It’s already that time of year again – January yes, but we are thinking ahead.
Mothers day is in 52 days, or 52 sleeps if you count them with littles. That’s really not long!
Last year, I invited families to book in for a mini photoshoot celebrating mothers. We had mum friends, a mum who’s partner was a away, a dad who got involved too and the most beautiful little details in each one.
I was honoured to capture a snippet of these stories, and to share the beauty of each of these mothers, because often in the thick of it, you don’t see just how beautiful your interactions are.
Some of my favourite were the cheeky smiles that go to their eyes, and the joy in each mum as they held, walked and talked with their growing babies.
I won’t share the ones of their little faces, those are private.
But I can share these.
And now, I’m inviting you. If you’re local to Helensburgh or Rhu (or can get here), I’d love to capture your beautiful family and celebrate you.
Mums to be, mums of 1, mums of many, grandmas… and dads/grandads if they want to, all welcome to come create some magick. I know all too well that these moments are fleeting, even when they don’t seem to be.
Get in touch and we’ll book your date 💕
You deserve to be seen – not just in a selfie!
With love,
Rohana
Details:
Dates: 31st Jan, 7th Feb, 21st Feb.
£60 – a full gallery, 5 digital downloads, or the option to upgrade.
I’m holding my one year old and thinking about how I very rarely have to walk him around for sleep.
Before, when I just had my first baby, I thought I needed to help him sleep all the time, especially when all I would read about wake windows and dropping naps etc was that if he didn’t sleep, I was doing something wrong.
I thought that I needed to hold him and walk him and be with him. I thought if I left him alone, I’d be traumatising him. So I stayed.
I with him, but all that did was stress me out. Of course, he mirrored my stress. I didn’t understand that then, but knowing now about mirror neurons, I can see that those hours where whether or not he was tired, sleep would elude the both of us as my stress levels rose wondering what he hell I’d missed or done wrong to mess up bedtime that day. I spent hours walking him around, holding him awkwardly, both of us crying, and damaging my deeply unhealed postpartum body and spirit as a result.
From the very start my firstborn didn’t love sleep… and now, he only loves it when it’s time to wake up!
I look back and see that I was trying to force him to sleep by rocking and singing and doing all the things instead of just relaxing and being with him. This wasn’t because I enjoyed it, I just felt like it was what I should be doing – it was because I didn’t want to face the feelings of inadequacy that having a baby who doesn’t sleep would bring.
And now, as I hold my nearly one year old, my fourth baby I’m so much more relaxed. I don’t really care when he sleeps, just that he does and that he feels safe until he’s ready, whether that’s with me or more recently with his dad. It’s made such a difference to slowly, the more kids we’ve had, let all those expectations go.
I hope that my youngest baby will be more secure and comfortable, while simultaneously work through the guilt I feel about how much I didn’t know with my first and also feel proud of everything I’ve learned. If I could go back and tell the version of me with just 1 kid anything, it would be to relax, to just fucking relax. Honestly, the amount of time I spent stressed out, worrying that I was doing it wrong, and worrying what other people thought and how I should be, and whether I was doing it the way the book said, and the podcast said, and all the things I must have passed so much stress to him. You don’t know what you don’t know though, so here we are – learning. Undoing the stress of those first few years with gentle persistence and support. I can’t change the past, but I can support him to process it; and show up for where we are now.
So I won’t rock them to sleep. I won’t pace. I won’t force sleep right now. And hopefully by doing that, I am laying the foundations for a calmer association with it all too.
Pregnancy is one of the most significant transitions in our life, and one that unlike the menarche is still widely celebrated in Western society. It is of course the magical time when a woman grows a tiny human while battling heartburn, swollen feet, and unsolicited belly rubs from strangers, because lets face it, who needs autonomy right?! The way the world is moving, it’s scary! As we move further and further into a time where white supremacy is clinging on and throwing a party for everyone to see, I’m sat at my desk thinking about baby showers, pregnancy and how we’ve (in masses) lost the meaning of rituals at this sacred time. I want to pause, and take a minute to appreciate the pregnancy rituals that actually honor women and foster a sense of community—no smoke bombs or giant pink and blue cakes required.
