Once Upon a Time…

Once upon a time you were born. In the timeless months preceding this momentous event, you lived, grew, developed, learned – yes learned – within a dark, watery womb inside your mother. Life before birth is an essential period of rapid learning, as the little one prepares for the world he or she will be born into. Mother’s perception of her environment as friendly and supportive, or as threatening and lacking, affects her baby’s experience, communicating through bio-chemicals related to maternal emotions and feelings.

I want to pause here to address any parents reading this to reassure you in case you are falling into whirlpools of guilt. I firmly believe that all parents do their best, which can be limited by their own early context, as well as current conditions. If you are worried about how you have affected your child, this is a sign of what a good parent you truly are and how much you care. While little ones are remarkably sensitive and aware, they are also highly resilient. When we make mistakes or miss in our interactions with babies, as with anyone, we can do repair. We can acknowledge our error, reveal our deeper caring and offer to receive whatever feelings they may have to express.

Babies respond to our words, long before they are capable of speaking them. They are aware of our external world because they need to be. They need to know what kind of environment they are going to live in. Babies of mothers undergoing extreme or chronic stress are born with extra sensitive nervous system responses, hyper-alert for where the next danger may be coming from and often easily escaping into a freeze or dissociative state so as not to feel the pain. Babies whose mothers experienced abundant nurturing, safety and support while pregnant need not develop such strong defensive nervous system patterning. They can grow in other ways, and may demonstrate amazing compassion and communication skills.

Remembering that you, too, were a baby once, what arises for you reading these words? What do you remember of that early formative time? If you do not remember consciously, what does your body or feelings suggest to you? Recent research into Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) relates early challenges to later physical and mental health issues. These early challenges can begin as early as conception, which may not occur in ideal, loving circumstances with both parents highly resourced, feeling excited and ready to parent. The time when the pregnancy is discovered can be devastating for the both parents and baby. Little ones, like all of us, need to be recognized, received and appreciated. In the womb and through the first few years of life, their very survival depends on being accepted, loved and protected by their family.

How were you received? How do you receive yourself and others in your life?

Even if your beginning was difficult, the good news is that it is never too late to create a new context within which to re-form ourselves. It is never too late to practice love, to learn to accept and appreciate yourself and the little one within you, who may still be waiting for what was missing back then.

If these words affect you, please take a moment to consider yourself as a little one. What do you sense in your body as you do this? What do you sense in your heart? Where in your body might your little one reside? How is it to be with this? Is it possible in this moment to hold the little one, remembering that you are no longer so little and dependent, but still carry this little one within? What happens as you enquire into this?

I recommend taking some time, if it feels right, to be with this, and to write in a journal about your experience and discoveries. In that little ones are learning within relationship, healing from this time also occurs most easily within relationship. You can begin with your own relationship with the little one within. You may find it helpful to work with a therapist on meeting this early material, so you can experience on a cellular level the kind of holding, appreciation, acceptance and reflection you needed back then and may not have received.

It is never too late. Now is the time to be born into a new context of love. Welcome!