To Hell and Back (Part II): Surviving Motherhood

Last week we examined the assumptions underlying the wellness movement: that when you make diet and lifestyle changes you will feel great and everything will be ok. But sometimes it’s not so easy…sometimes things get worse before they get better, and we have to hunker down and do the work.

Motherhood can be the same way.

Yes, babies are exciting and wonderful and miraculous and beautiful. Babies also ask you to renegotiate every single part of your life, and that is something that no one can prepare you for.

No doubt, some women start dreaming of motherhood early on in their lives. They know they want to have kids. I think that’s wonderful, but motherhood was not in my plans.

If you take Facebook and social media at face value, what you see is all the joy. But once again, there is something lurking underneath these images of bliss that we need to name.

The flip side of creating new life is that something must die.

Lots of women have thoughts of dying during labor, and of course, this is a real concern. You can die in this process, but more often than not, it is a symbolic death. This is not a fear to live from; it is a fear to respect. Parts of you are going to die in order to bring new life into this world.

And if you don’t look like you’re enjoying every minute of it, you think you’re doing it wrong, or at its worst, you think that something is deeply wrong with you as a woman.

The first three years of motherhood were a unique form of hell for me. A few months into it, I realized that I was in the same pattern as when I was sick, many years ago. Who I knew myself to be was dying AGAIN. I had been here before. And I called upon the inner strength I had developed in my first round of healing to get me through this transition.

But in some ways, this was even more intense because in my previous experience, it was just me I had to take care of. When I gave birth to our child, I had to continue to take care of my family – our newborn, my husband, and my mom. I essentially stopped mattering, even though I mattered more than ever.

This is in stark contrast to people who believe that having a baby is no big deal. Someone said to me one day, “I don’t get what all the fuss is about. You just carry on with your life but you’re holding a baby.”

I am confronting this denial.

I have friends who spend thousands of dollars on yoga training, silent retreats, and meditation to find inner peace. Nothing wrong with that; those are good tools. But I think to myself, “You want a spiritual experience that won’t ever stop? You want to break your ego? Have a baby and give ALL of yourself to it.” I call it Baby Boot Camp.

But, once again, our modern world takes short cuts in parenting. Just like you can take an Aspirin or drink a glass of wine to dull your pain, we have found ways to dull the pain of parenting. These shortcuts may make us more comfortable in the moment, but what are the long-term consequences?

I truly recognize that there is a wide spectrum of choices in parenting and not all of them are available to everyone. Many parents must make hard choices and sacrifice what is ideal for what is available to them, given their circumstances.

The last thing I want to do is come across as a parenting expert. I’m not. I also realize that these are very personal, complex decisions to make, and there is so much judgment of each other and our selves. But I also believe that we need to question the status quo as frequently as possible, and if something doesn’t make sense, then do something different.

Let’s take a look at a few of these shortcuts.

American culture: We set up nurseries and isolate our babies in little jail cells that we fondly call cribs, and we break their spirits by letting them cry it out, so that we can get a good night’s sleep. The goal seems to be to make the baby as independent as possible as soon as possible.

Our family: Babies are not designed to sleep through the night. My husband and I kept our son with us. Drake got his own room when he was two. We put him to sleep there in his bed and then he comes and joins us in the middle of the night. We haven’t slept well in four years and know deep within our bones that we are doing the right thing, not the easy thing.

I have never spent one night away from Drake because I know that mommy and baby need to be together. I bathe with him every night.

Recommended reading: The Family Bed by Tine Thevenin and Our Babies, Ourselves by Meredith Small.

American culture: Worst-case scenario is to feed our babies formula or pump our milk. I get that pumping has a place, but it is far from ideal, and our ancestors did not have these contraptions.

Our family: I have breastfed exclusively. No pumping. No bottles.

I want to say right here that I am not ignorant to my privilege in this world. Obviously, some women can’t be with their babies and will need to pump because their income is important. But I also know lots of privileged people who don’t give breastfeeding the time a day. It is still a choice, and I refuse to dismiss my commitment, based on not having to work in an office. I realize I am lucky to have a career where my work allows me to be with my child.

