I'm not gonna make it.
I want to tell you a story about how it is that I’m running on fumes and why I’m slowing way down. It relates to motherhood and stamina and everything I have ever taught you here.
I’m not sure where to start.
Maybe with the pregnancy that started in 2017.
The Pregnancy
It was a hard pregnancy. On and off nausea and food aversions all the way through. Crippling fatigue that gave way to insomnia. I never reached the ease and energy I had after the first trimester during my pregnancy with my first son.
As I approached my due date, I can remember weeping in my midwife’s office, saying, “I’m so absolutely spent from having not slept that I am genuinely worried about being able to make it through labor.” I knew what would happen if I got too tired to labor. I knew the chance of being transported to a hospital, of induction, of a repeat cesarean.
Nothing I was doing was working. “Take CBD,” she said.
And it helped. It wasn’t amazing. It didn’t fully solve the problem, but I stopped swirling in absolute exhaustion and panic about that absolute exhaustion.
The Labor
Which is good. Because I had another long labor - 36 hours - and needed every ounce of physical and mental energy available to bring that chid earthside. During delivery, I also hemorrhaged. It didn’t last long - the midwives were fast with Pitocin to get it to stop - but I lost enough blood that they didn’t want me to get up at all, not even to pee.
I share all of this to say that this is how I physically entered round two of motherhood: depleted. (I make the distinction here around physical depletion because it’s really important to note that I also had the exact opposite experience relating to the psyche: I was on a total high!)
The Postpartum Period + A Return to Work
In the early postpartum period, I took it suuuuuper easy. I stayed in bed. My acupuncturist visited me at home. A friend came to do ayurvedic bodywork and I hired a cranial sacral practitioner to do the same. A postpartum doula came once per week.
Gradually, life returned to “normal.” I was getting more sleep than I had in the pregnancy. My body felt really good. I was recovering beautifully!
A few months postpartum, I returned to a bit of work. And then a bit more. Within a year postpartum, I was in full swing, running a brand new program, creating and filming loads of new content and holding space for 25 women.
All of this was good and pleasurable and what I wanted. This post-birth period feel like full on flow and joy and intuitive navigation. I remained on that high from my very empowering HBAC.
But then I stopped sleeping again.
I had recently starting doing some methylation work and hormone balancing and thought perhaps that was it. But stopping all supplements didn’t change a thing.
I did my inner work. I did my outer work. I drank teas. I picked up more CBD. I tried new sleep supplements. I entirely eliminated caffeine. I had blood work done.
Sleep would improve a bit here and there. Mostly with inner work and time outside. But it wasn’t trackable and it would only last a few days before I’d be back to some version of insomnia. Sometimes I couldn’t go to sleep at all. Sometimes I would wake in the middle of the night for several hours. Sometimes I would sleep lightly all night. Sometimes I would be wide awake after just a few hours of rest. Naps weren’t on the table.
Desperation set it. Fear. I dreaded nighttime. I never knew what was going to come. Nothing I did ever consistently helped. I was often in tears of desperation, afraid of sleep, afraid of the next day.
The Solution
Then a mentor suggested I return to acupuncture (why hadn’t I thought of that?) and I simultaneously doubled down on self-care, bathing most nights before bed and keeping life super chill. OH THE SWEET RELIEF!
After those four months of excruciating pain, I started to feel well again. To sleep without worry. To awaken energized. My acupuncturist said that I remained depleted from pregnancy/birth/breastfeeding and we needed to build blood, so each week we worked on building blood.
The Covid
And then there was Covid.
Covid.
The great taker-awayer-of-things like acupuncture.
Without acupuncture, sleep started to slip away again. The strange patterns returned. And with it, my own suffering.
I want to pause here.
I’ve written before about sleep being one of my greatest messengers. If I’m not sleeping, I know I need to pay attention to something somewhere in my life. Insomnia has led to some pretty important awarenesses in my life and so, overall, I trust it.
During these six months or so, I would find partial answers to my sleep issues by making use of my Figure It Out Practice and other tools, like those in Embodied Essentials. I received many clear, insightful messages about what I needed to do and adjustments I needed to make throughout many parts of my life simply by “dialoguing” with sleep.
But one of the things acupuncture had shown me is that there was a really basic component of my physiology that needed intense, acute care in order to function well. That the larger message of my insomnia was: “You don’t have the resources you need. Get physically resourced.”
So back to our story. :)
During lockdown, I did acupressure, took Melatonin and tried to be patient. I would occasionally have a few good nights.
When Covid restrictions eased, my acupuncturist was one of the first people I called. But progress has been slower this round. Sleep has had more ups and downs. My pulses remain weak, thin, constricted. The blood deficiency is deeper.
