Resilience

I remember sitting on the edge of my bed looking at my sister Evie, with tears in my eyes.

“I don’t know if I’ll be able to be a good mother. I don’t know if I’ll cope. I don’t know if I can do the whole labour thing. I’m just terrified by the idea of it all”.

Me and my husband had been trying for a baby for a while. On the one hand, my gut knew that I wanted a baby more than anything. On the other hand, my anxiety had other ideas. “A baby?! YOU?” it wondered aloud, every waking moment. My anxiety reminded me daily that I didn’t have my shit together. That I was an anxious mess. That I was barely able to sort out my own life. How could I possibly be a parent?

And then… two pink lines stared back at me one day, as I sat perched on the edge of a toilet seat. The blood drained from my face. This is it. We’re actually going to have a baby. I opened the door and handed the pregnancy test to my husband. We held each other in terror and delight and disbelief. It seemed miraculous, incredible.

Being pregnant and giving birth was a wonderful time, but it was probably one of the hardest times in my life. And it is at these hard times: a death, a birth, a move, a break-up; that we need to dig deep and find depths of resilience we didn’t dare dream we were capable of.

I had been in very painful pre-labour for days, actual labour for 12 hours. I had absolutely no idea where I would find the physical or mental strength I needed to get this baby out. I needed to dig deep – deeper than I had ever before. I had absolutely no faith that I could do it. I was burnt out, exhausted, ready to close my eyes and make it all just disappear. I was so exhausted I was beginning to hallucinate from sheer tiredness (and the gas and air I was hovering).

A new midwife came into the room just then at that moment, and she must have sensed the doubt that hung heavy in the air. It was around 4am. My husband was sleeping on the floor, it was just me and her. And she was my resilience angel. She held my hand as I cried and said I couldn’t do it, I was too exhausted, too scared, in too much pain. I wanted to withdraw, to hide, to forget the whole being a parent thing and go back to normal.

She looked at me deeply, and said: “Ciara. This is the first and one of the most important things you are going to do for your son. You have GOT to sit up, take a deep breath, and do this for him.”

This was my bed of coals to walk across, and I needed to find the fight in me. I nodded at her, shed a tear, and closed my eyes. This is it, I thought. I’m about to become a parent. I’m going to fight every day of the rest of my life for this little guy. I’m going to be a warrior for him, and to make sure he has the best life I can possibly give him. And this is my first battle.

Ten minutes later, the midwives said it was time to push. They glanced at each other in slight disbelief as I had suddenly sat up the bed, ready for action, having been in and out of consciousness only minutes earlier. I will never forget the look of awe on my husband’s face when I gave birth to my son. I have never felt so powerful in that moment, even though I had never felt so low just before. Those moments when he burst into the world were the hardest but most incredible of my life. And it is in these moments, when as they say, the struggle is really REAL, that we plumb the depths of our own resilience.

Ever since that moment, when I’m facing into a job interview, or a doctor’s appointment I’m nervous about, I cast my mind back to that moment. I remember the level of strength I had in the face of utter, existential terror. And I think – “if I did that, I can do absolutely anything.” And I feel strong, and brave, and alive.

This beautiful video from The School of Life really sums up the struggle, and how rather than it being a sign that something is wrong in our life, rather it is a sign that we are truly living, truly experiencing everything life has to offer. And if we can find it in ourselves – with help – to get up and fight that fight, even when we feel completely empty, we will prove to ourselves how capable we really are of so much more than we ever gave ourselves credit for.

“The tree has entered my hands,
The sap has ascended my arms,
The tree has grown in my breast-
Downward,
The branches grow out of me, like arms.

Tree you are,
Moss you are,
You are violets with wind above them.
A child – so high – you are,
And all this is folly to the world”

A Girl, By Ezra Pound