Episode 9 - Birth Asked Me To Surrender What My Lineage Kept Safe

In this episode of The Place of Permission, Liz Chandler shares an intimate exploration of how birth became a threshold that asked her to surrender not only to the process, but to the deeper layers of protection shaped across generations.

Through her journey of fertility challenges, pregnancy, childbirth, and postpartum, Liz explores how the opening of life force in the body can bring both power and fear to the surface at the same time. As her daughter entered the world, so did the parts of her shaped by shame, control, and the need to stay safe.

She speaks candidly about the intensity of birth, the emotional complexity of family dynamics, and the often-unspoken realities of early motherhood; including, intrusive thoughts, isolation, and the pressure to hold it all together. But alongside this unraveling, something else opened.

As her body moved through birth and into postpartum, Liz experienced a deep reawakening of sensory awareness as an embodied connection to intuition and psychism that had once been natural to her in childhood, then disconnected, and now returned with intensity. This opening was not separate from the fear or the overwhelm, but intertwined with it, asking for deeper surrender and trust in self. 

Rather than framing these experiences as something to overcome, Liz explores how they became an invitation to lay down inherited patterns of protection and meet herself and her intuitive knowing in a new way.

This episode is a reflection on surrender as a powerful, embodied process of allowing what has been held for generations to finally move.

Thank you for spending this time with me, friend. Your presence here matters more than you know.

You can find more on social media at @withlizchandler and at withlizchandler.com for sessions, offerings, and ways to walk this work together.

Deep gratitude to my producer Dennis Hull for his wizardry in sound engineering, organizational magic, and steady emotional support and a massive thank you to my admin team at Do What You Love for helping bring this dream to life with patience, encouragement, and steadfast dedication.

And to my closest loved ones- thank you for believing in me, standing with me, and encouraging me to radiate fully and unapologetically as myself. This podcast is woven with your love.