Recommended reading: The Continuum Concept by Jean Liedloff.

American culture: We use television as a babysitter.

Our family: We do not expose our child to screens. When we go out to eat in a restaurant, I see that the TV screen mesmerizes Drake. It has a drug-like effect. The screen is like sugar. I will not lie: there are times in our home when I want to plop him down in front of the television and go do something that I want to do. But we don’t. Our home is screen-free, so we have to get creative and out of our comfort zones.

American culture: Sometimes we use pacifiers when our babies make too much noise and need soothing.

Our family: We didn’t use a pacifier in our home. For a few months we gave Drake our little finger to suck on. Extremely inconvenient, but felt better than plastic. His urge to suck dissipated naturally. Pacifiers aren’t about the baby’s comfort; they are about the parent’s comfort. A crying baby strikes a deep cord of unresolved grief within our selves.

Recommended reading: The Aware Baby by Aletha Solter and The Conscious Parent by Shefali Tsabary.

Here’s the real truth…we live in a world that we aren’t designed for.

Over and over again, in pregnancy, birthing, and parenting, my husband and I ask a single question: how close to nature are we? Not what's considered to be right or wrong, but how can we bring ancestral wisdom into our modern family.

I have used motherhood as a spiritual path, just like I used my chronic inflammatory illnesses as a source of transformation. In both cases, there was nowhere to go. How I felt about anything didn’t really matter. What I wanted to do was now irrelevant. When I was sick, my spirit was trapped in a body that didn’t want to get up off the bathroom floor. And in the first few years of parenting, I gave up everything to be with my child. All of the self-care that I had mastered to deal with my health concerns literally went out the window.

I talked to friends who said, “Oh, we just did whatever made it easy for us.”

I would have loved to do what was easy, but taking the easy route is in conflict with my soul.

Easy doesn’t resonate. Easy gets us into trouble. Easy isn’t always right. Putting a frozen pizza in the oven is easy, but that doesn’t mean it’s good for you. Nope, I was going to do it again: throw myself into motherhood with everything I had, just like I did when I was getting well.

EVERYTHING had to be renegotiated.

I let go of my body. My breasts were for Drake now. My stomach is still soft and round. I look different.

I let go of the future I had created in my head.

I let go of my marriage, as I knew it.

I let go of pooping by myself.

I let go of doing anything on my time frame. I remember two weeks after giving birth, I left my house for the first time as a new mother. I needed to go buy some new breastfeeding bras. I’d never been so excited and so discouraged. It took all of my being to get out of the house that day. I thought to myself, “I just won’t ever leave the house again. Fuck it.” Now, was that true? No, but that’s what it felt like, and I am learning that feelings are real and wise.

I let go of having any kind of agenda or to-do list. What a joke? At one point, I remember it took me 5 days to send a 3-sentence email to someone.

Had I been involved in the online community, I would have let that go, too, but I hadn’t entered into this world yet.

And the weirdest thing is that everyone somehow expected me to be the same. I would show up in the world and everything was the same but me. It’s like I had to go back into my old life to say good-bye to it.

For me, motherhood was devastating.

Many health professionals would have turned this into a disease. They call it post-partum depression. I knew better. I was in the midst of a transformation, and it was spiritual. My life was expanding. I had been here before. It was going to get better, but not yet.

You see…six months before I found out I was pregnant. I was in a state of prayer. My prayer is “Infinite Spirit show me the way.” I had realized that my life was unsustainable. I was not living in a model of wellness. I was running a business with my husband AND managing my own business Eat in Peace Wellness Consulting. It wasn’t working. I wasn’t taking good care of my clients, yet my heart wasn’t fully engaged with my husband’s business. It was all wonderful, and yet I felt torn.

This prayer had always worked to give me clarity in the past. I always got the sign or series of signs I needed to determine my next move, usually pretty quickly, but the months were going by and nothing was happening.

I was getting ready to take the bull by the horns….

