Alyssa is a singer, songwriter, yogi, metaphysician, and contributing editor for Earth Mamma, writing about yoga, healing, gardening, and child care.
Here, she shares about her journey with listening to her inner voice during pregnancy and raising her children conciously, while living in a society that says otherwise.
As I crouched down towards the grass, the ground, the Mother, Earth, I felt pulled to sit and put my hands on her. Her oneness and wholeness became me in the instant my connection with her was made. Our Mother, our planet, mother earth. She is the Divine Mother. Supporting us, sturdy, strong and pure hearted. From the womb of her soil, and from the branches of her many trees and plants, she provides our bodies with the highest life-giving, vitalizing nourishment. Her streams clear our minds, emotional selves and souls; they cleanse our bodies and hydrate our every cell. Her beauty and landscapes inspire us to explore and adventure, create and grow.
Her picturesque and alluring beauty calls us out of where we are to climb higher and explore ourselves, supported by her divine creation, further stretching and growing our conscious awareness, transforming us into the highest we are meant to become. She does this not out of force, but out of being, as she was created by love, purity and beauty. She is and is of the divine feminine, as are all woman.
Mamma, oh mamma earth, may I learn to be like you, steady and strong, supporting my children’s highest wellness always, nourishing their bodies minds and souls with the divine love, flowing through me from the source.
Motherhood has been all the most challenging, character building, fulfilling, selfless, heart warming, and sweetest experiences Iʼve ever had. At times seemingly years on end without even a moment to myself, I somehow kept going. When everyone around me was criticizing and judging every single parenting choice I was making, I protected my little flame of Inner Woman Wisdom and kept going. There were times my light dimmed as I felt as though there was a whole society trying to throw dirt on my little flame of woman wisdom, trying to put it out and take control of my decisions and actions. Though, I kept going and kept listening to myself.
It seems the conscious mind of the generation before me was severed from their own inner wisdom of trusting their bodies and hearts. It seems their voices about sexuality and birthing had at some point been shut down, or perhaps they were never let out. There was a void of encouragement on natural birthing, breastfeeding and homeschooling.
Feeling as if perhaps a whole society was trying to get me to become a box store, fast lane, fast food, mom with a 9-5, house and car with a mortgage and vaccinated kids in daycare, I’ve continued to listen to the quiet voices within my most innerness. I lived off little, kept my children un-vaccinated and close, ate organic, spent time in nature, doing and leading yoga, making food and creating music and art. We are growing here.
During my first pregnancy my OBGYN encouraged me to schedule a C-section completely based on fear that a natural birth might not go well for me. For a moment I thought, “Oh, a scheduled appointment to get this rather large baby out of my small frame could be much more convenient.” Quite quickly though, that quiet inner voice in me became very loud, ringing bells and banging large symbols in my ear, telling me that my body would know what to do, and my job was to listen and trust MY inner guidance and voice. After all women have been giving birth since the beginning of time!
I soon gave birth naturally to my son in the hospital, as I didn’t have my own home and was not permitted to birth in the home where I was living. That night after birthing an 8 pound 7 ounce boy, out of my normally 111 pound body, I lay exhausted, alone throughout the night, as no one was able to stay with me (hospital rules). I was figuring it out with this brand new little being on my own.
We are meant to pass our woman wisdom down from generation to generation, though this whole medical doctor and hospital experience was starting to get me to think that someone didn’t want me to be supported and nurtured in birthing naturally, bonding with my baby or in breast-feeding, as none of this was encouraged. In fact, I was instructed to leave my baby in the plastic rectangular open box, throughout the night, and not allowed to have him in the bed with me. That was a rule I was not about to follow. Rather I brought him into the very narrow hospital bed and held him close against me, breast feeding him as he seemed to nuzzle into my body seeking out my milk, as I rested, keeping a watchful eye.
