Fear suffering and being vulnerale

How do we feel vulnerable without fear, move through hard spaces through love and grace, experience pain without suffering, and building a community who will hold your hand while muddling through all the beautiful messy stuff? I have learned, and still learn everyday, that these questions are what give all humans a common ground - that we are all trying to figure this out. What ever the journey is, we are given these questions and must hold space for such binding concepts.

One major theme with the parent-infant dyad, or pair, after birth is that the postpartum person and newborn are on a similar learning curve for a while. Like a year or two, kind of while. The nervous system is learning how to regulate, the lungs learning how to expand and hold air, how to breath, the body slowly builds strength and learns to move, eat, and excrete, all while the heart learns to love and be cared for. So we see the postpartum state has this undeniable likeness to the infantile state - which, as the neonatal period turns into infancy as months go by, also includes learning to self soothe. In parenting, we find ourselves on a parallel learning curve with our dyad team member - learning to self soothe and readjust our perception of suffering into one of pain without fear. How about that?  

This is relevant when asked about the role of suffering and pain in childbirth. I think learning to move through suffering into a state of supported fearless pain a beautiful goal to work towards and achieve during labor and childbirth, and one that comes in handy as preparation and practice for the unpredictable messiness and pain of parenting. One chapter is meant to prepare you for the next, so without learning to move through suffering to pain then you don’t have the empowerment and self knowledge to carry you enlightened into your next chapter. 

To be clear, does this mean one must achieve a natural un-medicated vaginal birth as practice to good parenting. Nope. There are plenty of practice opportunities in a what ever path the journey takes a birthing person - the path of a medical induction, a disease process like diabetes or hypertension, a cesarean birth, and so on and so forth. My own mother’s labor helped prepare her for breast cancer, so she told me in reflection in the days after her double mastectomy decades later as we tended to the wound drains. My labor helped prepare me to survive and live again after I had my world flipped upside down with tragic news. Specifically the things I learned in labor that come in handy as I find myself parenting: feeling loved, mindfulness & self-compassion techniques, breath awareness, embracing the muddy process of surrendering to the process, calling for support people to witness and share the journey, and acknowledging the common humanity of suffering, loss and grief. Many of these reflections inspire the offering of Holistic Health Midwifery, and continue to serve a way to questions and learn everyday.