Traditional Pregnancy Rituals, from around the world
Across cultures worldwide, far beyond my desk in Helensbrugh, babies are born, people live and die and the world keeps spinning. Pregnancy has long been celebrated with rituals focused on nurturing and supporting the mother, rather than just planning the perfect Instagram moment. These traditions emphasize connection, wisdom-sharing, and, dare I say, actual real life support. I think it’s important to say though, there’s a difference between being inspired by these traditions and being appropriative of them, so definitely consider that before you just grab one off the shelf kind of thing.
Here are a few beautiful examples:
Blessingway (Navajo Tradition)
Unlike a baby shower (which is often just a lot of baby grows presents and weird games ), the Blessingway is a sacred Navajo ceremony centered around the mother. Women in her circle gather to offer blessings, share stories, and quite literally wrap her in love and encouragement. Sometimes, they create a beaded necklace, each bead symbolizing a wish for her journey ahead. No awkward “guess the baby food” games—just pure community.
Seemantham (South Indian Ritual)
In South India, Seemantham is a celebration that again focuses on the mother’s well-being. Family members recite prayers, offer gifts meant to bring prosperity, and pamper the mum-to-be with traditional music and massages. It is a pregnancy pause, to honour the work she is doing growing her baby and about making sure she feels cherished and held towards those last few weeks – It’s not about blue or pink balloons!
Arvigo Mayan Abdominal Massage (Mayan Tradition)
This beautiful tradition is not a single event, but rather something that has been passed down through generations to support fertility, pregnancy, and postpartum recovery. It is a practice where women gather to perform gentle abdominal massages, believed to promote a healthy pregnancy and ease labor. Talk about ancestral strengths – I love this.
Pregnancy Cradling (Ghana, Akan Tribe)
In certain Ghanaian traditions (and this holds a soft spot for me because my mum was born in Ghana) a pregnant woman is surrounded by elder women who cradle her belly and chant blessings. This is meant to ensure the safe arrival of the baby and provide emotional and spiritual support. Can you imagine the power of this, as opposed to a tea party or similar where mum-to-be is shattered and overwhelmed in both love and stuff!
There are more, but you get the point. None of these traditions are about ‘stuff’ or performance. They are about community, village, support, all things that are essential in our life and parenting, and yet things that we are deprived off in the society we live in.
These rituals and community make a difference. They start our mothering journey off in a space of sacredness and wisdom; when the wise women gather in love and joy to celebrate, it is a passing down of power and magick. Yes it sounds witchy, because it is! It so beautifully is.
I’m running pregnancy yoga classes now in Helensburgh and this is what I want to share with the gorgeous mamas coming to stretch and connect with their babies; the rituals and relationships we forge that sustain us are so much more essential that capitalist systems want us to believe. I haven’t decided if I will yet, but I’m feeling really drawn to doing a ceremony at the end of this block of classes. Inspired by, but not imitating the traditions from around the world, I’d make my own mothers blessing ceremony, because though yes the wisdom is celebrated in different ways, ultimately there is an innate wisdom within all of us. Our ancestors birthed us, and we birth the future. We are the ancestors of our great great grandchildren, and honouring that feels incredibly special.
That’s it for tonight, thanks so much for reading,
Ti’s the season… to be really honest about the phases of parenting that can look really dark and despairing sometimes, especially for neruospicy folk. It might be the new year and all that in the Gregorian calendar, but here in the northern hemisphere, the earth is still deep in her slumber, the days are dark, and as mammals, we should be curled up in the warmth in community, not isolated and out in the cold at all hours of the day.
The last few weeks of festivities and house move have been a real rollercoaster for me parenting wise, and now, I’m taking the time to record and reflect on them. I had been having a really tough time with K, with major meltdowns night terrors multiple time a week. Night terrors are especially scary because at least in my experience, my child isn’t really there at all, they look like themselves but actually have no resemblance to the sweet or fun personality of the kid I know. I’m grateful he’s my 3rd child, because I am aware this happened with both my older children and that this stage doesn’t last forever. That said, when you’re in it, in that moment, it feels like forever, especially when 20 minutes can cause so much damage. The screaming and rage is scary and hard, trying to keep them safe, from each other and themselves, trying to hold on to the knowledge that this is their primal brain, and that they are not consciously or willingly trying to hurt you … but then comes the after, and the pain I feel when the little sobs haven’t quietened yet and I’m stroking their face wondering what I can do to help. It is one of the hardest, darkest parts of parenting I have ever faced. It is one of the loneliest too, because who talks about how their kids tore the room apart or screamed that they wanted to destroy everything in the depths of feelings… nobody I know does.
