Trusting the Body
Do you trust your body? Do you love your body? Do you believe in your body? I’d love to challenge you to really sit with these questions. Feel these questions physically - from the top of your head to the tip of your toes. Where is your love for it? Where is your hate? Where is there trust?
I ask my clients these questions all the time! Pregnancy is a marathon and labor is the last mile of pain and pushing. In postpartum your body sustains life for your child, whether through your mommy juice (as my last client charmingly calls it) or through your warm touch, skin to skin. We need to trust our bodies!
I’ve been challenged through this month's book to continue to ask myself these questions both as a doula and a woman who has been told so many narratives about how I should view my body. Dr. Sarah Buckley, in Gentle Birth, Gentle Mothering: A Doctor’s Guide to Natural Childbirth and Gentle Early Parenting Choices speaks on various popular topics regarding pregnancy, labor, and early parenting with an insight into natural and instinct decision making. “A woman’s satisfaction with her birth experience is related more to her involvement in decision-making than to the outcome (Buckely, 10)”. I love this. I believe strongly in it and I will stand firmly in this at every birth I attend.
Dr. Buckley also speaks to an idea of trust in the labor journey. “[A] lack of trust in and care for our bodies can rob us of confidence in giving birth” (Buckley, 11). In another section on ‘surrender’ she again speaks to this idea of trust. “A woman learns to trust her own, and her baby’s natural rhythms. Such trust is another gift; another way that Mother Nature ensures optimal mothering and maximum survival for our young” (Buckley, 30). It’s why our bodies hand us those annoying Braxton Hicks contractions before active labor, telling us to go to a safe and calm place as labor begins. It’s why our bodies continue to generate milk that is appropriate for the age of our child whether they're breastfeeding at 6 days or 6 months.
What happens when we can’t trust our bodies? What happens when something comes into view that we weren’t expecting; high blood pressure, baby stuck in the pelvis, or lack of energy to go on? What if something has happened prior to being pregnant that has caused us to be distanced from our own bodies; sexual abuse, self harm, past struggles with an eating disorder. What do we do when we struggle with trust?
I’ve reflected on this a lot this month as I wade through the distrust of my own body. On January 13th I was diagnosed with Hodgkin's Lymphoma; a very common and treatable cancer.This body of mine that I can’t escape now has a disease in it that was killing me. That was a harsh pill to swallow. The few weeks after finding out were filled with so much information and doctors appointments that I found myself being overwhelmed very easily. I came undone as my doctor told me about the necessity of chemotherapy, the unavoidable side effects, and the possibility that my likelihood of fertility could be in jeopardy. And so I found myself coming back to this question - do I trust my body?
It’s somewhat funny how much I am turning to my ‘tips and tricks’ that I point my clients to. Aromatherapy, yoga, breathing techniques, massage, etc.. But I can’t ignore that this experience is coming in tension with the reality that trusting my body is really difficult right now. But I have walked with pregnant mamas on the same track of hatred and this is what I have shared with them and am now choosing to remind myself of.
My body is good. My body is a gift. I can breathe in and breathe out and choose to present in my body. I can speak kind words over my body in this season. I am finding myself reminded of the gift that is my body as I would remind a woman sitting across from me as she writes her birth plan. Although I am preparing for something else and the outcome looks different, the truth still remains. This is a good body that God has made. The trusting has been hard. But sometimes trusting isn’t this magical feeling you feel deep down rather it is trusting the truths that we can say to ourselves again and again.
Although someone may be suffering in labor, her body is good. Although I am sick with disease, this body can sustain me. I hope you can rely on these truths this month.
