Family- where spirituality, sacredness & home belong.
Sacredness here will not include any mention of organized religion. I’ve spent too much time in my life participating in organized religion to ever want to be associated with it ever again. However, as I’ve aged and more importantly as I became a parent I am coming around to the idea of the importance of sacred spaces, mindfulness, and participating in connected space with others.
I grew up nominally religious, which included church on Sundays. Now I was in middle America, in one of the fly-over states. Now-a-days my home state has become unrecognizable in the wave of conservatism that has swept rural America. As I watch it from afar, I am aghast at how crazy it seems. My childhood trips to church did not seem to include the vigor, religious fervor, or adulation of a particular political figure.
It was more a societal thing; my immediate family went to church to meet up with my maternal grandparents on Sunday morning. Us kids would romp around in Sunday school until we got old enough to sit in the pulpit. Sunday school classes were filled with your run-of-the-mill middle America Presbyterian teachings. We talked about Old Testament stories, often white-washed of all the divine-ordered slaughtering that accompanied the storyline. New Testament stories seemed warm and welcoming with a white-washed Jesus smiling benevolently down at us.
I can’t really recall any aspect of Sunday school sticking out to me, but I can remember sitting in the sanctuary during the service, laying down with my head on my father’s lap staring up at the ribbed-dome ceiling. There were ceiling fans that lazily spun around, but I can remember being memorized by the repeating patterns in the wood. Or trying to count the individual boards from one side of the ceiling to another.
Growing up we spend most Sundays in the old sanctuary. A quiet, reserved place with towering ceilings, stained glass, and red velvet cushioned pews. Lunch followed with the grandparents at a local deli. Religion never meant more than Sunday mornings. But as I grew up, my teenage angst evolved into a fundamentalist approach to Christianity fueled by a emotional conversion experience and a conservative Wesleyan Church.
Thankfully this extreme dogmatism ended with the death of my maternal grandmother and general adulthood. By the time she passed away I had traveled the world, living in Western Europe, the far East, and central Europe. I left my hometown as quick as I could ad not only met different type of people (which is easy to do when you leave a small town) but spent time in different countries. Some who had no formal religion. Some others who were a completely different religion than I had ever experienced.
As I entered my mid twenties, I was a fierce atheist. But now as I enter my early forties (when did that happen?) I am gentle atheist. I recognize that I don’t know anything really, which really solidified after my stint in Academia where of all things to study, I studied religion. I also became a parent in the past three years which has completely turned my life upside down. So stay tuned for more not-religious, but maybe spiritual musings from a gentle atheist who now recognizes the value that organized religion can play in a life, especially a new parent.
Komodo Dragons & Family
Have I mentioned that I am a new parent? It seems wild to me that I created a person. That person now is almost three years old. How is it possible that me, with all my life stories, and mishaps created someone so new? My little one is so new, even at almost three years old. They are just starting to talk, can now express wants/desires ( I need!!) and is also finding their place in our little family.
One sidenote- I will not be posting any picture of them or reveal their gender. I will always refer to them in the third person. Why? Because I want to keep their life private from the crazy online world. So if that bothers you, too bad. They are more important.
Back to the cute stories… my little one has recently taken to reading books before bedtime. There’s one in particular that we read every single night. It’s called, “Borris Gets a Lizzard”. It’s about a wild boar “Boris” and his family. In this particular book, Boris daydreams of getting a Komodo Dragon and gets into all the shenanigans trying to bring one home. I have now read it a total of 29384738 times. But my little one loves it, so we keep reading it at bedtime.
One this that has caught my attention is that 1) my LO (little one) is fascinated with buses (which I already knew) and 2) they are interested in how Boris’ family represents our own. Now I realize that talking about family make-up can turn political in a split second. Especially in my home country who is a day away from deciding who the next president will be. One choice is a decorated person who is currently the vice president of the country. The next is a convicted felon with a makeup problem. I guess you now know which way I lean politically. Anyways, our particular family looks from the outside as a nice and neat hetero-oriented family. And that’s how I’ll keep it looking in this post. Our family also mirrors Boris’ family in the book. My LO keeps pointing out that Boris has a mamma and a baba just like themselves. There’s a particular page where Boris’ family is sitting down to dinner (while discussing Komodo Dragons) and my LO keeps pointing out that there is a mamma, a baba and Boris. Just like our own family.
It’s cute, and it happens every night. But I think there is something deeper at play. It seems like my little one is figuring out their space in our family. Yes, we have a mamma, yes, we have a baba, and yes, we have a LO just like Boris’ family.
