my birth story
June 11, 2015.
Today is my birthday. 37 years ago I took my first breath and was magically given life. Magically given the gift of cycling this astral plane. Magically given the potential to be all that I can be.
Gosh it blows my mind. To be created and for a soul to take human form is beyond surreal and yet completely natural at the same time. To move through the years. To journey, to grow, to expand. Life is incredible. We are incredible. Little miracles of star dust formed into one whole being, a being that is made up of real living things. Cells, tissue, organs, bones, blood. How is it that we can make this little bundle of aliveness.
Today isn’t just any other birthday for me. It marks a milestone. It marks 7 years since my body collapsed under the strain of auto-immune destruction. And, poignantly, it marks the complete regeneration of the cells in my body given that cells transform and are ‘born’ new every 7 years. Today I am literally a NEW person.
Today also marks the end of Mercury in retrograde. The energy around us is no longer cycling backwards. If you’ve been finding things tough these past few weeks, this will have weaved its way in. It has been intense. And when planets are in retrograde we literally feel stuck. But as of today it changes. Our shadow selves will dissipate. The load will lighten. The energy will flow. Things will move forward.
And with that, I am choosing to actively move forward. Today I finally launch and anchor my next chapter. Today Green Soul truly soars and is grounded in this space as well as its instagram platform. Thank you so much to everyone who has followed my journey over there for the past couple of years. YOU have made me believe that I have a voice. YOU have made this final leap happen. YOU have given me wings. Nothing will change over there but things will grow here. I will be there and I will be here. Fully showing up and being all that I can be. It’s a bit exciting.
To use this portal and birthing energy, as the powerful vehicle it is, I would like to share something very close to my heart; #mybirthstory. I have invited others to do the same. I invite YOU to as well. A birth story can be anything, obviously. From the seeds we plant to the thoughts we have. We birth things daily; today I’m birthing my website; but in this instance I literally mean our own birth story. Our first breath. Our first experience with this lifetime.
Part of the healing work that I do, and a huge part of my own healing, innately recognises that going back to our birth experience is critical to understanding who we are today. Why we are the way we are. And how we’re shaped the way we’re shaped.
The majority of clients that I work with don’t really have too much information about their own births, it’s not something they’ve ever really thought of. I was probably the same (to a degree), before I had to go back to it to offer my body strength, but once I did I was truly able to surrender to the whys and the hows of my debilitating health battle – Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS), Fibromyalgia and a cocktail of auto immune responses. I found a different peace and a different acceptance. I understood myself fully.
As mentioned, some know nothing, a few know a little, others know a lot. What most people don’t understand is how this experience shows up for us every single day for the rest of our lives. It paths the way to the person we become. I can literally tell whether a client was ‘early’ or ‘late’ at birth by the time that they arrive for their appointment. Bowen Therapy is the main tool that I use to communicate with their bodies and it is through the mind body connection, in Bowen, that we learn how life experiences are reflected within us.
If they were ‘early’ at birth they came into an energy that said ‘yikes, what are you doing here, we’re not ready for you yet!’. Our body catalogues this, it never wants to feel this awkward energy again. These people tend to become adults who are 5-10mins late for things ensuring that they don’t feel that same unwelcome energy when they arrive.
For those who arrived ‘late’ at birth the energy that they experience is a ‘ummmm, seriously, you took your time!’. Once again, the body files this memory away. It’s not a particularly traumatic file but we all know what it’s like to run late for something. It doesn’t feel good. These people tend to become early people as they grow up. They do this at a subconscious level so that they can control what makes them feel safe and comfortable.
Of course many many many other things come into play for a late/early person, and this isn’t a hard and fast rule, but gives you a little insight into how a basic foundation is formed and how our subconscious responds. Our cellular memory files every single thing away and if those files haven’t served us, in this instance during our birth experience, they become part of our life story and they influence us. There is a beautiful reason why many midwives are studying Bowen Therapy. They quickly administer a couple of tiny baby moves to the new born’s back, while wrapping them in a towel and before handing them back to their Mum, to say – ‘beautiful body, there’s no need to hold onto anything that feels heavy from that experience. You can let go. Infact you can let go of anything that isn’t serving you while in the womb as well. Your ‘trauma’ is over, you can relax and become whole in who you are right now’. While not every birth is obviously considered traumatic there will be memories captured that the body doesn’t need, little things or big things, they still play their part.
