The director, producer, writer, and actor.
Once you understand this, you have embodied your own power.
Just yesterday, my baby turned 3 months old. For anyone who isn't a mother, I have to explain; the first time someone told me that they had a small baby, it sounded nice and easy. My experience was far from that idea.
Before getting pregnant, I decided to have a cuarentena post-pregnancy. It's 40 days of connecting with your baby. The family will come to help you with taking care of your healing body and everything else. I am lucky and grateful to have had people come in increments. My parents and siblings came from California to Spain to assist us. I was in desperate need of help as I was surging with hormones and coming down from a powerful birth that I had put all my strength into. I didn't have much reserve to handle everything that was about to come.
The first month of my daughter's life was the hardest month of my life. I had postpartum anxiety, 10% of women get this, and I felt like it became debilitating for me.
My daughter had dropped drastic weight from her birth the week after she was born. I'm still not sure what caused this, but she was not well, and I needed to make drastic decisions for her to come back to birth weight as fast as possible. There was a constant worry and suffocating feeling that I wasn't going to take care of my baby the way she needed. She wasn't latching, and we had to bottle-feed her. I was pumped breast milk every 2/3 hours, and sleep was a luxury.
When a mother produces milk, her body is constantly hungry and thirsty. I felt an insatiable hunger that could not be cured, and when I held my baby, her cries scared me, and I felt like I had no space to be myself again. Her cries were a constant reminder that something was wrong, and anxiety gave me the dooming sensation that life was forever different and more difficult than before.
It was not until my 30 days postpartum that I remembered a phrase I once heard Dolores Cannon say in one of her interviews. This is a saying from the past life regressions she conducted on people.
She says," You are the director, producer, and actor in your play. You are also the scriptwriter, writing it all as it goes along." She explained that it means we are the creators of our reality and we can change it at any moment.
I believe that wholeheartedly. I remembered that the suffering I was experiencing was of my choosing. After 30 days of being a new, fearful mother, I had a conversation with my anxiety. I separated it from myself, sat down, and wrote to it. It was like having an internal dialogue written out.
I asked it why it was so present and strong. It responded that it needed to make sure I was paying attention to our baby. I felt like all I was doing was paying attention to my baby, so I asked why it was so intense. It was almost all I could feel.
It responded- I am here to remind you of what you didn't get as a baby. The only way we can give her what she needs is to make you pay attention.
I thanked the feeling and responded - I appreciate your pressure, but your intensity doesn't let me connect with my baby. She is only a month and I can't enjoy her as I’d intended. She is growing, and I feel like I'm missing her. I want to be a present mother, and now, with you driving, I can't be the mother I want to be. It's ok that you are here, I am grateful you are helping me stay present to her needs, but you need to dial down so I can feel the love and bond she deserves.
My anxiety dramatically lessened after talking to it like this. I also did a Mexican ritual called the closing of the bones to solidify my cuarentena, my forty days postpartum. This I will write about later. The ceremony marked a closing of the woman I was before giving birth and made a new connection for who I was to be; my baby girl's mother. She and I were now eternally connected, and life would never be the same in the best way possible.
Today, at three months, she exclusively breastfeeds and sleeps throughout the night. The anxiety has been gone for a month and a half, and I can confidently say that when things get hard, I remember to change my story. I am the maker and I create the narrative.
So, I hope to serve as an ambassador for this mindset. I hope you make your story whatever it needs to be. And mostly, I wish you peace. The kind of peace that is profound and deeply needed.
All the best,
Misha,
P.s. I also have a small business where I help people find a way back to themselves. It's the way I help people heal. Go to my website to connect further with me.