Yo, Mamas! Katie's got a new blog!

Well, it's official.  Katie's blog got too big for it's britches.  We moved to another site. 

Please take a look and join us over there.  It's gonna be fun!

Look for our new wordpress site, Yo, Mamas!

A new awakening

It has been a moving week.  I shared a very personal guest blog post for Mother's Advocate that has been read by over 750 readers this week.   To see the impact of sharing my story has inspired me to take my blog to the next level.  I have decided to move my blog to it's own site:  Yo Mamas!.  Please keep an eye out for the official launch next week!

To see my post on Survivors Giving Birth, click here.

Mindfulness

I have been thinking a lot about mindfulness.  As time seems to fly at an every increasing pace, it feels like I am on a train whizzing past each moment, grasping at the rails to slow down... 6 months.... teeth... pulling up to standing... each station flies past me at an unbelievable pace... 9 months... waving bye bye... eating with a spoon... too many milestones to keep up with... it seems that walking must be just around the corner and college just after that.  And my mind is way behind, on the caboose of the train, still sitting in a prenatal yoga class last spring watching the trees blossom and feeling a kick in my belly. 

Children are a force.  They show us just how fast life is really moving.  With their ever changing needs, naps, and skills, they challenge the parts of us that want to cling to the past.  Phoenix doesn't know that he's changing fast.  All he knows is that he wants to stand, he wants to walk, he wants to explore his surroundings.  He wants to move in ever wider circles away from his mother.  And I watch, at one moment delighting in his new found independence, and at the same moment mourning the baby that he isn't anymore.

Mindfulness.  I think all that we can hope for is moments.   Today I watched as Phoenix and his friend saw a helicopter for the first time, and their different reactions to it.  One showed awe, excitement, and the other a little bit of terror.  Each time the strange metal bird flew by, their reactions intensified a little bit.  Seeing the world through their eyes for a moment.  All new.  all present.  The mind "full" only of that one thing.

An analogy Eileen shared with us in Mindful Moments class is that our minds are basically like dogs.  She explained how meditation is like trying to teach a dog to sit.  Sit. stay, good girl.  And how  our thoughts are like balls being tossed over that poor dog's nose.  Some thoughts are really enticing, and the dog (mind) wants to get up and chase the ball (thought), and the trainer keeps the dog sitting (meditation).  Sit, stay, good girl.  And even as Eileen spoke so beautifully about the mind and it's yearnings, I felt my mind just trying to even take in what she was saying as the balls of my own thoughts were tossed repeatedly over my head.  Sit, stay, good girl.  "hmmm should I leave this class early and go to the pool party with my moms group?" oh, crap.  Sit, stay, good girl.  "what was that again, Eileen?  The mind finds itself either in a state of attachment, aversion, or... what was the other one?"   "Equanimity."  Oh yeah, that one.  Of course I forgot that one.

Equanimity.   "The quality of being calm and even-tempered, composure."   How often are we actually there?  The masters, Eileen said, are simply those that live the most time in equanimity.  I think our children are masters.  I think of Phoenix, in his last blissful months without language, without a running commentary about his own life, and I think... slow down. sit. stay... good girl.  Enjoy the teeth, enjoy the milestones, and trust each moment as it comes... and more importantly, as it goes.  The train is not going to slow down, but our minds can.  Stay.  Stay... One tiny moment at a time.   Ride the train on the front car looking forward.

I am so grateful for these moments.  And for the gift of living with a child, the best teacher of all in mindfulness and being present.

The Eye of the Needle

This week I had the honor of attending another birth.  This is the second birth I have attended since the birth of Phoenix, and the 132^nd birth I have attended total.  I have always stood in awe of birth, and of women and their power to give birth.  In the past, when a woman would hit that wall, the “I can’t do this!  This is crazy” kind of wall, I would speak to her with all the passion, dedication, sweetness, and encouragement I could muster.  I would tell her that this was the moment, the eye of the needle, and that although it felt impossible, she could do it.  She would do it, and she would meet her baby.  I would speak firmly and calmly telling her that although every part of her felt like it would break open, that indeed she would be made stronger by her birth, and by facing this moment of impossibility.   That was before I had felt it myself.

This time, as I looked into this woman’s eyes, as she entered “transition” as the childbirth classes call it, everything was different.  Here she was, in the middle of the strongest surges of her labor, clutching her husband’s hand, seeking a comfortable position (which is impossible to find at that time, by the way) and looking to me, “the expert”, for words of wisdom.   “This is horrible,” she said to me, matter of factly.   My voice went silent.  Instead of speaking to her with phrases like “You are a goddess” and “you can do this,” or “every contraction brings you closer to your baby,”  all I could find in my heart to say,  was… quietly “I know.”  This was a phrase I always avoided as a doula before I was a mom, myself.  I would say many other things, but I reserved that one, because truthfully I didn’t know.  Perhaps I was worried if I used that phrase,  a client would yell back “what do you know?  Nothing!”  I understood, I empathized, I had seen much of it before, I knew all about it from a witnessing perspective.  But I didn’t know.  Until now.  Now I know.

Looking at her, I was transported to my own birth, to that moment, that moment of impossibility.  The moment you realize the only way out of all these crazy “sensations” is to go into that place that hurts the most and have a baby, and that the last thing you want to do is to go into that place that hurts the most and have a baby.  It’s like you’re on the top of the craziest amusement park ride you’ve ever seen, and suddenly they’ve locked the gate behind you, and the only way out is down the ride.  And although the voices around you, your partner, your midwife, are lifelines for sure, and their hands are trying to reach out to help you, you are the only one on the ride.  Actually, you are the ride.  The ride is happening in your uterus.  And no matter where you go, the ride is coming with you.  And what seemed originally like a really great idea, now seems like a trap, closing tighter and tighter around you.

