Yesterday I got a compliment and it was lovely… someone said that I was looking beautiful and pregnancy suits me.

She was kind. And I was thankful.

My body went to respond. To reflexively give her a compliment back. Because it felt wrong to receive something and just thank her.

Instead, I held myself… and I felt rude, but also knew, patterns were rewiring.

It’s something that happened for the first time a little while ago, and I noticed then. Yesterday I noticed again.

I read about how we reflexively respond to people, especially our partners, and over the past year its something I’ve spoken with H about quite frequently. It comes up in situations from the food we might want, the arguments we might have and the intimate moments of life… it’s easy to practice noticing with him, because once I explained what I was doing, he just got it. In fact, we’ve had some incredibly connected moments based off of checking in about whether our responses are reflective or genuine.

Further reading and research has led into linking this to a fawn response, and now, I’m thinking about how interesting it is, in relation to today.

The woman who complimented me is beautiful. She’s also one of the kindest people I know, and though we’re not close friends, she is a friendly face, and someone I’m genuinely happy to meet when out. Everything in my body said “compliment back” … and I did, later, on an entirely other subject, where it was genuine and not in a fawn or ‘giving for the sake of it’ kind of way.

Noticing these interactions I know that in waiting to find a genuine reason to compliment her (or anyone), I was able to be more aligned with my own body and my nervous system benefited too.

This pregnancy has been one of immense healing… because ultimately I’m more resourced. Rewiring this reflexive response has been a part of that. Understanding that I don’t need to appease or please anyone because I am not actually in any danger, has been an incredible shift. It is of course still a work in progress… but the patterns are moving, and today was proof of that.

It reminds me too, that starting in a space (with my husband) where I was safe to test out how this felt and how to navigate it, is how I have built my capacity to bring it out into every day life.

In a similar way, our children do that with us. They test their feelings, explore, explode, repair and play through many experiences using us as their safety net. Then, as their capacity builds, they bring it out into the world. P is testing and expanding his capacity to make friends (after some really sad experiences where friendships have disappeared and he has struggled) and A is testing her tolerance at exploring emotions with other people, practicing what rupture and repair might look like with people outside of our home.

It hasn’t clicked until writing this that I witnessed both of these in them at the park yesterday.

Compliments are a fun one to explore, because actually they are jam packed with baggage for many of us. Giving compliments and receiving them bring up so many different experiences in our bodies. I’ll probably have more thoughts later about them, but for now, that’s it.

As ever, thanks for reading,

With love, Rohana x