Recently I was having a session with a very well renowned and loved Esoteric practitioner about healing my need to have children. I have always carried a need to have a child, which has not come from a true impulse, but from needing someone to love. That was until I came across Universal Medicine and Serge Benhayon, who reminded me what true love is: an emanation, a beholding quality we all can choose to live, that we all come from, that doesn’t involve a need for doing things or buying presents. And that love starts with our self, not needing another to love you or needing another for you to love. Need is not love. And this is something I am learning to live again.
So I am at that age, where the world, with its many expectations, pictures, beliefs and ideals we have been ‘sold’, and bought into, may I hasten to add, from the day we are born tells a woman she should have kids by the time she reaches a certain age. You know in your late thirties where many women panic and their body clock, or head, I should rightly say, starts ticking to the wrong time, of ‘I won’t be able to have kids soon’, and for some, devastation and a ravaging need kicks in, as many of us believe we are not complete as a woman without children; that we have failed or something is wrong with us. None of this is true. But we don’t value or appreciate ourselves and our bodies enough, and all that we are and already bring as a woman.
These many ideals and expectations, I, and the world had chosen to place on myself, were impacting on my relationships, and putting unseen pressures and expectations onto myself, my body and my partners, big time. For example, even though unsaid, many of the times, there was a need in me thinking, will he be the one, even on a very first date, will this be the relationship, the person, the man who I have kids with? Can you imagine and feel the pressure this person would feel even when not physically with me, to have to live up to stereotypes, pictures, expectations and ideals that are not true, and putting a pressure and demand on them – not to mention myself and my body – that is not love in my book.
I am then trying to build and have loving relationships with all this heavy unseen stuff hanging around. Not to mention the thoughts that would come into my head, of well if they don’t want kids, do I end the relationship? Thank goodness, these thoughts are no longer chosen and ruling me.
So in all truth, was I truly meeting my partners and seeing them for who they are as a person, how truly lovely they are, and all that they bring, or was I seeing them in some areas of our relationship as someone to fill my needs?
You wonder why many people back off from relationships, but believe me the feeling of need in a relationship, anywhere in fact, is horrible, and something I am working on. But also living from all these expectations, ideals and beliefs is not allowing us to truly connect to other people, to feel who they really are, to build loving relationships with them, or ourselves.
When it came to my body, these expectations, pictures and ideals I had chosen to accept, created such an intense pressure on me to be a biological mum. It felt like a heaviness in my body which I carried around with me for a very long time. It’s only now that it’s gone, that I can feel the true extent of this; with an incredible lightness and so much more space and joy in my body and a freedom in my movements and steps.
This is what everyone is now feeling, from my partner, strangers in the street, to kids at school. It has had an effect on all of my life. I don’t need to say anything; people can feel how I live.
I also feel there has been a pressure taken off my female organs – my ovaries, uterus, and my breasts – they feel more like part of my body than they ever have done. Not just ‘something’ that is there to simply ‘make kids’, and also there is a lightness and a change to my abdomen area. Honestly, the feeling of joy I can now feel again is immense.
This has not only come about from my letting go of the need to be a biological mum, but it is more to do with appreciating and valuing what I already bring and live. I hadn’t been valuing or giving myself credit for this.
The truth is I am actually already a ‘mum’ to thousands of kids, as I have learnt that mothering and parenting, is an energy and expression first – way before it is about what you do. I am already living this and have been for years, with all the children in my life. I have a natural rapport, and a mothering and parenting energy with children and teenagers that I hold them in, but I actually hadn’t stopped to appreciate and give myself credit for this – the pictures of being the ‘biological’ mum stopped me appreciating the mum I already was to many. The truth is, we don’t have to physically have children of our own to be in that energy and to live it, and that can be equally felt and lived for men too as a fathering energy or expression.
It is this – appreciating and valuing what I bring and already live, that has brought a huge amount of space and settlement in my body, where I am actually now able to fully claim my choice that I don’t need to physically have a child to feel complete.
That is not saying I wouldn’t, if it was a true and correct choice I would; but first and foremost, mothering, fathering and parenting is an energy or quality we all can offer, live and hold others in, no matter whether we have biological children or not.
By Gyl Rae Teacher, 39, Scotland
Further Reading:
Mothering beyond our children
Mothering – the essence of true nurturing
Motherless mothers – finding our way back to wholeness and love