I do sometimes to be fair, and when I have done so, the looks of horror or surprise, or then relief (depending on who I’m talking to) are always so visible. It’s hard though, and when people don’t understand, it’s easier to make small talk.
I’m really fucking bad at small talk though.
So I share … and recently I share more. The hardest bits, like when A told me she didn’t want to exist anymore because she was so sad in the middle of the night. Or when we played a game at the park, she didn’t fully understand it and thought she’d lost, and screamed and scratched for 45 minutes once we’d made it home, telling me we should have never started that game and she wanted to cut her jacket to pieces. I looked at her and saw that in this game and her reaction, she had created the perfect storm to play out her feelings of not getting what she wanted. She was bubbling over and trying to process her lack of control, and because children speak and heal through play, this was her doing the work of healing.
Thankfully, we have the resources to see that, to resource them, and to repair when ruptures are made. That night, as she sobbed in bed, and said she didn’t know why she’d found it so hard, I held her and said seriously “there is literally nothing you could ever do to make us stop loving you. You cannot hurt us, and we will keep everyone safe as much as we can, but your feelings are always allowed.”
I read the other day about how resources for emotional regulation and tools for a safe nervous system are a form of generational wealth and honestly I love that. These are tools that yes feel foreign to me at times, but are going to be (hopefully) passed down for generations to benefit from. Teaching them and learning with them is healing, for all of us.
I think this literal dark season of winter correlates with some of the darker hours of motherhood, and I am grateful to find moments to reflect, breathe, practice on my mat or go to the woods and let the trees and river hold me in my processing. The depths these kids feel… it scares me. And it’s a mirror. They are highly sensitive and notice everything, but so do I. As a kid, I didn’t understand it. In fact, even into my 20s I didn’t… and I still struggle now. As a neurospicy house, we all feel deeply, H too, though he says less words, and P in his own way tells us through his games or stories or sensory seeking comforts. We are all looking forward to the light.
Lighter days and lighter loads. It isn’t forever, and as the seasons cycle, we do too. Every year, these months around Christmas and cold are, in their own ways, a challenge. Every year, in the midst of it all, I wonder if it will last forever. And every year, we grow, we hold each other, we cry and we laugh, and we get really honest about much we miss the sun.
This year, the lightness feels closer, as we settle into a new space, and we ride the waves of all that comes with big transitions, we exit the festive period and move into new beginnings, not in the Gregorian calendar sense, but in a whole family, new home, new spaces, new learnings and new resources kind of way. I am learning that the more honest I am about the darker seasons of parenting, the lighter they end up becoming.
This might not be the end of all the hard moments this season, and I guarantee there will be more rollercoaster days to come, but right now, sitting with it I am beyond grateful for the cracks shining through these dark hours, and for the darkness – because it is in these hours that I really see just how imperfectly human we all are. I’m sharing it in the hope that someone like me will find it, and feel a little less crazy, a little less lonely and a little more hopeful about their own magick darkness – not to romanticize it or glorify the chaos, but because when I’ve dug deeper, survived those minutes and hours, and loved on my little ones even harder than before, I am reminded that allowing them to feel this means it doesn’t get stuck in their little bodies. Allowing them to feel it means that maybe one day, they’ll be holding space for their own babies, and find it easier than I do … and that is important work.
When I first learned about how in Chinese medicine birth is seen as a depleting life event, it felt contradictory to everything I’d ever read birth was “supposed” to be.
Surely having a baby was a rich, life giving event that left you full and feeling blessed and whole right? But no, in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) birth is an event that requires a lot of jing, and depletes the qi and blood within the body. It puts pressure on the kidneys and takes the warmth out of a woman’s body, so where she was full of the warmth of an extra life, with extra blood and vital energy through her pregnancy, the energy is used in labour and by the time baby is earthside, her body is emptier and depleted. Essentially what I learned was, yes having a baby is a beautiful life event, and it requires massive amounts of life force energy. Both things can be simultaneously true.
