Heart Ache

Mortality

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I don’t know if I believe in an afterlife, going to heaven or hell, or reincarnating. I do know that the fear of death has been with me even when I was a child. I recall sitting at my grandmother’s knees crying asking her about death. She was a good god-fearing woman and would lean on her bible for strength in those times.

As an adult I have experienced moments when in deep stretches of meditation, that everything is unified and all of this is transient. I feel like that is more of a truth to me than believing of some light at the end of the tunnel. I have lived my life with the acceptance that now is what is, and it’s up to me to make the most of it. I have changed my life again and again in pursuit of my own growth, without a thought of if I do x now, then maybe I’ll be redeemed in heaven, or whatever. I live a moral life. I have a strong sense of right and wrong. I don’t lie on purpose, which is a great distinction from saying I always tell the truth because maybe some times I do lie but it isn’t on purpose, it’s just that memory isn’t in my memory bank at that moment, so I go with what I know and is fresh in my mind.

All in all, I really am the best person I can be and live as good of a life, making as positive of an impact as I can amongst the people I associate. I feel good about all of this. If anything, the feeling that I can be doing more is always there, which is why I am changing course and heading into medicine, so that I can positively impact even more people and have the influence so that people may actually do what I suggest.

So in researching and studying for the upcoming medical school test, GAMSAT, I have been diving in biology, anatomy and physiology, psychology, philosophy, chemistry (only lightly so far), and have recently watched a succinct version of life from start to finish from a scientific standpoint, and I was crying by the end of it. The amount of change that a person goes through in their life, especially for women, is tremendous. I am aware of my own mortality again, and all of this life seems so precious, and so fleeting, and I am tinged with sadness because there isn’t anything I can do about it. I know that I will flip this perspective and use it the opposite way, of making most of every moment and finding happiness and alleviating stress because I know it makes life better and healthier, but in this moment, right now, I am sad and I feel it.

Sadness is a rich human emotion and I am glad that I get to feel it. If I had to choose to know that I would die, I don’t know if I would choose that again. I would like to know the preventative measures I can take in order to make my physical life as healthy as possible, but if I could choose to be like an ordinary mammal and not know about my own mortality, I would. Perhaps I will change my mind when I am in a better disposition, but for now I just want to cuddle up and escape for a moment.

Navigating the Waters

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In the last week, I have turned a corner, a major corner. I have started to allow someone else to look after my child in a maximum of 2 hour increments. This is a big deal. He’s now almost 22 months, and prior to now, I pretty much count on one hand the number of times someone else has looked after him besides my husband or myself.

I have so many feelings that are arising from this. Perhaps this is what primary carers of little people go through with this transition. Simultaneously wanting to have freedom and independence, but at the same time wanting to make sure that my little person is completely taken care of. The feeling of, YES FINALLY, I’m Doing Something For Myself, AND the feeling of guilt that someone else is looking after my most precious being, who is completely defenceless, completely incapable of articulating with words anything that goes on.

Exhale. I am doing that a lot, deep breathing. He is going to the day care option that is available at the gym I have joined. It’s all super new, totally customer oriented, and really top of the line. The classes are incredible, the machines are the newest available, the instructors are top notch, the child care is incredible. Even in the baby area, they have a huge play section that rivals the places you have to pay to go into for $12 for 2 hours where you have to buy an obligatory coffee as well. The carers are so lovely, so friendly, so very obviously kid people with big hearts and huge smiles.

All of this is good, I know it. I do. Me progressing forward by moving my body and getting back into shape, along with allowing the next stage of our lives to happen by me letting go and accepting help with my child. I know all of this, I know it’s truly all good. There is still a fountain of feelings coming up and I can’t ignore them. I even invited a fellow Mum from my mum and bub group to come over and watch a tear jerking movie that left us both sobbing, just so we could let the emotions out in a safe place.

The new chapter is beginning and I am grieving the last one. It’s normal, and it’s okay. I have loads of self compassion for myself and am being as gentle with me as I possibly can in this transition. I am also doing my best to be there for my son while he transitions, because it’s also a major shift for him as well. Such a big deal.

How could they?

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My stomach is turning, my throat is tight, my brow is furrowed. I have blocked out the majority of my childhood, only a glimpse or two remain from before I was in my teens. Recently, as in about 20 minutes ago, I learned from a close relative, whom I trust, that when I was 4 or 6 weeks old, that my parents asked this relative to look after me for a couple of hours, so they could go on a motorcycle ride, and did not come back for 3 days. THREE DAYS! Three days they left me, their premature baby of 6 weeks, with someone else.

My relative only brought this up after asking if I had put my own child into preschool or daycare yet. I said I hadn’t, and that I honestly didn’t really trust it, at least not until he is old enough to speak. This is a deep untrusting level I have, and maybe this is where it comes from. She said that I was so different, like the opposite of my own parents, and told me that story jokingly. She of course didn’t realise how it would effect me, neither did I.

