Blog O' the Beamish Girl

Perhaps I’m insane. . .that thought makes me laugh, though sometimes too, I give up. A girl in a dream, running uphill against the thick syrup of sky. I continue to dream of fingertips touching, the gravity of a deep kiss that might send the earth spinning in new directions. Not asking for much here.

I know the rules. That I am not allowed to get excited like this in this lifetime, it means things are off or upside down, the floor is definitely dropping out. Any time this wave of convolution washes through me, I have already lost. I am too easily intoxicated by the mere indication that there is someone else as curious about life as I am. Absurdity as seduction, a rabbit-hole that cannot end. I simply fall for it (into it) every damn time. This lifetime, I am reminded, is meant for solitary pursuits that only graze up against this. Whatever this is (nothing, it’s nothing). “I didn’t know you were so into rollercoasters,” folks scoff. I need to be tumbled, undone, thrashed so that is that. How do you ask this of another? Come with me, we shall scream into the abyss joy-filled and drunk on adrenaline and laughter, where no one is damaged by a heart’s mistake. I will carry you into the dark wood and tell you how beautiful you are to me. This soul is old, is wise, is sometimes tired of going it alone. But the weight of hope is a gruesome black hole. Everyone who has met me knows this, senses this. Even when curtsying for a queen, I am more than (blink, blink) you want to handle.

But here’s the rub: it’s true. I just came from a lunch with an old friend/lover/friend/lover/friend/lover/friend. He still toys with the me from the past, loves me as a dear friend in the present. And I once fell in love with him, then had my heart shattered across the universe. Life rocks and rolls over us. Anytime I happen upon one who might bring me more to life than life itself, and I ache for it unendingly, unceasingly, as though I have discovered a new source of oxygen, sustenance, controlled chaos. It seems to be better when I forget that this exists, practice living in a state of equilibrium that spills only from me.

I am a Two on the Enneagram, the need to be needed type. This conundrum is often described as a shame around sorting out intimacy. I haven’t quite worked out where the middle ground lies. I have dear, wonderful, loving friends, which may be as good as it gets this experience. My weird attachment stuff is still shadowy, though I practice being as open about it as I know to be when appropriate. I suspect that the person for whom this energy has recently stirred is unavailable, based on what I know about my unconscious patterns doin’ their thang. That passive resistance tugs at me, opium in the veins. I will whore myself out again and again for this weird, old, useless game. But somehow writing that reassures, tosses out a buoy, helps me float along rather than being pulled so far under. I am quite good at drowning, loving Mother Ocean with my entire being, that I shall give myself up if not put on pause. Even now, after all of this time. What fun, folks, the long-suffering cycles of soul work. But it helps me see how beautiful I am, this is, as well, in a very human, humbling expression. I can hold myself here, loving myself for being a tiny mess with giant longing. I can laugh and carry myself home. It’s a brilliant vitality this younger wild woman holds. I won’t abandon her.

I need to provide some context and history for this story. I spent twenty years of my nursing career becoming an expert helping families have babies. At least a piece of each day leaned into how I could help others achieve experiencing birth as an incredible, life-changing event: practicing as a preceptor for new labor and birth nurses, teaching doula skills to my coworkers, teaching HypnoBirthing childbirth education for seventeen years to families and other childbirth facilitators, sharing research and options on social media, doula-ing, and owning a birth and postpartum wellness center and spa with some friends for many years. As a hypnotherapist, I often met with pregnant mothers who’d had previous birth trauma and we would release the old so they could welcome in their new child less encumbered. I was considered an eminent resource in my Portland community and I took great pride in my work. No matter how a family approached birth, I created a space for them to feel deeply safe, which ultimately impacted the quality of their birth regardless of what actually unfolded. Teaching and empowering new parents felt like a joy to me, never like a job. I could share birth stories forever, never tiring of the beautiful, wild, unique ways babies might choose to arrive earthside.