By this point I’d had 3 babies already, and I hadn’t respected the sacredness of postpartum any of those times. In fact, with my 2nd, I was up and out in the Scottish December cold just 3 days after she was born. With my summer babies, I didn’t rest either, and I indulged in ice creams and cold drinks, not understanding the impact letting more cold into my body would have.
From this experience then, and from work with women in the past few years, I have really leaned into the wisdom of traditional Chinese medicine, and deeply respect the many cultures that prioritise a rest period postpartum, where women can rest, rebuild their stores of warmth and qi, and honour their recovery from birth while bonding with their babies.
In Chinese Medicine, there is a 40 day period of recovery. These 40 days are essential for warmth, healing, and vitality, and the wisdom of it says that if a woman lets cold into her body, through food or exposure, in these first 40 days, the result will likely be an impact (negatively) on her mental health down the line. Of course, postpartum depression, anxiety and other mental health struggles are not solely related to the first 40 days, and we can absolutely see there are elements of privilege and resources that impact families too, but the idea that we could radically influence that first year within the first 40 days is fascinating to me.
Learning this revolutionised the way I taught postpartum doula-ing, it changed the way I would offer support postpartum, and when it came to having my 4th baby, it radically impacted the way I planned my own resting period.
I didn’t manage 40 days indoors – I’ve got 3 older kids so that was always going to be stretch; but I did give myself 12. I prepped warm foods, accepted food from friends, asked my mum to come visit and mother me in my own newness again, and strictly stayed away from cold foods, drinks, and winds. It wasn’t perfect, but it was my own adapted honouring of the learnings TCM has given me.
You know that saying, if its worth doing, it’s worth half arsing? Or done is better than prefect? This was my approach. I knew following the teachings of TCM would be beneficial, and whether that was doing it at 90% or doing it at 15%, I would gain warmth and energy to keep up with my older kiddos in the long run.
7 months later, I can see and feel the gift of those slow weeks, and it influences the way I show up even more to support others. Prepping for postpartum with a lens of ancient traditions is something I think more families should have access to. A slow, warm, hygge filled postpartum, with nourishing foods and a support bubble that shows up for you, with no need to mask or entertain or host them, is what I wish I could give every new mother no-matter how many children she has. It is through this rest and healing that we start parenting not in burnout or depleted and traumatised, but full of life and feeling supported. Imagine a whole generation raised by families who aren’t in their survival responses – what a change that will make on the world! This is the impact of TCM (and other ancient wisdoms)… if we learn and listen.
The way a baby is born impacts them on some level for their whole life.
The way they are born. The people around them. The environment they enter this world into.
Baby’s born into war carry that, (if they survive) into the life they live and it physically alters the DNA of their decendants. This has been heavily weighing on my mind this week, as we watch the events in the middle East unfold- with little to no voice given to the reality birthing women and babies are facing.
Baby’s born into immense privilege carry it too… though not always in the ways we might assume. Privilege often equates to a certain amount of resources over and above others. In the birth world, it’s a little more nuanced than that.
Assuming that you’re birthing outside of a war zone then; what impact does the environment of birth really have? It matters deeply, not just for babies but for mothers and partners too.
We cannot prepare for the future without embracing the meaning and the relevance of the baby’s perspective on life.
-Michel Odent
We know that mothers birthing in supported environments where they feel safe and nurtured pass this information on to their babies. The same is true for mothers who birth in conditions of big T and little t trauma. From hospitals to birthing centers to home births, the space you birth will shape everything from the medical interventions used to the emotional atmosphere surrounding your birth. After numerous conversations about why thinking about this as early on as possible matters, I thought I’d write a little on it.
Choosing where to give birth is a deeply personal decision. The assumption that everyone has the information and resources to choose the way they want is one I just cannot make. Socio-economic factors come into play, race, ethnicity and culture too. In the UK (at least at the time of writing in 2024), you can legally choose where you birth, and that choice can absolutely impact the way your birth story plays out.