The Revelation
Yesterday, I had an acupuncture appointment. In our conversation, it became clear to me that I wasn’t making much progress toward resolving the depletion that started nearly three years ago, when I got pregnant. I’ve been holding steady, at best, in a depleted state. I’ve gone almost three years with near constant output - mostly to creating and sustaining a small human and then also to creating and sustaining my work - and, FOR WHATEVER REASON, haven’t been resourced enough to physically overcome the effort of this work. This, despite my best efforts. Despite my knowledge. Despite everything.
Maybe it’s my age. Maybe it’s the way I physiologically intersect with this specific child. Maybe it’s the high altitude after a lifetime lived at sea level. I DON’T KNOW.
What I do know is how serious this kind of depletion is. I work with women all the time who are under-resourced. I know how quickly health can turn from good-enough to horrible. I know the incidences of autoimmune disease that kick in after long periods of stress or childbearing.
On my drive home from acupuncture yesterday, it became clear to me that I needed a radical shift. That I’m done treading water. I returned to a state of deep trust in my body around this issue of sleep and found a willingness to meet myself more fully.
As Eminem says:
You better lose yourself in the music, the moment
You own it, you better never let it go
You only get one shot, do not miss your chance to blow
This opportunity comes once in a lifetime
The Medicine
So I’m taking my own medicine.
I’ve connected my heart and my body and see that my body needs more than I’ve been giving it.
It needs so much more rest. So much more pleasure. So much more walking. So much less output, despite the mental energy I have available to keep creating. You know what I won’t be filling my work time with? More parenting.
After a brief conversation with my husband (“I didn’t realize how worried I’ve been until you said all of this”) and some time consulting my future self in meditation (“Oh, sweetheart, none of this really matters!”), I decided to take the next several weeks off and then to move at a more leisurely pace when I return.
This is inconvenient. I’m smack-dab in the middle of an amazing restructuring of my signature program, HeartBody Method, and have a lot of mental energy for the work. The next live round was going to launch next month. But my Self says to wait until January so that my assistant and I can take care of all that behind-the-scenes work without having to pack in every single moment of my work time.
It’s also really challenging to the part of me that has bought into “the system.”
Last night, I asked my husband, “Are you sure you don’t mind?”
“Mind what?” he said.
I searched for the right words awhile, before answering: “Are you sure you don’t mind me breaking my unspoken agreement with the capitalist and tyrannical drive for productivity?”
See? It gets me, too. Who am I if I am not a “productive” member of society? EVEN FOR A FEW UNEXPECTED WEEKS? What do I deserve if my entire attention isn’t on being of service and/or making money? In many ways, isn’t that what were were getting at in this video?
The Irony
One of my teachers talks about the driving nature of archetypes, about how they have an entire disregard for the physical body. I’m wondering if I’ve been so aligned with the archetypes of Healer and Mother and Teacher that I haven’t been able to see clearly that my body is not being held in the highest regard it needs.
Which is somewhat ironic, yes? Because, in a way, that is what I am always teaching YOU.
The amazing thing is that I’ve gotten really good at trusting myself when I am able to hear myself. I course-correct quickly (one of the reasons I have quit so many things: jobs, people, doctors, practices, online courses…).
It seems that yesterday, I heard something in myself that I hadn’t been hearing clearly. Importantly, I trust what I heard, despite my conditioning to do otherwise, despite the inconvenience, despite the discomfort I feel, despite the delay in be able to understand what I needed.
For You
I could have just sent out a quick note to my email list or set up an autoresponder. My work isn’t high-stakes enough for a few week slowdown to really matter. But I wanted to share this (rather long) story with you because actually meeting the body’s needs is something most women struggle to do, especially mothers. And mothers are routinely the most depleted group I’ve ever met.
The body is messy. Confusing. It takes time - and help - to understand what it is needing and communicating. Listening is a practice. Responding is a practice.
I also want you to know that there are ways of getting help. Of honoring where you are. Of getting really, really clear. In that spirit, I hope you’ll consider purchasing Embodied Essentials, which is always available to you. It has amazing practices to start you on this journey of trusting your body deeply.
The End
The truth is, I could keep going without a break. I have what it takes. I love my work. It is good to and for me. I could make a few adjustments to my time and see how that helps. I could, instead, wean my son so that I’m not being depleted in that way, and find more childcare.
But when I drop in, when I really listen, my body wants to find another way. It wants my full attention for a little bit so, together, we can see how to do this in a more sustainable way.
Preferably with lots and lots and lots of sleep.
Need help figuring out what you need to do next to take really amazing care of yourself?