Stretch marks on my heart and soul – the expansive journey of motherhood

Never mind stretch marks on my belly, of which I have plenty, I can assure you! But I sometimes feel I have stretch marks on my heart, my soul and every neuron in my brain!

 I remember when I was pregnant with my daughter (now almost 14) and someone said to me, get ready to have your heart living outside your body. What a funny yet accurate description of motherhood. Whatever my experiences in the past had been, I was wholly unprepared for the sheer vulnerability and heart-exposure of birthing and raising children.

Officially the postpartum period refers to the first six weeks after you have your baby. It’s the stage of childbirth where the bonding happens, breastfeeding becomes established and the mother begins to recover from the physical and emotional experience that is childbirth. It’s a different journey for every woman and no matter how things go; there’s a physical recovery to be made, varying levels of pain and discomfort until the body heals. Then, there’s the up and down emotional journey, sometimes ecstatic, sometimes exhausted - made more challenging by sleepless nights. And that’s just the beginning…

Of course in reality, the postpartum period goes on for months and years, it is part of the motherhood journey and begins a whole new life. It is transformative on so many levels that are impossible to imagine until your life is turned upside and inside out by them.

No matter how much you prepare or observe others, I learned, just like countless women before me and countless after, that bringing another being into the world, nourishing them and raising them is one of the most transformative processes there is. From pregnancy, when I first breathed into the knowledge that my body was no longer my own, to those early years where you orbit the same space and the years that follow as those boundaries expand and contract like continual contractions in the energy field between you. Each stage brings new delights, new challenges and new opportunities for personal growth.

 Just as they are taking growth spurts, stretching and reaching new heights and awareness, so am I, stretching my mind and emotions, reconfiguring my understanding of the world to include new viewpoints, new ways of communicating and new ways of being. Motherhood has sent me soul searching and digging deep into my past – examining my choices, morals, values and worldview.

As mothers, our priorities change, our mindset changes, our needs, desires, goals and dreams all undergo continual shifts. Although, on the outside it can appear as an apparently steady, unadventurous time - living in the same place long term, doing the daily grind, and all the experiences that go with that – in my experience it’s also one of the most internally transformative times.

 All of our relationships change and require new navigation, bringing a messy mixture, in my case at least, of joy, confusion and frustration. Our extended web of support and community changes as we raise children, and who we are among them is also a new story being written. Children push us to expand and question, to reinvent ourselves, to lose ourselves and find ourselves over and over again.

To them we must now explain loss, grief, anger, despair and the power struggles, misogyny, injustice and racism of the world. To them we must introduce boundaries, respect, transparency, confidence and wisdom, when this is a lifelong journey in itself and we have not mastered these things ourselves. There is a deep vulnerability in this journey and an amazing willingness to lay bare our hearts, to flounder and to pick ourselves up again and again.  One thing I’m learning and which I also encourage with my clients, is to be kind to myself in the process, not to forget that I’m still learning and expect the impossible, to accept my floundering warts-and-all self.

And once I embrace that softness, more and more, from all of that expansion, I’m encountering and nourishing new possibilities within myself. The new person I am growing into, the stretch I am taking into new thought patterns, new goals, new projects and new potential.  And I’m trying to do it with the same non-critical, listening heart I muster forth for my kids. Because even though I’m strong, I’m also vulnerable and I’m just learning too.

“In giving birth to our babies, we may find that we give birth to new possibilities within ourselves.”

– Myla and Jon Kabat-Zinn

Siobhán Daffy runs Natural Rhythms natural health practice, helping women find hormonal and emotional balance in their lives.