published in Book Reviews, Childfree, Decision Making, Family, Health, Motherhood, Mothering Matters by Maryanne | June 24, 2017 | 6 Comments
This is the 8th and final Mothering Matters blog in the Spring 2017 Blog Series:
A Must-Read Resource When Making the Motherhood Decision…or ANY Major Decision for that Matter
“When you isolate your desire first, and then weigh it carefully against your personal circumstances, it’s easier to make your decision.”
– Ann Davidman and Denise L. Carlini, Motherhood: Is It For Me?
Book Review of “Motherhood: Is it for me?”
For many women, the motherhood decision is a given. For some, the decision not to have children is just as clear. But for many of women – myself included – the motherhood decision is not so cut and dry.
In fact, I spent two decades struggling over whether or not I wanted to become a mom. In the end, life – and my choices – pretty much chose for me.
And as glad as I am that I ended up not taking the path of raising a child/ren, I could have saved myself an awful lot of time and energy…that was spent thinking about the decision, if the brilliant book, Motherhood: Is It For Me? Your Step by Step Guide to Clarity, had existed to help me work through the process of making a decision.
Alas, it wasn’t published until 2016.
But for all the other women out there, currently struggling their way through the “Should I or shouldn’t I…become a mom?” question, I highly recommend reading this book.
And yet, here’s the thing: even though I read the Motherhood: Is It For Me? book at the tender age of 49 😊 I actually found it to be extremely useful in helping me make another major life decision over the past few months (more on that in another blog).
In my opinion, that’s the sign of a very good book!
But why, perhaps you may be asking yourself, would a 49-year old single gazelle have taken the time to read a book entitled, “Motherhood: Is It For Me?” in the first place?
Well, here’s the scoop: one of the authors, Ann Davidman, contacted me several months ago, after watching our documentary, Whatever Floats Your Boat…Perspectives on Motherhood.
Ann is a Motherhood Clarity Mentor and a Marriage and Family Therapist. Ann has been helping women work through the motherhood decision for more than 25 years.
In fact, the book stems from the Motherhood Clarity Course, which is a 14-week program that helps women who are struggling with indecision about whether they want to become a mother.
Ann’s co-author, Denise L. Carlini, is also a Marriage and Family Therapist. The authors know from their professional experience that an analytical pros-and-cons approach often fails to successfully answer this most personal question.
Because of the Whatever Floats Your Boat documentary and the Mothering Matters blog series, Ann asked me if I would read and review their book. I said yes. And I’m awfully glad I did.
Right off the top, Davidman and Carlini explain the difference between determining one’s desire – what the heart truly wants – and making one’s decision: what course of action are you actually going to take?
This is important because: “When you isolate your desire first, and then weigh it carefully against your personal circumstances; it’s easier to make your decision.”
So often, we get caught up in trying to MAKE a decision before we’ve taken the time to really think through what it is we truly want…and that goes for anything in life, not just motherhood.
Here are just a few gems gleamed from the book…perhaps you might find, as I did, that regardless of where you’re at on your path, there is some very sage life advice here:
“Sometimes an important piece of information needs time to completely unfold, and sharing it prematurely can disrupt the unfolding…even the most well-intentioned feedback from others can disturb the feeling of safety you’ve been creating for yourself and push you off track.”
In other words: it is very wise to keep the early part of your decision-making process to yourself. Don’t let the riff raff in until you’re ready to let them in!
“Slowing down may indeed feel uncomfortable at first, but we’ve learned that allowing yourself time and space to examine and accurately perceive the various aspects of your life is far more effective than generating those pros-and-cons lists that only seem to keep you stuck in an endless loop of indecision.”
“Thinking is good, of course, but so much more happens when you write. The writing itself takes twists and turns in a way that thought processes can’t, creating a fertile environment for more and more to emerge.”
Ahhh…music to a writer’s soul.
“Bring intention to your process while you suspend judgement, and trust that on a deeper level something is happening.”
“Most women find that when they grant themselves permission to not know, they feel less fatigue and have more energy for exploring.”
“What needs to be known first is what you want for yourself regardless of the circumstances of your life.”
“Trying to make a decision based on your internal emotions and the external circumstances in your life at the same time creates all kinds of pressure…trying to figure out your desire and your decision at the same time creates gridlock.”
“There are no appropriate or inappropriate fears. There are only the fears that live inside you for good reason.”
“Human nature compels us to seek answers actively. It can feel excruciating not to know, and fluctuating between answers creates the perpetual illusion that at any moment the answer will come and provide relief…making a case for ‘yes’ and then making a case for ‘no’ doesn’t help you get any closer to getting off the fence; it only serves to temporarily soothe anxiety, nothing more.”
“When you relax into self-acceptance, the result is spaciousness. From there you can more easily gain access to the answers that are already there.”
“When you’re able to say yes to a big dream or future possibility, whether or not you know how it will come about, you move forward toward it and life tends to meet you, often filling in the details.”
