Why I do what I do
June is my birth month.
My birth story is the landscape that still lives in me today, even after 48 years of life. It informs what I do with parents. It keeps me accountable to holding space for mothers and their babies of any age to repair and reconnect. It drives me to help mothers develop their capacity for holding space for their children to recover from adverse beginnings.
It is why I seek to be of service in the world in the way I do.
So let me tell you the story of my birth.
It begins with…
It was all wrong from the beginning.
My mom was wrong. I was wrong. We were wrong.
When my mother finally got to see me in the hospital nursery, a day after I was born, she was heartbroken. As a brand new mom seeing her daughter for only the second time after a day of separation immediately after birth, her second glance upon her baby was through a hospital window. It was through that window she saw the note taped to my bassinet that read…
“Don’t pick up. Cries too much.”
My mom was devastated to see this public announcement. Full of grief for me, she blamed my experience of abandonment by the hospital nurses on her inability to advocate in the right way to be taken to see me sooner.
I, on the other hand, blamed it on my inability to cry right.
Too loud, too long, too unable to be soothed into quiet.
Too wrong.
The “wrongness” continued for the first few months of life when I continued to cry too long, too loud. With all strategies exhausted, my mom laments her only solution was to put me down to cry and walk away.
A bummer story. One that has lingered my whole life, re-ignited each year on my birthday as my mom recounts my birth and these sad details, attempting to process her entry into motherhood- her experience of Matrescence.
I/We have been actively re-working and metabolizing this story together for the last few years, closing loops and allowing for joy to seep into all the broken bits caused by pain.
The way I know to allow new healing and growth to happen is with patience on my part, support in the form of expert listening by others and symbolic action that incorporates my mind, heart and spirit.
So 2 years ago, after getting to cry and rage with others about this sticky, icky story, I found my way to showering my mom with love around the topic.
I was inspired to throw a baby shower for her. Just me and her. One of the stories on repeat was she never got a baby shower because I came too early.
Of course she always said it with a laugh, but it didn't feel like a laugh underneath.
So in the summer of 2022, I walked around a store and bought baby clothes. I picked beautiful little dresses and onesies and shoes. I picked what I would have bought for me, and what she might have bought for me.
Then I wrapped them. I made a beautiful breakfast. I gathered flowers. And I invited my mom to a surprise baby shower.
We had a great time just her and I.
It was one of those delicious mixes of weird and lovely.
I trusted inspiration and moved towards celebrating her, celebrating her Matrescence, her becoming a mother all those years ago.
Celebrating Fiercely.
Which usually looks pretty weird and questionable to others.
That was 2 years ago.
When we take symbolic action like this, things don't just all of a sudden clear up and go away. But with this kind of venturing into the imaginative territory of a pretend baby shower, something shifted way down inside of each of us, making room for new perspective, steps in new directions.
Since then, my mom realized her dream of graduating from college.
Since then I have found my way into deeper levels of acceptance of her and me and the whole damn story.
And this year, on my birthday, I found my way into a baby shower for me, for baby Magdalena Consuelo, thrown by me and held by a dear sister friend.
We sat on the beach and cried and laughed and lovingly touched these adorable clothes. We thanked ancestors and gave them gifts. We held open a space for me to be centered in the experience, without having to take care of anyone else as I pivoted from the story of “wrongness” towards the truth of my “rightness.”
It was serious repair that resulted in fierce celebration.
All babies when they come into this world deserve to be:
Welcomed
Wanted
Seen
Felt
Heard
Safe
Protected
All of these cultivate a deeply nourishing sense of being Lovable and therefore truly Belonging.
(Thank you to Kate White and Ray Castellino for the codification of this wisdom.)
I am finding that it is the allowing of joy and love that comes along with celebrating that is the antidote to a story that doesn't begin in this way.
That is why I use the word fierce.
We have to be fierce in our determination to turn towards the light, the laughter, the joy, the love of ourselves and then our children.
It’s so fucking taboo ( I love to cuss when the time is right and it can feel so deliciously celebratory) to celebrate ourselves.
Like really celebrate ourselves. Without comparison, toxic humility and people pleasing coming in to put us in our place. And without ignoring the grief that sits underneath so many of our stories.
I don’t want my daughter to have that model.
Here's what I want her to see.
Weird 48 year belated baby showers.
Tears, laughter, anger and growth.
I want her to see me celebrating me this year.
And celebrating her.
And you.
Zooming out, I have a hope beyond myself that by sharing these small but personally gigantic steps in the direction of affirming my desire, need and right to be seen that you will also, as the magnificent creature you are, find your way into celebrating yourself, with however you began and however your children began, with the kind of fierceness you and they deserve.
The kind of fierceness your child, and mine, are learning from.