Hellobee

Wherever you go, there you are – Looking over the city of Chiang Mai – her birthplace

Motherhood. This is it. Raw and beautiful. I am here, in the breastmilk, in the sleepless nights, in the reflection in my newborn’s precious bright eyes. Wherever you go there you are. It’s true. It’s also the latest title in an unending stream of novels and self help books I’ve been powering through while breastfeeding. I’ve read more books in the last month than all of the last year. This book gives great shape to the things I’ve already been thinking about during this exhausting, incredible time. It gives it a name. Mindfulness.

For me, meditation is not an emptying of myself, but a connection of my mind, body and spirit. That sounds cheesy and doesn’t truly get at how it feels, because you can never accurately describe a personal practice like this. That’s just it – it’s personal. It can be supplemental to a faith practice or separate depending on the person. Everyone’s practice looks different. I either do a guided meditation practice or prayer with rhythmic breathing and I am still just discovering the power of it.

I started a meditation practice as preparation for birth, knowing that I would need the ability to control and relax my mind and learn to submit to my body and allow it to do the work it was intended to do. Birth was the ultimate meditation – 19 hours of continuous focus on only the moment at hand, breathing slowly in and out, feeling every contraction and determining not to judge each sensation, connecting with my body and its power in a way I never had before. I was so present. Labor truly taught me to meditate and it taught me to pray with my body instead of my mind.

When I got pregnant, I didn’t start with the intention to have a natural birth. I was quite certain I’d opt for an epidural and try to avoid all the messy, humanness of birth. Then I started researching hospitals in Chiang Mai and found out that due to a complicated case some years ago, all of the hospitals in the city stopped offering epidurals during active labor. It simply wasn’t an option apart from a C-section, which I wanted to avoid if at all possible. So we got plugged in with a natural birthing coach here and she gave us the resources to consider natural birth for our daughter. From then on it was a re-education. First I acknowledged my fear of birth. Second, I admitted to myself that I have a general fear of difficult things. Both would have to be surmounted.

Several times a week during pregnancy, I did guided meditations by Jon Kabat-Zinn, the author of Wherever you Go There You Are. Very practical, relaxing, and straightforward. It really was a meditation “practice” in the sense that it all lead up to birth for me. Since then, learning to use my breath has had so many practical implications. I can handle exercising for longer because I feel more in control of my frustration. Instead of quitting at any sign of challenge or discomfort, I slow my breath and remember how I rode the waves of contractions, one after the next and so now postpartum, my body and mind become stronger. For me, looking back, this strength was from God, manifest in the prayers of my community across the world and the love and care of my partner and I hold that energy now in my body as I face each new challenge motherhood brings.

I think stopping to breathe is the only control we have over the rapid progression of time and change. Sometimes I want my little girl to grow up all of a sudden so I can know what she’s like as a toddler and beyond, and sometimes I want to rewind even a few weeks and go back to the intensity of those first days getting to know her and her tiny little body.

“I see patience as one of those fundamental ethical attitudes. If you cultivate patience, you almost can’t help cultivating mindfulness, and your meditation practice will gradually become richer and more mature. After all, if you really aren’t trying to get anywhere else in this moment, patience takes care of itself. It is a remembering that things unfold in their own time. The seasons cannot be hurried.” – Jon Kabat-Zinn, Wherever You Go, There You Are

Becoming a mother is the ultimate test of patience. The newborn season is so exhausting and confusing, and I find that adding my own expectations to it only adds frustration. It’s that old equation: happiness equals reality minus expectations.

It’s a letting go. Not that I have no hopes for her – I want to give her every opportunity to grow and thrive. But my ultimate goal is to be at peace with whatever the moment, whatever the season, no matter how many times she wakes up in the night or whenever she starts to cluster feed again. I know I’m only able to accomplish this a tiny fraction of the time, but sometimes I really am able to remember: I am here. There is no where else I need to be, really. I am ever-grateful that I have the privilege and time to be slow with her during my maternity leave.

I never understood why parents I knew always claimed that having kids was the best thing that ever happened to them, while still describing how hard it is. Now I’m beginning to understand. It’s the very challenging nature of it that makes it the best. I can do hard things! The beauty of it is in fully participating in each difficult and precious moment. It’s a lifelong mission to even begin to tap into the ability to be present in it, but I’m so grateful to have the opportunity to try, and to be her mother.