Seeing myself as Mother

This one was hard... It took me a while to get going and I think it should be an ongoing assignment..

Seeing Myself as a Mother
First off I feel that this should be an ongoing assignment for me. It reminded me of something I had forgotten in the recent times. When I was pregnant with my first baby, I was anxious about being the perfect mother. My grandmother, an uneducated but very wise woman said, whatever you need to know the baby will teach you, just keep listen to your child. I followed her advice for many years but with kids growing up and life moving on sometimes we forget the simplest things.
When I began this drawing I thought I knew what I felt and was most challenged in how to make the right picture. And the picture took over, something I have experienced before, but this time I did realise that it took over. So I kept drawing and ended with a lot of hats and lot of balls.
I see myself standing tall and strong on a see saw with a whole lot of hats and a lot of balls in the air trying to juggle. I have already understood the duality of life and haven’t looked for the idealistic thing for a long while. I see smile and tears together and it could either be tears of joy and it could just as well be a smile through my sorrow.
I know for sure that I have a dark side and many times my children have seen it. I learnt the lesson of unconditional love from them when they could love me through my darkness. I see light in me balancing the darkness.
I need to protect my children and hold them to me yet I need to set them free, to be the person they are. The picture tells me it’s a balancing act through and through.
The balls in the air are the different aspect of things I need to balance. Boundaries and freedom and where that line in between is is my constant challenge with a 13 year old boy and 10 year old girl.
I realise that as a mother I wear a lot of hats. I am the cook and driver; I am the teacher and the friend. I play many roles that my children need me to play. But the picture brings home my need to be my own person and not feel selfish or guilty. I want to be a smart attractive and intelligent woman in my own right with my own needs being fulfilled away and beyond being a mother. It challenges the giving image of the mother in my mind sometimes and brings about guilt. But left unfulfilled has always brought on the dark side of me. It’s only counterproductive to not nurture myself. So I am mother to myself as well.
I balance the children’s needs and my needs. That brings about another element of pull and push to the balancing act. In all I believe what my grandmother was saying is that if you stay open, you will be able to keep adjusting to keep the balance. For me being the mother is not one thing its many, it’s not constant but changing but it’s definitely about shifting ever so slightly to keep the balance

Stages of Labour

After I made the first, cried and journaled, I could not stop myself and this is what came from my complusion to keep my hands moving on the paper. This time again I thought I had it right till I reflected on it. ... This so true of the doula work I do... I think it also shows my love for the water and all the water births and where they come fromJourney through Labour Landscape
This drawing is completely influenced by my experiences as a doula, however, I did not need to think this part. Even though each woman goes through a unique labour and birth experiences there are certain commonalities that resonate through each labour including my own.
She sails out on calm seas, excited and just a little anxious about her journey, and as the ocean floor drops from under her and seas get rough... the little boat is rocked. She finds herself in unknown territory.
Soon enough her little boat is tossed and ripped and she sinks deeper. She spins through the vortex of intense feelings - physical and emotional. The physical manifestation of this play of feelings is seen as progress or not. At some time she hits rock bottom and only then can she begin her journey upward.
While the picture could represent the woman working her way through her labour sinking deeper into her instinctive self, moving with her body and supported by her nature as a woman and hormones. It could be just the opposite. She could start with a just a small fear, which would grow with each contraction, further as times passes. She may reach a point where it paralyses her and she faces extreme physical pain and helplessness. Her labour could be stalling or she may be facing trauma for herself or the baby and that’s her point of hitting the rock bottom and then having faced the worse she comes back.
What came as a surprise is the part where it says keep going. I found that I drew this little energy symbol within her and as she moved in time and body, she also moves the energy within. Whether this energy uncoils in sync with her body or against it is the play of her feelings. Faith or fear? As she hits rock bottom, she lets go of all plans and ideal birth scenes and if she does tap into the other positive energies around her she can move beyond the mode and modality of how she gave birth and actually birth the baby.
It helps me understand how I connect with the women I support and how she can mirror my positivity but most of all despite all the information why I feel the helplessness and desperation when she isn’t able to work through her issues blocking her birth and my energy begins to move with her in the negative direction. It has given me a new sensitivity to why some births are mentally harder on me than others, irrespective of how the woman has given birth.

Womb with a View

My very first attempt, begun with an attitude of "I know about that" completely swept me off my feet and before I could even journal a word I cried, humbled...


Womb with A View: World Within
As I look at the drawing now, I am surprised by what I feel. The feeling I get when I see this drawing brings back a old memory of my grandfather talking about a scene from Gita. As Arjun looks upon the magnificent persona of Krishna he can see the entire universe within him. The womb is the baby's entire universe.
I see that I have put in the four elements to nurture life...sun, earth water and love. I see the curiosity in the eyes of this little human being and the potential of holding the world in the palm of his hand.
When I began I thought I could draw upon all the information I had about baby's uterine life but as I went along. Only a few elements stayed while many other came up all by themselves.
The colour and form within the womb is more distinct and bright and sharp than outside, which as I blended when asked the drawing what it needed. Also, the way showed the different parts of the baby rather than the baby... that confused me.
Now I see that the baby's entire world is the womb. While we on the outside may dwell upon how he feels, the baby is in state of bliss. He is nurtured by the life force of the world and the love of his mother. The two balance the way he becomes aware of his world. Fluidity of his home allows him to defy the pull of gravity, takes the weight of him and pliable yet firm boundaries allow him the space to discover light, sound, feel and other wonderful sensations that will make his world outside.
The baby depicted in part no longer confuses me. I think none of us have yet discovered ourselves in whole. We grow in different ways and change constantly. We do not need to know the baby ‘fully’; we just need to accept that there is potential beyond our knowing and love.
I have sat and stared at the picture each day, many times a day. I feel that the baby there is not restricted by the space, he is not uncomfortable. In fact, he is in a state of bliss. (I used this world before and it feels that way even more now). Hidden from eyes that can only understand things they can label and put away in neat box, he is free to be anything he wants and do the impossible without feeling even a shred of hesitation. In the outside world we would be afraid of such a feeling.
While we on the outside feel his lack of space, his limited stimuli to the senses as a negative, is that not what we wish to achieve when we meditate, to shut down the outside world and move inwards.
I thought I had finished with this section till I saw the picture I had done for Womb with a View. As I was resizing and uploading the picture it struck me that in a glance it seemed I was looking at the swollen belly and the birth opening of the world right between the legs. Not unlike how it looks when birth happens. Just had to add that impression to this journal