My Son's Birth Triggered Emotional Trauma From My Childhood.
*trigger warning for talk of emotional and verbal abuse by a family member, as well as a brief discussion of pregnancy loss/stillbirth*
Oh man, holy fuck did it ever.
We're going to get REAL personal here. You are going to learn some very deep things about me and my childhood and family. I want to be vulnerable. I want to show you deep parts of my being, while also taking you along my journey to healing.
I ask a lot of my clients when they ask me to be their doula or birth photographer. I've watched live births, but I've also watched still births. I've been a part of clients happiest days but also a part of the worst day of their life. I've wiped fecal matter (aka poop, shit, feces) from the backside of a client as they're pushing, I've been the only support person in the cold sterile surgical room trying to radiate love and comfort to someone strapped to a table unable to see anything around her, to then wipe tears from my clients face through everything until the moment they see their little one take their first breath.
I ask a lot of my clients and I know that. I ask them to trust me from the beginning, from the very first meeting. And I try my hardest to be open, and transparent, and vulnerable the entire time but sometimes I just don't feel like it's enough.
So now I'll just randomly write blogs where I pour my heart and vulnerability out for the entire internet to read 🤷🏼♀️😂
I grew up knowing I didn't have a mother I could rely on.
She was emotionally distant and selfish. Horribly, horribly, selfish. She had mental illnesses she didn't get treated that snowballed, which to this day, is still something she struggles with. She's been jealous of me my entire life because of the relationship I had with my father (so nice of her right).
A little back story: growing up I always felt like a burden. My entire seventh grade year, my best friend's mom took me to school because my own mother couldn't bother to do it. And then eighth grade year after my friend's mom stopped taking me (because my mother never said thank you) my father would drive from his house in Oceanside to my mothers house in Vista (a 40 minute drive) to take me to school (a 20 minute drive), and then back to his house (another 40-ish minute drive). This was all through high school as well until I got my license 3 months before my senior year ended.
During high school I was in the color guard and for night practices that got out at 9 pm, I wouldn't be picked up until after 10 pm because she had to finish watching her reality TV show (not kidding). I would literally be the last person there, sitting in the dark by myself. She even threatened to have me institutionalized as we were fighting one day because she wasn't getting her way (I had come clean that I was depressed and suicidal my junior year). That same year, she also told me I was a mistake to my face on the one random day she had to take me to school (I was almost 2 hours late to school). And then she kicked me out of her disgustingly unlivable house (she's a hoarder, like legit would give the TLC show Hoarders a run for their money) when I was 18, right after I had graduated high school, because she couldn't handle her marriage to my father.
Everything that I thought I had worked through came roaring back to life after I gave birth.
And the question I kept asking myself over and over was "how the fuck could you do that to your child?" How the fuck could you live with yourself, treating your child like that? I would constantly ask myself questions like that as I looked at Killian because I couldn't and can't fathom EVER doing something like that to him. To ANY child.
I. Don't. Get. It.
I grew up hearing how many Barbies my mother had every time my father got me a new one, because she only ever had 3 barbies to play with. She would constantly complain about how condescending her father was, but then turn around and do the same thing to me. I don't understand how someone could be so selfish and jealous of their child. Aren't you as a parent supposed to want better for your child than you had!? Not hold so much animosity towards them?
I have had to do so much soul searching since Killian was born. I knew I had to process his birth before walking into other's birth spaces. Being a birth doula, or birth worker in general, really brings up a lot of shit that you yourself need to deal with and handle before being able to provide someone with unconditional emotional support. But I wasn't prepared for the trauma that was brought up after Killian was born. I wasn't prepared to relive the emotional abuse and sometimes verbal abuse that I endured as a child, stemming from the one person who is supposed to love you and support you, no questions asked. I had to accept that I never received that love and support. I never received that unconditional bond that many mother's and daughters share.
No.
I had to stop the generational trauma that was happening. I was the one strong enough to face it head on, and say you will not touch my family. You will not touch my son. Your reign ends here. Period.
But it's difficult. It's difficult to watch mothers and daughters be so close when they're older. It was difficult to go through my major milestones and CHOOSE not to have my own mother there. Why? Because she's toxic as fuck.
I thought, before I journeyed through pregnancy and birth, that I had fully accepted and processed everything that was between my mother and I. But I hadn't.
I essentially lived through it all again and Killian's birth brought everything back to the surface so that I was able to ACTUALLY process it and validate my feelings. I had to truly forgive myself for what she had done. For the harshness she had instilled in me from a young age. And I've been allowing myself to grieve.
To grieve the experiences I never had with my mother. The phone calls looking for advice or support I never get to make because my mental health is more important than some fantasy of a mother-daughter relationship. To acknowledge the toxicity and to cut that toxicity out of my life. And to forgive her because I understand that she did what she could with what she was given.
But most importantly, to allow myself to put myself first. To know that I did the best thing for myself and in turn my family.
Because the trauma stops with me.
Please know that pregnancy and childbirth may stir up very personal things. It sometimes even pulls things from your subconscious to your conscious mind that you weren't even aware was there.
When I say childbirth is transformational, it sure as shit is. But it's not always in the movie type of way where everyone lives happily ever after. And that's totally ok. Sometimes it's pharmaceutical medications with weekly meetings to a therapist to process all the shit you're going through (that what I did, hello Zoloft and postpartum depression group meetings with a licensed Marriage and Family therapist who specialized in the postpartum area). Shout out to Babies in Bloom in Vista, CA for holding a "Blooming Mama's" group where people within their first year postpartum can safely go and speak about all the difficulties and judgemental societal bullshit of motherhood 🙌🏻
If you need help processing it, please get help. Therapists have experience helping with trauma of all sorts and to be able to speak with a professional in a safe and non-judgmental space is so important. Talk it over with those you feel comfortable and safe with.