Like many girls, I grew up putting pillows in my t-shirts while daydreaming about having a baby. I remember thinking if I hit the super old age of 30 and wasn’t married, I would adopt a kid on my own. In that daydream, I was totally established and wealthy and able to handle being a single mom. Because I was 30. And that was like OLD.
And this was my back-up plan – because obviously I’d be married by like 27 LATEST and pregnant by 28.
To say I was a planner is an understatement.
My 37th birthday is coming up. And with it comes the haunting sound of a clock ticking every single day. The dread of realizing that I may never be a mom sometimes washes over me with a sadness that surpasses any heartbreak I’ve ever felt. Watching my friends with kids or my friends who are pregnant still overwhelms me with feelings of failure and occasional shame. Like somehow the Universe deemed me not worthy of being a mom.
A few years ago, I thought I was so close I could taste it. I was in a life partnership with a man who I was convinced would be the best father ever. And I was so excited for the day we would be ready to have kids. But that story did not go as planned.
In so much of my coaching work, I try to get clients (and myself) to a place where we can weave together the work of rolling up our sleeves and taking the reigns of our destiny while also knowing (and trusting) the taste of sweet surrender.
My biggest fear is that I will never have a child.
And this is a place in my life where I find myself STILL unable to surrender. I wake up and hear the ticking clock. I go to sleep and hear the ticking clock. I lie in the most blissful of meditations and feel the piercing longing of holding my own child in my arms.
This year has presented me with so many lessons along this same theme. I used to be able to muscle through, push through, work through challenges. I was a warrior. I battled through my challenges with my vision, my willpower, and my work ethic.
And yet this year, the script flipped.
When I started to TRULY connect with Source…
When I said yes to leading from my heart and flowing in my feminine…
When I accepted the new feminine rising paradigm, none of my old warrior tricks worked anymore.
Suddenly, the Universe would not let me off the hook. Ways of running my business stopped working, patterns of numbing out stopped working, methods of controlling the outcome stopped working.
And I just had to surrender.
Life did not go remotely like my plan. And, yet, every single piece of it was perfect.
Every single shared laugh. Every late night conversation. Every ill-fitting job. Every bizarre crush. Every heartbreak. Every party. Every move. Every sobfest. All of it.
I would have it no other way.
This year I started to ask Source to use me however she would like. That I am unattached to what it looks like.
But that’s sort of a lie.
Yes, I’ve graduated from the bossy little girl to the humbled servant of Source – the majority of the time. I am able to be relatively detached from the plan. I am ready to go and do whatever will be of the highest service. Whatever will have the most impact. Whatever can best heal the planet. Because my soul knows this is my job in this lifetime.
But the one asterisk to this prayer is always “but please whatever you do, don’t assign me the role of the spinster childless healer.”
This is a place where I haven’t been able to surrender. Where I continue to watch the battle between my human desire and what may be my soul’s destiny.
Even just typing out “my soul’s destiny” scares the crap out of me because it makes it a possibility.
The other phenomenon I’ve been observing is my envy of men. How trapped and suffocated I feel by my own feminine body. And how much I desire to have the freedom of time. How, even if I overhaul my own internalized patriarchy, I cannot overhaul my physiology.
Yes, I would like a child. AND the truth is I’m really enjoying my time with myself right now.
And I wouldn’t be thinking about pregnancy as much as I do if I knew I could get pregnant 10 years from now without difficulty.
But for most women, this is one thing we cannot will ourselves out of. It’s a biological reality.
And although it wasn’t the only reason, it was one of the primary reasons my last partner fled the relationship. The perceived pressure of partnership with an “aging” woman.
And this is a pattern I see. This catch-22 I observe. Men fearing to date me because I am clear about my desire – and with it, the assumption that just because I really want a family, that I’m desperate enough to put aside my discernment.
But I know me. I want my child. I want MY child with MY King. Not the first nice guy who comes around the corner. And that makes this even more challenging.
Because I will wait an eternity to find my king. But my ovaries aren’t as romantic.
Nowadays in most areas of my life, especially my business, it NEVER looks like what I want. The second I want it, it does not happen. The second I don’t, something comes knocking on my door.
It’s quite interesting. This dance between desire and detachment. And it’s more than just that.
As my roommate and dear friend, Rachael Maddox, so beautifully reflected tome, my system goes from hyper-drive to hypo-shutdown. These are trauma responses my nervous system learned from growing up in a war and having no control over my environment. So I learned to either fight with hypervigilant strength or to completely shutdown and disassociate. Because in my system the story was if I desire something, I must FIGHT the world for it. In my system, to detach I must disassociate completely from the desire.
So my deepest spiritual work has been to find the gear in between – in business, in romance, with money, with self-love. How to desire AND detach. How to want without control. How to love without agenda. How to lead with heart.
And as my wise coach, Jody England always says: It can be “this” AND “that”. I can be heartbroken and hopeful. I canbe longing and loving. I can be happy for my friends and lonely about not having my own family. The dance of ANDS. Because that is the gear I’m looking for. One where I can roll up my sleeves and take reign of my destiny while trusting the taste of sweet surrender.
(*but please God/ddess, whatever you do, don’t assign me the role of the spinster childless healer.”)