And then, my period didn’t come, so I got a pregnancy test and the call came, “Charlotte, I don’t know how to tell you this, but you’re pregnant.” Some unique version of fuck came out of my mouth. My husband and I were celebrating our two-year wedding anniversary at Perry’s Steakhouse. We had just had this amazing meal when the phone rang. THIS was what Spirit was asking of me. THIS?! I was going to be a mother?

It was hard to make sense of my getting pregnant when I had friends who wanted a child and couldn’t, but life’s not fair. There’s an old saying that we get what we need, not what we want. That can be hard to swallow sometimes.

I hope my son reads this one-day and feels proud. Life is full of surprises. Children are one of them. My son asked me to be a mother and my husband to be a father, and we said, “YES! Let’s do this!” It was a conscious choice to bring him into this world. He has such power. He changed my life before he was born and continues to turn me into the woman I have always longed to be, and my husband is by my side.

It sounds corny, but having Drake is the best thing that ever happened to me. But no, it hasn’t been frolicking through a field of fucking daisies. It’s been more like hiking on a treacherous mountain path with an occasional view that takes your breath away.

Here is the scoop: if the goal is happy, then we get stuck and nothing changes. Can you see that? I not only spent years numbing my dark emotions with sugar, alcohol, and excessive exercise, but on top of that, I made myself wrong for not being happy. Insult to injury.

Some people may end up as alcoholics or on hard drugs or as workaholics. I know lots of mothers who start out with a glass of wine to relax in the evening and as the months and years go by, the glass turns into a bottle.

If we glorify happy, there is no transformation. There is no change. There is just a fake smile to cover up the pain of being human. I think that life conspires to bring us to our knees, so that we can experience the full spectrum of what it means to be alive.

For me, this came as a series of spiritual interventions completely out of my control. These things aren’t planned. You have to be awake enough to pay attention to what life is trying to tell you. I am writing a book about vitality because the physical leads to the spiritual. Always. And if people took care of themselves in a more meaningful and more appropriate way, I believe that they could live a more powerful life.

Women could truly step into their power.

Motherhood has been hard. I have cried. I have been angry. Angry is an understatement. Full of rage is much more accurate. AND in the same breath, I can say that it has been the most extraordinary experience ever – moments of joy and ecstasy – sprinkled into WTF is happening? Who am I? Who are you?

In both of these instances, reclaiming my vitality and motherhood, the pain and despair and heartbreak took me somewhere, and if I hadn’t been all in, then I wouldn’t have received the healing. That’s the thing that kept me going day after day after shitty-ass day. I knew I was on the right path and that discomfort was part of it. I kept showing up, even when I didn’t want to.

I began a never-ending process of letting go of control. I was allowing my life to unfold before me in a new way, and that brought me here to be with you.

So my questions to you are:

Where are you holding back? You won’t get the answers you long for until you go all in.

Where are you numbing your pain, as opposed to stepping into it fully?

Where is your need to be comfortable actually turning you into a useless ball of mush?

Where are you making excuses when you should be stepping into something new?

If you are living in fear, read this.

It sounds cliché; life is a series of choices. I chose to get well and I chose to have our son.

Choose something and see it all the way through.

Life is a story of half-assed versus whole-assed. The latter option is a lot more rewarding.

And if you’ve chosen a path of expansion, but feel like total and utter shit, you are probably on the right track. At least that’s what’s been true for me…

It’s worth repeating:

“If you’re going through Hell, keep going.” –Winston Churchill

The Universe is in Your Uterus

Let’s talk about a female organ that needs some attention - the uterus. Hey MEN…don’t go tip-toeing off anywhere – you are included in this conversation and need this information too. It amazes me how little is understood about the uterus; its sacred power, its connectivity to everything else in the body and how to care for it.

Much of our uterine care advice comes from a medical community, which disregards the power of the female body to regulate itself through a natural ebb and flow of hormones throughout the month.

As a species, we have gotten so far away from our raw natural state, that we see our periods as an inconvenience and our uterus as an expendable organ to be conquered and controlled rather than honored and nurtured.

I got a call from a friend the other day. She said, “I need to talk to you about something. Sex is becoming very painful. My sex drive is good. But my tissue is just so tight. I’m so uncomfortable. It is really becoming an issue, and I don’t know what to do.”

