Patience with the Process - Excerpt from Giving Birth to Ourselves, contemplations for midwives

Babies do not usually pop out at once. Expulsion is a gradual process of descending and retreating which allows all involved to mold and stretch for minimum trauma. We let parents know that this is part of the normal flow of labor, not a problem.

Our selves do the same as we are born and reborn in so many ways. We may show our new found qualities to the world, only for them to disappear again for a while. We may despair of ever making it out all the way - and yet the baby will always be born. We need to remind ourselves that relapses are a normal part of personal growth. Each retreat is a chance to relax, reassess, renew and find our way out with more appreciation for the process.

Contemplations--

• How do I react to relapses into old behavior patterns?
• Can I distinguish between choosing to do something in a new context and doing the same thing out of unconscious habit?
• Do relapses into old behavior patterns bring on fear of being trapped in the past?
• Am I willing to see my growth as a process rather than an all or nothing situation?
• Am I willing to promptly admit when I relapse and work with it?

Activities--

* When a relapse occurs affirmations can be a helpful reminder to break the old behavior pattern. Examples
“I can fulfill my needs by conscious choice rather than by habit."
“I’m willing to change."
"I'm beginning to change."
"Relapses are part of the process."
"Life is a spiral - I'm in the same place & a different place at the same time. Now I can choose."

* Pay attention to your thoughts during a relapse & how they may feed self punishment. Write them down. Say them out loud (in privacy or with someone who will not be brutalized by hearing them). Examine them carefully for their truths and untruths.


--by Terra Rafael
excerpt from Giving Birth to Ourselves, contemplations for midwives, 2009
available from lulu.com

http://www.lulu.com/content/paperback-book/giving-birth-to-ourselves-2nd-edition/7233381

In The Night

I would hear his footsteps approaching me in the night. Lying there, I'd pretend that I was asleep, stomach clenched, muscles taut with anxiety-- an innocent fawn caught in the inappropriate headlight-gaze of his eyes. I kept my eyes closed hoping to make my uncle disappear, but he pressed himself against the boundaries of my skin. I learned to leave my body.

Over fifty years later, I still sometimes wake in the night. Are those sounds my stepson creeping around downstairs? Or is it a burglar stealing my laptop, along with all of my writings and my purse with my identity in it?

Then I consider how I was duped by Facebook. I just found out that what I post there belongs to Facebook forever- even if I quit Facebook and delete my page. They can use is as they will. My pictures. My essays. My poems. Anger at unseen faces, those people who make policies hidden in a dark wall of legalese. But we all just click “Agree”, still in the dark, so that we can play with all the others on-line.

Tired of thoughts spinning through my head and fear and anger roiling in my gut, I get up and go downstairs to survey the damage wrought by the burglar—or not. I turn on the light. Everything is safely in its place. I sit down and pick up my pen to write this in my journal.
--by Terra Rafael