That being said, it was not always positive. Or happy. Or particularly hopeful. I took and then taught a class around supporting those who had sexual trauma in their past, how to show up with awareness and compassion so that as a team, we could avoid retraumatizing. I worked with many folks who were addicted to substances and unable to pull out of that cycle, birthing children who would suffer withdrawals and be placed in foster care. I also cared for many, many families suffering stillbirths at all stages of pregnancy. Early to midterm miscarriages often would take a very long time, and then the baby would be born quite suddenly. This meant that it was often me, not the doctor or midwife, who would be catching and supporting this transition. While I loved catching babies when they were alive and healthy, it is such a different, slow, breath-holding experience to very gently hand parents a child who has passed. Sitting here writing, the impressions that are coming to me are starkly darkened rooms, sobbing sounds, despair. Very different from the energy of a joyous welcoming in of new life. But I still loved being there, being a person who could hold the space, allow for all of the expression, tenderly bathe those little bodies. I did not mind it one bit, as on a deep level I’ve always understood how we come through, passing in and out of existence.

So there’s the context of my history and how I show up for birth. I have an intuitive and clinical expertise, but the parents have the innate knowledge that I can help unlock and channel. Okay. I will preface this story by sharing that in all of my twenty years working with birth, I never had a maternal or fetal death occur that was not already known, though there were some very sick moms with preeclampsia and some babies that did not fare well, as is rare but natural and for different reasons.

On this night in 2016, the family I was caring for had come to the hospital following an attempted homebirth. The details are fuzzy at this point, but perhaps her water had released and labor had stalled and the midwives were concerned about infection setting in. Because of how I practice, this type of family was often assigned to me as I am supportive, creative about options, and easygoing with families who might be struggling with a big change in how they hoped things would go. There’s grief even in birth, moment by moment, and processing cannot be pushed in the absence of an emergency or trauma ensues, disrupting bonding, sleep, nursing.

The entire team took their time with allowing this family to make choices, nothing was pushed on them, it was truly the epitome of wonderful care in this sort of situation. The mother made her way to time for pushing unmedicated. Unfortunately, even though she was making slow but steady progress and felt supported, the baby was not doing as well. Monitoring the baby’s heartrate, we could see that this fella was starting to show signs of growing tired and depleted, not receiving enough oxygen each time after mom pushed, to bounce back the way we like. Myself and the doctor in the room became a bit myopic, as mom was soooooo close to that final push.

All of the sudden the heartrate dropped in a prolonged manner that I recognized as dire. I nudged the doctor and the room quickly turned into a madhouse, my least favorite space for birth. They tried in vain to use a vacuum on the baby to pull him out, but when that didn’t work, a million people were racing this poor mother down to the operating room for emergency surgery. When a person enters the OR without an epidural in an emergency, they have to use general anesthesia and have they baby out within mere minutes. Because this is much higher risk, birth partners (in this case, the father) are not allowed in. I hate all of this. While some nurses love emergent situations and the adrenaline that accompanies them, I cannot think straight. In my practice as a birth nurse in general, this is a big reason why I spent so much time anticipating all possible outcomes and mitigating problems well ahead of their occurrence.

So while the mother was unconscious, this sweet baby boy is born barely alive. An entire team frantically worked on him, but it was too late. It was too much and he couldn’t stay. This is where time slowed to a crawl for me. They filed out, the neonatologist saying something that felt well-intended but meaningless. He headed out to tell the father, who still could not come in, that his son hadn’t made it. The mother being held in some liminal space, still under anesthesia and had no idea any of this had happened. I could feel the baby’s energy still filling the room, waiting for them. I think someone had wrapped his perfect body tight in warm blankets. Or maybe I did. I went over and picked him up while I sleepwalked through my remaining tasks. All I could focus on was holding his body close until I could hand him off to a parent. But that did not happen for a seemingly endless amount of time. The surgical team finished up and left, but the anesthesiologist could not bring her out of anesthesia until an ultrasound was done on her abdomen. Because it was emergency surgery, they had not had time to do an initial count on all of the instruments. They had to ensure none were left in her abdomen. So here I was, snuggling this little body, my coworker and dear friend Felicia working on other bits in the room, and a very inconsiderate, insensitive anesthesiologist griping about why ultrasound is taking so long.