“As you imagine your future, do you feel that you’re entitled to have things go the way you want them to?”
See? I told you it was a brilliant book 😊
Here is the link for further information on (or to purchase) Motherhood: Is It For Me?
“At the centre of your being you have the answer; you know who you are and you know what you want.”
– Lao Tzu
Related Blogs
Getting to the Heart of the Matter – To Be or Not To Be…a Mom?
Maryanne Pope is the author of A Widow’s Awakening, the playwright of Saviour and the screenwriter of God’s Country. She is the executive producer of the documentary, Whatever Floats Your Boat…Perspectives on Motherhood. Maryanne is the CEO of Pink Gazelle Productions and Chair of the John Petropoulos Memorial Fund. If you would like to receive her regular weekly blog, please sign up here.
Mothering Matters is an initiative of Pink Gazelle Productions Inc.
For further information about the Mothering Matters blog series, here is the link.
If you would like to receive the Mothering Matters blogs and/or read the other blogs, please click here.
published in Anger, Book Reviews, Boundaries, Depression, Health, Saying NO! by Maryanne | June 6, 2017 | 4 Comments
In Sickness & in Health – When The Body Says No
“When we have been prevented from learning how to say no, our bodies may end up saying it for us.”
– Gabor Maté
If you haven’t read Gabor Maté’s book, When the Body Says No; The Cost of Hidden Stress, I highly recommend it. I borrowed a copy from a friend a year ago and read it in small chunks, here and there, as there was an awful lot of content – and supporting case studies – to consider, in terms of the role we play in our own health. It is not a particularly comfortable read but it is extremely enlightening.
“It is a sensitive matter to raise the possibility that the way people have been conditioned to live their lives may contribute to their illness.”
– Gabor Maté, When the Body Says No
Drawing on scientific research and the author’s decades of experience as a practicing physician, When the Body Says No examines the effect of the mind-body connection on illness and health and the role that stress and one’s individual emotional makeup play in conditions and diseases such as arthritis, cancer, diabetes, heart disease, irritable bowel syndrome and multiple sclerosis.
Here are a just a few highlights from the book:
“People have always understood intuitively that mind and body are not separable. Modernity has brought with it an unfortunate dissociation, a split between what we know with our whole being and what our thinking mind accepts as truth.”
“Our immune system does not exist in isolation from daily experience.”
“Many of us live, if not alone, then in emotionally inadequate relationships that do not recognize or honour our deepest needs.”
“When emotions are repressed, this inhibition disarms the body’s defences against illness.”
“Repression – dissociating emotions from awareness and relegating them to the unconscious realm – disorganizes and confuses our physiological defences so that in some people these defences go awry, becoming the destroyers of health rather than its protectors.”
“The blurring of psychological boundaries during childhood becomes a significant source of future physiological stress in the adult. There are ongoing negative effects on the body’s hormonal and immune systems, since people with indistinct personal boundaries live with stress; it is a permanent part of their daily experience to be encroached on by others. However, that is a reality they have learned to exclude from their direct awareness.”
“The research literature has identified three factors that universally lead to stress: uncertainty, the lack of information and the loss of control. All three are present in the lives of individuals with chronic illness.”
“Repression of anger increases the risk for cancer for the very practical reason that it magnifies exposure to physiological stress. If people are not able to recognize intrusion, or are unable to assert themselves, even when they do see a violation, they are likely to experience repeatedly the damage brought on by stress.”
“Physiological stress is the link between personality traits and disease. Certain traits – otherwise known as coping styles – magnify the risk for illness by increasing the likelihood of chronic stress. Common to them all is a diminished capacity for emotional communication.”
“The gut, or intestinal tract, is much more than an organ of digestion. It is a sensory apparatus with a nervous system of its own, intimately connected to the brain’s emotional centres.”
“Gut feelings, pleasant or unpleasant, are part of the body’s normal response to the world – they help us interpret what is happening around us and inform us whether we are safe or in danger.”
“The repression of negative emotion is a chronic and significant source of damaging stress.”
“Characteristics of many persons with rheumatoid diseases is a stoicism carried to an extreme degree, a deeply ingrained reticence about seeking help.”
“Repressed anger will lead to disordered immunity. The inability to process and express feelings effectively, and the tendency to serve the needs of others before even considering one’s own, are common patterns in people who develop chronic illness.”
“The less powerful partner in any relationship will absorb a disproportionate amount of the shared anxiety – which is the reason that so many more women than men are treated for, say, anxiety or depression. (The issue here is not strength but power: that is, who is serving whose needs?)
“Healthy anger leaves the individual, not the unbridled emotion, in charge.”
“Health rests on three pillars: the body, the psyche and the spiritual connection. To ignore any one of them is to invite imbalance and dis-ease.”
For further information about the book and author, here is the link.