Transcript

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Welcome to the place of permission. I'm Liz, and I invite you to listen in as I share from the raw and authentic depths of my life. This is a space for those who've ever felt alone in their sensitivity, tangled in societal expectation, exhausted from giving too much, or lost in confusion. On this podcast, I explore the alchemy of these very places through storytelling, turning yearning into belonging, disconnection into collective healing, exhaustion into resolve, and confusion into imagination. In the pop podcast, we journey through a variety of topics ranging from grief and rage to sexual power and the expansiveness of love and joy, psychic insights, embodiment practices, conversations with the afterlife, and all the paradoxical happenings in between. My hope is that my stories and the voices I bring in serve as permission slips for you to embrace your own truth as the source of your power. Thank you for listening. And remember, all of you are welcome here, because all of me is too. Welcome back to episode nine. In the last episode, I talked about the reconnection that I experienced to pleasure in my body as a teenager, and how because of several years of secrecy and shame around what I experienced as a kid, when I opened up to sensation in my body, in particular, pleasurable sensation in my body, and a deepening of my sexuality, I had a lot of panic and fear around what it felt like to experience pleasure, and how from this was birthed intrusive thoughts that I experienced for many years. And that from these intrusive thoughts, they were a deeply protective mechanism to keep me safe, but they also kept me small and obedient, and took me further away from my actual power, from feeling confidently in myself, from knowing, understanding, and being able to say what it is that I wanted and needed with um confidence. And what I want to talk about today is the next time in my life that I experienced a reconnection to that power through sexuality, but not in the way that you might be thinking about it. I want to talk about how motherhood became a portal for me to be able to walk through and deepen into my power. When I was growing up, I used to say I didn't want to get married, I didn't want to have any kids, I actually wanted to be an old cat lady, is what I used to say a lot, that I would have a bunch of cats. And that didn't actually pan out. Um I did get married, and when I was around 25, I started to feel very much like I wanted to have a baby. And at the same time, I had a lot of stress around would I even be able to have kids? Because that was a story that I was always told was I might not be able to have children because of my hormonal issues. I mean, that was always a story I heard. And because I had to go on birth control at 15 in order to induce a bleed, that it might either be harder for me to have kids or I might not be able to have them. And by this point, around 25, I was already diagnosed with PCOS. I believe I had just been diagnosed with it. And so having that diagnosis kind of compounded onto this belief that I wouldn't be able to have a baby. And so when I was around 25, I felt this urgency in my body. I felt this need to have a child. And at the same time, I was also experiencing a lot of fear around having a kid, becoming a mom. Because what did I really know about being a mom? At that point, what I knew of motherhood was that there was pain, that there's grief, that yeah, that there's sadness, that there's being shut down, being told to be quiet, that there at that point my mom and I did not have a great relationship. I think we really didn't talk much, and that was by my choice, um, because it felt too painful. And so I for a about three years, my husband and I were trying to have a baby, and I really didn't have a lot of understanding around cycle sinking, around really understanding when my bleed would come because I wasn't having a bleed. I had just gotten off of birth control, and any sort of shedding in a cycle was not happening, and I felt really disconnected from what is even going on in my body. So it's like I had all these stories going on about okay, I want to have a kid, but I also feel like I don't know how to be a mom, but also I don't even know if my body's gonna let me be a mom, but also what's even going on with my body. There was a lot of a lot of chaos swirling around being able to have a kid, and for three years, it was a lot of pressure that I was putting on myself to just be able to get pregnant. And and at this point, my husband and I were living overseas, we were in Armenia, and we hadn't come back to the States yet, and so I really wasn't seeking any um medical advice or really deepening into knowing what was hormonally happening inside my body. I was just beating myself up every month when I thought I should be bleeding and then ovulating, when in reality I wasn't experiencing either, I don't think. And so once we came back to the state, then I was able to get some lab work done and have a bit of a clearer understanding of what my hormones were doing. And the doctor I was seeing at the time said that okay, if you want to have a baby, then and you're not bleeding, we're going to induce a bleed and then give you medication to help you ovulate. And it's so interesting to look back now because everything that we did in preparation to get pregnant with our now daughter was controlled, and my daughter is very much someone who does not like to be controlled, who wants to um be prepared for things, but she does not like to know or feel that she has to do anything. So there's a there's a lot of irony in this for us. Um but at this time, so I'm skipping a lot of things in between, but I will I will eventually have an episode that talks more about my cycle reclamation and understanding my body in that way. But for the purposes of this episode, I want to skip forward to when I actually did get pregnant. So I took the um progesterone to induce a bleed, I took clomid to have ovulation occur, and then I got pregnant with my daughter. And it was really funny in preparation because even though I had taken the medication, there was still, you know, a possibility that I wouldn't be able to get pregnant. And again, this is the story that was constantly playing in my head. You're not gonna be able to get pregnant, it's gonna be hard for you. