How an ink blot helped me transform the direction of my life, and how that relates to trusting the timings around the birthing of the Room:
Have you ever been faced with a decision, and at that moment, Life has responded in ways that helped you see clearly which path to take?
I’m going to share about one such experience of mine, and because that was related to birth, I’m also called to share about birth and trusting the timing of birthing.
20 years ago, I was wanting to conceive my first baby, and I was so full of fear and terror, Understandably, I wanted to free myself from those feelings.
Looking online about getting free from fear during birthing, I found out about a training to become a HypnoBirthing instructor. As I read more, I was amazed to see that the founder, Mickey Mongan, was coming over to offer the first ever training in Australia just two months later.
I was questioning whether to do the training, and at that moment, the ink from my ink pen all spilled out, and I folded the piece of paper in half.
When I unfolded it, I saw, to my delight and wonderment, a picture of a birthing woman.
Two months later, I was at the HB training, which helped change my core beliefs about birth. I still remember hearing a mother speak who had also gone from feeling terrified of giving birth to feeling completely calm and relaxed during her birthing experience. I knew that I could do that too.
On that training, I met Peter Jackson, who was then a HB practitioner. From him, I learnt about Private Subconscious-mind Healing (P.S.H.) which I went to train in during my pregnancy, after becoming pregnant very soon after doing the HB training.
I worked as a HB and P.S.H. instructor and also used these both in the birth of my daughter 18 years ago.
In the 12 months between finding out about HypnoBirthing and giving birth, I had become so trusting of myself, my body and my baby that I had a mostly unassisted, 86 hour posterior birth which was amazing and life-changing. I’m so incredibly grateful for that start in life that my daughter had, and the ease and joy of those early months with her after such a beautiful start.
Peter Jackson went on to develop Calmbirth, which I also then both offered clients and used in the birth of my son, which was another one of the most empowering experiences of my life. I fully free-birthed him, and used The Lifting Technique to turn him from posterior to anterior during his 90 minute birth.
That one ink blot of the birthing woman had a deeply profound effect on the trajectory of my life and of my children’s lives, and I’m so grateful that I listened to that message.
(Side note: when I went to look for the inkblot to share with this post, I found all the original notes from that time, and also a letter and a card from a HypnoBirthing client. V described her birthing experience, saying, “This was the most amazing and extraordinary experience of my life and felt SO normal. I felt incredibly proud of myself… Our midwife was so amazed that she walked out of the delivery suite and signed up for a HB course later this year.” So, that inkblot helped me make a decision which not only profoundly influenced my birth experience, my daughter and son’s births, and the couples that I worked with, but also all the people who went on to have the support of that midwife. All from an inkblot!)
Talking of birth, Mary Walker and I have been talking a lot about birth as we prepare to open the doors for the Room: A place for Conversations with Life.
I am passionate about supporting the Will-Needs of all beings, including babies and their choosing when they are ready to come out into the world.
In Respond Lovingly to Your Calling a few days ago, I facilitated a Zoom call about how our birth themes show up, particularly when we are doing something new, joining something new, or sharing something new.
I have a bug-bear around ‘due dates’ – and, in the holographic nature of reality, I love remembering that this is what I learnt in the HypnoBirthing training.
Babies aren’t buses. I believe the whole ‘due dates’ thing is part of the domination system/colonisation/patriarchy. I am passionate about deeply trusting women’s bodies and their babies to together birth in their own time, honouring their Will-Needs for autonomy and choice and trusting their timing, and supporting them to feel deeply safe and relaxed is such a key part of that. As I talk about often, first comes Love, then Will. From a sense of being lovingly supported comes willingness and the energy of the will, which birth so deeply manifests.
AND, holding a psychospiritual lens, I also believe that babies aren’t blank slates. The work of people like Stan Grof point to the themes in birth that are also replicated not only forwards, in childhood and adulthood, but also ‘backwards’ in lives that one could see as past lives or as accessed in the Collective Unconscious. So, I believe there are also deeper and older reasons why many babies don’t get to start the process of their own birth themselves.
What does this have to do with the Room, you might ask! Well, one of the things that relates is that there isn’t a due date for the Room.
Just like in late pregnancy, we know that it is close and imminent, but we don’t know exactly what day it is coming. We’re not coercing ourselves to make it come on a particular day.
Each day, we’re following the leads, whether that’s attending to some younger parts of us, listening to the Messages that we’re hearing from Life, or following our wanting and willingness to act, such as me today with this post.
In fact, this post emerged from receiving a request a few days ago from someone (you know who you are) to tell them more about my HB and Calmbirth journey, and I remembered that I’d wanted to share the whole inkblot story, and this fitted with the conversations that Mary and I have been having around birth and due dates. So, today, I had a big desire to write about this and share about it, and all the willingness energy to go along with that.
All things are connected. Life is a hologram. The way we are launching the Room is the way we conceived it and the way we will facilitate it: with a lot of listening, presence, trust and willingness.
Doors are opening any day now!
I’d love to hear if you remember an experience where you were wanting to make a decision, and you received a clear Message from Life that helped you be really clear! Come over to FB or IG and I’d love to hear!
Big love! xoxox