Journey to a New Life

I am going to be opening up a new series, on – as you may have guessed from the title – how animals taught me to be a better parent. I will still be writing about my Euro-trip experience so the two topics will be posted on and off.

I was actually first looking at the various gifts as insights into my life that I have received over the years with the various animals I’ve walked with on the farm.

Each relationship with the animals carries a story, a story of my personal process. When I was looking more into each specific ‘gift’ I had learnt and received from the animals; I noticed how each on of those gifts had come into play when working and walking with Cesar. Some I applied naturally and didn’t even notice where it came from, others I specifically implemented to see if they would assist with my relationship with Cesar as well as with my relationship with myself. So when this point opened up within myself of looking at what I have learnt from the animals, it really hit me to what extent my participation with them influenced me and assisted me to become who I am today, and still assist me in my personal development.

We often take animals and our relationship to animals for granted, so with these blogs I would like to highlight the ‘special’ part they can play in one’s life and how one can utilise animals in one’s environment to assist yourself in overcoming your own limitations and get more out of life.

So stay tuned to read all about the experiences and lessons I have learnt from walking with dogs, birds, parrots and horses – and how I have been able to apply these lessons walking with my toddler.

In my previous blog I described some points I faced with the idea of ‘becoming a mother’, where I was lacking trust within myself which moved me to look for ‘what to do’ and ‘how to be’ within the information and knowledge I had acquired over my life on the topic of ‘being a mother’.

What was quite fascinating was that most of the inner conflict and friction which played out inside myself, took place predominantly while I was pregnant and not yet a mother in fact – where I was still busy entering the ‘unknown’ and would allow myself to get swept away by little nagging fears which would present themselves here and there. Then – when I had my baby and looking back in retrospect: most of the points I had been fussing about inside myself simply disappeared. Turned out that ‘being a mother’ and ‘thinking what it’s like to be a mother’ are worlds apart (surprise! Lol).

While I had carried much anxiety about the new role I would be taking on – actually living it was a down to earth process, simply walking things moment by moment. Assessing new points, new directions as they come up – always referencing back to my principles, cross-referencing with others: basically walking the mother process as I would walk any other point or project.

It keeps astonishing me how much value and credit we tend to give to the thoughts, imaginations, ideas and projections that come circling inside our head. When I was in that state – it felt ‘so real’ so ‘convincing’ all these worries, thoughts – they must be valid! They must be relevant! But then when you get to the actual physical living of a point or process, they just go *poof*. Makes you wonder what else in your reality you’re investing credence into that’s just waiting to get caught out and disappear.

If I look at the amount of information I was holding unto and what I perceived ‘being a mother’ to be – it was a mountain of stuff and if you looked up you couldn’t see the end of it. Then, the actual walking, what it actually entails – the simplicity of what you’re actually working with = you can hold it in the palm of your hand.

We tend to bring and haul in so many issues when we look at what it means to parent, to being a mother – as we’re very good at making things complicated and valuing things which are of little relevance. For that, it can be helpful to look at nature and how nature/the animals express parenting/being a mother. Animals don’t share our weakness for making things complicated and creating attachments where none are required. So when we look at nature / the animal kingdom and the general (with the emphasis on general because some animals’ parenting could use some serious upgrading, like the geese we have on our farm) trend of how ‘being a mother’ is expressed – it is actually a very simple point:

You have an animal who gave birth to another animal/being and who nurtures/looks out for the animal until the animal can take that role unto itself and then that’s that. And here, even the ‘birthing’ part is optional in the animal kingdom (as some animals raise other animals their young albeit knowing or unknowingly).

One lioness is not going to be bothered worrying about what any other lionesses thinks of her parenting or how she looks as a mother or how her cubs look/act compared to other cubs, she doesn't go off gossiping with other lionesses or whatever other weird things we humans entertain and preoccupy ourselves with.

Now, in terms of humans and walking your Journey to Life – it’s just a matter of taking this elementary point and placing it within the context of what is Best for All so that you as a mother take it upon yourself to guide, nurture and direct your child so he/she may achieve its utmost potential in all dimensions (eg. physically and in one’s character/expression).

Once you have integrated this definition as your baseline, as what you are living by within being ‘a mother’ – it’s just a matter of living and walking day by day, moment by moment – and checking that whenever a decision/direction arises, that your course of action/decisions matches your commitment of living the word ‘mother’. And you simply check: if I do this, am I in anyway compromising my child? Is there another way? Is there a better way? Am I adhering to an idea/belief/value inside my head or am I taking into consideration physical reality / what will actually empower/support my child?

