 The first time I went to the supermarket, 5 mins from our house, by myself, without my baby.
The first time my baby went into the arms of a friend, after many meetings with friends where baby was just with me. The first time my sister came to babysit for an hour, and I went out for tea in town with my man. The first time using a babyphone after I rocked my baby to sleep, letting him sleep alone in the bedroom while I’m downstairs watching a series before bed. The first time my mom came to babysit while instead of me spending the day wíth them, I actually went upstairs to do some work. I love how I have been able to take these steps in my own timing. How I’ve kept honoring my own pace, and not tried to follow others around me who did it a bit faster. How I’ve allowed myself to literally run back from the supermarket that first time, hesitate to leave the house that first hour of babysit, stay all day with my baby until I felt ready to let my mom take over a bit longer. I love how my close environment welcomed and respected my feelings and boundaries as a newborn mom. My nervousness, my wanting to check in a million times, my yes, my no, my wanting to be close. All those first times became normal, easy, relaxed times. The moments of distance between me and baby are naturally growing. I don’t really think about whether I should take more space or give him space away from me. It’s a feeling, an impulse, that is suddenly there. There’s a wanting to explore. A need for change. An opening up to the world. And then I know we’re ready for a next step. I’ve noticed it’s easy in our culture to feel shame, to feel oversensitive, silly, or like you’re overreacting, as a mom following her instinct. While in reality, you’re simply connected to your baby and their needs, and are feeling the impulse to care for them. Which, as the one who has carried and birthed the child, is basically your task. I’ve never felt my intuition as strong as now that I’m a mother. And it’s such a feeling of well-being to allow myself to follow that inner knowing, that right timing, those true desires. It’s part of what makes motherhood so enjoyable for me 🤍  Right before our first date - a morning walk through the neighborhood - my inner voice invited me to stand still for a moment, before I went down the stairs of my building to meet the guy I met on a dating app the day before.
The guy stood outside, in front of my building, not yet aware of me. I could see him through the window. I paused to listen a bit more into that inner voice. “Take a moment to look at him,”, I heard. And then: “This is your man.” I thought it was pretty wild to make a statement like that 😅, and did not take it very seriously, as I knew my intuition often communicates more symbolically. At the same time, I’d learned to trust that voice, and so I was willing to play, stood there for a moment, and observed the man in front of my apartment. I thought to myself: “‘My man’, that’s probably not what it literally means, but I guess there’s sóme kind of adventure that will come out of this.” We had a fun first date. It was the first day of spring weather after a long grey winter. We laughed a lot, and I felt something deeper than on other first dates. We started dating, spending time together. It was fun, there was a connection, but we wanted to take things slow. Our baby had a different idea though 😅 Because not long after, we found out that we were pregnant. If that was not enough to deal with, I also got really sick - my body didn’t handle pregnancy that well. Not just a week of feeling sick, no, I was bedridden sick for months, and would be feeling unwell until the end of my pregnancy. From exciting dates, and taking it slow, we went to managing daily heavy nausea and a rollercoaster of stuff that needed to be figured out, arranged, cared for. We needed to step into a partnership more committed than I’ve ever experienced before. Now, 18 months later, I’m looking back and am so proud of us. We’re living together as a family, and are a great team as parents. Our boy is a happy, healthy and relaxed baby, and we enjoy being with him so very much. We’ve birthed a baby, and with that a relationship, a new house, and totally different versions of ourselves. We’ve become a family. Transformation like no other, and not the easiest path, but seeing where I am now, I feel incrédibly lucky 🧡  Over the years the more I grew in my work as a coach, the more I became aware of how important it is to respect a clients ‘no’.
This might sound obvious, but you’d be surprised at how many times in coaching or other healing professions a client’s ‘no’ is not really being seen or respected. I remember one time during an acupuncture session my therapist told me they were going to put a needle in a point on my forehead. He brought the needle to my head and my body suddenly tensed up, and I called out a clear ‘no!’. His reaction: ‘Ah no, this is not gonna hurt you.’ With an unsure voice I said ‘ok then’, and he put the needle in my forehead. After that session I felt so unwell. For weeks I struggled with dizziness, feeling ungrounded, like there was no floor beneath me. It was no fun. I needed a session with a befriended energy worker to come to balance again. My acupuncturist probably didn’t mean any harm and thought he did the right thing to help me. I, at the time, wasn’t used to feeling or trusting my own ‘no’. I felt overwhelmed by my own sudden reaction, started doubting myself because of hís reaction, and then just gave him sort of a ‘ok’. In coaching this often takes on more subtle ways. For instance where a coach could be going on about an idea or exercise that would be good for a client, but isn’t really tapping into what a client needs in that specific moment. The client might feel a slight disconnection, but might also be used to ‘follow the teacher’ and be a good student. And thus neglect their feeling, push through some exercise and afterwards blame themselves when things didn’t go well or feel right. A lot of people have never learned to feel their own no’s, or act upon them. This is why in sessions we often practice the no’s. We check in again and again to see if where we’re going is still aligned with the client’s well-being. We honor no’s when they come up. We take pauses, slow down, change course if we have to. The beauty of respecting the no’s, is that the yes’s come out as well, without being pushed or forced. Yes’s to life, to joy, to relaxation, to new opportunities. And so, we say yes to no 😊 |
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Let op: Mijn nieuwsbrief is langzaam weer aan het opstarten na zwangerschapsverlof en op dit moment nog bijna voltijd mama zijn. Nog even niet wekelijks dus!
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