We talked some more. We talked about lubrication options, which could help to buy some time while we figure out what’s going on. And then things got interesting. I asked her, “What do you use for birth control?”

She said, “A copper IUD. I figured that it is the least invasive with no hormones.”

IUD stands for intrauterine device. Lots of women opt in for this contraceptive device based on the statement above.

I said, “Ok. You are not going to like what I have to say, but here we go. First, let’s talk about invasive. There is a foreign, metal object in your vagina. That is invasive. You already have an autoimmune disease (she has Hashimoto’s). Once again, you have a foreign object inside of your body that could elicit even more inflammation. My vagina gets tense just talking about it!” [laughter]

“Do you see that this IUD isn’t doing you any favors? I’ve even seen this argument extend to wearing contact lenses, which is a foreign object in your eye. I’ve even seen it extend to vasectomies in men. They don’t stop producing sperm when they cut the tube that carries them. The body absorbs the sperm. For some people, none of this means anything. There is little to no known impact. But for others like yourself, who already have a chronic inflammatory disease, well, it could tip the scales even further away from your favor.”

“There is no easy way to prevent what Mother Nature wants to have happen, which is get you impregnated. But making your vagina an inhospitable place with an IUD is disrupting the core of your entire being. The uterus is this open space where life happens. Out of nothing, an egg and sperm meet and make a baby. The uterus is the ultimate source of creativity and right now yours is not happy. It is inflamed.”

“We can try herbal smooth muscle relaxants. We can try nervine herbs to help relax your nervous system. We can try to moisten your vaginal tissue from the inside out with appropriate nutritional and herbal support. There are lots of options. I do not want to tell you what to do. My job is to educate. If you decide to remove it, you can always get another one. I will support you either way. I just hate chasing symptoms on people and wasting resources when there is something obvious that needs to be addressed, like a foreign object up inside your body. Obviously, I am biased [more laughter].”

She thanked me for my feedback, and I told her to call me if she needed anything else.

Whew! What would she decide to do?

Within 48 hours she made an appointment to remove the IUD, and I received this text message:

“Holy shit! Just left the doctor’s office and I swear to God it feels like this dark cloud has lifted. It’s like my vagina just took a deep breath of fresh air, ha ha! I had no idea it would be so immediate and noticeable.”

She had her IUD for 21 months before taking it out. Then, a few days later, I get this message:

“Light bulb moment! I would bet money that my iritis was an inflammatory response to the IUD. It started shortly after having the IUD put in and nothing I did diet wise seemed to keep it at bay.”

So in addition to an autoimmune pattern in her body, she has had this mysterious inflammation in her eye, which is called iritis. Now, she thinks the two are connected.

Everything is connected.

You cannot imagine the joy I feel for the possibilities of this young woman’s life. She is ready for change. She is motivated. She is committed to the unfolding of her vitality. I have had this same conversation with many women. She was ready to hear it.

She gives me hope.

Ladies, your uterus is not an expendable organ. The two most unnecessary and destructive surgeries I see happening are cholecystectomies, which is the removal of the gall bladder, and hysterectomies, which is the removal of the uterus. The fact that both of these are hollow organs intrigues me. I wonder what that means, if anything. Beyond that fascination, I am pissed.

If you have had one or both of these organs removed, I am so, so sorry.

If you still have yours, do everything you can to keep them.

Women deserve better.

Just because you can live without it, does not mean that you don’t need it.

This is one of the reasons the medical system is so quick to schedule these surgeries. Technically, you can live without these organs, but my question is: CAN YOU LIVE WELL?

When women fail to honor their reproductive capacity, they fail to honor themselves.

The energetic function of your uterus is to ground you, to help you feel a connection with the earth, and to inspire your creativity. The vaginal canal is an opening for the exchange of energy into and out of the body. I am not just talking about sexual activity. I am talking about the kind of connection that reminds you that you are part of the tides and the seasons and yes, the cycles of the moon! Once again, the IUD is not going to facilitate this healthy flow of energy.