Ultimately, its your choice, so get informed! There are far too many women told they can only birth in hospital when truly they do have other options. Equally, if the idea of birthing anywhere outside a hospital gives you shudders, then planning that ahead matters.
I want to preface the next few passages by highlighting that ultimately I believe every single baby comes earthside in the way they need to, with their unique birth resourcing them in various ways.
What are your options?
Hospital, Birth Centre, Home. I won’t chat freebirth, that’s for another day.
Hospitals are the high tech options, sold to us as high safety, but also the space where the highest levels of birth trauma exist. Hopstials are supposed to be safe – and when they work, they are a blessing. More and more though, especially for women who have no or low ‘risk’ factors the hosptial birth story isn’t a happy one.
Hospitals represent the standard choice for childbirth, they are normalised in the media we consume right from childhood, and other spaces are considered ‘alternative’ or even a little radical. There are an array of medical interventions and expertise available, with health care professionals and a full range of technology on hand to monitor baby and mother throughout labour. There’s access to all sorts of interventions and pain relief options, and of course surgery.
While a cesarean birth can be lifesaving; for many of us in the birth world, we can see that it is the interventions prior that snowballed a healthy birth into an emergency. The conveyor belt system of induction and cesarean births is all a bit too neatly boxed up; and it takes away from the rite of passage birth physiologically is.
Hospital births are often a ticket to the trauma train because procedure trumps real life experience, and women are often gaslit, ignored, or violated. Circling back to babies, this also means babies are being ignored, assaulted and sent the information that the world is scary and unsafe.
Birth is nearly never an emergency, but sometimes it is. If you need to prioritise safety with medical resources, then a hospital birth is a blessing.
If you don’t… Read on.
A birth centre/midwife unit:
Birth centres are often described as kind of like the middle ground between hospital and home. They’re quieter, often offer a pool, can have the lights dimmed and try to be as warm and cosy as possible. Most birth centers will try to encourage birth to be as intervention free as possible, and I’ve heard of some beautiful birth stories with supportive staff in them.
However, with the ever increasing agenda to streamline birth (and yes this is the agenda), more birth centres are being closed or told they can’t operate fully because of staffing levels. Midwife units cannot support birthing women if they aren’t supported themselves; which means being able to access these is getting harder. Added to this is the fact most of them are for babies being born physiologically with little / no risk, and will turn away women who don’t their box.
This isn’t without reason, birth centres aren’t equipped to navigate emergencies or complications, and so err on the slide of caution. Birth centres can be some of the most beautiful, supportive and nurturing spaces, and midwives often go above and beyond to make them so… but they need to be given the resources for that to happen.
Home births:
For a healthy woman, the first intervention in birth and labour is leaving home. This is something I learned only after my 2nd child, and having had both hospital and home births myself, it is something I wholly believe to be true. As a woman, I know my homebirths were far more positive than my hospital ones, and I only got here through research and experience.
As a doula who wholeheartedly supports informed choices, I will never tell a potential client where to birth, but I will absolutely encourage you to really think about what that means to you.
Homebirths are growing in popularity, becoming something many mothers return to. I don’t see this as a a coincidence, it is a remembering. A remembering that sovereign birth is something we all have the right to. A return to reclaim the power of birth. Homebirths are in the comfort of your own space, so autonomy comes more naturally. You aren’t entering someone else’s space, they are visiting yours as a support system for you.
You can choose the environment, the lights the music etc, and if you decide you want to transfer, then that’s okay. It’s a choice you make. For first time mothers, there’s evidence to say that home births are far less traumatic, bonding feels easier and healing is quicker. Because in your space, generally speaking you feel safer, therefore all these processes don’t need to be big and hard, they can flow with ease. You can take breaks, chill out, zone out, and rest without interruption or inspection. There’s a reason mammals find/create dark quiet spaces for birthing, it is a primal instinct to do so. Humans like to think we are different, but hardly so.
Before I sign off, I have a question for you. Did you birth in more than one of these settings? What were your experiences of thr difference ? If you feel called to and safe to share, get in touch. I’d be honoured to hear from you.
