meet her in this intense place?   They don't want to be intense. Was her childhood really that bad? 

For years I have tried to minimize the pain underneath by explaining, by disallowing, by dismissing, diagnosing.  None of which, do anything towards healing.  Neither do telling her to stop it, knock it off or use some intellectual explanation without tending to her first.  My friend reminded me of that on the phone just now.   It is why I am a somatic therapist.  EXPLAINING does very little in the larger scope.  Relating to another person from our deepest felt experience heals the deep stuff - in its own time mind you.  Now that said, I needed years of explaining before I would even consider the possibility of feeling my deepest longings in my body so I still do explaining therapy too at times. 

I don't want to leave her right now though. She is still there while I get heady again.  This baby. Oh this baby.  This aching longing for a mother inside...a mother who knew to put her arms around me.  God.    I need to mourn with her and help grow this little baby up.  She has been waiting all this time for someone to come get her.  Can you believe that?   I don't want to say more right now.  I am noticing I want to tie this post up into a neat bow with some moral of the story type of comment.  I will just say, as I sit with more people as a therapist and as I relate to my friends, I am aware that we all have babies with varying degrees of need and tending internal babies, I am happy to say, is my life's work.  I feel grateful for my work with clients as we stretch each other in going deeper.  My work has grown with them as I have gone deeper inside of me.  I am proud of my courage as well.   It is dark, murky, complicated and unusual to be in relationship to me in my regular life.  Especially if you are a mother and well, here is where I am.  Doing my best.  I love me, even if you can't.  I don't believe it all the time but will repeat it often.