I feel so disappointed. I feel so sad. I feel so very angry and pissed off. How could they do this to me? Why have children if you aren’t going to take care of them? Really, and me? How selfish of them, it really is the opposite of how I am with my own child. No wonder I was reluctant to have children.

This all shows that even from the beginning they didn’t want to be parents. I had this rosey view now that I have my own child, that maybe in their early days they did care, that we really did have a family atmosphere, but clearly that is a fantasy, and certainly not one based on any memories, just hope.

External, internal talk: I love you Jennifer. I know this is hard for you. It is so very unlike what you would do. Try to have compassion. You are special, you have gone through so very much and look how far you have come. I know it hurts. I know it hurts to feel like someone doesn’t care, I know it must be devastating to feel like your parents didn’t care, but they did their best. You are highly resilient, and no matter what happened as a child, you are not destined to repeat their lives nor their mistakes. You are better than that. You are a beautiful, thoughtful human being, and you get to choose every single day how you operate in the world. Let this be fuel to make you better. Let this be fuel to understand your own self reliance, your own self worth that you have developed because of you.

I really feel gutted right now. NO wonder I’ve had self worth issues. NO wonder I’ve had issues with security. No wonder. Without a solid base, everything else is hard to build. I am so lucky that I have chosen this conscious route and have rebuilt myself as an adult. It still hurts though, uncovering a bit of the truth that is so utterly revealing.

Also just from a baby’s perspective, not having your parents there, for days on end. Not having the security of your parents for days on end. I know that can be overcome, like it has with Abraham after him being in the NICU, something I did not choose. However, it has taken conscious effort to rebuild that trust, no wonder I never really trusted my parents.

Emotional Hangover

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My head hurts, my eyes hurt, I feel withdrawn, slightly manic almost going from a momentary high to back down into the wallowing blah that is. It’s hard having an emotional hangover. They can last for days, up to a week. For some people they get so used to being in that emotional hangover state that it consumes their life and months go by, even years before they really bounce back. I guess I’m lucky. I have a high tolerance because I’ve gone through a lot of unnecessary crap in my life. I guess that make me lucky in some regards, I know it passes, it always does.

The emotional hangover can be caused by a number of things. It doesn’t have to be solely around losing a loved one, or breaking up. It can be not getting the recognition for a job well done after you spent months working on it. It can be not getting thing you’ve been dedicating time and energy into only to be turned down, not given the chance, or just ignored all together. It can be trauma as well like after having a baby, or having a car accident, falling and breaking a bone, it can all cause this feeling. It’s almost like life gets put slightly on hold so that you can reconcile what has happened and then move forward.

Some positive points about an emotional hangover include learning how to look after and love yourself. This is only if you have worked on it. The easy way is to indulge in some escapism with drinking too much, getting high, binging on Netflix, overeating or fantasising about the old glory days. None of this really helps, but it seems to, at least momentarily, and when you are feeling low, anything that makes you feel even a little bit better seems like a great option, at the time.

As I’ve gotten older, and hopefully wiser, I’ve learned that I need to do the opposite of the negative indulgence. I really need to feel the feelings before I can let it pass, and then I focus on me. What really cures the emotional hangover is a whole lot of self love, self nurturing, and self compassion. This includes getting some body work done such as a massage, or acupuncture. There are many other options, but for me, this really helps get everything back in order. I know I need to eat well, as in healthy good foods that make me feel nourished. I normally don’t eat meat, but when I am feeling like I need something extra, I don’t even hesitate getting some salmon or some kind of beef, it just helps everything in that moment. Moving my body is a key upper as well. It can be as simple as taking a walk around the neighbourhood, or doing the stairs more. I also have a sauna at home, so letting my body sweat a bit definitely helps get it all moving which helps me move through the emotional hangover. I also find that if I groom myself, even if it’s a DIY mani/pedi, and a DIY facial and DIY hair mask, it all makes a world of difference. I also make a point of putting on makeup because when I look in the mirror I see a more perky version of myself and it holds space for me to move back into that, even if I don’t feel that way right then.

Sex can be a great aid for the emotional hangover. Orgasms and releasing in that way specifically helps to reduce stress in a major way. This can even be effective without a partner but oh boy it’s so much nicer when it’s with the one you love.

Expressing the feelings or the even what happened in a factual way can be helpful. Writing it out, painting it, speaking it all helps. It can be very harmful to keep it all in, just be sure not to hurt anyone’s feelings when you do share. Also taking responsibility for your own feelings is essential. Working out how to avoid another emotional hangover is also awesome if you can do that too.

Sometimes, in life, you just have to understand that things will go the way they do. Control is often out of your hands, and all you can really do is manage your own self, your own reactions, and seek help if you need it. Use every experience as an opportunity to grow more into who you really are, to learn what you can from it, and move on.