I’ve been thinking about birth plans a lot recently. About how we approach them as a society, how women are often told one of 2 things – that they must make one for their team to be on the same page, or not to bother because nobody’s going to read it anyway. Birth is treated like a ‘to do list’ activity, with no real consideration of the humans it involves.
I’ve been thinking about how these 2 polarising options presented to mothers-to-be are focusing on how birth plans are impacting other people. They are either necessary for autonomy and choices to be honoured- but are they? Or they are a hinderence and going to be ignored. Neither of these give any consideration into how a pregnant woman (and their partner) is impacted by creating these plans.
So who is a birth plan for truely, if not for the person who’s body is actually going to open and bring life earthside?
Heres my twopence.
Your birth plan isn’t for your team. It isn’t pointless. It doesn’t have to be meticulously planned. Your birth plan can be scribbled on a notebook, voice noted into an app, created with deliberate and careful care, or anything in between.
Whether you’re planning a freebirth, home birth, hospital birth or an elective cesarean, making a plan is one of those things that comes up as a “must do” while you prep for birth, and yet nobody really explains why. It’s for you. It’s for your partner if you have one. It’s for your baby. Because in making a plan, setting intentions for how you want the story to unfold and talking about it, either in your head or out loud, you are communicating with your baby, letting them know there is a plan.
When you change the way you view birth, the way you birth will change. ~ Marie Mongan
We (individually and collectively) can’t control every little thing that’s going to happen, because the nature of birth is that it is unique and out of our control every single time. That said, when we don’t plan, then we don’t really know what we want. In birth, and in life, it’s important to know where our boundaries are.
If you don’t know what you want, then you don’t know what you don’t want.
When you make a plan, you get to decide what is a non-negotiable, and what you’re willing to be flexible about. You get to prepare for this immense transition, and stand in your power through it. In the same way that athletes visualise their win, you can visualise the birth story you want to create with your baby. By doing this, you’re energetically telling the universe that this is the plan- even without writing a single thing down.
I will always say, write things down. When you do, the neurons in your brain form stronger pathways, and your intentions are built with stronger foundations. But even if pen never touches paper, even if not a single plan or intention is spoken out loud, just by visualising it, you’re on the way.
Okay Rohana but is 1 birth plan enough? What should I include? What happens if I want to have a water birth or a home birth and then things change? What if I’m planning a cesarean? Where do I start?
I asked myself all of these questions and more when I was planning my most recent birth. I had made birth plans before, but this one was a freebirth, so I wanted to be extra resourced. I thought long and hard, I journalled, I visualised, I made lists and researched a lot… and I ended up with 3 plans. For me, 3 was enough, for someone else, it might be more.
From those plans, I’ve created this checklist for you, so you can spend more time in the zone of creation and build your support bubble, and less time fretting about whether you’ve thought about everything.
Mostly I tell clients that if they’re making a plan, 2 – 4 plans is best, not to just make the 1. Why? Because there is so much possibility and I’m the kind of control freak (in some areas of life) that needs to prep for the various scenarios ‘just in case’. Creating 1 ideal, everything goes right plan, and 1 emergency plan is the minimum… then there’s the option to flesh out interventions, changes and variations in the middle.
It might like a lot of work, or like youre considering all the ways things could go ‘wrong’, but actually youre taking your power into a situation, where if anything less than your ideal plan happens, you are still sovereign and prepared. It means you’re not throwing your hands in the air or just hoping for the best. It means you are advocating for yourself and for new baby, and if your birthing within the system -regardless of the way you intend to birth- this advocacy is an immensely important muscle to be flexing right from the start.
So, should you make a birth plan – the short answer is yes.
The long answer, is you should make multiple, with different scenarios and different supports. You should advocate hard, and build a foundation of cheerleaders who will hold space for you and nourish you while you labour. You should make your plans in a way that feels good… in a way that is a kind of self care exercise, and a way that bonds you and baby even more. You should share your plans with those who’ll be around, and talk to baby about how you want them to arrive. Make many plans, and resource yourself to aim for the number 1.
Did you know, doing something for 40 days rewires our neurobiology?
It’s stronger than a habit.
It’s why, many yoga practices, or meditations etc do 40 days…. its a magic number.
