Has shame taken over your life?

Funny enough this post is more about Max’s 5th birthday than anything else. But you see if I would not have broken free of the chains of shame this email would not have been written.

If I’m going to brutally honest Max was 99.9% never going to happen. I never envisioned a life with another child. After 4 years I was finally getting in the groove of having my one kid. Kaiya was finally “easy.” I never for a second imagined Max would be in my life…which means Eve was literally just a big ole surprise!

For 4 years I suffered in a prison I had created for myself. I had gone deep into a path that was ruling my life and I never imagined coming out of it. This prison was called shame. Let me explain. When I got pregnant with Kaiya I thought I knew what I wanted. I was married for LITERALLY 3 months when I found out I was pregnant - yeah I really don’t recommend that to anyone. I learned that being married, getting pregnant and having a baby were all seasons in one’s life that need the proper adjustment. The proper growth, the proper time to cultivate, get used to and nourish. All too often we rush through these seasons not ever really knowing how to properly adjust our minds and hearts to how we are feeling in those moments. Often times we find ourselves lost in a sea of change that you can’t take back, control and feel completely overwhelmed by.

After I gave birth to Kaiya I did not feel this strong beautiful bond that I watched over and over and over again on TLC’s Bringing Home Baby. This my friends, was the start of the long and bumpy ride on the shame-train. I found motherhood both easy and extremely hard. Easy in the sense that I could change a diaper, provide the bare necessities but all too often I found the overwhelm of being a new mom take grip on me and I would find myself shamefully crying at my lack of that true “motherly-gene.” I wasn’t the girl that dreamed about being a mom. I dreamed about having a successful career making an impact and traveling the world. 6 months after having Kaiya I found myself (along with everyone else in my company) out of a job after 7 years of having a very successful career trying to figure out what I was going to do. Each passing day I spent with my baby I realized I was losing a little bit of myself. This baby wasn’t filling the gap in my dream that I had longed for all in my life, instead it spiraled me to a long road of baby blues, depression and massive anxiety. The shame of feeling all those emotions dug me deeper into this shame-pit, one I never imagined I would get out of. You see when you want to hide from shame it rears its ugly head even bigger. I would find myself feeling worse any time feelings of anxiety or sadness surfaced and I couldn’t find a way to get myself out of those feelings.

It wasn’t until I started talking to my family about it and openly letting them know that my anxiety at times was too much to control and that there were days where being a mom made me very sad that I started to heal. It took a while, but it was through the healing that my heart opened to the idea of having another baby. I never in a million years wanted to go back in that pit of shame. When people would ask me when we were going to have another baby those baby-blues filled days and massive anxiety attacks would make their way to my head and immediately I could feel my fight or flight response kick in - I was FREAKED OUT!

Today, as I celebrate Max’s 5th Birthday I am so thankful that I freed myself once and for all from the shame that was consuming my life. It was actually through watching my mother in law mourn the death of her mom a few years ago that I can recall God soften my heart. I watched her as an only child experience having to put her mom to rest - all on her own. It truly did not matter that she was surrounded by family and friends because none of those people could truly FEEL the way she felt that very moment. As we said our final goodbyes to GiGi I looked at my own daughter and realized that I would never want her to experience this sort of loss on her own.I wanted her to have a brother or sister to feel these feelings with and to get through that hardship with someone. I didn’t want her to do it alone.

Shortly after that I learned that I was pregnant with Max (yeah we clearly waste no time at all) and my first emotions were fear. What if I went back to that pit. What if I would suck at being a mom (yes, this was another lie that I was fed in my shame-pit…that I was a terrible mom…which if anyone knows me that is totally untrue). What if I was so depressed I could harm my babies. Those fears were felt a lot and they would come up often throughout my pregnancy. I worked hard to push those fears from my head because I knew those fears were not valid.

Max changed my life. He opened up a new level of my heart that I never knew was possible.I ended up deciding on a natural labor with him and almost delivered him in my car. I adored every ounce of him immediately after delivery (I uttered the words “I want ANOTHER one” seconds after he was born). He was my easiest labor, my hardest baby/toddler but my every ounce of joy. He was the piece of the puzzle that our family was missing and I am so thankful for him every single day. He has grown my patience in ways I never thought possible and he just holds such a big piece of my heart. He broke me free from my shame prison and it was his birth that allowed me to kindle a relationship with myself as a mom.