The other story of motherhood

This is not every mother’s story. It is mine.

One of the greatest gifts my son gave me in my birth ( I mean his birth) is showing me how overpowering my existence was no longer what worked. The hustle. The I can. The lemme just squeeze that in …because kids need non-linear space. Space to dawdle and find entertainment. Most of you know this apparently, so if you did, maybe hop over to another article. I didn’t. 

I mean – intellectually I knew that. Duh. But it was not embodied wisdom and it showed.

See I was great with adults, leading them into unforgotten places in their minds and bodies and helping them reclaim wholeness. I was the mystically minded that could extrapolate and understand the cross points in differing cultures and belief structures. I was the high school teacher that could lead teenagers to inquiry and understanding. I could do all of these amazing things, but kids — that was not my realm of understanding let alone expertise.

What you see in this picture is a woman drowning. She booked headshots to launch an executive tour of speaking in a five dollar old Navy shirt because there was no money at home. The night before the shoot there was also no sleep because the baby was teething.  For said woman (yes, me) there was also no styling happening because this picture was taken in the throes of postpartum hair-loss in a race against the clock.

What clock you ask? One that I had imagined.

The reality was that I was not going fully back to work because primarily, I didn’t want to leave my son and secondarily my partner at the the time was not making the money that would make any sense in me going back to work. 

Now, what is glaringly obvious to me now, was illusive then: I had choices. At the time, I couldn’t perceive any. I was exhausted, confused and in love with my child (my partnership was already dissolving even if I did not consciously choose to see it).  In so many of the photos, when I look into the eyes of this new Mom, I see how deeply out of body she was.

The kicker? I am a bodyworker. For the past decade I have worked to help women reengage their strength emotionally, physically and spiritually. I had locked in to a really great life and I loved it.  

Then I became a mother and life lead me back into my learning, into the spaces left unattended and away from the strengths I knew and understood.

It’s a big statement to leave there hanging. The reason it is hanging out there like that – was because that is how I entered motherhood: hanging out on a limb of my own consciousness, and I spent the second year of my son’s life trying to get back to a place that no longer existed. Even though, I knew it and wrote about it here.

Let me jump forward to the punchline for you – even when we are fully onboard to a change in our lives many of us lose a little piece of ourselves along the way, and we may not initially notice because we are so darn busy, or ecstatically grateful that how dare we complain or begrudge; unfortunately, unintegrated, undigested emotions, hang out taking space in our unconscious causing a raucous until we notice. They can wait years. Or longer.

So anyway, there I was in a rushed ensemble (there were shots in professional attire), and the places and lighting were fabulous, but all I could see when the photos came back were the vacancy in my eyes – confusion and a very obvious being stretched too thinnedness. Those pictures were worth their weight in gold because they served to wake me up to myself.  I was in a bit of a vacuum and those pictures said, “Hey life is hard because you aren’t really here. You need help.”

Now, mind you at the same time I was loving my son and snuggling, breastfeeding, and walking in the woods with him, but I didn’t understand how to do life. How was I supposed to leave him and go to work? What were we going to do as a family? What is this dynamic field that is Mother?

So many questions. I also had a 36 hour labor that ended in an emergency C-section so my body was also deeply in recovery. (There is so much more to that, and we can discuss it at another time, or you can listen to a podcast I did with my midwife, called “Peace starts with birth” here).

You know what happened? I did. I happened. I slowed down and started seeking out practitioners that could help me get back into my body more deeply. I started doing the emotional work of integrating my son’s birth, which I think is some of the most powerful, unspoken work, mothers can do – and I began to awaken to the truth that I could not live life the way I previously had.  

Why?

It wasn’t sustainable.

It had run its course.  

I was leaving the early summer of life – where you can run around endlessly expending energy, and was being tugged into my expansion of life, turning from what can I learn to what can I give. I was being slowed down to become more fully myself. 

But all I saw was failing. Not keeping up, and wondering how I had landed in a place that was so foreign to me – a place of frailty and dependency when I was the one that made dreams happen and flitted all over the world to teach and to heal, to learn and to love, now Life had sat me down and filled my arms with a miracle and where I thought I had to give (and you do you have to give a lot) what I really needed to learn was to receive. That I was worthy of this precious one and that he was in good hands – mine.

The funny thing about how the shoot ended – was this photo. The photographer took me to a place in the woods that I loved and walked for decades. When we arrived a man was serendipitously playing a digeridoo to the water. I kicked off my shoes and let my feet sink into the Earth.

“There you are,” the photographer said.

And it was true, for all the confusion and even the rhetoric of this writing, I had never been lost, I had always been here waiting for my own presence to catch up to me.  We can be lost and found at the same time. We can be complete and broken down (or open). We can be masterful and have worlds to learn, thankfully, that option of growth and presence is always with us, underneath our feet, and holy intact in our next breath.

Some mothering stories are easy. Some are not. What I have learned to embrace is that the sacred bond between my son and I is a fluctuating one of student and teacher. Yes, indeed it is the role of parent to hold the space and the responsibility, but the soul growth between a parent and child is a dynamic all on its own, dancing so that the growth is exponential. I recently read Edward Bach speak of parenting:

“Fundamentally, the office of parenthood is to be the privileged means (and indeed it should be considered as divinely privileged) of enabling a soul to contract this world for the sake of evolution. If properly understood, there is probably no greater opportunity offered to mankind than this, to be the agent of the physical birth of a soul and to have the care of the young personality during the first few years of its existence on earth…ever remembering that the wee one is an individual soul come down to gain his own experience and knowledge in his own way according to the dictates of his Higher Self, an every possible freedom should be given for unhampered development.”