And as you go along, you may make mistakes, you may find that there was a different way, a better way, you may find you acted according to a belief that you weren’t aware of, … -- and so you specify yourself and improve your way of seeing/looking at things and perfect your skills of supporting another being as yourself. But the one point which is paramount, is to in every moment check and cross-reference your course of actions/decisions within yourself, within your own self-honesty. To have that relationship of engagement with yourself where you check every point to ensure that you are in fact parenting in awareness, that you are in fact in every moment being the directive principle, that you have in fact checked the foundation of your decision and that you can stand by it – to not leave a moment up to ‘automated parenting’ where you’re just acting and directing things from a starting point of ‘what you think’ you should be doing, where you haven’t actually investigated the basis of what you are doing or merely acting/playing out a pattern not really knowing why or how you could improve it. These are the ‘danger traps’, where if you leave the directive seat within yourself for a moment, and kind of ‘sit back and relax’ within yourself and act/live/guide according to how you feel, how you are experiencing yourself and the things that pop-up in your head: those are the moments where you are stunting your own self-expansion, your own potential and directly stunt and diminish your child’s self-development and expression. And this is about the 'hardest' part of being a parent - to keep pushing and moving yourself to be in the directive seat, to move and live in awareness - to make that decision to live and create a reality for yourself where you're the one checking and directing things, and to move and keep your feet out of the mind's reality: over and over again until one day there is only one reality as the one where you're constantly in awareness and the directive principle in every single moment.

Lately I have not been feeling as nauseous. Where I used to feel mildly nauseous all throughout the day, I’m now mostly normal during the day except for my stomach getting very upset early mornings and in the late evenings. If I turn out to eat ‘ok’ stuff during those times my days are pretty cool – but if I don’t, then I end up vomiting during those times and then my stomach ends up feeling not so nice for a while after that. Those times are not so great because then I am reeeaally hungry but then I know that whatever I will eat will just come out again and hurt my stomach.

What else have I noticed….

Oh, I haven’t been able to handle hot weather as well I used to. I get hotter quicker and if it’s really hot and sunny I start feeling sick after a short while.

Some activities are also more intense. Like, trimming Charlie’s hooves used to be hard work but that was it. Now it’s hard work and it has become cardio, where soon after I start my heart starts beating faster and I start sweating quicker.

Can’t say that I am not looking forward towards the 12 week benchmark after which the morning sickness is supposed to subside.

Being pregnant really puts ‘pregnancy’ into a whole new perspective lol. It takes a lot to make someone new. I can’t believe that my own mom went through this process 3 times!!

I’m now also reading less on pregnancy and birth because it also just makes me feel more nauseous lol. Most of the magazines are on the one side full about the dangers of pregnancy and birth and then on the other side they are trying to ‘keep you positive’ and ‘look at the bright side of things’ and then bombard you with baby related advertisement of stuff so you can distract and entertain yourself with all the ‘fun stuff’ you can buy once you have a baby, so you can for a moment forget about the harsh reality of pregnancy and giving birth.

I mostly just keep to this one book I bought myself, which lays out the pregnancy process week by week and isn’t trying to scare you one page and then trying to make you happy on the other. It just gives you the info in a very sober matter and that’s that.

There’s also like a whole cultish vibe around the whole pregnancy and giving birth thing – like it is some amazing experience which is “completely natural”. That point just keeeeps coming up “it’s natural”. Like just because we are designed to give birth in this particular way and not another – this is ‘the way’ to give birth and you shouldn’t worry or question it because it’s “natural” it’s how “mother nature designed us”. Especially when you read child birth stories, the people don’t like to go into how the pain was and how they experienced themselves as they tore while giving birth – they quickly like to get to the end part of how wonderful it is to have your baby in your arms and ‘yes there’s some pain but the process is COMPLETELY NATURAL’ and ‘it’s just something you have to go through’. It’s like there’s this whole belief that because we give birth this way that it MUST be the RIGHT way – and that if there was a better way, well then nature would have designed it differently.

So no-one questions the whole process, just like no-one questions ‘periods’ because it’s aaaaalll soooo “natural” – just accept the pain and suffering and be quiet about it. This whole ‘natural’ thing is really quite stupid. You just have to watch some series like ‘Life’ and ‘Planet Earth’ to see that ‘natural’ isn’t always sunshine and rainbows. There’s animals eating each other alive, there’s bugs laying eggs in other animals and when they hatch they eat the animal alive, there’s parasites that can only survive in the eyes of other beings,... and the list goes on. There’s some really evil designs in this world, in what we call ‘natural’. Just because something is ‘natural’ does not mean it’s the best way it could have possibly been.

Coming from a Destonian background and having gone through the History of Mankind files – you can see how some stuff just has been deliberately messed with.

And no-one wants to really talk and share about the real nasty stuff that happens during pregnancy and child birth, because c’mon, this is your child that you’re talking about, you don’t want to give them the impression bringing them into this world was unpleasant! That’s just mean… So then no-one talks about it and then your whole life you’re pretty much clueless about pregnancy until it happens to you and then BAM your bubble bursts. It’s kind of like when you found out that Santa doesn’t exist – just another fantasy bubble being popped.