The Disconnect
The disconnection from myself was huge after I gave birth to my son. Looking back, I feel like the disconnection happened straight away, as soon as he was placed on my chest. I couldn’t make sense of it then, but the exhaustion that sat heavy throughout my entire body wouldn’t allow me to be still and take in what had just happened. but was sitting ‘still’ for days in hospital, I didn’t have a clue about what was happening. My son had safely arrived earth side, so why am I in a state of anti-climax? What was I expecting to happen? A feeling of rainbows and unicorns? All I knew at the time was that I needed a break, I needed someone to come and help take this exhaustion away from me. Perhaps I needed someone to touch me, to hug me, to hold me, to wrap me up and keep me warm. A gentleness and tenderness. Perhaps what I needed was to hear “you’ve been through a lot in the past 24hrs, let me take care of you. Tell me what I can do?” .
Fast forward to returning home from the hospital, the disconnection started all over again. The in-laws were around to ‘wet’ the baby’s head. I shared a gentle smile with hollow empty eyes “I’ll be back, go to nurse the baby”. I softly padded away and slid into my bed. I just sat there thinking “what is going on?”. Someone please come and take me away, something’s not right. I want to scream, cry, shout and disappear. No one seems to get it and I have no idea myself.
The disconnection was at its peak when I was 5 months postpartum. This disconnection I felt deep in my bones. I knew something was wrong. “who am I?”. I could hear it so loud in my head at home, while laying in my bed, while nursing the baby, while I was out and about. “Where is my voice? I have no voice”. I was in total utter and complete disconnect with everything around me, including with myself. I couldn’t talk, I didn’t want to do anything but care for the baby in autopilot mode. I didn’t want to have anyone around me. I just wanted to hide. When I was in the company of friends, I panicked when I felt someone look over at me knowing that it’ll be my turn to answer to “so what have you been up to?”. I had no idea how to answer or even what to say, all I wanted to say really was “pass”. I felt so lost, confused, alone, raw and vulnerable. I didn’t know who I was anymore and how to comfort myself. Everything felt so hard and I had no idea where to start. I felt I had lost something, something huge and it was an important part of me, it had disconnected from me, broken off, fallen away, lost.
These feelings are real and very much part of the transition into motherhood. This was me feeling my matrescence- the immense shift we experience when we become Mothers that impacts every aspect of our life. Matrescence bring us face to face with our motherhood, its landscape, what we believed to be true about us and that brings us to face parts of us that we that we thought we had hidden away forever.
What if we were to make space for the shedding, the disconnect? To surrender entirely to unbecoming so we can become again? See ourselves and the world through a whole new perspective?
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Stay gentle with yourself.