Related blogs by Maryanne:
Anger in the Garden – Pruning Back for Future Growth
When Our Body Says No, We’d Be Wise to Listen
Back Off Baby – You Just Crossed My Boundary
Maryanne Pope is the author of A Widow’s Awakening, the playwright of Saviour and the screenwriter of God’s Country. Maryanne is the CEO of Pink Gazelle Productions and Chair of the John Petropoulos Memorial Fund. If you would like to receive her regular weekly blog, please sign up here.
published in Anger, Gardening, Health, Inspiration by Maryanne | May 29, 2017 | 6 Comments
Anger in the Garden – Pruning Back for Future Growth
“Not only does the repression of anger predispose to disease but the experience of anger has been shown to promote healing or, at least, to prolong survival.”
– Gabor Maté, When the Body Says No; The Cost of Hidden Stress
Spring is here and gardening season is upon us. Hooray! And yet…
I love puttering in the garden but I must confess to having mixed feelings when I’m working in my yard in Sidney. Unfortunately, over the seven years since I’ve lived here, more often than not there has been much in the way of neighbourhood noise to contend with while trying to achieve serenity: screaming children, parents screaming at said children, high-pitched band saws that get used for hours and hours on end, power washers, as well as the boom-boom-boom pounding of bass from music and video games.
And then there’s the traffic.
I live on some sort of thoroughfare road that is getting busier and busier in our growing town, so maintenance and construction vehicles rumble by loudly on weekdays. Gravel and cement trucks, city buses and Harley Davidson motorcycles are LOUD vehicles, especially when they are accelerating – which is, oddly enough, often the case in front of my house. I gave up years ago trying to garden in my front yard without wearing ear protection.
But over the May long weekend, I was working – without earplugs – in my back garden and it was delightfully…quiet. I could hear the birds chirping. It was lovely.
Part of the reason for this is the fact that my neighbour with the screaming children moved out six months ago and has been prepping the house for sale. I’m not sure who will be moving in next but for now, I am beyond grateful for the relative peace and quiet.
Grapevine and dead branches of adjacent tree
But here’s the thing: one of the tasks I was tackling in my garden over the long weekend was the pruning of the wisteria and grapevine. Both vines had grown out of control and were strangling their neighbouring trees, so I cut and cut and cut.
Wisteria gone wild AFTER a good pruning
However, much of the time I was on a ladder so I could see into my neighbour’s backyard – the one who has, albeit inadvertently, irritated me so much over the years.
And the more I pruned, the angrier I got at my neighbour for a) being so noisy and messy over the years and; b) only bothering to clean up his home and yard now that it was time to SELL it and make a whack of cash.
“Blaming others takes an enormous amount of mental energy…it makes you feel powerless over your own life because your happiness is contingent on the actions and behaviours of others, which you can’t control.”
– Richard Carlson, Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff
At first, my anger felt rather therapeutic. But then I turned that anger towards myself when I realized that I was the one who had chosen to stay in my home for SEVEN years. Nobody had forced me to stay and tolerate noisy neighbours. I was mad at my own damn self!
And then wouldn’t you know it, I had a reflexology treatment on my feet two days later – and the next morning, I was really sick. I had this strange headache on the very top of my head, as if my body was trying to release something out the top but couldn’t. I was nauseous and had no appetite or energy. And I kept falling asleep. I drank enough water to sink a battleship because I suspected my body was ridding itself of all that anger that had come to surface.
Whatever I did worked. The next day, I woke up and felt pretty much back to my usual self – but far less angry.
As for the garden? Well, both the wisteria and grapevine are growing like crazy…they LOVED the pruning! As for the poor trees that were nearly strangled to death by the vines, their recovery is going to take some time.
Interestingly, along with gardening, I have also – at long last – been working through some of the old boxes in my basement and getting rid of STUFF…decluttering yet again. That, of course, is also bringing all sorts of memories, thoughts and emotions to the surface. But in all honesty, I am finding that a rather enjoyable process…well, except for the rats. But I’ll write about that experience in a separate blog 😊
I have also been reading Gabor Maté’s book, When the Body Says No; The Cost of Hidden Stress. WOW! If you haven’t read it, I highly recommend it. You might think twice the next time you say ‘yes’ when you want to say ‘no’ to a demand placed on your time. But I’ll write a future blog about that book, too!
In the meantime, here is an interesting quote about the suppression of anger:
“I am greatly empowered without harming anyone if I permit myself to experience the anger and to contemplate what may have triggered it. Depending on circumstances, I may choose to manifest the anger in some way or let go of it. The key is that I have not suppressed the experience of it.”
– Gabor Maté, When the Body Says No
Related blogs by Maryanne
Anchors Away – Letting Go of Anger
A Little Lesson from the Garden: Sometimes the Most Obvious Explanation is the Most Difficult to See
Maryanne Pope is the author of A Widow’s Awakening, the playwright of Saviour and the screenwriter of God’s Country. Maryanne is the CEO of Pink Gazelle Productions and Chair of the John Petropoulos Memorial Fund. If you would like to receive her regular weekly blog, please sign up here.