5/11/2017
I recently spent the evening in the hospital with my daughter who 10 days earlier had delivered a beautiful 4 lb 10 oz little girl 5 weeks premature. My new grand daughter! Both fortunate that she is so close to excellent care with doctors and a facility that can help them through these uncertainties and unfortunate that this little girl and my daughter have spent the last 10 days here in the Newborn ICU. She is having several difficulties both breathing on her own, learning to eat and having enough energy to do both.
As I witness the frustration of both my daughter and her boyfriend about wanting to take their baby home and the complications they are facing both financially and the worries about their daughter and wanting to go home there was a brief discussion about the baby. The question was “is anything wrong?”, a question so many times I have asked myself about many different situations, or “something’s not right?” as if again I am looking for evidence to support my belief about either of these questions.
As we were speaking with the nurse with these questions that came up the nurse emphasized that this is normal for the baby being 5 weeks premature “there is nothing wrong”. The baby, due to premature lung development, needs assistance in developing her lungs, and her stomach is getting assistance in both growing to take in enough calories to expend the energy to wake up and eat she is functioning normally within the circumstances.
This conversation brought me back to an important lesson that I sometimes forget to live in my life. This life is a progression of learning and when there are certain feeling that keeps coming up in life like anger, frustration, doubt, jealousy, or even depression, or whatever our experience is at the moment the same question “is there anything wrong?” although life might not be playing out the way we envisioned it, or be at what our expectations are and not to mention “right or wrong” is a judgment that we have created about something. It seems the first place I usually go in this is avoidance or try to shove something aside and not be willing to look at it directly as it usually means being uncomfortable for a while if not longer. I mean who really wants to feel the pain of something or be uncomfortable right?
However, l do know a little bit of truth for myself. Most of the greatest freedoms I have encountered that have come from accepting these feelings and especially embracing and acknowledging the circumstances that I was in when I was in these feeling states.
The better question I learned to ask is what can I learn from this, not the question in the aspect of how can I protect myself and how can I be more guarded in the future. I see the later part of this question as a contraction in my own personal self-awareness. ”What was it from earlier experiences that brought these feelings to the front row of life again?” I see these feelings as gifts and just like the “nothing is wrong with the baby” it is an opening for self-discovery an opening to be vulnerable an opening to be aware that growth is coming to an expansion of myself just like the breath the exhale is the contraction and release of the old that previously sustained you and the inhale is the expansion with new vitality to take care of you until the next breath.
Remember to breathe and pay attention to your breath in this way especially when you have a moment for meditation, is it the inhale or the exhale that sustains you, it is both.
My life, as well as I, assume all of us has so many intricate moments of contraction and expansion and the relation to them as “what is wrong?” well nothing is wrong and nothing is right the progression to expand ourselves to deepen our self awareness, to deepen our love and compassion for others. Just like my granddaughter learning to breathe and eat expanding her lungs “nothing is wrong this is normal” my perception needed a shift.
“What is it I need to learn, how can I grow from this, what is the gift in this for me that I can evolve and grow for myself and others?” These are the questions I am reminded of to ask.
Protection of self is a contraction acceptance of the situation and my feelings is an expansion just like the in and out breath of the baby learning to live.
Thank you for this reminder little miss Mae