None of this should have happened. He came to us perfectly healthy and ready for a life in this world. And in one of the most challenging situations for me to make sense of, I feel like we killed him trying to support this family and their birth wishes. We did such a good thing, but lost sight and took it too far. And he died alone and she woke up to emptiness, never saw him outside of her body with life in his. It just hurts, my heart aches writing this out. I have always been able to find some measure of peace in other situations, but this one still feels unjust, unnecessary, extra cruel. I’ve held it inside of me and it’s time to release his story in exchange for healing.

If you made it this far, thank you. I don’t need anyone to fix it, I just had never really shared it all beginning to end in one spot, as it seemed too enormous for anyone to hold without breaking. It broke me, as I stopped being a birth nurse a few months later. The workplace just carried on after a few meetings were held. No grief counseling offered, though I did receive some condolences from coworkers and managers, but also relief that it didn’t happen to them. I get it. I will offer his story to Mother Earth for transmuting, I trust she will help me let the weight of this go.

Up early today, before the sun made its way out but with the birds. Made me think of being down near the equator and blue-green sea, my soul’s happy place. The first bird to begin the chorus sounded like he was saying “Woo-woooo, ” except he only made the outgoing woo. I filled in the incoming wooooo. Completion.

Sitting in my office chair, I am supposed to be writing a paper. My final paper for the semester. And I am so resistant right now. I would like to be digging in the yard. There are twenty plants waiting for me on my porch. My yard NEEDS them. I’m daydreaming sitting here. Sneaking sly glances at stupid Instagram. Listening to the cacophony of birds calling out over the focus music playing.

I am always shocked to have made it through wintertime. Winter, for too many years, wore me out and threatened my wellbeing, sometimes my life. I no longer get SADD but I’m still wary. I have to drop into hibernation season with extra intentions and deep self-care (we need a new word for this, btw). When I emerge unscathed, that in itself is a bit of a shock, but then to come face to face with Springtime. So glorious, so many sensory blessings! I recently had a week of consuming anxiety, the only positive side effect being the easy loss of five previously stubborn pounds. But then I went out in my yard: I mowed, I weeded, I cleaned, I planted, I watered. I dove into each blade of grass and bit of earth. And by the time I finished, I felt so light, so free. I also made some decisions about how my life needs to feel and look at this point. I have only so much time with school and work–how do I want to spend my precious, limited currency of time?

I have a distant friend who recently lost her 38 year-old husband to cancer, a battle that went on for the last few years. She set out to document the experience from the beginning, baring her soul with courage for all to see. I am always inspired by those who show up in public as is. I have too much leftover shame from childhood to really do that well–my stories usually are up for grabs after being processed and gleaned. I don’t necessarily sanitize them, but I do sometime omit the bits that still wring pain or internal cringing. I have to circle through my patterns and pop out on the other side, reconnected to my core sense, before laying it all out. In the meantime, my heart aches for her and her kiddos. They had a grand sort of love that seemed to levitate and grow over all of the time and work they spent trying to restore his body. I hope that love holds her as she moves through this next phase of grief and healing.

Life is so strange and beautiful.

I feel better. Emptying out my busy brain so that I can do the last bit of work for school. This semester I began the process of becoming a therapist by using new and old skills with more intention and awareness. What a thrilling experience, I am so excited to be in this right now. I feel alive with the season, with upcoming time off to play, connect, read, BE, laugh, and breathe it all in. Of course I am grateful and ridiculous. And human.

I just completed my first semester of grad school, whoo hoo! While it was very interesting and exactly what I want it to be, it also completely took over my life and mind for the past three months. I now have a month plus to reclaim and settle back into myself. I want to be connected and intentional with this time. Some of it will be spent in Louisville for sparkly holidays with my favorite fam, and of course I’ll be working my regular hours. But I want to get some hiking in, lots of social time with folks, and catch up on creative reading and some shows. Seems reasonable, right?

