This month of July is significant for me in special ways. Sixteen years ago, in 2010, I left my life in North America and moved across the pond to live with my soul mate in the UK. We married soon after I arrived and our relationship continued to deepen and, in many ways, delight, until he sadly passed away last summer.
As we enter July this year, I am aware of how profoundly my life changed when I moved here, but also the deep healing in the years preceding the move that I see as having enabled me to enter this relationship and this new life.
I have never lived anywhere this long before! I have been living in the same house for sixteen years! I was in the same relationship for all these years. (I consider myself to still be in relationship with Franklyn even though he is no longer in the physical body I was familiar with.) This length of time to live in one place or to have a relationship was unheard of prior to the profound healing I experienced through exploring my prenatal history.
Our First Home
One of the most important and challenging milestones of our prenatal journey occurs 5 – 7 days after conception. At this point, we need to implant or “nest” into the wall of the mother’s womb. If we don’t, we starve to death. Yes, it is that stark. Like most prenatal developmental milestones, it is a matter of survival that we succeed.
For many of us, implantation can be extremely challenging. Our success is dependent on many factors such as the health of the mother’s womb, which may be affected by her attitude toward pregnancy, becoming a mother, being female, or even the shape of her female body. There may also be more obvious factors like pollution, stress, and previous sexual or birth trauma.
My mother hated her body. She had dieted so extremely at age eighteen that her menstrual cycle had stopped. She abhorred gaining weight. Guess what happens in pregnancy?! Please understand that, on the surface, consciously, my mother was outspoken about wanting as many children as possible. Her dreams, however, were countered by the conditions of her life. She already had my brother, who was a rambunctious toddler. Her husband, my father, was mentally ill, which was becoming increasingly obvious. His out-of-control behavior and treatment of her left her feeling unsafe and unsure. This was not a welcoming environment for a child to enter.
That child was me. Through my prenatal therapy, I realized that, not only did I face, and survive, enormous challenges before birth, but I also survived them. When learning about such early experiences, which may include traumas, we often forget that we have already made it! We tend to slip back into the emotional, physiological state of the little one that we were. Since the challenge back then was a life-or-death matter, we may feel overwhelmed by the urgency we faced back then.
Echoes of a Prenatal Past
How is this relevant to July and having lived in one place for sixteen years? Implantation is about finding and settling into a home. My mother’s womb did not offer the plush uterine wall I needed to gently burrow into. Instead, I struggled to make my nest in what felt like a concrete wall. This was a clear sense in my body when I re-visited this time through therapy.
Until I came to understand this primal experience, I was acting out my history by never fully settling into a home or a relationship. Back in the days before digital everything, my friends used to complain that I filled up their entire address book by moving so often! I seldom lasted more than a year or so at one address. My relationships were also short-lived.
As my healing proceeded, I began to settle a bit more. I lived somewhere for three years. My last home before moving to the UK was for four years. I had never even lived in one town for as long as I have lived in the UK. I lived in Toronto for fifteen years but had almost as many addresses during that time.
Before beginning my relationship with Franklyn, I engaged in years of intensive study and therapy, focused on embodiment and prenatal and birth experience. I am so grateful for having been guided into this field. My life is so much easier and more fulfilling. Since doing this work for myself, my deepest impulse has been to facilitate the journey for others.
Shining Light on the Prenatal Shadow
I have learned that a helpful starting point is to increase our awareness of how our early history may be expressing itself in our lives now, including our behaviors, relationships, addictions, and more. I consider this early material to generally be held unconsciously as what Carl Jung called “shadow.” This term refers to aspects of ourselves that we have learned are unacceptable and tend to be forgotten to our conscious minds. Our prenatal experiences are rarely spoken of or reflected to us as we are learning to speak, and our conscious mind is developing. Lacking words, these implicit memories are held in our bodies, our tissues, our nervous system, our beliefs, and our behavioral tendencies. Shining the light of awareness is a first important step in integrating these memories, liberating us from their sticky hold.
If you are curious about how your own prenatal experience may be affecting you and your life, I invite you to read my recent book, The Prenatal Shadow: Healing the Traumas Experienced Before and at Birth, and to join my upcoming online course, Exploring Your Prenatal Shadow. The course begins July 16th and is intended to guide you gently through experiential explorations to shine light on the prenatal shadow.
I’m curious. What does July hold for you?
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