The Unfolding: Parenting, Grief and Celebration

I have been journeying over the last few years to this moment, which feels like a birthing of sorts.

A birthing of ideas which feel so personally relevant to me as a mother, a woman, a human, pulling together the many threads that have been weaving within me and around me throughout my life.

Here is what I have realized.

Allowing myself to GRIEVE FULLY and CELEBRATE FIERCELY what happens on this transformative path of parenthood is completely necessary.

When I pay close attention and am supported to walk through what is emotionally hard for me, I am much more capable of supporting my daughter to handle her emotionally difficult times.

Based on my actual experience as a parent and of working with children and parents for 25 years in schools, I have found myself driven to care for the inner lives of parents, so they are capable of confidently and compassionately caring for the inner lives of their children.

Pause. Breathe. Cue flashback.

This has been being birthed ever since I was 20 years old and I began my own birthing process.

25 years ago I bought a book about birth on sale at Borders bookstore. The big orange $2.99 sticker stuck on the cover allowed a broke college student to follow the surprising whim that bubbled up inside her at the thought of reveling in the wonders of birth. I couldn’t pass up buying it and stashed it under my bed, hiding it, the way someone might stash something a little racier under theirs.  The love of the process of becoming a mother never left for me as I went on to conceive 3 daughters. One who is 15, one who lived her life up until 24 weeks in utero and another daughter who was lost through a miscarriage at 7 weeks.

I have been in love with BIRTH for a very long time.  And it was/is a journey full of grief and celebration. 

Along the same timeline, ever since I stepped into a home day care setting 25 years ago as a young college student in my child development class and sought ways to connect with the one child of color who deserved more than he was being offered, I have been slowly birthed into a social justice educator who works with, learns from and advocates for children and families.  

I thought most recently, after moving out of elementary school teaching and school leadership after 25 years of working in that capacity, that I might go back to school to become a therapist because I value supporting people to tend to their inner lives. Then I would finally have the legitimacy to do the thing I have always done in meetings with parents as an educator that (almost) always ended in tears, release and realization.

Then I thought maybe I would become a doula, because birth is so damn amazing and I want to support people in bringing babies into the world.

And then finally, I thought I would be a parenting coach because I work hard to be a protective, guiding force for my child while simultaneously staying positively connected to her and seem to always find myself supporting those around me to do the same.

And then, the pandemic hit. 

That's when Circles and Bridges, this endeavor that is endeavoring to be created, began it’s true gestation.

I tried to get it going before, a couple of years ago, but I wasn’t ready yet. Not in a way that I could be of real service to people without all my unresolved stuff splashing all over the place.

I needed a couple of years.

I needed time to regulate my nervous system. 

I needed time to learn about trauma and deal with how it has impacted my life through its impact on my body, my mind and my relationships.

I needed time to continue to reckon with my multi-racialness and the racial injustice that lived(s) within me and colonized(s) me, enacted upon and by my ancestors.

I needed time to be surprised, yet again, at the power of grief to shake out all my preconceived rules, like an emptying of the pockets of my heart, leaving me broken open, tired, yet deeper, more grateful, more convinced of the beauty of this human life.  

I needed time to listen to my dreams, the daytime ones and the nighttime ones, and reconnect to the part of me that plays in poetry, swims in metaphor, is guided by music and loves the hell out of being in community.

And I needed time to give up this idea of a traditional path to my next career by allowing all of my experience over the last 45 years to wrap around what was speaking to me as the medicine I personally needed. 

What showed up was access to thoughtful thinkers and teachers that moved into virtual formats because of the pandemic as a way to reach their students, allowing me to learn from guides from around the world.

I completed a long time dream of becoming a certified Hand in Hand Parenting Instructor. 

I trained in trauma informed practices.

I dove into learning the art of Birth Story Listening to heal distressing birthing experiences that impact a parent’s self-image and parenting experience

And, I sought extensive learning in the practice of Dream Tending as an unexpected way to bring depth and imagination into my ability to help clients.

As a result of these gestational years, I am closer to finding the code that opens a lock. A lock to a door that opens onto a landscape of full bodied, full-spirited, wholeness. 

To bring it full circle, I’ve discovered that what I am in love with about birth is that as humans we are birthed over and over through the act of parenthood and that we witness the birth and rebirth of these humans we call our children over and over again across their lifetimes as well. 

This being birthed and witnessing birth is full of grief and celebration. 

How do we carry this, hold space for this and move through this on our own?

WE DON’T.

We need Circles of support around us as parents because we can’t do this alone. We are not supposed to do it alone.

We can’t tend to our inner lives and cross the many thresholds of parenthood as whole, transformed people if we don’t have support.

Many of us have been taught to hide our grief and tamp down our joy for fear of being too much or selfish or boastful or needy or...inappropriate. 

We need to gather back up with others, to reclaim the tools for feeling, processing and metabolizing so we can cross the Bridges that present themselves as we grow up with our children.

When we can do this very unfrivolous, rebellious act, we free our children to grow and be in relationship with who we are NOW, with all of the humanness and brilliance that brings.

I’m glad you are here.

Let’s transform this path of parenthood together.