“I will not teach or love or show you anything perfectly, but I will let you see me, and I will always hold sacred the gift of seeing you. Truly, deeply, seeing you.”
-Dr. Brene Brown
The other day I was at a birth… my client had decided to get an epidural and I was sent out of the room while the anesthesiologist placed it in her spine. I sat in one of two chairs in the center of the labor and delivery wing, and a strange woman who had been haunting the hallways for the past four hours plopped down beside me. She informed me that she was waiting for her surrogate to have her baby, a moment she had been waiting for her entire life. She was wringing her hands, her anxiety palpable.
“Are you a mom?” she asked.
“Three little girls,” I said, smiling warmly, I tried to surround her in my calm energy, bring down her distress with my own breath.
“Is it hard?” she asked a few quiet minutes later.
“Labor?”
“No, being a mom.”
I squeezed her quaking hand. I told her it was hard. And marvelous.
“How? How is it hard?” she persisted, trying to gather her motherhood in her arms so she could greet her new babe with all of the secrets in hand.
I was called in to my client again before I could give her an answer.
