As spiritually grounded and accepting of truth as I would like to see myself as, the reality is I have had a lot of expectations. Expectations of life events that I could swear 100% were going to happen, imaginings of what is to come and absolute certainty it would be so.
Oh how wrong one can be at what life is actually going to look like! I gave birth in March 2020 in a hospital where 2 people had just died of COVID. My vision of what my first baby experience was going to be was very different to what I had projected. (In fact the reality of it has been AMAZING and truly my Higher Power has taken care of all my wants and needs, I shall elaborate on this later in the article.) There has been a real epiphany for me of something I already knew- that we have pretty much no idea what is going to happen, ever.
This is nothing new! I knew this all along! The pandemic re-affirmed this fact in a way that was stark and unavoidable.
After giving birth and coming home, the reality of the snowballing pandemic and its repercussions climbed it’s way to my mind, and I grappled and fought with it for a few days. Accepting that my expectations of this special time with my little family, were now needing to fall away. I needed to wave goodbye to the idea of my tiny son being hugged and kissed by my family, of him playing with other babies, my loved ones bonding with him, showing him off in the area I grew up, having coffees with friends, going swimming, having ‘me time’ at the hairdressers or beauty therapist treatment rooms, taking him out to see the world with me, I could add to the list infinitum.
The whole idea of what I thought I wanted, had to go. It was no more, and I needed to grieve. Holding onto ‘what wasn’t’ was causing me too much dis-ease. And so the grieving began.
Grief is not limited to the loss of a loved one, but it comes with letting go of anything, including expectations.
I guess I have had a head start in understanding the grieving process, as my lovely Mum passed unexpectedly in February 2018. When my Mum died, a part of me died to- who I was in relation to her had vanished, and this part of my grief held hands with my Mum moving on, and still now has left me forever a changed person. And in this way that grief can change us, I feel the grief of my expectations also has changed me.
Once I accepted reality, I could appreciate all the goodness in it. And, for me, there has been a lot.
For the first time in my life I have had a stable family home environment, more stable than if COVID weren’t a thing. Without the distractions of seeing people and going out we have been able to find a good routine, we have bonded as a family as my partner set up a business to work from home so hasn’t needed to go out of the house to work. We have established our unit in a way that is less tampered with by others, as we know really what works for us without advice or direction from other people. On the flipside I could say we were without support, which when my son had terrible acid reflux with an undiagnosed CMPA and tongue tie, it was fucking hard. No one to take the baby for 5 minutes when we had been up for 24 hours with a screaming baby that can’t be laid down on his back because of the pain it caused my him. I had to find independent professionals to help and do my own research. It did seem like a real bummer, but actually it gave my partner and I a resilience and ability to cope on our own. What a gift! I feel I have been well equipped to continue motherhood in a way that I just wouldn’t have if things were ‘normal’.
And it's not to say that what I wanted won’t come, in time. God knows I will appreciate those things in a whole new way. I believe our hearts deepest desires will be fulfilled, if not in this life than in the next. But it is my belief that I can have heaven on earth now, by practicing surrender, and allowing my internal to be transformed so that despite the chaos in the world, I can have peace and love and joy deep inside.

And in all honesty, the holding on and letting go comes in waves and cycles- it is not linear, it comes in tides. Sometimes I feel like I’ve come so far, other times I feel back at square one- but I’m not.
We are not, despite how crap we feel, or how bleak things are, we are moving forward, we have learnt something knew. Sometimes we just need help in letting go in order to feel that wisdom really integrate with our hearts...
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