Not Meant as a Single Parent

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Seriously I am not meant to be a single parent. Specifically, I am certainly not meant to be a person who has to solely look after another person who is dependent upon them. It is too much. Add to that the additional tasks of looking after elderly people and I am at a breaking point. I literally broke down in tears as I just couldn’t do any more. There’s a thing where I can hold it all together to a point. Then it will be something minor that is the straw that breaks the camels back. Today it was the criticism of too much salt in the meals I have been making after I was some how given the task of being the meal creator for everyone else along with myself and my little person. I am stretched too thin as it is. Not having family support due to geographic location and the rest of the family not being so family oriented, leaves the whole raising of the child to the parents. Then when one parent is away, it’s just that one person. Then to add more to that workload, it’s too much. Too much.

Also people forget what it’s like to have their first child. They also forget what it’s like to have only one child. It’s a big freaking deal. No one else occupies their time, no one else plays with them, it’s all left to me. It’s all, every thing, left to me. We have had a demi pair in the past and that has helped to alleviate that, but at the farm that isn’t the case. Everyone is so stretched here, and that is just the way of land, but now, for me at this stage of my life, it’s more than I can handle.

Exhale. This is me venting. It’s okay. It’s all okay. I’m also so frustrated that I can’t fix the issues here, I don’t have the money right now to afford a million dollar property to help everyone out. I don’t have the means and it’s so frustrating. I feel like it’s all slipping away and I’m too taxed personally to do anything about it. Also being at the beginning stages of making a family it’s at odds with being at the beginning stages of building a grand fortune. I chose to have a baby with intention. I chose to have a baby so that I can experience this, so that I am there with the child. I don’t want to give that experience away to someone else, that isn’t what I want in my life. The solution isn’t just to send the baby to daycare so that I can work a full time job and bring in income and then see my baby for maximum 3 hours of wake time a day. It’s fucking bullshit. I am not doing that, I am not doing it that way and it makes me feel so frustrated that I can’t seem to find another way. Sure getting another demi pair will help. that will alleviate some time, but for christ sakes, when I don’t have the money to pay the freaking person, then i get someone who isn’t really qualified and I don’t trust them. So I have to be on hand, with my ear out all the time anyway. I don’t know how to win at this right now without having the financial resources.

This post isn’t really about being a single parent, it’s really about being frustrated with the limitations in my life, the lack of income, and the additional load of looking after others. That’s what it’s about. It’s that I feel this life is out of our reach. It’s that I need to just let go of the idea of buying the farm because it’s not going to happen. How on earth would I magically get 1 million dollars and then how would I then have money to do anything with that land after that? It’s too much and I can’t do it.

My husband is away at the moment and looking after bub full time all day every day and night, when he is not sleeping, is really wearing on me. I need help and if I do have another person in looking after bub, i want them to be an actual au pair, and one that I don’t then also have to clean up after, because that’s bullshit too, exchanging looking after one person to then look after another. This doesn’t make sense.

Additional thought after venting and 15 minutes:

Now that I’ve had a moment, the thing is that the farm needs help. They need help to maintain the farm, to maintain the egg business, to maintain the processing business, and to maintain the animals. On top of that my husband’s parents also need help. They need help by someone cleaning up the house. They need help by someone cooking meals. They need help for my mother in law who will likely have to have a heart operation. They need help to look after my father in law who has parkinson’s. They need help anyway because they are in their 80s. I also need help as I have a small child and that seems so minor when looking at everything else here that needs help, but I need help too. I need to realise that the farm is not mine to fix. It is my mother in laws, and she always says that it is a family company so it’s everyone’s even though no one else seems to really care other than my husband and I. It’s not enough. I am not the superhero and I need to understand that my position in life right now is as a mother to a toddler and as a wife to a husband who works non-stop. This is what it is. This is where we are, this is where I am, and somehow I just need to accept this so i don’t get into these big emotional meltdowns about it all. I am too attached to it and without help myself I certainly cannot help the rest.

I guess selling the farm is the right move. Then my parents in law can afford the help they need. They can stop doing the egg business and just focus on this small property. They can have a single woofer to help them maintain the yards and garden, and then it’s done. Maybe it really is for the best. Sure the person who buys the rest of the land may very well build their new house directly in front of this house, and that would be there right and then the view would be lost, and in turn this last part of the land would lose its’ value, and you know what, that would suck, but it would have to be fine too. Sure the person who buys the land might protest about having a chicken farm next to them, and it would be there right, and all of the money we have put into it would be for naught, and that would suck, but it would have to be fine too. Maybe all of this has to be let go after all.