True traumatic births will tend to become perfectionists as people. Things were out of their control, they weren’t perfect so their subconscious will endeavor to control things moving forward. Forceps/suction caps will tend to be head people, teeth grinders, suffer from migraines, perhaps need intense dental work. If the Mother craved a lot of sugar while pregnant the child may be addicted to carbs or they may become an anxious person. If the Mum was sad during her pregnancy the child will have absorbed this. They will become a protector in their lives (having tried to protect their Mum from the womb). If the womb had lost a pregnancy before this pregnancy then the child will come into a space that is grieving and will take this energy on. If the Mother had an epidural (totally understandable!) then the baby may have felt ‘alone’ during the labour because the energy was disconnected. They may become highly independent or fearful of ‘abandonment’. If the child was delivered by a caesarian their legs may not be as strong and some key muscles may not be as fully developed because they didn’t go through the ‘pushing’ action within the birthing experience. Likewise with organ development and heavy metal exposure (not due to the caesarian but if the Mum was around something that released extensive heavy metals while pregnant etc). If the child was mostly tucked into a comfy little spot in the womb, but compressing their lower back, they may have kidney weakness and therefore low kidney chi and lower back problems. If they’re the first born, and come from a traditional rural family who subconsciously hope for a son to take over the farm but are a girl, they may have felt this unintentional ‘wish’ and could struggle will self worth. And don’t even get me started on twins (if you’re a twin please do not hear this as a bad thing!). The list goes on and on and on – conclusions can be drawn everywhere. Physical and emotional things arise. I’m sure you’re getting the gist.
None of these things can be avoided. I am not suggesting that they are anyone’s fault. But they can feel raw when first brought up. They can make us feel a little resentful towards the person asking the questions. Infact you might feel triggered just reading this. But our experience is exactly as it was meant to be, it’s just that we don’t understand how the details weave their way into our lives. How they form the first chapter of our story. Why we need to release the things that aren’t worth filing so that they don’t trigger a lifetime of BIGGER imbalances. If we don’t let go of what isn’t serving us from day dot, the overcompensation within the body begins immediately and the cycle kicks in. Throw in a thousand other scenarios and it’s a very interesting starting point for a body that begins to put experience after experience after experience on top of it. We must acknowledge and realise that our bodies remember EVERYTHING even if our minds do not.
Fast forward to now and we’re doing all the ‘right’ things for ourselves but still can’t seem to overcome elements of our conditioned behavior. We can’t let go of things that we can see aren’t serving us. We can’t move beyond the one step forward ten steps back approach. We make gentle inroads but just can’t seem to get over bits and pieces of ‘stuck’ energy. We eat what works for us. Move beautifully. Think mindfully. Explore gorgeous opportunities. Expand ourselves. Learn, grow, develop. But there’s still a little something that feels heavy. It is because our filing system, our subconscious, our cellular memory hasn’t released the story that triggers this. It’s still a huge part of our first chapter.
I could go on and on here…. I’m good at that. I was a first born, 3 week early, 9 hour labour who was stuck in the birthing canal for 2 and a half hours. 9 hours probably doesn’t sound so bad, in comparison to many birthing marathons, but the 2 and a half hours weren’t ideal. I wasn’t breach but I was facing the wrong way. My beautiful GP, who is still my GP today (bless!), was young. My Mum always describes him as being elbow deep inside of her trying to turn me around. Haha! He had to send out for a more experienced doctor and I was yanked out with forceps. I use the word yank as it’s literally what my body feels when I ask it to describe the memory. The energy was a little panicky. I was blue. Chord wrapped around my neck. I did breathe straight away though and let out a hell of a cry. Phew. Once the blueness settled they could see I was jaundice. Like many babies are.
There are many things that I could go into around my birth that show up in me daily. Self worth, self love, protector, giver, sensitive being, fiercely independent. But I won’t because the details are too personal for others in my life. Needless to say they shaped me. I was so out of my depth at birth that I became a perfectionist, over achiever, high expectationist, teeth grinding Gemini cray cray who must always be in control while analyzing EVERYTHING in my head…. constantly! It is no surprise that I ended up with CFS. But I am now aware of why they exist and how I’ve become the person I’ve become. Beauty surrounds all of it even with the elements of self-sabotage that followed for 30 years.
I am much softer than I once was given the work I’ve done with my birth experience (through Bowen Therapy and the way we stimulate the fascia it talks to the cellular memory allowing the body to journey back to where it needs to journey back to, aka our births or falling out of a tree when we were three, or our brother yelling at us, or yesterday if that’s all we’re ready for….) but, like many of us, I have a lifetime worth of things built on top of my foundation so it doesn’t disappear overnight not to mention the energy we continue to absorb even when we are doing the ‘work’. But knowledge and true connection to our stories is the first step. This knowledge provides so much empowerment and it’s our birth story that I feel is critical for people to understand.
Like many healing modalities the body will journey to where it needs to journey to but sometimes we miss the signs. And we miss the exact reason it has journeyed to a certain space. If someone is there to ask the right questions and really encourage our conscious mind to connect with it during the healing exchange it can be fully felt and released from our cells.
Today, on my day of birth, I offer this birthing insight to you. A little piece of wisdom that I truly believe needs a voice. Journey back to your birth. Ask questions. Field answers. Understand who you are and give yourself the gift of your whole story. The gift of a connected conscious life. #mybirthstory
