And I'm a monster on the hill
It's me, hi, I'm the problem it's me
We are in the last few days of eclipse season! I’ve used this emoji a lot over the past month : 🫠 …several viruses, some financial setbacks/ opportunities and lots of emotional release. Although eclipse season almost is over, the south node will remain in Scorpio for one more round of eclipses, giving us one final push to release any deep emotions, grief and even financial partnerships (Scorpio rules shared resources) over the next six months.
In these past weeks, I've felt old grief rising up for release - specifically around the time I entered motherhood.
When I got pregnant in NYC, I decided to take a giant leap of faith and move to Nashville with my partner, where he was raised. I thought it would be nice to raise my daughter in a place more rural, with more access to nature, less expensive, etc. I also VERY much wanted to have a natural birth on The Farm. The Farm is a midwifery center started by Ina May Gaskin, who is one of the most famous midwives in the world. She landed in Tennessee in the 70’s, on a caravan of hippies from San Francisco, and learned the art of midwifery by assisting births during their travels - it’s like Mecca for the natural birth world. Some might say dangerous, while others argue the most safe and effective way to give birth.
I won’t get into all that, but when I moved to Nashville 8 months pregnant and walked into the little duplex we rented - it was a SHIT SHOW. No hot water, broken window panes, open sewage pipes - I spent 2 weeks battling the landlord, with contractors in my space everyday while I was supposed to be “nesting”.
My partner’s family provided no support and added lots of stress, and one day while painting Ruby’s nursery, my water broke 2 months early. My midwife, Deborah Flowers (of the original caravan), informed me it was far too early to give birth on The Farm and sent me to the hospital - where all my dreams of a peaceful birth crashed around me.
Fear, stress, fluorescent lights, doctors on rotation I didn’t know, mean nurses, family I didn’t know (or like, tbh), beeping monitors and fluid leaking. Steroids, antibiotics, one doctor telling me to wait, another telling me I had to have a C section right away - chaos and overwhelm. I was supposed to be in a cabin surrounded by supportive women and taking nature walks- this was ALL WRONG.
My daughter was born 3 days later, I gave birth vaginally, without medication, as I planned, in the hospital, by some miracle and a lot of sheer will. Ruby Moon was just 4lbs and spent a week in the NICU before coming home.
For months, maybe years, I was devastated- I blamed myself for moving too late in my pregnancy, for trusting people I didn’t know to look at a place for us, for cashing in my 401k to pay for an all natural birth (that I didn’t get to have) not covered by insurance. Everything felt unstable, I felt like I had failed as a mother right from the start. At this time, my own mother was in prison, and my partner quickly got busy doing drugs with his old high school friends. I had probably never felt more alone in my life.
How does one mother when they’ve never really been mothered? Who mothers the mother? Where did she get left behind in society?
I had so much guilt and shame, I felt like such a colossal failure. I wanted so badly to be a good mom, a “natural mom”, a beautiful pregnant yogi goddess mom. But I felt like a lost mom, a trashy mom with a drug addict partner and a crazy mom in prison. I was a mess mom.
There is a line in Taylor Swift’s new song Anti-Hero that says, “sometimes I feel like everybody is a sexy baby, and I’m a monster on the hill”. And I laugh every time I hear it because I so relate to being that monster, trying so hard to be good and right, trying to outrun the toxicity and shame of my past but just recreating it in my present.
In my dreams I would see myself dressed up in couture, but in this gross environment, dirty, messy, toxic. I called this dream version of me “trash girl” - the part of myself I deemed the monster- unlovable, unworthy, lost- sparkly on the outside but steeped in trash. It’s taken me many years to create the stability, the safe space, the forgiveness, acceptance and love for her. To see beyond the shame into the hurt, the hurt of my own mother and back down the line. To let her out of the closet and into the light.
Looking back I can have gratitude. Gratitude that I accidentally signed up for TennCare when searching for insurance to cover my birth, and paid $0 of the $30k hospital bill. Gratitude for modern medicine, those steroids helped my daughter’s lungs develop so she could breath on her own as a preemie. Gratitude that I unknowingly walked into a hospital with one of the best NICU’s in the area, gratitude my daughter is healthy and happy, and that my sheer determination and resilience got us through those first few years with very little sleep and constant chaos and worry. Gratitude to my own mother for doing the best she could with the tools she had, gratitude for the things she taught me, both good and “bad”, because they all helped me to become who I am today- a mother breaking cycles for her daughter, creating better stories, turning darkness into colors.
Gratitude that maybe what I thought were my biggest flaws, were actually doorways into my deepest healing.
The Hierophant + Flow
This week we enter into Sagittarius Season and celebrate the new moon…and boy am I ready for a shift in the planetary energy! Sagittarius is a fire sign connected to travel, philosophy, and expanding the mind through spirituality. The Hierophant connects us to our mentors, gurus, higher learning and spiritual pursuits. Although the card states “unlearn”, I think the medicine of this card is twofold - sometimes learning new things requires us to step back and unlearn old ways of approaching it or part with belief systems & structures that hold us back from further expansion.
Flow is a card about ease, connecting to our emotions and of course, going with the flow. It asks us to be changeable, adaptable and not resist the current of our emotions, situations or growth.
What excites you / light you up? Is there a place you would like to explore? A course you’ve been dying to take? A mentor you relate to? Or perhaps you are the one stepping into the role of teacher? What are you excited to share? What gifts/ talents flow to you naturally? What practices help you to step into your “flow state”?
I can’t help but also note this is the week of thanksgiving, the celebration of a holiday that does not pay homage to the indigenous peoples that once lived on this land. How can we unlearn the white washed stories of colonialism and begin to tell the truth of how this nation came to be? How can we find new ways to connect to the land, the food and it’s history? What better stories exist for future generations to live into?