Feeding All of You

A young friend who lives across the country is pregnant, after a long and challenging time of praying for this to happen.  Just nudging  into her second trimester, she is doing everything possible to ensure the health of her baby:  eating organically, meditating, and taking naps.  She has even returned to her singing group, knowing how valuable music is to babies in utero.

She is reading books, taking walks, and letting herself rest when she gets tired.

But when I ask if she is keeping track of herself and her inner life through the dazzling, shifting adventure that is pregnancy and young motherhood, she balks.  I sensed that she is annoyed by my question.

There’s so little time, she finally responds.  And so much to be doing for, and learning about, the baby.

I think I’ve heard every possible rationale for failing to practice spiritual selfceare, but this one surprised me.

Didn’t she think it was as important, I asked, to be the kind of mother she wanted to be — to be intentional about this — as it was to show up for her pre-natal doctor’s visits?  Wasn’t nourishing herself as important as feeding her (and her baby’s) bodies?

There was a long silence this time.

Suddenly, she cried out, “You’re RIGHT!”

Nourishing our spiritual selves is more than just a nice idea.

It is the work we do each day, reaching beyond disappointments and failures to draw new strength, processing hurts and angers and fears.  It’s picking ourselves up again when we fall — as my friend will do many times each week as a mother.  Acts of self-awareness enable us to make progress towards our true goals, instead of getting mired in pleasing others or pursuing empty diversions.  They keep us healthy in the most important ways, and when our integrity sustains a tear or a scrape, heal us where we need to mend.

My friend admitted that she’d lapsed in her morning meditation, and in her journal practice.

“It just seemed to fall away,” she told me.

While she was physically healthy, her lack of spiritual self care was showing up, she admitted now in procrastination on a project that was critical to her professional security.  She had started to make excuses, Instead of reminding herself of the ideals that led her to the work she is doing.

My friend was prescient enough to catch herself, a good measure of her self-honesty and the many years in which she HAS maintained a practice of reflection and journaling.

It will be some time before we speak again.  Between that time and today, I will be leading an online summer journal practice.  If you feel that you need a reset, join me.   Life is always being transformed in ways we can’t imagine.  Having a practice to help us to pick ourselves up and look inside can change things for the better.  But I said goodbye to my friend knowing she, and her baby, will be well.