My Dad is No Longer Physical

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I’m okay most of the time, but then I’ll be hit with this big emotional wave of sadness that my father is no longer alive, here in this physical world. It’s like I’m looking at the shoreline with my feet just in the water and then I’m pummelled by a huge wave and I get whirled around in the sand and have to make it back up again. It makes me so sad and I start to cry and all I can do is think of his big smile, his all encompassing hug, and his natural charisma. I think of the way he would kiss my forehead and tell me he loved me. I think of the times when he would choke up and even shed a tear when i would be leaving home back to Yosemite, or the Grand Canyon, or Brazil, or Australia. I feel like I was always leaving. I had to though.

My emotional heart feels so heavy, and my throat feels all blocked. I have tears streaming down my face as I type this. I feel such despair. I can’t call him on the phone and just talk to him anymore. I can write him letters and post them but he’ll never actually read them. This feels makes me feel so sad. 60 is so young. I’ve only just started my own family. I want to have him there so I can talk to him and grow in this way with him, as me a mother and him a grandfather to my son. I cannot help but think of all the things we cannot do together, all the memories that we can no longer make together, they have all come to an end.

Now he lives just in my minds eye, in my heart, in my body, in my cells, he lives within me.

Struggle

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You never know what people are going through.

Some hide it with a smile

Some hide it with achieving great things

Some hide it by being the centre of attention, on stage

Most quietly go through their struggles, alone.

The older I get and the more I actually talk with people about what is really happening in their lives, I realise that we all have baggage of some sort. Some of it we acknowledge because it’s painstakingly clear, but some is so obscure and its like we unintentionally continue to act it out without awareness.

I have met so very many people in my life from all over the world due to living and working on popular destinations and from living abroad. I never really knew about the struggles that people were going through. I always kept it light and tried to just be present with what was going on at the time.

Now that I’ve gone through and am still going through my own struggles relating to the emotional pain I experienced leading up and birthing my son, I notice that more people open up to me about their own struggles. I had this happen as well after the head on collision, but not in the same way, now it is so raw, it is an emotional wound that I and other women that I have been speaking to, carry within themselves, not for show in the outside world, like a scar across the face.

Part of me thinks that the internal struggle that none can physically see is the harder to bear. At least when having a scar exposed, the topic is already on the table. However, for an internal scar, a wound that maybe hasn’t healed yet, it needs to be talked about in a loving space.

For most things in life I think that its best to just move on and focus on whats happening now and by doing so, life will automatically readjust to be the best for you. However, now having experienced this major internal trauma, I find it absolutely essential to talk about it, to feel all the emotions in order to process it as best as we can, and then allow time to lessen the burn.

I found myself bawling in a mother’s group that I am a part of yesterday as another woman shared her traumatic birthing experience, it felt all so real, and I know that we were so close to being like her, losing her baby at the final moment due to the same placental abruption that I had gone through with Baby A.

I felt the pain as it was so fresh, the wound was wide open. Some days I think I have been able to come to peace with it, and then other days I am completely amidst the throes of the memory. When Baby A came down with a cold around Mother’s Day all of those same painful emotions and fears came rushing back. I wasn’t expecting it, I wasn’t prepared for it, but all I could do was try to stay present, as present as possible.

My method of staying present when the feelings come rushing in when I am taking care of bubs and cannot have the time alone to really feel the feelings to let the go, I bring it back to right now, I remind myself that we are safe, we are alive, we are healthy, this is now, and I find some way to smile, to laugh.

I need to remember this, that everyone is struggling in some way the next time I get mad at someone on the road, or get frustrated with the way I see people behaving with their children. We all have something. We all have something to learn and grow from.

 

Rebroken

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This is so hard for me

my tender heart is rebroken when we meet

its like a rejection again and again

when i’m around you I want to be back in

the warm and generous nature I know you have

along with your admiration and basking due to my love

you allow it – but each time I’m left so sad.

I try to be cool – most times I think I pull it off

or so I think –

I purposely put a barrier around me for protection

so I won’t continue to get hurt

I try, I try, I try

but its so hard with my broken heart

Romantic Love

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nothing in life is permanent

although I’d love romantic love to be

memories of sheer bliss – well so to speak

of course starting a relationship amidst a major car accident

could be the kind of romantic comedy that Hollywood would portray

however it likely will run its course.

i openly wish that wasn’t the case – wasn’t my story

but as I was reminded today

one step closer to the one.

i learn about matters of the heart

learning about love firsthand

by personal experience of being vulnerable

with a wide open heart

Unplanned Love

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i see in your eyes how much you love me
i feel how your arms wrap around and embrace me so…
effortlessly, so openly, so naturally
i feel the comfort around you unlike any other
and of all the high vibrational beautiful people
i’ve been around
you are still the one –
the most beautiful and the highest
i’ve yet to encounter
i wish you had more time for me
i know your door is always open
i wish you had more space for me
i know you’ll always make room
i love you, i know this is true
i do
“its the little things” he says
i’ve missed you, me too