Winter Solstice Musing

For the last 6 months, I’ve been burrowing myself into myself…

I’ve written a little bit before about the synchronistic meeting between my partner, Antoni, and myself last summer in Greece (I share personal and spiritual musings in our Newsletter). My prayer of meeting someone who matched me was made by the Divine Spirit.

Along the way, we started trying to conceive. We both are older, getting close to our 40s and all the doubts and fears started creeping into my head since we didn’t conceive the first time around.

In fact, we didn’t conceive quite a few times. So those negative thoughts and doubtful hopes (my ultimate paradoxical emotion) began to try to steer me away from our vision.

So, I created a prayer that I started to recite in the morning and evening about our conception journey.

As the days started going by, I slowly forgot about my fears and doubt. The prayer guided me back to center and presence in myself. Then, during the Summer Solstice (June 21), I held a Healing Circle for our Telegram Community. It was a powerful healing session for all of us a part of the group. And, I truly feel that it was a huge catalyst to this next chapter in my life!

About 2 ½ weeks later, I was a couple days late for my moon (menstrual) cycle.

I still didn’t think it was possible to be pregnant, neither did my partner, so it was confirmed that we conceived the day that the Greece Retreat commenced in Athens, Greece!

It was quite overwhelming to find the space for myself to process this profound blessing bestowed to us while running a very long and very big retreat. When I’m in retreat mode, I dedicate my heart and soul into the space, I know no other way of being.

So, I took as many little moments as I could to process and integrate for my journey as best as I could during the three weeks.

There were a lot of different elements that came up during the retreat, which each retreat has its own unique experiences that I navigate in order to create the best atmosphere for the group cohesion and participation. This was normal and to be expected.

Yet, there was a  completely uncontrollable situations that rocked my world.

Greece was experiencing its worst heat wave since the 70s during the three weeks of the retreat. This caused my morning sickness to increase so intensely that it was so physically taxing to be able to show up to the best of my ability for all the participants. I wasn’t ready to share with anyone other than my family of our news so all of this I kept to myself. The physical discomfort of not having an air conditioner (the air conditioner in our room broke) while in over 100-degree Mediterranean weather, while pregnant, was not a fun time, by any means.

Needless to say, we got through the heat wave, and we were coming to the tail end of the retreat, when my partner had to travel back to his village in Greece (about 2 hours south of Athens). I didn’t recognize the emotional pain that occurred from this separation as it happened, but only now, do I know it was one of the hardest things for me to do. Because, once the retreat ended, I was back on a plane to the States, getting further and further from him.  We didn’t think we would conceive as quickly as we did, and we had planned out a whole different course for our lives for the rest of the year.

But, as they say, “If you want to make God laugh, tell him[/her] your plans.”

The whole way back on the plane, I was filled with fear again. If you’ve been a part of my journey the last four years, you know about my journey with my sweet daughter Sage (podcast to our story). I’ve known that getting pregnant again, would bring up a lot of the grief and fear around pregnancy loss. But I wasn’t really prepared to process this while traveling internationally.

Every little bump in turbulence I would be so worried. Not to mention having to pee 10 times on a 10-hour flight, literally! (lol)

I made it home safely and was now processing, integrating, and accepting this whole new commencement of a journey that I have very little control over.

Additionally, whenever I get back to my home in the States from Greece, I have about a 2–3-week period of a slight depression from leaving my ancestral homeland. It’s a sadness that’s hard to explain because it’s my blood and bones longing the land. So, this time around, I knew I had this process to go through, along with the immense longing to be physically together with my love.

Combine that with the joys of morning sickness (which was all day sickness for me the first three months) and the debilitating fear of miscarriage or stillbirth. For the first few weeks that I was back in August, I could barely get myself to move. The only things that I could do was eat, lay on my couch and visit my grandparents who live right around the corner.

During the times that I was visiting my grandparents, I would give sound healing, marma chikitsa (acupressure therapy), and cupping to them. My grandmother would have me sit with her and do breathwork to help her breathing. But, right at the end of August, she had to go to the hospital. This started a month and a half of going in and out of the hospital, and, ultimately being diagnosed with stage four lung cancer.

When it was finally decided that she could be discharged from the hospital to be put on hospice in the middle of October, she got home that afternoon and left her body that same night.

It was quite shocking, in fact, I’m still a little in shock.

Even though, I had been given messages and had spiritually information of different aspects of her journey, it didn’t take the pain away of losing my best friend. Even being given the gift of communicating with her on the Otherside, doesn’t take away the human process of grieving.

Now, I walk a pregnancy path coupled with the grief of death. Maybe, now it makes more sense what I mean by burrowing myself into myself…

In Greek, we have a saying, “Του παιδιού μου το παιδί, δυο φορές παιδί μου (tou pediou mou to pedi, dio fores pedi mou)”. Which translates to, “my child’s child, two times my child”. It indicates the feeling that of being a grandparent is double the feeling of what it’s like to have your own child.

With this grief journey integrating through me, I would say that the same is true for me in reverse, that my parent’s parent are twice my parent.

It’s a beautiful blessing the gift that our family was given to meet and have relationships with both sets of grandparents.

My selfish ego, of course, would have preferred to have my grandmother here during this pregnancy journey. And, God willing, through my delivery and beyond of this precious being. Having preferences is ok. It requires diligence on my part to not get attached to my preferences.  

Being attached to my preferences is the predecessor to desire. And, desire is one of the leading causes of suffering in this world.

Desiring to have my world as I would want it, not accepting my world as it is – this encompasses all of my suffering.

Accepting how life unfolds and approving of it all is one of the greatest spiritual practices that I’ve learned along the way. When I accept, I admit that I’m not the Authority of the Universe. And, when I approve, I show my allegiance with the One Power that rules Everything.

I share my personal experience with you as a way to process, integrate and connect with you on a human level. Life is beautifully hard. And, we each have our own pain to experience.

It’s what we do with the pain that matters.

We can be in union with God to create from our pain.

Or, we can disconnect from our Creator and our pain can cause us suffering.

The choice is ultimately your own.

No matter how dark your experience is and no matter the pain you’ve gone through, God’s love, beauty and strength lives through you. Believe in this Power and you will be amazed in how God uses your pain to create beautiful things in this world!

Thank you for reading my journey. I write this on the longest, darkest night of the year, the Winter Solstice. Celebrating the Light in the Dark.

Om, Shanti, Shanti, Shanti 🙏🕊️🕊️🕊️