09/09/2024
I’ve been running these day retreats for the past year and this was the final one for 2024.
I’ve had babies as young as 4 weeks old, women in their final days before birth, and women with multiple children experiencing each birth and motherhood journey completely differently.
Hopi was just 5 months old when I ran the first one - I’ve turned up to these retreats buzzing with energy, fatigued as hell, hungry, full of creativity, rife with brain fog, distracted - breastfeeding whenever little man desires each time. Facilitating with him right next to me. Teaching, holding, responding - it requires a well of inner resources but each and every time I name this experience and bring it to the space. This is motherhood.
And it can’t be anything other than complete honesty and transparency otherwise you crumble. The constant expectation (put on you and from you) will pull you into a pit. This part I am still learning but it is, I believe, at the crux of every difficult feeling toward and during motherhood.
The expectations of your child, yourself, your family dynamic, what you thought your life would look like, what your babies birth would be like, what you can give to other people, what you still have capacity for.
There’s a resonance in the room with these women. So much to say, but the quiet nods are often enough.
We will pass one another again, at different parts of our journey, but knew we received that well known look of admiration and the silent “I see you”, that is more than deserved.
A community, in flux. No expectation. Holding one another in the force field of motherhood.
Next retreat will be spring 2025. Cooking up an extended mother only journey for those that want to delve deeper into the initiation - TBC.
You mamas are 🔥
