March 31, 2011
As you probably know, I am pregnant right now, and at 33 weeks, it's getting to that time where I need to set limits. I am going to take a break from this blog as I go inward to nest, connect and emotionally and spiritually prepare for this baby to come. I'm also getting to a vulnerable point in the pregnancy regarding my history of HELLP Syndrome. If you'd like to stay in touch, my pregnancy blog is here:
http://hopefulafterhellp.blogspot.com/
Here's to a birth of positive intention! :)
Amy
How Vulnerability Leads to Connection
If you didn't get a chance to watch the video that I posted (and still highly recommend that you watch), here's the short of it. Brene Brown has been studying connection, empathy, shame and vulnerability for the last decade. She's come up with a way of framing her work that I like, and it's based on research. It goes like this:
If you think of a spectrum, with Connection and Empathy on one side, and Shame and Fear on the other, then Vulnerability is the dial that moves between them. Here. I'll make a quick drawing:
Brene talks about "whole-hearted people" allowing themselves to be vulnerable, as in open, self-aware, and comfortable with their imperfections. So within her framework, connection can only happen when you move toward whole-heartedness in this way. If you exist in your own thoughts, caught up in fears or in shame, it will be very difficult to feel connection.
I've been trying to dissect myself within this framework over the past week. I don't come from a very shame-based place, so I have been focusing on fear. What fears am I aware that I sink into, as well as what fears may be lurking within my unconscious. I do feel like I am pretty vulnerable, as in open, self-aware and accepting of my imperfections. But in my quest for continued self-awareness/vulnerability and increased connection, I am still searching for what else I need to work on. Am I stuck along the spectrum on not fully accepting all of my imperfections? Are there imperfections that I fear admitting? Or is it just that I fear admitting imperfections at all? I am acutely aware of my overcompensating need to be competent, capable, and smart. So if I can let myself be seen as imperfect, if I can tell the truth about myself faster, will I feel more connected?
And a side note I've been thinking about is that she talks about the message we need to give our children, "You are imperfect. Human life is filled with struggles. But you are worthy of love and belonging." I think I got that last part, but not so sure about the first two statements... the root of my problem being imperfect? Seriously, comment.
Great Talk about Connection
One of my clients recently sent me this video, and I thought you might like to watch it. It's about 20 minutes long and well worth the time. (If you haven't heard of the TED Conferences, they're totally inspiring and you can find free videos of many of the talks online.) From the site, "Brene Brown studies human connection -- our ability to empathize, belong, love. In a poignant, funny talk at TEDxHouston, she shares a deep insight from her research, one that sent her on a personal quest to know herself as well as to understand humanity. A talk to share."
:Connection: is the Theme of the Month
In our society, December is often a time of connection. We spend more time with family, get together with friends, and some of us even send real mail! Since my HELLP experience/ birth trauma in December of 2007, I've struggled with my sense of connection to others during this time of year and especially around the winter holidays. I've really turned into a Grinch, actually, finding it much easier to dismiss the parties, cards, shopping and gift-giving scene as a parade of superficiality rather than to be really honest with myself and see that my dismissal of these things is related to my own struggle with connection during this time of year.
Probably the last time I can remember feeling connected in December was the first Christmas after I had my son, just days after leaving the hospital. We were having holiday dinner with my husband's family and my mother-in-law asked us to go around the table and say something nice to the person to our left. It was a sweet thing. When it was my turn, I sat frozen, hormonal and sweaty, with a squirming pink newborn on my lap, a nursing cover awkwardly placed over my shoulder, and looked over to the person on my left. My husband. My partner with whom I had just shared the scariest time of our lives. The days leading up to that moment flashed in my memory like a train passing too fast, and too close. I looked at Brian. The person who stayed by my side for 30 hours of labor, who feared for my life, and who mothered our son on his own for the first 7 hours of Gavin's life. Only to sleep on a thin mat on a hospital floor for the next 6 nights, never leaving his wife and son. The man who wore a handmade necklace of birth beads over his scrubs while our baby was lifted from my lifeless abdomen in the next room. Who ran, scared, with the nurse down the hall with our minutes-old baby, pushing his cart to the nursery, barely aware if we'd had a boy or a girl, let alone how many fingers and toes there were to count. The man who fought tirelessly to recapture any of our intended birth plans, bringing a breast pump into the recovery room where I wasn't yet out of the fog of anesthesia, pumping me as best he could on his own, trying to get precious mother's milk from my body... I just sat at that surreal Christmas table, with its casseroles and cheerful garland, looking at my husband, with his whole family watching me, and waiting to hear me say something nice. "Something nice" would never capture the way I felt about him in that moment. Connected by our souls. By this indescribable experience we'd just had. By this tiny baby who had survived. All I could do was cry. I cried and cried right there at the table, the only expression of the deep love I felt for him. He held my hand. I held our baby. I couldn't even talk. That's the last time I remember feeling really, really connected around the holidays.
This year my disconnection was so blatantly obvious for Christmas that I actually forgot to bring gifts, both purchased and made, to my mother-in-law's in Oklahoma City. Even with a three year old just starting to get the whole Santa concept, I couldn't muster any holiday spirit. I let myself make an excuse, yet again, for why I would wait to send holiday cards until the new year. It's just been easier that way.
But I know it's not good for me. I am usually a very connected person. The whole rest of the year I merrily reach out to others and seek connections and nurturing relationships. Because I am so connected the rest of the time, I can feel the negative impact that my December disconnection has on me. Starting this blog in the first place was a way to connect. I crave it. I thrive on it. I think all of us do. So it's only fitting that the first monthly theme in this new year is Connection.
More to come...
Happy New Year of Positive Intention!
Thank you so much for all of your love and support with my blog last year! Your end-of-the-year emails and comments warmed my heart and validated my intent to share this journey with others.
Writing this blog last year was so positive and helped me feel so connected to you, to myself, and to my constant quest for mindfulness. I want to continue on into this new year with a few tweaks. I realized a couple months into my first year of blogging about positive intention that having a new focus every week was just too much. I didn't get to really engage in the mantras and actions every week and often felt rushed. So this year, I will choose one theme for each month. I also felt my right-brained-ness struggling with the structure of weekly posts and having mantras and actions. I need a more free-flowing, creative approach, so that's what will happen this year. (Whatever that will be..) I loved that part of the blog was about donating to the Preeclampsia Foundation and I appreciate those of you who donated (to PF or to your own cause) along with me. I do want to make charitable giving an ongoing part of this blog, so will include that on a monthly basis as well as opposed to just being something I do when I don't post or follow through with an action. I hope you will come along with me again this year, and I also encourage you to interact more in the comments section. I'd love your ideas for monthly themes - either something you would like to see repeated from last year or something new. Also, I would love to have some guest bloggers this year! Step forward any time!!!
I'm officially starting tomorrow, or sometime this week. ;)
Happy New Year!
xo
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