Once returning home the next day, I spent the next several months with that little baby boy, sleeping under my arm, nestled into my warmth, feeding him as he seemed to ask. Pregnant without my own house, a marriage or much money at the time, put me in a position where the majority of the people around me thought, because they had the house, money and marriages, that they were in a superior position to tell me how I was to do everything, from schooling to food, sleeping, bathing, and clothing. As if not having as much money, a house or a husband somehow made me separate from the wisdom that each women carries within her on how to care and nurture her child and because of my lack of material things at the time, my choices for my children somehow couldn’t be trusted.
Though my every move was judged, I continued to listen to my inner-ness and move forward. My deep instincts have led me to surround my children with nature, teaching them to live in harmony with its creatures and seasons, seeking out teachers and guides for us that have been educating our whole beings rather than the intellect only, but developing the heart, hands and will. We practice natural holistic health and dental care and my children are healthy and strong.
As mothers I think we all do our best. I think the question is, “What is guiding us as a mother in ‘the best’ that we are doing?”. Is it the judgements of our own mother or families, the expectations of our society, perhaps ones own limiting and deceptive beliefs, perhaps fear, or is it our God given divine inner wisdom that connects us and moves us synchronistically in harmony with all nature?
I know the universe is here to support our heart’s desires and the highest path of our soul, and when we as mothers and women walk fearlessly in sync with the music of our own heart’s callings, the world will know a new peace, love and harmony. When men too step into the role as supporter and protector of the divine feminine of both mother and child, a new world will be born where harmony and love rein.
When we open ourselves to the wisdom of the spirit, God will guide us in the highest way, teaching us to trust until we trust fully, teaching us to live out of our love as it is this that creates heaven on earth. One day we will become the masters of love and rather than living to go on to heaven or hell after this life, we will transform this dualistic experience on earth of both heaven and hell into a heaven on earth. The woman, the mother, she is sacred, but she has been afraid to follow her instincts as she hasn’t been shown the way, and the masses have tried to talk her out of her own feminine power and divinity. She is pure, she is whole, she is life giving, she is a woman, she is a mother, she is to the young girl and the wise grandmother.
The time to unite as women, as a sacred tribe and supportive sisterhood is here. To share with one another and pass down the wisdom of birth, of mothering that in many places and cases has been veiled and even severed. But the wisdom of the women is always there, if she learns to listen, to surrender to the voice of spirit that synchronizes all of nature.
It is time for the woman to reclaim her body and learn to listen to it and move with it. She is the bearer of life, a divine channel of the miraculous to flow through and be born out of her and then she nurtures and nourishes that very miracle born through her own body from her breast. She too is part of the miracle. She is to be honored and respected, treated with love, nurturing and care. She has been strong for long, she has suffered and endured much, she has awoken to her divinity and is ready to stand in her power as the divine feminine goddess, and mother that she is.
So mothers, grandmothers and mothers-to-be, dance to the beat of your own heart’s rhythm, be wild and free! Its time to come out of the caves we have locked our goddess selves away in and step into the light and shine!
I truly owned my inner woman wisdom during the pregnancy and birth of my second child as I could hear her growing voice inside of me, teaching me to listen and relax, as if she were an angel sent to guide me. This happened so regularly that when it finally came time to give birth, I felt so inwardly connected to myself, my baby and the divine, that a state of pure knowingness that trusting in my body and surrendering to the forces of nature that were moving through me, was my highest path. So I listened deeper than I ever had and surrendered to the infinite voice within that was guiding me and with the help of an amazing doula helping to hold the sacred space within my bedroom and two midwives who supported the process, I gave birth to my incredible daughter naturally and beautifully at home.
Part of my daily parenting practice…
Be loving.
Be Present.
Be consistently firm in your own knowingness.
Support your childrenʼs needs in the most pure and beautiful ways.
Move with nature.
Move with the natural cycles.
Rise with the sun.
Sleep with itʼs setting.
Howl at the full moon!
….Happy Mother’s Day!