I noticed that I spent a lot of frivolous money on things I absolutely do not need this past month, with all of the sales. In hindsight, I felt a bit ridiculous and disconnected from my spirit. Definitely some shame and remorse. I am taking several apps off of my phone and stopping unwarranted and promotional texts. I have been listening to Deepak Chopra’s podcast on Audible (free with subscription!), “The MindBody Zone.” He interviewed a financial researcher who emphasized how hard it is to leave websites and escape without spending extra money, how it’s all geared toward sucking us in. Ugh. In other news, I did remove a game that I had been playing for a couple of years and freed up a large portion of time about a month ago. I booted Facebook two months ago. Those have continued to feel good. My next goal is to conquer Instagram, which I lose myself into without any awareness, until I come up for air minutes, hours, days later. My mind is so susceptible to the short scrolling format, it’s bananas. My sister uses IG for her art promotions, but she takes the app off of her phone every time she finishes using it. Seems worth trying.

During this semester, I received one less-than stellar grade on a project that really threw me. I thought I completed the assignment as the professor wanted it, but that was not the case. When this happened, I spiraled. Mostly because the next assignment to follow was a bigger version of the one I’d boffed. The messaging that let loose was impressive and torrential: “You’re going to fail,” “You’ll never complete this program,,” “You’ll never be a therapist,” and on and on. Nightmares each night about the projects. My goodness. I got lost in it for a bit. When out of sorts, I find Mark Nepo or Deepak are both really grounding and spiritual in a way that works beautifully to bring me back to what is important and real. So it felt like the Universe was kindly tapping me on the shoulder when the podcast on Audible showed up in my email. Always appreciate that ever present and loving support from the Universe.

Setting my intentions here, with the thought that if you find this, it was meant for both of us. I haven’t been compelled to blog in a long minute. Officially: Clear out the stuff that distracts me from this beautiful life. Take advantage of this break from school to reconnect to myself and my world. Be grateful, be open, listen for clues to slip into depth. Be IN love, love, love. I shared this quote on my FB page (still exists even though it’s no longer on my phone) the other day, but felt like it pertains to what I am leaning into right now. Happy holidays!

“Self-care is often a very unbeautiful thing. It is making a spreadsheet of your debt and enforcing a morning routine and cooking yourself healthy meals and no longer just running from your problems and calling the distraction a solution. It is often doing the ugliest thing that you have to do, like sweat through another workout or tell a toxic friend you don’t want to see them anymore or get a second job so you can have a savings account or figure out a way to accept yourself so that you’re not constantly exhausted from trying to be everything, all the time and then needing to take deliberate, mandated breaks from living to do basic things like drop some oil into a bath and read Marie Claire and turn your phone off for the day. A world in which self-care has to be such a trendy topic is a world that is sick. Self-care should not be something we resort to because we are so absolutely exhausted that we need some reprieve from our own relentless internal pressure. True self-care is not salt baths and chocolate cake, it is making the choice to build a life you don’t need to regularly escape from. And that often takes doing the thing you least want to do. It often means looking your failures and disappointments square in the eye and re-strategizing. It is not satiating your immediate desires. It is letting go. It is choosing new. It is disappointing some people. It is making sacrifices for others. It is living a way that other people won’t, so maybe you can live in a way that other people can’t. It is letting yourself be normal. Regular. Unexceptional. It is sometimes having a dirty kitchen and deciding your ultimate goal in life isn’t going to be having abs and keeping up with your fake friends. It is deciding how much of your anxiety comes from not actualizing your latent potential, and how much comes from the way you were being trained to think before you even knew what was happening. If you find yourself having to regularly indulge in consumer self-care, it’s because you are disconnected from actual self-care, which has very little to do with “treating yourself” and a whole lot do with parenting yourself and making choices for your long-term wellness. It is no longer using your hectic and unreasonable life as justification for self-sabotage in the form of liquor and procrastination. It is learning how to stop trying to “fix yourself” and start trying to take care of yourself… and maybe finding that taking care lovingly attends to a lot of the problems you were trying to fix in the first place. It means being the hero of your life, not the victim. It means rewiring what you have until your everyday life isn’t something you need therapy to recover from. It is no longer choosing a life that looks good over a life that feels good. It is giving the hell up on some goals so you can care about others. It is being honest even if that means you aren’t universally liked. It is meeting your own needs so you aren’t anxious and dependent on other people. It is becoming the person you know you want and are meant to be. Someone who knows that salt baths and chocolate cake are ways to enjoy life – not escape from it.” –Brianna Wiest

Flowers poking and peeking, despite my resistance, to see Spring truly, actually arriving. Back in October, I inadvertently surrendered to a forever winter and somehow we’ve landed on the other side. I’ve never been less prepared or surprised by spring in my life. Even sitting here in the coffeeshop, I see snowdrops gathered in a nearby yard. At home, my Lungwort holds clumps of gorgeous buds, spanning the rainbow of purple. Hyacinth and tulip leaves aim skyward, topped with candy colors.

