If this is my last day on earth would I want to be doing this?

Let’s back up.

I planned the perfect postpartum.

I had in place all of my pillars. I stocked the fridge. Threw myself a Nesting party. I had my mom here for a whole month and my husband took off work to be with us. I was getting the home birth I so dreamed about with my first child. I had lined up a meal train. I felt so ready for the change that was coming my way.

Looking back now -that- was probably the problem. I was so ready. I had planned it all. I had everything in place.

I had failed though to see the crumbling foundation around my husband and my friend group. The third-trimester hormones worked perfectly to keep me in this bubble of -not bliss- but a lack of an ability to see outside of myself and my children.

So on my sixth day of pre-labor, I went to my husband in tears and said “You have to pull it together- I have a baby trying to come out of me and I need to feel safe”…so when even THAT didn’t tip me off for what was coming nothing would have.

At times I was left alone with a baby for 12 hours at a time. I didn’t leave my room though I wasn’t nourished until I directly asked. My meal train totally flopped. Until a soul sister in another country reached out to her women and THOSE women showed up for me in a way that began to fill my soul back up. And some of those women are forever etched on my heart.

And then for weeks I lived in this place in the in-between nursing wounds of abandonment while nursing a child. Feeling the fire of anger. Matched only with a feeling of joy and love I had never yet experienced. I held my baby alone after her tongue and lip surgery while she cried in pain…alone…with me. My nerves were shot.

At some point, I started searching for ways to crawl myself back out of this darkness. My marriage got harder. My friendships continued to morph and dissolve or morph and just change.

Somewhere in there though I was starting to feel whole again. I read books I never thought I would read. I signed up for a big mountain race and invited/convinced (which wasn’t hard) my new bestie from the internet to join me. I decided that every day I would simply start to say Thank You. I joined a breathwork class. I sought out a new mentor. I decided I could no longer stay this version of myself that I had been trying to be.

And then in the quietest way, possible something in me shifted. I started being able to ask myself this: “If this was my last day on earth would I want to be doing this, thinking this, saying this?” And if I said no… I stopped whatever it was. I just stopped. I took a moment and I’d pivot if I could.

The practice is not perfect. Though it’s working. Today I found myself dancing with my son in the grocery store wearing the hat and shoes he picked out for me to wear… his hat by the way… and you know why? Because if it is my last day on earth I want to say YES to wearing his hat. And I most certainly want to be dancing.

Life is more both/and then I think we feel comfortable to admit. It takes courage to change and it is perfectly healthy and wise of you to change.