Falling in love with the Perfect Buddha too…
Posted by Goddess Leonie on February 1st, 2010. Filed under: Mama Goddess.
Confession time:
I never had a huge amount of faith in my body before I got pregnant. That scares me to write that – and yet it’s true. I love my body… and yet I never felt we were working on the same team.
I’ve always felt heavy, cumbersome, unco-ordinated. Always been unable to get the body to do and look like what I wanted. I was somehow not fully attached to my body, and didn’t feel totally confident in it. I always thought it would take me a long time to fall pregnant.
I wrote in a poem when I was sixteen:
Inside doesn’t look like outside should
Clearly I see now I’m misunderstood.
And I don’t know why I remember those two lines so well… but I just do.
So I got really surprised when my body took over eight months ago. It became pregnant. It started hurling up. It started detoxing everything out of my system. It made me stare at my hands, too sick to move, for five weeks. It put me into a mama’s cave, a cocoon, for the right amount of incubation time. It did everything that was needed.
Without me needing to control it. Without help from my ginormous brain. Without me needing to know what needed to happen, it did its own thing.
And it grew a little mermaid – a little mermaid who is so strong and healthy and happy in there. She’s just doing her thing, living her life, growing in her body inside my body.
I feel stronger and healthier and more in tune with my body than I ever have… we’re now *so* on the same team.
Every time Little Mermaid does her full body rolls, or bounces around, or lets us hear her strong heartbeat, I get so filled with pride. This warrior goddess is making a new warrior goddess. She is strong all of her own accord, and healthy… and that completely and utterly amazes me.
Today I went to our midwife appointment. I’m now 31 weeks – nine weeks to go or so before Little Mermaid is due to arrive in the world (whenever she chooses to come is perfect though). I asked our midwife when Little Mermaid needed to make her way down to be headfirst, and asked if she could tell me now how Little Mermaid was sitting.
And I lay down, and the midwife put her hands over my belly and prodded around, and showed me how Little Mermaid was lying in my belly – head right down, back curving around to the left, feet in my right side. Perfecto.
And yes – it’s still early days – baby’s usually settle down by about 36 weeks. But right now, she’s heading in the right and perfect direction.
It totally blows me away and cracks me open though… that Little Mermaid is doing what she needs to do though.
After all the lack of faith I had. After all the thoughts I had about my body.
You know how I wrote about being utterly okay with imperfection? My sweet mama even said to me: Darling, you sounded more surprised than anything that your pregnancy lasted to three months… you were so prepared for things to not go to plan.
And I think a part of that being okay with imperfection – and actually being surprised to be a three-monther – had a little bit to do with my lack of faith in my body. Some of it was about faith in the path, but a lot of that was lack of faith in my body. That somehow I saw my body as flawed, unhealthy, and unable.
When it’s so abundantly not the truth.
So maybe that’s the lesson I need to learn now…
to have that faith.
to see that my body can do amazing things.
to be surprised when things are going along perfectly.
And that’s the part that makes me laugh – at just how beautiful this world is, how beautiful Great Spirit is… and how we get given the lessons and medicine we need to learn.
I was so open and accepting of things not going in that “perfect” direction… that I am now being taught how to be open and accepting and trusting of natural perfection too.
After feeling like my body was just that thing to be ignored around me – the thing that had its own life – I am finally starting to feel like me inside my body. Like there is a goddess inside here, and a goddess on the outside too.
Yus… Great Spirit gives us just the teachings we need…
to fall in love even more with ourselves… with this world… with this journey… with each other.
No matter how things go,
that is the truth.
I’m glad you are you.
P.S. If this presses any of your buttons, I’m truly sorry. I know all subjects around perfection/imperfection and mamahood are challenging ones. What is perfect for my journey may not be perfect for yours… and that is the beauty of all of us living our different, gorgeous journeys.
February 1st, 2010 at 1:26 pm
Oh gorgeous Goddess! I can so relate to that! Let me tell you, the birth and breastfeeding will make you realise that these words are preparing you for the most amazingly potent body affirmation that you can ever imagine! It’s true, some births don’t go as planned and not everyone can successfully breastfeed but the process and allowing your body to do what it has to do is the most incredible feeling and sadly the only part the males or birth/life partner miss out on experiencing. They look on in fascinated amazement and you never feel so loved! My two births were completely different, Nate was a 17 hour labour, all natural, not even gas, floating in a huge tub only for my body to take over and I found myself in a trance-like state and gave birth standing up! With Abbey I had complications and completely unprepared I was admitted to hospital and had to have a Caesarian 5 days later and on my own but my sister came in with me and we were laughing, joking and then as the doctor pulled my baby out he exclaimed ‘It’s a healthy baby girl!’ and I was crying with sheer delight as I had asked to know the sex and was told I was having a boy! Two completely different births but so incredible in their own right! Nate is almost 15 and Abbey is 3, they are my greatest achievements and nothing will ever top them! I am thrilled to hear your journey, it’s making me so clucky! So now I love my stretchmarks, love my womanly figure, I might not be model material but I am maternal material!!! I look at my beautiful photos that my sister took a week before I had Abbey and I LOVE them!
Much love to you both!