I want to write again, I want to find the solace snuggled between words that I seem to have lost. I want my yearning back, the excitement and anticipatory zing of putting ideas together. Instead, it’s almost painful, and therefore sad.

Found myself balancing fury and embarrassment right at the point where aging and caring about it meet. I think it might be challenging to explain what I mean. I’ve been crashing up against time lately, and aging tucked inside of that. Being reminded that I’m being carried right along with the rest of ya, toward whatever grand finale life holds. I watched “Moxie” last night, which I felt really captured some of the headier qualities of adolescence: chaos, power, fear, rage. And I’m not sure how everyone else is with time, but I’m able to pick myself up and set myself down in most time periods, my own and any really, with weird accuracy and empathy. I’m all the ages all the time. So I watched the entire movie with tears welling but never falling, heart full.

Today, while getting dressed, my mind began listing the things I’ll need to do in the weeks coming to get ready for a trip to Costa Rica. And this list sounded something like this: stop shaving two weeks prior, get waxing strips and tanning lotion, don’t buy or eat excessive snacks, cover up those silver eyebrow hairs peeping through, pluck and clip and minimize the signs. . .keep lifting weights and doing sit-ups, make sure you get some Booty Luv in there beforehand, oh! and don’t forget to use the hair thickener. It really hasn’t stopped yet.

But you know what struck me about this very specifically? I used to spend *this* much time worrying and plotting about boys and relationships and my particular brand of worthiness. But I’ve worked my ass off in that department and no longer waste my precious allotment over those fires. And until this moment, I thought I’d freed up all of my time and energy. But no, apparently, the enemy is now our aging bodies (my aging body), even though I’m quite appreciative of it and really like it overall. But when I think about all of the younger women that will be on this trip, my mind moves towards, “How can I keep up? Maintain? Disguise?” Because on the inside, I’m somewhere between twelve and thirty.

The movie last night encapsulated all of the incredible changes that are rushing in right now, if we can make space, for all people. Inclusivity and open-heartedness, but also the new guidelines and parameters for what this looks like. All of these completely sensical ideas that are often at odds with the ways of old, that for so long, went unquestioned. And unfortunately, aging needs to be tossed in there too, since it’s still a raw and uncomfortable place as I’m discovering.

I’ve found myself feeling incredibly sad and guilty, about what I can’t quite put my finger on. But worrying about all of the things my body no longer is doesn’t help. How to be beautiful AND allow the body to age without trying to hide that fact is something I aspire to learn, again, to make room for myself fully and others, fully.

I must share, as an aside, that I went to see my esthetician the other day for botox (which I’ve gotten for thirteen years for a handful of reasons). I had noticed that one side of my mouth is getting droopy and asked her how that might be remedied. She handed me a mirror and took a long q-tip, propping up my mouth. “To get this back up, we’re going to have to lift here,” as she moved the q-tip to my cheek, pushing it up so that the corner of my mouth lifted as well. I turned to her and said, “I’m guessing we’d have to balance it out on the other side?” She nodded. “How much?” “It would be around fourteen hundred, and would normally last ten months. . .but you take such good care of your skin, so probably a year.”

Good lord, I’m happy to just paste a smile on my face for free. And this is the attitude I’d love to adopt for all of it, deeply. I’m tired of being distracted by nonsense. I want to immerse myself in this fully. Fuck the noise.

An impressively pushy feeling that I must write as fast as I can, as much as I can, arrived this week. Yet I’ve not written anything considered creative in months. I’ve instead been baking and reading and hiking and naturing and nurturing, friending and playing, dancing and laughing. But no writing. And I miss it/don’t miss it. 