It always seems like a profound moment when my LO points out Boris’ family. For them and for me. Mainly because I’ve never really had a family that I can count on, never had a family that I really liked. Sometimes I wonder if that’s why I fell into religion so hard, because it was a place where I finally felt like I could belong. But I’m hoping that for my kiddo, that they don’t experience the painful self-doubt that I did while growing up. And that they grow up with a secure sense of belonging.
Sacred birthing space
One thing I never understood pre-kiddo is how exactly having a child transforms your life, our brain, and your values. In fact, I was so insensitive that I would probably roll my eyes anytime a parent would talk about their life experiences with making, raising, and loving children. Young me was an asshole, and to all those people, I am sorry.
For me, the bodily changes happened immediately after conception. Prior to baby I was extremely active. Biking to work, running 4k before work, working all day, and then biking home. I was incredible. But then, bam I got pregnant and immediately everything changed. All my energy disappeared. When I did manage to still bike into work, at the end of the day I would just fall asleep on the couch before dinner. I was so tired. Runing felt terrible, like something heavy was bouncy around deep in my gut. It felt like even the tendons inside of me were being pulled, it was a very uncomfortable feeling.
As my pregnancy progressed, I became interested in hypno-birthing. As you know I’m not the most spiritual person out there, so I was a bit skeptical. But let me tell you it transformed my life.
No, it did not. Sorry. However, it was a good resource for positive birth stories and it introduced me to the idea of a birth doula. Now pre-pregnancy I had no idea what a doula was, and didn’t really think that an extra support person was necessary. When you’re pregnant and it’s time for the baby to come, all you have to do is to go to the hospital and then you have the baby right?
No. So much can go wrong and having an experienced doula there can help advocate for you and be a support person for the birthing parent. Doulas are also a really good resource for following our birth plan. Now, unfortunately mine was not able to come to my kiddo’s birth due to COVID lockdowns. But having access to them was a lifesaver.
Some people like to uphold the sacredness of the birthing space. Some others like to lean into the inherent wisdom of their bodies during their birth. While I have an opinion, I will keep it to myself because I know now that my knowledge is limited to my own experiences, worldview, and past history. What hypo-birthing taught me was how to incorporate mindfulness into the marathon of labour.
I learned how contractions work and how frequent they become at the end of labour. I learned how to ride the waves of the pain, from beginning to the crest and then the relief. And you know what? It worked. Often people fear labour, because they think that the pain will never end. But what my birth doula taught me along with hypnobirthing was how to use my breath to release the tension in my body during the pain of labour. At the end, I would ride the pain of contractions up, up, up, and then after it peaked, I would revel in the release. It was an extreme form of self-discipline. And I am so proud of myself.
I’ll write more about my birth story later, unfortunately it did not end well. But I was able to have a few moments during labour where I could create a sacred space for my body. A sacred space for my mind and a sacred space for the process. This was all achieved through mindfulness and breathing, it was pretty magical.
Yoga and Mindfulness
My split leaf philodendron
As I’ve gotten older, and left religion behind I’ve also noticed a growing interest in finding a connection with my mind and my body. I discovered mindfulness while going through a major and painful life change and have been practicing ever since. But when I was pregnant, I sought to strengthen the connection I have with my body, knowing that movement is beneficial through out all stages in life.
Even before pregnancy I was compelled to starting a yoga practice. I like the strength it provided and how cool is it to be in positions where you are all twisty and upside down? Very cool. I like how it makes my body feel and I like how it pressures me to work through the discomfort of different poses through my breath. I’ve wrote a bit about how I utilized hypno-birthing for my delivery, but this post will be about how prenatal yoga helped me stay in tune with my body as it went through the serious change of being pregnant.
I am lucky to be in a country that values social good, especially regarding new families. There is leave for the birth parent, and then there is also leave for the support parent. Interesting enough you can access this leave before you give birth, allowing pregnant people the flexibility to prepare for their little one prior to its arrival. I decided to leave my job prior to giving birth for multiple reasons. Looking back, I really value the time I spent with myself, taking care of the house and my body before my LO came. I was able to settle into a new routine where I could focus on my breath and my health.
Prior to going onto maternity leave, I found this lovely co-op in Gatineau that does prenatal yoga, or as they call it up there yoga prénatal. It was so lovely. Thankfully my LO in utero did not protest too much. Those kicks to the ribs can be so painful! I really wanted to go back, but alas I never did. Granted I used the poses and the breathing techniques they shared during our class up until my baby came. For me it was more than a physical experience, being able to tune into my body in a shared space with others who were also doing the same was so special. Sometimes, on the bad days I go back to that day, center in on my breathing and find acceptance in my current situation.