Lose Yourself or Heal Yourself

It’s been almost five and a half years since I held my oldest daughter in my arms for the first time. We went through a short season of trauma during my pregnancy with her (our anatomy scan showed she had potentially fatal birth defects, but they were somehow healed a few weeks later), but overall I loved carrying her, watching my body grow to accommodate her growth, reading about her size in comparison to a piece of fruit each week.

Her birth, though, was an experience I didn’t want to refer to as trauma for a long while. Because, well, it was supposed to be the happiest day of my life, right? My first child was now outside of my body and more beautiful than an entire orchard full of fruit. But my labor was long, my pelvic floor was too tight, and I pushed until I passed out. I had so badly wanted to love and appreciate my body in a new way after a beautiful unmedicated birth, but instead I questioned it more than ever. The strength I thought I was building throughout my pregnancy by working out obsessively turned out to be my biggest weakness. I almost didn’t do it. It took so incredibly long.

And then she couldn’t nurse well, and I didn’t even know it. Or, I did, but when I brought it up to the doctors and lactation consultants, they told me everything seemed fine, so I doubted myself. Again. She fell off the growth chart and I lost myself in hospital visits and lab tests and weight checks, all night pumping and squeezing my breast until it felt bruised, trying to get her to keep eating. It turned out to be a tongue tie, and any energy I had left was spent working on regaining my milk supply and teaching her to latch correctly at five months old. She was still in newborn clothes.

I look back and don’t remember ever looking at myself in the mirror that first year. I look at pictures and wonder why no one pushed me to eat more—I was starving in just about every sense.

As she grew into a toddler, I was suffering from regular panic attacks. It turns out it is really hard to love your child, to really enjoy her, if you don’t love and appreciate yourself. I felt so robbed of her infancy and so angry she didn’t have the chance to be a laid back child because of her first half year of life, so full of hunger and stress. Sometime in that second year, I realized staying in this place was just continuing to steal joy from both of us. I had every right to be angry, yes, but I had a right to heal from it, too.

My sweet friend, Aubree, told me recently that healing has a ripple effect. Healing yourself helps heal those around you. I believe this. In the last few years my children have seen me cry in their father’s arms and talk through what came up in counseling earlier that day. They’ve felt me relax into a weekly rhythm we can all count on and enjoy instead of spending our time frantically cleaning the house and panicking at every little thing. They’ve watched me move my body and asked to work out with me, “because it’s good to get some exercise,” as my five year old often puts it. They’ve held my hand on trail after trail after trail as we retreat to the woods often when doing anything else seems to feel just not quite right.

And, someday, maybe they will read what I’ve written along the way. Writing it out has been my greatest release, and sharing it with you has been my way of turning my trauma into something beautiful. If my experiences can help someone else feel less alone, less crazy, then they were worth it.