BROKEN HEARTED BIT
I am lying in my OBGYN’s chair in a claustrophobic office, (this story is being set up by my Victim Archetype--just want to identify that,) and I am awake. I’m enduring my first D&C procedure after my first pregnancy. That pregnancy ended at 11 weeks. I didn’t find out it had ended until probably about 13 weeks when I went for my first trimester ultrasound. The nurse performing the ultrasound detected that there were two “poles,” so she thought that there were twins.
I feel the pull of my Victim as I tell this story, and I’m listening to what she is teaching me--she calls me to share the experience in a way that honors the lives that came through to me and also to honor feminine cycles.
The cycles were never incomplete--and they are never failed. When the full term pregnancy and live birth doesn’t happen, they are not failures, just opportunities to offer grief as praise and face the fears that help me grow as I should.
The still-life paintings in the gallery here, originally titled “Broken Hearted Bit,” and “Little App,” were both painted while I told myself the story that I was broken and that my womb space was a lemon . While I was painting “Little App,” I fed myself a tragic story that there would always be an unborn child involved in a fruitless search for a mother. I painted the foal with an outstretched neck, a nursing pose, looking for milk from an absent mother. It was all very dramatic--it had the fear of, “I’ll never ever bear a child, I will never find my mother, I will never be a mother.” Carolyn Myss identifies the Victim archetype as useful and, in this moment of telling this story, I am making use of her. It is my sincere intention in exposing these fears and walking into them, that I hold a vibrational energy that lifts that of the collective.
Myss says:
In its shadow manifestation, the Victim tells you that you are always taken advantage of and it’s never your fault. We may like to play the Victim at times because of the positive feedback we get in the form of sympathy or pity. Our goal is always to learn how to recognize these inappropriate attitudes in ourselves or others, and to act accordingly. We are not meant to be victimized in life, but to learn how to handle challenges and outrun our fears.
I agree with most of this, except for outrunning the fear. It is here and now that I enter my heart to retell the story from a place of sincere gratitude for this experience.
The true story here is that the connection to Mother has been with me all along, and whether it comes with a human baby or not, that connection is within me always. I honor the heartache and the ability to grieve, for grief offers praise for all of life.
I want to talk now about the experience that came just after the discovery of the ended pregnancy. This part of the story highlights the beauty and resilience of the human soul to exercise choice, even in the midst of what the body endures as trauma.
During the D&C following this first pregnancy (the experience that my Victim began to tell here at the start of this post,) the D&C machine broke during the procedure. Victim wants you to know that there are some pain killers administered, but honestly, the discomfort level is not something that I would ever voluntarily walk into, unless I remember that I can walk into it without the false story that initially came with the presence of the Victim…yes, I have that choice now.
Victim wants you to hear--when the machine broke, the most terrible sounds--the suction--because it’s basically a vacuum sucking out the dead fetus, and the doctor is cutting the tissue away and vacuuming it out and the sound the machine made when it malfunctioned, and they had to pause the procedure and get a new machine--
STOP. I have choice here to remember and, most importantly, to share my truth. My truth, the one in my heart, it took over. While I was waiting for the nurse and technician to bring a new machine, I entered a visualization experience where I was walking down a steep embankment to a majestic river in Northern California—in Trinity Forest. Trinity Forest is where my friend, Kat, and her family lived at the time. It is an idyllic place that was the perfect setting to imagine while my physical body was under stress. I began to channel the energy of being with Kat, holding her hand, and walking down to the river where I could breathe and be tranquil--I was able to visualize this while the machine was malfunctioning and throughout the D&C procedure. Also, in the 3D reality of that time, my dear husband held my hand and was with me. His tenderness in holding me in this moment is how I choose to envision his presence in my life.
So, the Victim shows up to expose the fears that I was on my own to endure this and that I was broken or disconnected. I am offered a choice in her presence. I can choose the truth, and the truth is, that I stepped into my power. I held myself in that moment by holding the connection to the Divine. I stepped into the love to walk through the fear. And I was not alone.
This process makes my compassion and my empathy grow--for each person, woman or man. For each person’s perceived traumas are the beautiful experiences of growth. This is the metaphor of the pine cone that releases its seeds only when the forest is burning. We are such Divine creatures of love and light. Namaste.
