Soothe She

The babe cries!

I recently became an auntie, this initiation has been hallmarked by stoking the fires of preparation as I have helped doula my sister, witnessing the journey of mother, father, and child simultaneously created. It has been a wondrous joy to spectate! Here as I sit and rock a little Aubrey, I share a poem and reflection inspired by both her, the newborn and what she awakens within myself… the inner child.

Soothe me

Rocking gently through life times

Dance me

Remind me of the waves of womb

I am forlorn in stimulation of the world

Away from the warm caress of a nourishing home

Speak to me in tones, those that echo

Receive me as I am alert for sustenance

Reach me in mother form where breath creates capacity

Teach me in fatherly compassion where hearts open

Walk with me, my legs they falter, without strength

I am mutable, flowing through all versions of my becoming

Hums & low tunes remind me of peace within that sacred cave

Love held all around me reminds me of how I was made

Lift me higher, for my possibility excites the ancestors

Place my feet in the land for upon the earth I will be sequestered

A prayer that I will always carry my child within me

For she is spirit & body made anew

Her cries approach you honest & true

Before long she will become witness between fierce & blue

This poem was based on observing myself through the ability that humans hold to soothe ourselves, and in turn our capacity to soothe others. But what does this action really entail?

• Originating from the Old English archaic root soð, meaning "truth, a true situation, certainty, genuine."

• Following with use as a verb is the Old English soðian "show to be true, bear witness, offer confirmation, to bring forth a state of truth.”

WELL the modern dictionary would like to dull your brain receptors and give you a detrimental modern definition! Big shocker... Soothe is now defined as “to become calm or make someone calm, to comfort, to ease distress, to become less upset or angry. To mitigate, to relieve, to cause something to hurt less.”

Soothing brings clarity because it is more than comfort, because its essence is truth; and to hold truth you must acknowledge it by observing its current state. It means meeting yourself where you are... right now, not yesterday or tomorrow, or even in 10 minutes. Attuning to your truth no matter how raw, tender, aroused, or irritated of a state that might be.

Imagine yourself singing tones to cradle a babe, you must simply match where she is, then slowly and steadily there shines a pathway where together you realign into a metabolized frequency. In our society we are stuck in a frame work of condemning another as the “other”, yet between a babe and her nurturer there is nothing but union. A newborn is unable to realize they are separate from the mother, here we are taught of the dance between two constantly exchanging energy.

I’d like to hope that somewhere there lingers the invitation to tap into this intuition of soothing from both mother and father. Sometimes the investment of being cradled by one's parent(s) is clouded by retaliation and trauma, and feels like more of a fight than a dance. Recently reflecting upon my traits as an enneagram one, I have been able to give myself more grace as I identify behaviors that push me to excessively control my external atmosphere in order to feel safe. Identifying unhealthy comforts that distract me from the internal wounds that echo frustration and guilt of my protective figure lacking his own clarity to truly create the structure I needed.

I see daily echoes of this in my romantic partnership. Often in my gloomy days I am caught in a constant state of recomputing where my beloved is at not only emotionally, but intellectually, becoming trapped upon receiving good remarks of expression. Behaviors like these develop in children as coping mechanisms to handle insecurity of provision, and to remediate emotional immaturity of the adults around them. This type of dependency quickly becomes draining because we lose ourselves in looking for reassurance and validation from outside of us rather than from within. I have experienced that this also drains whoever we are trying to relate to as we push them to retreat from the external expressions we desire.

Through all the reflections I am putting energy into rewiring, this one currently feels the most important because it is a trait that I refuse to instill on girls like my niece. Although it's a long journey I remind myself that in the process of soothing one must embody the witness, it is the essence of going between or meeting oneself through transitions in order to reach initiations… however long that takes you must provide empathy for this space.

It is a companionship from the beginning of the journey to the end, soothing a pain to remove it is fully false. For that definition is against the very core of soothing which is a process that values witnessing, confirming, and sometimes even confronting the truth. Bearing witness is not to remove what is being experienced but to observe something as it really is, not just about becoming less upset.

Here I sit a self reminder to choose honesty & truth over shame & guilt. However painful that might be. For within you is a little babe, a crying inner child… All they really want is to be acknowledged and held. Cradle her, nourish her, soothe her.