When the uterus is understood as a sacred space, we no longer feel at odds with the emotions that arise because of our menstrual cycle. The positive emotion associated with the uterus is containment. The negative emotion is histrionic, which means overly dramatic or theatrical; essentially, the opposite of containment. Both emotions are important and reveal to us secrets from our subconscious.

You know what happens right before my period? I might get sensitive. I might get weepy. I might get angry. I might not have any energy. These symptoms are not a pathology. This is the wisdom of the body at work. When my estrogen and progesterone start to drop, my body has to adapt to that. Sometimes it doesn’t adapt all that well, and what gets revealed to me is what I am overlooking in my day-to-day life. All of a sudden, I can’t contain myself as well I could earlier in the month. At this point, my life shows itself to me. The things I have ignored, I can’t ignore anymore.

These insights are painful gifts.

Maybe I need to get more sleep this coming month.

Maybe I need to eat better foods this coming month.

Maybe I need to have that hard conversation with my spouse, co-worker, boss, family member, or friend that I have been avoiding.

You don’t want to make your menstrual cycle go away. You want to harness the power it brings each month. Use it to learn about yourself. Use it to connect with the moon. If your menstrual cycle disables you, then get to work on your self-care. You need support. On the other end of the spectrum, you may not have a menstrual cycle. That is another kind of problem, and you need help, too.

The emotional expression around a woman's period is raw. It is primal and often uncomfortable. Instead of making it wrong or viewing it as a weakness, I think women and men would be far better off to embrace it and look for its wisdom.

We can either think…I am a beacon of light and truth when my menstrual cycle comes along. What will I learn about myself and life this month?

Or...

I shouldn't feel so strongly or be so weepy or be so angry or be so irritated. What is wrong with me?

I think the first perspective is much more empowering. Don't fight it; lean into it.

Let’s examine another method of birth control: The Pill. Women’s hormones are cycling all month long. In the first half of the cycle, estrogen is high. As a hormone of proliferation, it builds the endometrial lining of the uterus. Then, the woman ovulates, and egg white-like vaginal discharge appears, marking the beginning of the second half of the cycle. Next, progesterone takes over, which helps to hold onto the endometrial lining, making sure your uterus is a nice, soft space for an egg and sperm to unite and make a baby. If pregnancy does not happen, then the estrogen and progesterone both drop and the woman has her period, effectively shedding the lining.

That’s the simple story. The menstrual cycle is very complex. The thing to know about hormones is that they exert powerful influences in the body in very small amounts, and they all affect each other.

Everything is connected.

Now that you understand, the ups and downs of hormones and how they dance together with all the other hormones, you understand why The Pill is a horrific intervention:

It takes this glorious cycle out of the equation and introduces a flat line of hormones.

It removes the essence of what it means to be a woman. It introduces male energy to the body. Let a man be a man. I want women to be women.

What I mean by that is that your menstrual cycle isn’t something that holds you back in life. It is NOT an inconvenience. It is something to celebrate – these are your reproductive years! And this cycle you live with, that resides inside you, makes you strong. It makes you adaptable to change. It’s wonderful!

But The Pill, an IUD, or an hysterectomy are NOT viable solutions. While it may make your symptoms go away, it is driving your imbalance deeper…and deeper!

I said this earlier and it is worth repeating: the universe is in the uterus; the empty space where the possibility to new life resides. Please respect and preserve this sacred space.

So here's my primer on how to take care of your uterus...

There are targeted nutritional and herbal solutions that can help you. There are dietary and lifestyle changes that can help you. You have options, but they require your participation.

My number one nutritional supplement for supporting the health of the uterus is from Standard Process. It is called Utrophin PMG, which is available through qualified health professionals. This supplement comes from the traditional wisdom of ‘like restores like’, meaning that our ancestors believed that if you had a problem with a specific tissue, then you need to eat it. This is still true today.

My number one herb for the health of the uterus is Rubus idaeus, also knowns as raspberry leaf. Many herbs have an affinity for specific tissues or organs. This is something that our ancestors figured out and is often observable. That is what is useful to me - observable phenomenon, observable changes. Raspberry helps the uterus be a better uterus. A few years ago, I suffered from menstrual cramps. After a few months taking raspberry leaf, my cramps subsided.

