I am a big believer in writing as thinking. The mental process involved with putting thoughts into coherent sentences makes your thoughts coherent, allows you to find connections you hadn’t seen before, and helps you to release the meaning in what happens to you. I have learned a lot about myself from writing.
Writing serves to heighten and stabilize your experiences. And there is no more important experience than birth. You can get more from the memories of the joyous moments, strengthen your gratitude for what went right, and benefit from sharing with those you choose. Writing will also help you come to terms with the hurt that happened, learn from mistakes (yours and others’), and see the changing power of trouble. In writing about a difficult experience, you create yourself over again: stronger, wiser, more compassionate. Whole.
And every birth is difficult. Birth is not supposed to be like blowing your nose. Birth is supposed to change you. It’s when you don’t let it change you that you have trouble. Writing about your birth is cathartic. Your birth is not only what happened, what’s in the charts, and how long each phase lasted. It’s about the evolution of your motherhood and of your self. I’ve yet to meet anyone who birth has not changed. Writing about your experience helps you to see more clearly where it is that you are, where you came from, and what you’re doing here. Yes, writing reveals the meaning of life. Your life.
A birth story is not static. Its meaning changes as how you feels about it changes. And it especially changes as you tell it and write it. We tell our stories over and over to look for the spiritual piece of our story. To extract learning and enlightenment from what we experienced. We are our stories. We create ourselves by the stories we tell about ourselves and about the world.
Your birth story changes as how you feel about it changes. Whatever troubles you about your birth, give it some time. Getting it all out in writing puts salve on the sting. It helps you begin to accept what happened and ultimately change how you see and tell your birth story. The power of trouble to change you is very strong, but you get to choose how you are changed. Tell your story. Tell it repeatedly to find the meaning in it. And write it down when you are ready. The magic is in the writing.
Change your story, change your life. Write your story, write your life.