When I committed to these 40 days, I was feeling really unsure, given that our house move is now in 3 days, I knew it would be a push, but actually, it has been such a grounding gift to be able to reflect and hold space for myself. To show up and to say, even when I don’t want to, I will.
I adore writing. I adore reading too, though I do far less of it than I’d like.
I used to think, I’d need things to be on point or have a theme in order to show up. It has boxed me in.
Slowly the self-censorship shackles are being broken.
On that topic, last year, I set intentions around self censorship in my breathwork practice. I was feeling very caged in, and much of it was related either to my own self imposed ideas of what was okay or not, or from what I’d decided comments from those close to me meant. I was frustrated and angry. I wanted change.
My intentions were around letting go of self censorship that didn’t serve me. Allowing myself to step authentically into my voice and feeling able to speak my truth regardless of the voices around me. That didn’t mean to be cruel, it meant, I needed to tune in.
A year later… I’m reflecting on this and realising, the thoughts and intentions I protected out then are my reality now without any real planning. I crafted it.
I won’t lie – it feels fu*king good!
Change isn’t instant…. but it comes. This process has been an anchoring of that.
I won’t continue to write every day, not specifically here at least. But I’ve got some incredible ideas for more shares that have been inspired the past 40 days; and I will continue to share on other platforms.
I consider myself a writer.
Writing is a part of who I am… and when I write, even (especially) if it’s just for me, there is magick in those offerings.
I’m off to write some more pages of intentions… crafting my reality for next year .. and beyond. I’ll leave you with this, a note I had written for myself in May 2023:
Why do we put so much pressure on ourselves and expect change or transformation to be instant? It’s like asking a pregnant woman to birth instantly, without allowing her the process and labour of love and transition she needs in order to bring life earthside. Our instant culture is ruining us… choosing slowness and ease is more radical every day.
From my journalling notes
If you’ve stuck with me these past 40 days, thank you. If you’ve been around longer, thank you. If you’re only just showing up, welcome.
There are many many transformations coming. I’m stocking up on spoons to be able to share them!
I hope you know, whereever you are, you are loved. You are important. You are powerful. You are so much more than enough.
I shared about my birth plans yesterday, but before that, I shared a little on my socials about it, in relation to our home ed, life and preparing for baby. One of the things that got picked up was about our placenta plans, which I fully get, because I have absolutely had alllllll the reactions going when people find out I not only keep my placentas, but I consume them!
The thing is, family isn’t always going to get it. Friends won’t either, but it’s a little different.
Our families are meant to be our safe space, the habour for our ship to dock in, as a friend so beautifully put it chatting the other day. They are supposed to be the people we turn to for support and encouragement… but more often than not, that isn’t how it works.
It used to bother me. I felt like I should appease people, and I was big in my fawn response around pretty much everything, but especially parenting as a new mum. I thought I should take all the advice and listen and implement and try and do things the same, so that we’d be more connected… or something like that. Rohana from back then had a lot of shit to sift through.
Now, I love being challenged and standing my ground. It feels shaky as hell, and I will have a felt sense reaction to it sometimes, but the more I’m challenged, the more I get to see why I choose the life I choose, and why I feel this way. I’m not mad or even affected by this particular issue, because though I was called ‘weird’ I actually love being weird. I love knowing that I am making choices in full autonomy and modelling that for my kids too.
So, when family doens’t get it, do we change, or do we hunker down and get clearer on our reasoning? The latter serves our mental health and relationship to ourselves so much more!
Navigating these situations isn’t always fun, and though I quite enjoy it now, I absolutely didn’t years ago… so if you’re reading this and resonating with the fawn and the discomfort, here’s some things that helped me a lot:
7-11 breathing (a winner in many many life situations)
Nadhi Sudi pranayama (my favourite)
Journaling … either free journaling where i brain dump on paper/in a book OR using prompts.
Voice noting myself – this has been one the most underrated healing techniques I have ever used.
And, watching my kids… anchoring myself in our life, and thinking about the life I am building for them. Watching them and reminding myself, I am the parent, and I am the one who has to live and answer to life choices later on, so what hurts my heart the least? I do that.
Supporting you from pregnancy to parenting 