Even the unexpected lessons.

This is why to know ourselves, to care for ourselves and to seek out the support so we may rise to the call is a process never-ending. This is why being broken open — or in my case falling deeply into an understanding of a whole new way was necessary for both of us.

If you are gifted with the care of another, by birth or by life, I bow to you. If you are sitting with a mistake you have recently made, may I offer you the permission to apply a lense of learning, a scent of compassion, and large cup of release with a deep cry for grace, so that you may once again feel the presence of you in all of your brilliance.

To you, thanks for being here,

Kate

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If you were reading and thinking — wait, where do I get this reflection in my own life? Maybe we can help. We have a 6 week intimate program called Root to Rise to clear confusion, define your focus and stabilize your vision for what you want to create in your life — and creating calm or peace counts, feeling strong in your body counts.

"You must go in"

Pour a cup of tea for this chat with wise woman, mother, astrologer, yogini and friend, Danielle Carr-Jarecha of www.mothercraftherbal.com. This conversation weaves through the magical to the mundane sacred in everyday life, motherhood, and other liminal spaces. We talk about herbalism, yoga nidra + returning to our roots, both familial and in the natural world. This episode is packed with gems for you to put in your pocket and help you on your path.

This episode is for every mama doing the best she can in this moment, celebrating her and reminding her no matter how along she feels, she is not alone.

Stay connected with Danielle’s wisdom and special offerings at: www.mothercraftherbal.com

Thank YOU for sharing + subscribing to Rebirth.

"Peace starts at birth."

This episode of Rebirth, Kate chats with midwife, Birth Educator, and practitioner of body balancing, specializing in trauma, Terri Simmons. Terri talks about birth preparation, how to communicate and prepare for birth, birth integration, de-stigmatizing postpartum and the invitation that postpartum integration can happen at any time. www.alchemybirthandwellness.com

Listen here

Through my work with Terri, as our family’s midwife, I have had journeys of rawness and integration. in my experiences as a body worker, healer and mother there are places where it could be easier to not feel. It could be easier to not fully stand in witness to difficulty, confusion, birth, parenting, and the list goes on. However, I know through my own life and through my clients’ that eventually the story must be witnessed, the pain held, and the difficulty be transmuted to integration.

As an independent woman and bodyworker, I never thought I would birth my child in a hospital, and I was humbled by life in the moment I was wheeled into one. I had expected to maintain my power of control (the fullness of that is a story for another day). I couldn’t have articulated that until a good year after, but I kept digging and I am glad I did. Birth - of any kind - is unique. Birth of a human demands all of the woman, her surrender, her trust, her strength , her release — not matter how it happens. I can only tell my story and share my medicine. I encourage you to tell your own, too. It is powerful to claim your victories and your lessons. Your confusion and your certainty; your pain and your triumph. I think birth carries all of that if we make ourselves available.

One of the reason that I am so deeply delighted to talk with Terri (aside from our friendship and mutual respect) is that I want every woman, no matter her age, to know that integrating your postpartum, your birth story can happen at any time.

Reach out if you have questions or if you are interested in working one on one with Kate or Terri.

We are here for you.

With love + gratitude for listening,

Kate

Listen here

How a forgotten mask gave me a smile

I was holding my son’s hand as we both toddled up to Native Cafe in quaint Doylestown, PA before hitting the newly opened playground: treats for us both.

“Ah, I forgot my mask in –“ slipped out of my mouth, mainly to my son, and three heads sitting outside the coffee shop all turned to me in empathy. That is when I realized the depth of our shared experience.

Now let me interject, without a toddler, I would have simply turned around and walked to the car. If you aren’t intimate with toddler rhythm, in short when you disrupt it the turnaround time can be tricky, especially when you are playground bound.

So I was halted in the midst of the sympathy and the silliness of my forgetting, when a masked woman to my left, coffee in hand says to me, “I’m waiting on my food order, I’ll run in and get your coffee for you.” 

And there it was. Our humanity. 

I handed my debit card over. She walked in and ordered, ran my debit card back to me then waited for my coffee, masked.

When she came out with my drink, I looked her in the eye and said: “I won’t forget this latte for a long time.”

We both smiled that coffee lover smile, that mom to mom smile, that woman to woman smile, that person to person smile.

With loved up latte in hand, my son and I continued our walk to the playground where children smiled down slides and laughed running over hills. Not too close. Not too many – but most importantly with the joy and innocence of children.

photo by Kate Brenton, unfiltered

I looked up at this Grandmother tree and thought of all the conversations she has sheltered. All the boo boo’s she has held. All the birthday cupcakes, breakups, and new friendships under her arms have come and gone. When I left, there were parents gathered making paper ships with their sons, to set forth, sea-bearing and assured of new horizons, new sunsets and sunrises.

As we weave our way through uncertainty, let us tend the light of connection and tend to the Eldership in nature all around, teaching us how to remain strong and steady, rhythmic and rooted as we grow through times of great change.

“One touch of nature makes the whole world kin.”  William Shakespeare

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