14 days in…

Then Spirit answered my question. That answer came in the form of a phone call from a woman named Asia that I had become friends with through her amazing abilities with animal communication. As a professional dog trainer at the time, I knew there were some animals that had deeper issues than what I could understand, and I knew there were people with other skills and talents that could “tap in”, so I sought some of these people out. After several sessions with Asia talking to my own dogs and some foster dogs, I knew I needed to learn more about this ‘woo woo’ stuff. So when Asia called me one afternoon to ask if I would be interested in going on a retreat with her to the Bahamas to swim with wild dolphins, I KNEW I needed to make it happen and that I’d ‘find my answer there’. 

That trip changed my life. Wild sting rays were the messengers for me, not the dolphins, although they were cool too…. The sting rays were old, ancient energy and felt wise and deep. The dolphins were young and playful and their energy was that of children and curiosity. So when my message was delivered to me by Asia in the Bahamian sunset on the back of the boat, I was forever altered. It was so deep, so profound, so accurate and hit me at my core, cracked open my soul. I came home from that trip a changed human. My connection with Spirit, my intuitive abilities, and my ability to follow my gut for answers all grew exponentially after that. 

I did a large amount of emotional purging, releasing, surrendering and learning to allow…. It had been 5 years of working on starting a family. We worked for a while on our nutrition, we changed our lifestyle and got rid of toxic cleaners, bathroom products, and started shopping differently. Switched to organic produce, then started to tune into reducing and eventually removing inflammatory foods. I invested heavily in chiropractic care and acupuncture as well as learning about supplements that my body would benefit from. Then, we did a whole body cleanse for two weeks and… We were pregnant. Naturally. We did what allopathic doctors told us we couldn’t do. Our first child, a son, was born when I was 27, almost 6 years after we started our journey. 

We were prepared for things to take time again so we were not as upset or worried when it took us a year of active trying for our second child, a girl, to come to us. We felt like we had cracked the code. The more we cleansed, ate better, eliminated crappy chemicals, the better and better we felt and looked. My Lupus symptoms were less and less and my mental health was better and better. What I wasn’t prepared for was that it would take no time at all for baby #3 to join us and just before #2 was a year, we found out we would soon become a family of five. 

Then came the crash. I was not equipped to deal with 3 young kids. The physical demands were enough, but the mental demands and the sleep, or lack of, was all too much for me. My husband was working full time out of the home and I was drowning. We had farm animals, were trying to create a homestead and keep up with the land and kids and animals was all too much. I broke and broke real bad. Mental, physical, emotional… all of the ways. I eventually figured out a way out of it (see my chapter in the Dare to Express Book 1 that I wrote on this subject)…. With my kids and we all learned together how to manage big feelings and hard situations. 

It took years to learn with tons and tons of opportunities to practice along the way. My health took years and years to recover. Stem cell treatments, aroma therapy, spiritual work and nutrition were all my main focus for healing. I had a strong drive to do the healing work, something I felt deep and internal that pushed me on. It took the form of two spirits. Every once in a while, I could feel them, sense them, almost see them. There were two of them and they hung out above my upper left shoulder about 3-4’ up. She was there all of the time. Like she was eating popcorn and watching a good movie. He, however, would flitter in, say hi, see what was going on, and then he’d pop out again. These two were there for years, urging me on, letting me know when I was on the right path, when I was “spiritually aligned” and doing what I like to call, ‘following the cosmic billboards’ that are directing me. They are what helped me to hold on when our marriage was crashing. They are what I clung to when the pain in my physical body was taking me over. They were reassuring and always made me feel better. I knew they were coming, I trusted they would and I didn’t question it this time or force it. I allowed it to unfold as needed. The first three had taught me the lessons here that I could apply to these next two. 

Eventually, seven years later, to be exact, I found myself healthy; physically, mentally and emotionally, and pregnant, for a fourth time with that sweet, sweet spirit girl that waited and watched from her spirit movie theater for so many years. I think I was conscious of her for about 5 of those 7 years. She chose an incredibly interesting time to incarnate into and an even more interesting astrology birth chart as well! She brought a LOT of change and chaos with her and I felt overwhelmed and very much done having children after having her. I felt like I needed to talk to Spirit and “let go” of the other little boy spirit and be good with these four kids. He didn’t seem like he was that sure of coming as he was always flitting in and out. 

