Life is Life is Life, in Whatever Form It May Come

Well, I’m going to be a mother.  I’ll pause there for a minute, so the readers who may have emotions (a variety perhaps) might allow them to arise and settle down a bit before continuing….

I’d like to dig a little deeper into how I got here.  Don’t worry – I won’t be so detailed that you might get red in the face.  This isn’t that kind of blog.  But I hope that sharing my experience might be helpful, in whatever way, to anyone, parent or not. 

This has been a long journey for me.  When I turned 40, I made peace with the idea that I would never be a mother.  I didn’t have a partner and I had chosen not to embark on parenthood alone.  And then life threw me a joyous curve ball, and I met my partner, who also wanted to parent.  After two years of trying in all sorts of ways, we were unsuccessful.  The doctors informed us that we had three choices: stop trying, adopt, or use an egg donor.  I would never be a biological mother.  

After a tumultuous two years, I needed a break from any large decisions in my life, so I took several months “off” while I settled other areas of my life that had also been seismically shifting.  I also grieved, all over again, that I wouldn’t be a biological mother.

Part of what I did during this time is attend several virtual meditation retreats.  I exhaled.  I practiced just being aware, of whatever was present.  I didn’t ask myself any specific questions or have an end-goal of deciding what to do about parenting.  I just allowed myself to stop moving and working for a bit.

During one of those retreats, I was practicing a technique my teacher calls “Turn Back.”  It’s based on the Self Inquiry series of techniques, where, when you experience a sensory event, for example you see something, you thrust your attention backward toward the awareness that apprehends the visual object, instead of forward toward the visual object itself.  Or this technique can be practiced by enlisting your thinking mind, asking the question, “Who sees?”  (If you’ve never done this technique, no worries!  You may also like to try it :)))

So I was practicing Feel Back, which means I was noticing physical sensations in my body and then asking, “Who feels?”  Each time I did this, I experienced a not-unpleasant detachment from my body.  It wasn’t “MY” body anymore, it was simply “THIS” body.  Who feels?  This mass of cells and neurons.  Who feels?  Nature, awareness, life itself.  Not “me.”  Just this figment of nature that has organized into this particular body in this particular moment. 

I want to emphasize that I did not experience this as unpleasant.  On the contrary, it seemed quite freeing and light.  It felt good to detach and de-identify with this body in that way.  I had a direct experience that life is life is life.  Life happened to inhabit this particular body in this moment, the same as it inhabits my dog, Maple, and the tree shimmering in front of me.  It inhabits every person too, no matter who their biological parents are, no matter their actions, no matter if they are never aware that Life is moving through them every second.

I suddenly felt very at ease with whatever decision I made about becoming a parent, or not.  And even more specifically, the grief I had felt about never being able to birth a child who looked like me, or inherited some of my mannerisms or voice or skills or abilities, was just gone.  Not that that grief wasn’t real, or something to be acknowledged, respected and worked through.  But all of the sudden, the biological thread wasn’t as important because the physical form I was in, and would potentially pass on, wasn’t that special or important either.  The idea of ME and MINE just didn’t hold the same weight for me anymore.  Life is life is life, no matter the form. 

I was free to let go of the idea of motherhood altogether, adopt a child, or try an egg-donor.  Each of these options, while absolutely different in their forms and in how they might shape my life, was equally valid and valuable.  No doubt you have an idea about which option I chose to pursue.  And that has, and continues to be, its own journey, which I will share more about next month….