Back in real time, my client shifted her breathing, and dropped into the intensity.  I awoke from my dream, and tried to remember the things that helped me in that moment.  One of my midwive’s words came to me, “As big as this is going to get, Katie, you’re going to get bigger.  So let it get as big as it’s going to get.”  I tried to think what else I would have wanted to hear in that moment.  My voice began to return. Not with any grand claims to the power of women, and rites of passage, and It’s all worth it, but simply, truthfully.  Gently I reassured her that “Yes, this part sucks, but it’s temporary.”

Less than an hour later, my client, with the strength of a lion, went through the eye of the needle, and pushed her baby out into the world.  The sweetest, tiniest, most perfect little baby boy lay close on his mother’s chest, while daddy and grandma wept, and we welcomed one more impossibly perfect human into the world.

“My tailbone hurts,” she said. 

“I know.” I said.

Gratitude

         Today I was honored as a finalist in the First Annual Colorado Leading Lady Awards.   As I sat in that room full of over 150 women entrepreneurs and their families and friends, I was filled with gratitude and awe.  Awe at how far we have come as women, and gratitude for all the people that help us everyday to go farther. 

            When my grandmother Myrm was alive, her career aspirations were considered to be trivial at best, and a betrayal of her marriage and family at worst.  The next generation had their pick of “appropriate” jobs for women: Secretary, Teacher, Nurse,  and maybe Cleaning Lady.  After that, a generation of women stormed into the corporate world, guns blazing, blasting through all the glass ceilings they could.  And following that war zone, a few women started to voice their desires to be mothers, to be home makers, to be stay at home moms, or Work at home moms… So now, we have this phenomenal choice… to be moms, to be business owners, to be all of it.  To create the work we want, in the way we want it.   Today, women are not just “allowed” to work, but often “encouraged and needed to work”.  Women are a vital, essential part of the workforce and our economy, not just in war time, or down times, but for all time.  I am grateful to the women who carved the way so that I can get up each day and create my business in a way that serves women, and mothers, and my family at the same time. 

            When I opened the first Yo Mama Yoga in Santa Monica, it was out of necessity.  I couldn’t stand being told by one more Yoga studio owner that my students’ strollers were “in the way,”  or that the cheerios were making a mess on the studio floor, or that the pregnant women needed to stop chatting so much after class and clear out so the “power flow” class could begin on time.  I wanted to create a space for moms in the spirit of what moms were all about.  I wanted a studio that greets the frazzled late-comer with spit up all over her shirt,  and welcomes her with warmth and acknowledgement that she made it at all!  I wanted a center that incorporates nursing, diaper changes, tears and meltdowns into the yoga.  I wanted a studio that understands that sometimes the conversation after a yoga class is more important than the class itself.  Because let’s face it, moms and moms-to-be need a moment of zen more than anyone.

             I am so grateful to have been able to realize this dream, first in Santa Monica, and now in my home town of beautiful Boulder, CO.  I am grateful to my mother for the $2000.00 loan that started it all.  I am grateful to my husband, who helped me paint my first studio on our second date, and continues to infuse the business with his huge heart.  I am grateful to my sister, for her inspiring pregnancy and birth, and for the constant joy I receive from seeing her raise her sweet amazing son (known to the family yoga class as Michael Jackson because of his ongoing Halloween costume).  I am grateful to my best friend Dawnia for her constant support and being on the other end of way too many meltdown phone calls.  I am grateful to all of my teachers and coaches who have guided me towards my higher truth, and my path of heart.  I am also deeply grateful to my amazing team:  Kelly, Amanda, Brittney and all the teachers and practioners at Yo Mama that make it all happen.

           Finally, I am grateful to all the women who have walked through the doors of Yo Mama Yoga and into my life.  Through you all, I have been so inspired and so filled with awe.  I have gotten to share in the joys:  The moment a woman conceives after trying for so long, the moment a woman faces her fears to give birth powerfully, the moment a mom and dad meet their new baby, the moment a mom finally gets a baby to latch on to breastfeed, against all odds, and of course, that holy grail of motherhood, the moment a baby sleeps through the night!  I have witnessed the strength of single moms, the different kinds of families forging their way, and the sweet faces of so many babies!

            I have also shared the depth of the  losses along the way, and the heartbreaking, winding path that motherhood can take.  I have seen a woman continue to come to prenatal yoga week after week out of pure intention, struggling to get pregnant, and then struggling to keep those pregnancies, and I have shared in her triumph to finally hold her sweet babe in her arms.  I have seen the woman who chooses to adopt discovering that love goes way beyond biology.  And I have seen the mother open her heart again after a devastating loss, and welcome a new baby into her heart.

            And through all of this, I have also gotten to share my own journey.   My struggle to find the right partner, my struggle to accept the transition to being a mother, my struggle to balance the business, my new sweet little man, and my own mind amidst it all.

            In yoga last week I taught a pose in the Mommy and Me class, we call “the one armed warrior.”  The moms hold babies in one arm and do warrior with the other.  And that is what we are.  WE are warriors.  WE can do more with one arm, and half of our brain power, in the two hour time period when our babies are sleeping, than many people can do in a week. 

            Thank you so much for sharing your journeys, your babies, and your stories with me.   It is my goal that Yo Mama be way more than a yoga studio.  It is a home for you, to bring it all, the good, the bad, the exhausted, and the exhilarated.  To be celebrated and empowered as the women warriors that we are, choosing each day to show up for our children and ourselves and co-create a life that is focused on what is good, what is real, and what is joyful.  In a time as uncertain as our current one, it is a great joy to spend my days hearing the laughter of children. I truly honor and recognize the heroic journey that we are on together, and I thank you for walking this path with me.  Namaste.