MY OWN JOURNEY INTO MOTHERHOOD…

I thought I prepared myself for motherhood. I thought I had enough knowledge and enough tools to find balance and wellbeing in my new role as a mother. Though I made the mistake and only prepared myself until birth. Simply because I was not aware of, how important the planning for the postpartum time so as the right care and ENOUGH REST is.

I knew that in our society mothers go through postpartum depression, experience overwhelm, exhaustion and anxieties. But I thought, this won’t be the reality for me. Of course, I was wrong.

I went through all of it. Even with my tools and with my husband on my side who was very supportive and worked from home. Only then and in my trainings later I started to realize how important the sacred window of the early postpartum time is for a mother and her health afterwards.

I oftentimes felt ashamed and felt I was failing. Again and again. The tools what helped me before, didn’t really work anymore. I was mostly too exhausted to even do anything besides Yoga Nidra, which actually helped me a lot during this time. I felt depressed, enormously sleep deprived and felt a lot of anxieties too. Though at the same time the bonding with my baby felt very intuitive and natural, so did our breastfeeding journey too. I felt bliss I never experienced before. Because so many things felt very intuitive to me, I struggled a lot with societal norms around pregnancy, birth and baby care. Things like the amount of medical check-ups, interruption in birth, feeding schedules and sleep trainings felt not right to me.

I wanted to have answers. On my journey, I first became a birth and postpartum Doula. I decided afterwards to participate in Innate Traditions Postpartum Training, which is a more in depth and holistic training with focus on traditional postpartum- / baby care and women's health. There was so much more to learn. Especially that there is so much more happening in the transformation of becoming a mother than most of us are aware of and how important the maternal health is for the health of our future generations.

Ever since, I’m constantly learning and unlearning.

I met my shadows and traumas in my postpartum time on a much deeper level that I have before. I had to put down so many more masks and conditionings.
I moaned for my old self, felt lost and didn’t know my new self yet. I experienced changes and challenges in my relationship with my partner, with friends and in my sexuality too.

But I can see now, why many mothers have experiences like this. There is a lot we have to heal in our society and there is a BIG LACK OF SUPPORT for postpartum mothers. It is important that we know that there is nothing wrong with us to have those experiences and nothing to be ashamed of. It is a healthy reaction of us to a very dysfunctional environment. Those reactions show us where we can grow, heal and where we need change to create more wellbeing for us. So we can become more of ourselves!

I strongly feel, that with the right preparation and with the right support, there is a DIFFERENT WAY to go through the postpartum time. To plan and prepare for the postpartum time is at least as important as the preparation for birth.

For me, my journey brought me back home. To myself. To Nature. To Life. And to simple things. I experienced so much transformation and healing through becoming a mother and being seen and heard in safe containers with other women, that I now see it as my mission to support other mothers (to be) during this special time.

I believe in every woman’s unique essence and her own gifts she brings into this world and to her children.”

- Nish Dunn