I started having talks. I let him know I was grateful for his interest in our family but I would like to be done, and would so appreciate it if he’d come back as a grandbaby or something like that. I felt good after these chats and usually very content. So my husband and I started making plans to move on with life. I had turned 40 and I was happy to enter a new decade and focus on career and the family we had. 

So when I found out half way through my 40th year that little Mr. Magic Baby was on the way, I was shocked. Absolutely dumbfounded! I thought I had ended that contract. I thought I could choose. I thought I could control this!! Clearly, not. He was going to be an Aries, they don’t really care what ‘you’ want and pretty much do what they want…. I know this well, I am one. Magic Baby didn’t care that I had ‘canceled the contract’, or tried to… I’m pretty sure he laughed at that concept actually.

 You see, what I have learned is that spirit contracts are spirit contracts. There is most definitely a higher power and things we cannot begin to understand with our little Earth School brains. I learned an immense amount of new things while pregnant with this little Magic being… Most of what I learned was felt, it was spiritual in nature, and hard to put into words. I became a channel and was given visions and stories that would help people I was working with to learn to better understand their struggles and challenges. I felt like he helped me to tune into a higher vibration and he helped me to open up to new ideas and concepts I could have never comprehended before his arrival. Even his birth was spiritual. He told me his name prior to birth. He told me when I’d go into labor and when he’d be born. (I was only 31 minutes off!) He has been an amazing communicator with me. 

Now, during these 14 days postpartum with this being Earthside, I sit and ponder all of the changes, all of the shifts, all of the experiences I went through to get to this point. The 20+ year journey of conception, fertility, and motherhood, the lessons and deep hurts and traumas… all of it. My ride through this round of Earth School clearly has intense connections with motherhood and all things associated with it, including the profound transformation I go through with each child. This last child seems to have been the spiritual “icing on the cake” as far as transformations go. The first four seem like they were prep for this one, with each one a new layer of transforming and letting go.  

I’ve been in the dark, with a cool washcloth over my eyes for a huge majority of these past two weeks. Either due to intense illness, postpartum hormonal headache, or just sheer exhaustion, I have been unable to see well or think clearly. My brain felt like a sort of mushy soup and my eyeballs wouldn’t stop leaking and being super sensitive to the sun or any light source. The postpartum afterpains are NO JOKE and will take out a grown man like someone snapped his achille’s tendon. They felt like I was being tasered in the uterus for an extended period of time with no warning, no slow build up like labor… nope. These are like a giant sucker punch with electric voltage turned on high right in the uterus. So along with these lovely experiences, I was also coughing out my lungs pretty much non-stop which would trigger more postpartum bleeding and of course the inability to hold my bladder fully as I hacked my lungs out. Always so much dignity in that situation. Just the best time, I tell you! 

So along with the coughing, uterine taser pain, leaking eyeballs, bleeding, headaches, exhaustion, and adjusting to a new baby, we can’t forget about the milk coming in and that my breasts grew like 3 sizes overnight and became five times heavier. Now we get to learn to regulate nursing, pumping and how this all works again. Plus, I’m still nursing a toddler and have been this entire time, and am trying to help her navigate her big feelings on this new little brother thing…. Sigh…. Don’t forget there are three other humans I made that still want and need time with me and still very much act out in their own ways. 

This was an intense two weeks. 

At last though… I see the light. I feel a lightening in my body. I can breathe again. My lungs have renewed themselves. My body is coming back (slowly) after birth and illness, and my brain is returning back online ever so slowly. The after pains are done, (which we need to really address as a major system design flaw that the pains kick in while nursing. I really feel we need to fix this and make nursing be the thing that makes the pains go away. Much better system function that way. Who do I see about this issue in the code?) and I’m figuring out the nursing and pumping game. For two weeks I had to lay in my bed or on the couch, in the dark, in the quiet, and just be. I had to allow my body to turn into mush and morph into something else, something new. I cried, a lot. It was hard. It was hard in all ways it could have been hard for me physically. What wasn’t hard though, was my new little baby. He was amazing and worked with me wonderfully. I can’t thank him enough for that. 

So here I am… a mom, five times over. I am so, so, so blessed to have had FIVE healthy pregnancies, five healthy births, five healthy children, and five postpartum times that I have learned so much from…to let go, surrender, and I have learned to love myself more and more, and to trust Spirit. I know I have so much more to learn and experience and I’m here for it. 

I am here for the flow and the joy, the hard, and the sad. 

I am here and I am embracing all of the chaos and beauty that I’ve created in Earth School this time.