This photograph is of the Hindu goddess, Saraswati. She represents knowledge and wisdom. Connecting to maternal wisdom is something I encourage all women to do, but we often get stuck and over complicate things. Here is a bit about my experience trying to tune into my maternal wisdom…
I picked up along the way somewhere that as women we all know how to mother but what was never clear to me was how… or what exactly that means. There is no book or guide anywhere? All I had to go on is what I have seen, experienced myself and read.
In pregnancy, I didn’t give the idea of maternal wisdom significant headspace because I didn’t know how and had far more things to think about. Then I had my first daughter. In the first 2 weeks, it was me, her and my husband, that’s it. We bonded big time. I felt super in tune with her and her rhythms and although I was having the typical challenges, they didn’t feel all that big. I was going with what felt right, doing the best I could and all seemed pretty easy!
Then we opened up our world to family, friends and the media I was consuming had time to invade my new mommy psyche. I started to doubt a lot more, not everything but my analyzing definitely notched up and never returned to my initial postpartum level again!
This continued for years, through another pregnancy and postpartum!! It never felt abnormal, overwhelming or like too much, however when I reflect on those first couple weeks in my cocoon of my first postpartum without the bombardment of society, that was the one time in my mothering journey that I was in tune with my maternal wisdom until years later.
I believe I was easily drawn away from the gentleness of my innate maternal wisdom and intuition, like most women these days, because I did not connect with it on a deeper level before becoming a mom. It was fresh and new and I did not have a supportive practice to keep its presence forefront in my life.
I’m not saying that I have no sense of intuition when it comes to how I have navigated motherhood. But I do believe had I connected on a deeper level to the idea of innate maternal wisdom and intuition that I would have been able to stay better connected and guided by it through my early years as a mother.
So long story short, taking intentional action to more deeply connect to your maternal wisdom and intuition in pregnancy will serve you well in postpartum. It will enable you to navigate through all the noise with more ease and confidence in your capacity to know what is best for your baby regardless of what you might receive from family, friends and society at large.
And most importantly, it is NEVER too late to begin working on building a deeper connection and trust with your intuition and innate wisdom!