For thousands of years, women have also employed this herb to ensure healthy childbirth. I drank raspberry tea every day when I was pregnant. The easiest means of consuming it is in a teabag from Traditional Medicinals. Consume 4 teabags every day, steeped overnight in a quart of hot water, for the best extraction. Traditional Medicinals teas are available at most health food stores, and you can refer to my previous blog about herbal medicine for more information and resources on this topic.

And if you have feelings to coldness, add a little ginger to your raspberry tea. Sometimes all the uterus needs is a little bit more blood flow, and she will feel much better. Once again, herbs have different affinities in the body and ginger likes to support the health of the pelvic floor, which includes the uterus.

If birth control is your main focus...

Outside of creating hormonal imbalance and an inflammatory cascade, well, like I said earlier, it is hard to prevent what Mother Nature has wired us for. On that basis, my advice is simple: don’t have sex unless you are prepared to have a child. Another way to say it, there is no such thing as casual sex. Any act of creation is sacred, and birthing a child is at the top of the heap.

The two most non-invasive and viable forms of birth control are family planning and condoms. I like Katie Singer’s work – gardenoffertility.com. This is win-win because whe teaches a woman how to embrace her menstrual cycle, know herself in a new, refreshing way and understand how her fertility works. It just requires participation and presence, which are wonderful ways of being that will seep into every aspect of your life. As far as condoms go, what a small price to pay.

If you are intrigued by the possibility of investing in uterine care, I recommend a woman here in Austin named Michelle Brown who can teach you how to care for your uterus, if you still have one. She can help you repair and heal, if it has been damaged. She can help you grieve your loss, if your uterus is gone. Whatever your phase in life, she can bring honor to you and your uterus. She specializes in Mayan Abdominal Massage, among other techniques. Michelle travels to Belize to study and is committed to her craft.

Barbara Christman is another woman I highly respect and I wouldn’t get a vaginal exam from anyone else. She is the female embodiment of Mother Earth; kind, gentle and knowledgeable.

If you doubt what I have said so far, or if it interests you, then you will want to read Mothering From Your Center by Tami Lynn Kent. It could just as well be titled living from your center. Tami specializes in holistic pelvic care, and Barbara Christman has trained with her.

I love these women and what they bring to the world and what they stand for, which is healing the female form. I am so happy to share them with you.

My hope is that after reading this, you will never look at a uterus in the same way. When you hear the word, you will think: universe. The universe is in the uterus. Love it. Respect it. Cherish it. Beyond that, get the help you need for true, deep healing. You’re worth it.

Eat in Peace. Live in Peace.

Love,

Charlotte

New Perspectives on Love and Healing

The things in life that bring us joy also bring us pain. Nowhere is this more true than in intimate relationships. I still know people that believe that they won't be happy until they are married or even better, their marriage sucks and they think kids will make it better. Good luck with that cuz wherever you go, there you are!

As I reflect on the last three years since having a child and all the changes that have transpired, these two books have helped Glenn and I traverse the rough waters. Parenting is a game changer and it's good to have some new relationship tools in your pocket, even if kids aren't a part of the package.

Stan Tatkin is awesome. He weaves neuroscience into attachment theory and simply brings the hard to swallow truths about relationships. One of my favorites is that when you take your vows, you might as well say, "And I take you to be my pain in the ass." According to his work, there's nothing more difficult than another person. Isn't that the truth?! The romance phase is a drug-like state that won't last forever but people chase it, like it will.

As far as the other book goes, talking more won't solve your problems, instead you need to find a way to connect on a vibrational level. This fascinates me because the ability to connect emotionally came long before language.

Bottom line, cultivating vitality involves nurturing our intimate relationships. Stan Tatkin explains that if you aren't tethered to one other person, then your health is negatively affected. Yep, we are tribal and need each other. Relationships can offer many levels of healing - if you're up for the work! You won't regret reading these two books to have a better understanding of yourself, your life and your loved ones. Really good stuff.