There’s a few “shoulds” connected to the missing. I should miss it since it’s been a part of my life for forever (since the fourth grade, methinks?). I should miss it since completing a book has been my off-center dream for years and years and years. I should miss it since I wrote something every single day that I wasn’t working (and sometimes those days, too). I should miss it as it fed me, connected me with Flow, the Universe.

But when Trump was elected in 2016, everything dimmed (perspectively speaking). I sank into the mire, my writing felt so superficial and lacking in substance or else it felt dire and melodramatic. Finding my way back to an accurate vision took an enormous amount of effort and still didn’t feel quite accurate. As I’ve written previously, I became achingly aware of the caste system of our country and how I was taking advantage of that. Much unraveling, undoing, re-learning ideas and vocabulary has occurred, is occurring, so that I can be better in the world, supporting all folks. This is my new normal. 

On top of that, the writing class I embarked upon last spring broke something. The instructor offered critiques but not solutions, and despite my strong sense of writerly self, I was thrown by it and stepped away.

But I’ve spoken with my people and discovered that creativity has been shifting and emerging in new ways for others as well. All is not lost, it simply has new forms in which to imbue the world with grace. And with the new administration, I feel like I can come out of flight or fight, of hypervigilance, a smidge. Shifting my time back to experiences and activities that I find deeply meaningful versus checking, rechecking, endless checking of my news feed. 

I’ve had both the vaccinations for Covid, and am really wanting to inch my way towards hope. Towards being on the other side of the pandemic weirdness. Writing the story I wanted to write a year ago feels faint and far off, but maybe it’s shifting and will re-emerge at some point. All bets are off with how this past year has changed each of us.

Buds a-poppin’, mid-February.

Something that keeps showing up lately, and I have mixed feelings about this word, is maturity. I use this word instead of “growth” because it’s different. For me, growth feels like epiphanies and lightbulbs of new information arriving or finally being understood, the “a-ha’s!” of life coming into focus for use. Maturity carries an unhurried, less urgent energy. It’s a step back and view the expanse feeling. Maturity tempers my old, impulsive anger and distrust when activated with a calm. A hang on, let’s take a closer look vibe.

I notice this in my new/not new relationship. Some texting starts to go off the rails, misinterpreted. Previously, I would move into huffiness, righteousness, stubbornness. But while that wants to still emerge, the maturity laughs at me and my silliness. I can hang on until we can reconnect around the conversation in person and maneuver through it together, on the same page(ish), with more ease and trust that neither of us is out to injure the other. What a place to be! After years of chaos and second-guessing and catawampusness, trusting myself and the people around me, trusting that things will sort themselves out, feels so. . .soothing. Even when the breakdowns do hit a darker spot, I don’t drop into an absolute despair. It’s more of a pause, breathe, resume with intention. 

I get irritated that I’m still talking about such things–I’d like to move my repertoire onto other areas. Yes, we all get our personal spirals to work on, but it bores me most of the time now. That is all I’ll say about that. I am maturing and I’m still twelve inside. So there.

Speaking of being twelve, I get to spend several days with my mama (Gram) babysitting three minions, ages 6.5, 4.5 and 2 (though she’ll tell you she’s “fowteen!”) next week. Honestly, I’m both excited and mildly terrified at how this is going to play out, if I’ll survive. But I’m mostly excited. Pretty sure my brother and his wife are over the moon, though, as it’s been over six years since they’ve taken a “just them” vacay. My mom told me to bring my muffin tin (fill each cup with a different “snack” and watch them eat!) and read up on separation anxiety, while the unspoken sense of humor and absurdity will also be packed and ready to go.

And I’m teaching my neighbor how to read music and play the piano, which means I’m playing the piano more than I have in a verrrry long time. I really am a teacher at heart, it’s where I shine the best, methinks. I love bringing new ideas and ways of doing/thinking about things and seeing someone’s eyes light up with comprehension/integration. Fills me with joy.

What is filling you with joy these days? How much joy can you contain next to all of the other raw feelings rolling around? Can you find your inner balance?