What It Means to Say Yes, and the Body's Wild Wisdom
I'm a mother of two young girls. I was pregnant with my first in 2015-2016, and my second in 2020-2021.
Both pivotal years in our political/social landscape here in the United States. Many people think 2016 was a turning point - with Trump first coming into office. And of course, we all remember what 2020-21 brought - so much death, fear, and a huge shift in how we worked and related to each other.
My girls are now 5 and 10 years old.
I remember how afraid I was with my first. I had heard so many stories about c-sections and the painful recovery women endure that I was determined to do everything in my power to birth naturally. With my first, I labored for 30 hours, mostly at home. By the time I reached the hospital, I was fully dilated, to the shock of the admitting nurse.
I was silent, quiet, holding in my pain, almost as if to hold her in. It took me 2 hours to push her out, and afterward when I had retained some of the placenta, I remember telling the doctor, yes, give me whatever drugs you need to so that I no longer have to feel anything.
It was a relief.
But I wish, looking back, that I didn't fear the pain so much. I wish I could have just let my body do what it wanted to do, rather than hold back.
For my second, I birthed in a tub. And with every wave of contraction, I kept saying the word, "Yes...yes, yeesssss, yesssss."
I wanted to say no - to tense up, because the pain was almost unbearable, but I found that with each yes and purposeful relaxation, with each purposeful breath that I took, my contraction would ease sooner. And my daughter would drop down faster.
When I gave birth to her, I felt like a wild animal, a lioness, as I grunted and pushed her out into the world catching her in my hands. I remember I dreamt in technicolor that night. I was running through a forest - bright greens and oranges all around me, I was wild and free.
I wonder if instead of tensing up, holding, and preparing for the worst, I wonder what would happen if we instead opened in times of hardship and pain. If we said yes to the difficulty, inviting it in for us to hold and to transmute the pain. If we breathed deeply and slowly through it all, and we trusted what our bodies knew, how might that change our experience? Would it quicken what was to come?
Would we dream in technicolor? Would we give access to a whole new world - more wild and free than our current reality?
So, how do we say yes?
Stay present - don't leave yourself when things feel hard
Stay soft - don't tighten your body, your breath or your reactions
Stay with your emotions as they come - let them move through instead of interrupting or denying them
Saying yes or opening doesn't mean that you want the struggle or the pain, it just means that when it happens you stop fighting against it, denying its existence.
And still, I notice how often I say no in small ways - reaching for my phone when I feel overwhelmed, lost or frustrated, tensing my body when something feels uncertain, or trying to move past a feeling instead of acknowledging its presence and getting curious as to why.
We live so much in the mind that I think we deny our body's wisdom. We deny what it teaches us, what it wants to communicate, we abuse our bodies with every vice, when what we should be doing is honoring it, listening closely, and letting it move through the world with purpose.
Saying yes doesn't mean tolerating what harms you - it means allowing and accepting the feeling, the internal experience you are moving through in response to the outside world.
There's a lot of hard things going on right now. But I would argue that there has always been a lot of hard things happening in the world. Back in the late 80s, early 90s we had the aids/hiv epidemic, crack cocaine addiction, race riots, and wars all across the globe (gulf war, Bosnia, Somali to name a few).
In many ways, it really isn't much different than today.
But I feel that more and more, instead of intentionality, instead of slowing down through all this noise, we have been tensing up as a collective community. Things are moving faster, and we have been saying, no, resistant to what's happening around us.
Resistant or distracted - wanting to numb the pain, rather than to feel it all.
It's the difference between bracing against life versus participating in it.
What might we invite, what would our hearts tell us, what movement or action would we create if we were to accept, to open, to say yes, to listen to our bodies?
What does your body want to say yes to - that will help you move through this time more grounded and aligned?
What are you resisting, ignoring, or numbing?
Maybe today you can spend some time sitting with what hurts, invite it in, surround it with acceptance, love, nurturing....and see if doing that allows for some healing, for movement or release.
Breathe in deeply, slowly.....and invite your heart to open.
You may find that your decisions feel clearer. Your journey through this world will feel a little easier, a little more true.
You'll start to honor yourself in small, quiet ways that add up.
There is more wisdom in you than you've been taught to trust. Let yourself move in your own way.