Liza xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
February 1st, 2010 at 3:40 pm
Dear Leonie,
I love this post…I love the openness and the honesty and the sheer joy you are experiencing in this mama process. I have never been pregnant and I am not sure children are in the cards for me, this lifetime anyway…but I can relate to what you are saying in getting connected to your body. I am on that journey now as well…learning to trust my body, to listen to what it needs and to love my body…Thank you for posting this.
Much Love,
Goddess Laura
February 2nd, 2010 at 12:30 am
Wow leonie, thnakyou so much for writing these words. I think self love and body image is such an interesting topic and is so very important to discuss openly. I think its an ongoing journey and such an important one. i just love being in the space when im totally happy with my body and feel sexy – its such a natural high xxxx
February 2nd, 2010 at 1:47 am
So so beautifully written, honest and true! Thank you for sharing your lessons with us. As women, I think we are assaulted from day one with messages and images that our bodies are something to be “worked on” “fixed” or altered in some way. Even when I thought I had made friends with my body, there were still deep roots of distrust that needed to be pulled out. I’ve learned over the years that always my body will let me know the things my “gi-normous” brain is busy distracting me from seeing. Injuries, illness have all taught me where i’ve been out of alignment with my spirit and have forced me to slow down and change my harmful ways of being or thinking.
Having gone through miscarriages, I felt like my body had betrayed me when in fact it was doing was it was supposed to do; my path to mamahood was to be a different one than I had envisioned and my body still prepared me for the mega-enormous love i would experience when i finally held my daughter in my arms. The lessons I learned through that challenge made me more open and ripe for the miracles I would witness as a mother. It is all beautiful and amazing!
And now i am moving into another cycle of my life and am having to rephrase some of the attitudes given to me about my changing body. One dear friend sees herself reconnecting to the universe through her belly button and boy, the heat certain flows that way! Definitely new lessons to be learned about myself and this vehicle which allows me to experience so much.
I cannot wait to read about the lessons your little mermaid teaches you and Chris – what an awesome adventure you all are on! It just gets better and better (and harder and more juicy and divinely beautiful)
{{big hugs}} lis
February 2nd, 2010 at 2:24 am
Bodies are such amazing things! I’ve been avoiding mine like crazy for quite a while out of not wanting to hear what it was telling me, and now that I have faced the biggest part of what was keeping me away I’m down for the count with a huge relapse of a chronic condition that makes just about everything difficult. Thank you for writing about your journey to learning to be on the same team and being in your body… I needed to hear somone else’s story, too.
February 2nd, 2010 at 3:08 am
Oh my dear sister Leonie…your words touch my heart as today is the day I celebrate my two angel babies. I wrote a post in my blog about it if you have a moment to read. Bless you and thank you for sharing your journey to motherhood in such a profound sacred way.
February 2nd, 2010 at 4:04 am
oh leonie…this made me well up with so much peace and joy for you and your sweet wee mermaid. *sigh* so beautifully shared.
February 2nd, 2010 at 4:16 am
I had the same feelings with my daughter. And, I can just tell you, its only the beginning! Your body is going to amaze you! Trust yourself, your intuition. You are so beautiful, and make my heart so happy!
February 2nd, 2010 at 4:24 am
What an awesome and powerful revelation. Your connection with your self and your “acceptance” are what make you so strong, so emotionally solid.
And I LOVE that pic!!!! Adorable!
Yes, your little bebe knows exactly what she’s doing….how could she not? I admire the closeness you have with her. When you meet her, it will be like you already know her.
Get as much bliss out of these next few weeks as you can!!!!!
February 2nd, 2010 at 5:19 am
Pregnancy did a number on me. I planned for the natural birth and got every complication under the sun. It’s such a *thing* to do, you just have to surrender and just go with it.
Good luck!
February 2nd, 2010 at 3:12 pm
you are GORGEOUS, goddess!!!
and isn’t this being in our bodies just one more thing to love love love about being able to be a mama this way. i have never felt healthier and more at peace in my skin than when a baby was growing in my bel.
SO much love to you, nurturing warrior woman.
February 2nd, 2010 at 4:55 pm
That was a nice post. I wish I had felt that way during my pregnancy, but I’m sad to say I didn’t. I’ve always had a pretty good relationship with my body, but I hated it when I was pregnant because I felt mildly crappy and weak most of the time, and I couldn’t control it the way I’m normally able to. But now I’m happy with it again. I’m glad you are now happy with yours.
February 2nd, 2010 at 5:28 pm
I cried reading this. My litte boy should arive sometime in the next 14 weeks and I am super excited. But I never felt like my body could really handle itself either. I lost a baby 2 years ago and I just assumed that the same would happen this time and that my body couldn’t really be trusted to take care of itself and a baby. Well at 26 weeks me and my baby are both doing great. Just today I woke up with a migrain becasue I haven’t been sleeping like I should so my body forced me to rest. I trust my body now to do what it needs to do and to tell me what I need to do for it. Thank you so much for writing this post. It spoke to my heart.
~Sarah
February 3rd, 2010 at 2:49 am
………….yeah i LOVE how you photoshopped the picture of the baby into the photo…..i love that…and the little mermaid cartoon aswell………..thats a really creative way to make the photos even more beautiful……you could create loads of collages with that kinda thing……. awwwww i would so make you one if i lived near by you………:))) very inspiring……xxxxxxx