The Next Adventure
This next phase in my life consisted of going through the changes that came with motherhood. The ups and downs of pregnancy, birth, becoming a mother, and so much more. After I welcomed Colette into the world, I had many realizations. I always thought before this that I would be a working mother. Looking back, I think it was mainly because I did not feel worthy of having someone else support me financially, as well as the fact that I didn't truly understand how important it was to be home with them during this time. I was fortunate enough in the United States to have 16 weeks of maternity leave. As the time kept creeping away from me and it was getting closer and closer to the time that I was to return to work, my heart began to break. No part of me wanted to give my baby to someone else to raise and nurture while I was stuck in what now felt like a prison. I was pumping milk alone instead of breastfeeding my baby. I was trying to coach people from afar on how to take care of my baby and manage all the things. On top of it, Colette was a more challenging baby as she would not take naps when she was supposed to, and it was very difficult to get her to sleep. In this circumstance, I felt it was very cruel to send her to daycare where it was very loud, and she would have almost no chance of sleeping. The workers had a hard time getting her to sleep as well and felt bad they couldn't do anything else to help. Luckily, Kevin and I had moved into my house in town at that time as it was better than his shouse was for a baby. So, once he was done sleeping after his midnight shift, he would run up to the daycare and get her and could usually get her to sleep on his chest. Then the rest of the evening I would try my best to get her down for the night. It was a challenging situation, but we got through it. I had my grandmother and some of Kevin's family who were able to help me out a little as well for daycare, but they also both had busy schedules and couldn't keep her all the time. I finally got to a point as she got older that she was able to do much better at daycare and could take her one nap a day and be good to go. By this point, Kevin and I were about to get married, and we found out we were welcoming baby #2!
When we found this out, we were both super excited as we had eventually wanted another baby but were not sure when the timing would be right. We had decided not to delay the wedding, I continued planning it and we got married in July of that year. By this time, I began to have a huge reality check as if I hadn't with Colette already. I started to think holy shit, how can I welcome another baby when I wasn't even able to do good enough to my standards by the first one. Now, I knew I desperately needed something to change because how could I keep having these babies and then leaving them when it didn't feel right. Nothing against anyone who uses daycare (I still use it to this day), I think there are definitely pros to it as well. The ladies there do a phenomenal job, however my experience with Colette though didn't make it easy to accept and I was concerned about the next baby. I desperately needed to figure out a solution that felt aligned.
All of a sudden, I kept seeing someone I knew here in town that was posting about their life coaching and much of their content resonated with me. It was someone I knew, and so one day after work I made an appointment to meet up with her. I went there, and began telling her everything and how nobody knew, but I was pregnant again and I didn't know what I was going to do. The energy at work was draining, on top of my concerns about my small children. She gave me some advice, and I ended up purchasing a few essential oils from her to try to help my anxiety that was resurfacing. Eventually, I felt called to begin a coaching period with her of 10 weeks. This is the point where I would say my spiritual and self-healing journey really began, in a deeper way than ever before. I was always someone who was into natural healing, I prayed and believe in God as well, but I never could fully grasp what I was supposed to be doing and how to truly let go. I let life paralyze me often, which I feel like many people do when they deal with trauma. They just don't understand what to do about it and how to deal with it. It can be challenging!
During the time I was working with my life coach, I began to have all kinds of realizations about life. She explained things to me about my soul purpose and how to tap into the holy spirit in order to get messages from God. She taught me how to begin to hone into myself on a deep level, and to open my eyes to looking at life with a more open-minded approach. A thought process where I actually have control over what is happening to me. Life is happening for me and I am a part of that, life is not happening to me where I an the victim as I had been used to feeling like. A big lesson I learned from her that truly has affected my life today is that we have to unlearn many of the programming we had as a child, and that we need to release limiting beliefs that we have been holding onto that are keeping us small. I now had the power and control to be able to realize these things and change my thoughts accordingly. This was a huge game changer to be able to unpack everything from my childhood, and from my life up until this point. As well as to see how I was allowing it all to affect my life, and to just surrender it to God instead of holding it as my truth. I will say, this very much improved my relationship with God, finally understanding how to do this instead of being so confused for so long.
At this point, I knew it was time to make a plan, and not continue being stuck!
