I struggled as a mother, and found it very challenging physically, mentally and emotionally to care for both of my children when they were babies. My daughter was my first child and I had lost my mother to cancer when I was 3 months pregnant. My son was growing inside me at the time of the Christchurch earthquakes and was born with severe reflux and digestive issues. He only slept for 1-2 (on a rare occasion 3) hour blocks for about the first 2 years, and then often it would take me several hours in the night to get him back to sleep. After that, combined with other stressful events like my father having a stroke, my body pretty much broke down and I developed multiple chemical sensitivity, chronic fatigue and depression.
Through it all I largely hid what I felt, and how much I was struggling. I would weep in private, and then put on a mask of calm and ‘happiness’ and carry on doing what I thought I had to do.
At the end of this post is a poem I wrote when my son was a baby, and a diary extract from just after I separated from my second husband. I expressed what I truly felt through my writing, but usually didn’t show that to anyone. I found it very hard to talk to people about what I was really feeling at the time that I was feeling it.
Fear and Shame
Fear and shame. Those are the two biggest reasons we hide what we are really feeling. We hide that we are struggling for fear of seeming weak or inadequate. We put on masks and personas to try and prevent ourselves from losing love, and from being rejected, but those masks actually create barriers which keep love out.
Learning to Love Myself
I have now learned to love myself for whatever I am feeling. Through using a variety of somatic, psychological and energy healing practices I have released most of my past hurt and unprocessed trauma and emotions. I still sometimes hide when I am upset – I am still a work in progress, but I now have greater confidence in myself to step into and through my fears. With practice I am getting better at telling people when I am feeling uncomfortable about something in the moment that I am feeling it. It takes courage, but I find that having practical skills to use to help me do this empowers me to step into this level of vulnerable connecting with others.
Learning to love myself and healing my emotional wounds with self-love has allowed me to love my children with greater openness, and to accept them as they are with compassion and curiosity as I do myself.
You Have All The Resources and Love You Need
For me reading back over the excerpts below feels like reading about a different version of myself from a different space and time. For you, reading it may feel like a reflection of your life right now. If so, know that there is always hope, and that you have within you all the resources and love you need.
When we allow thoughts of fear and shame to lead us to hide our struggles and resist asking for help, it can be very destructive to our physical, mental and emotional health.
Even more destructive than that is when we develop the belief that no-one will care even if we do ask. That is another limiting belief which I am deactivating in myself. Learning to love yourself is the foundational key for beginning to feel comfortable asking for and receiving help.
My ebook, 10 Steps to Happiness, is like a starter manual for learning to love yourself. It eases you gently into the process by first showing you ways to reduce stress, and the strength of binding emotions like fear and shame. This frees you up to begin accepting and giving to yourself more. Within each Step you are also given options to take things easier or go deeper depending on where you are at.
If you are a mother, I send you great love and want to tell you that you are awesome just for showing up as a mother. You are awesome for caring, and giving, and loving, and being there. You are awesome for being a mum. Take some time to appreciate yourself right now – for who you are and the love you feel.
The Hidden Hell
I cry a million tears in my hidden hell,
rise to my non-sleeping baby’s smile
and a world of misunderstanding.
Surviving through the long day
to face another long night
over and over
again and again
day after day.
So tired,
so tired of it all.
But plaster on a smile;
don’t let him see you cry –
Keep calm and carry on.
Every day I pick up the shattered pieces of me
and carry on.
2012
Some days I just feel sad. Sad and hollow. Sometimes with a little angry thrown in. I just don’t feel like dealing with people. And sometimes I feel like telling the whole world to just fuck off and leave me alone.
It’s those times that I feel the wounds on my heart – when I feel broken.
It takes a lot for me to open up to someone and sometimes – often – when I do I feel like I’ve been exposed, and I feel like curling back in on myself in a ball and shutting everything out again.
Sometimes I feel 50 fifty shades of fucked up.
Unlovable.
Ugly.
So I retreat into myself where it’s relatively safe.
And I tidy, so that I feel like I at least have control over something in my life: so that at least something in my life is in order. Resolving the chaos around me helps to resolve the chaos within me.
And I get outside in the garden in the hopes that it will soothe me. Restore me.
And I feel embarrassed that I feel this way: ashamed.
I don’t want anyone to know how deep I’m hurting.
I don’t want to seem weak, irrational, unstable, needy
“Don’t let them see you cry”
I don’t trust anyone to really care.
I’ve been hurt, rejected, too many times.
So I reject people first. It’s easier. Hurts less.
And I know that is about my lack of self-worth – that deep down, subconsciously, I don’t care enough about myself to feel worth asking someone else to care about me. I’m working on that.
And I know that those who love deeply, also hurt deeply. I don’t have a problem with giving love – just with receiving it.
It always passes eventually, the sad feeling, and I’m back to my more balanced self. I just need to retreat for a while and have some time alone or to get outside.
Eventually I will pick up the shattered pieces of me and carry on.
2016
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