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I remember the second I got pregnant with her. I felt it happen, I felt like the implantation occur, the twinge, and I I felt something shift in my body, and I knew I'm pregnant. And this whole process is really important for me to talk about in relation to what we talked about in the last episode, because this whole process of becoming a mother and birthing my child into this world and then raising her. And this is an ongoing process. Like my daughter is six right now, so I'm still in you know, the early part of motherhood. But this process is important in relation to the last episode because this is another example of my life force opening up. That I knew, I remember I had texted my best friend Hannah a picture. I had taken a test, and like you really, you really could not see, you know, the the extra line that says you're pregnant. And she she had texted me, she's like, Liz, I think you might have line eyes, it might be a little too soon for um this test. And I was like, No, I'm definitely pregnant. And I remember looking at this photo and zooming in and you know, going to the um color inverter to see if you can actually see the line, if you change the colors to black and white. And I waited a few days and took a couple more tests, and the line did start to appear, start to get darker, and eventually I took a digital test that said that I was pregnant. And I remember feeling so excited, like this jolt of electricity in my body, and terrified at the same time, because I had been wanting to have a baby for a few years at this point, and I also didn't have a great relationship with my mom, so that opened up a new avenue of healing for me that became years long, but really initiated there. And what felt really interwoven there were all of these younger parts of me that I didn't have the you know, understanding of at that moment or that time, but these younger parts of me that had carried these years of shame and fear, and these older parts of me that felt protective and felt more in their power than they had previously. And so when I was pregnant, I loved being pregnant. I felt good physically. Um, I had a little bit of nausea for the first trimester, like not a lot, but a little bit. I also felt like I'd entered into, you know, this next stage of life. Like I felt more respected as an adult, which sounds weird to say and wasn't my motivation for having a child, but I felt like I was beginning to belong to a wider audience or wider group of people, or maybe felt like I was belonging more to my family because I could understand differently, you know, as opposed to just being somebody's child, I was now about to have my own child, and so I think that felt good for me, and it also felt like pressure to do it better than how I received it, and I spent the pregnancy really thinking about how I wanted to do things differently and do them better, and it wasn't until I had the gender reveal that my best friend Hannah planned for us that all of that pressure really started to sink in because when we found out that we were having a girl, I was terrified. I I believed that we were gonna have a boy. And, or I don't want to say I believed because I actually think it was just more I really hoped that we would have a boy, because I was terrified of having a girl and repeating the same mistakes that my mom did with me. And in particular, you know, as it related to what happened when I was a kid. And again, these intrusive thoughts of if this adult in my life did this to me, am I going to do this to somebody else? And when I found out I was having a girl, I had this, you never would have known it on the outside, but internally I was freezing because I kept thinking, how am I supposed to do this? What am I supposed to do? And and at the same time, I was really excited. Again, it was this door opening for healing that I wanted, but I was trying to control how I could move about the healing, you know, or how I could um like what I thought it was supposed to be, how it was supposed to be. And what I've experienced in my journey into motherhood is that it's been everything I have not thought it was going to be. It has been a wild ride, including her birth and after. So my husband had joined the military about one month before her estimated due date. And in that time between when he joined and when she was born, he was in training, like the initial training for being in the military. And I remember we had a conversation with Ardula, and she was like, Are you guys sure that you want to do this? Do you know what you're getting yourself into with that? And I remember being like kind of defiant about it internally, of like, yeah, I know what we're doing. It's fine. I'm gonna be fine. I can do this, I've got this. Because, you know, coupled with this um, these layers of fear and shame is also this piece of me that has been like, I can do it all, I can figure it out, I can do it all, I can protect myself because I had to do that for so many years. And so I was really sad about him leaving, and I was also like, I'm gonna be able to do this. It's fine, I'll figure it out. And um when he was gone, we had an estimated due date for her, and we had the opportunity to be able to have him home for 24 hours. So I had to decide did I want her to be born while he like possibly while he was with us, or did I want her to be born and then he could have 24 hours guaranteed to be able to be with her? I decided to opt for I would have her and then we would call the Red Cross. The Red Cross would then get him away to come back and be with us for 24 hours. I remember feeling really sad about having to make this decision. And for a while I actually did carry some resentment about it because it felt like I had to put everyone else above me. And we had a doula, which was incredible. I I am forever grateful for her name is Molly. Really grateful for Molly because she was a steady and calming force during the birth. Before before the birth, even like when we met before, but the times we met before, but also during and especially during. So during the birth process, I had gone in to be induced. Again, going back to what I was speaking about earlier with my daughter getting pregnant with my daughter, everything was controlled, including her birth. Because when I went in, I was induced and then given, yeah, given pitocin to be able to um trigger contractions. And I knew that birth was going to be painful, and I don't think anybody, I think everybody knows this, right? Like we intellectually know this, but I did not understand how much pain it was going to be, and again, how much it was going to activate all of these fears that I have been holding for most of my life, that, like I talked about in the last episode, got revealed when I started to get more in touch with pleasure in my body, when I was stimulating more of that sacral energy, that creative sexual life force energy, everything else that was in that channel, in that pathway from sacral to my heart and out, got brought up too. And this is exactly what happened during the birth process for me as well. So as they started to give me Pitocin and the contractions started to come, at first I didn't feel them, and I was like, oh, you know, it's kind of like cocky about it. I was like, I've got this. If this is really what birth is, I have got this. And then my water broke.

unknown 21:59

Actually,

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No, my water didn't break on its own. They had to come in and break it. And because I remember when the doctor broke my water, I made like a I was like excited because you could hear it burst. And um and side note here, I wanted to explain because this is how weird I am. When we moved back to the states, we moved back to Kansas, which we're both from Missouri and Kansas. And we moved back into the the town that I was born in, Wichita, Kansas. And when I got pregnant, I wanted to make sure that I had the same doctor who birthed me with my mom. And I was able to make that happen. And um something felt important about that. And I don't know if that is me again putting pressure on myself to change from the get-go to be able to heal the lineage. Uh, you know, and that's one way I was trying to control it, or if it was me just hearing, yeah, there's gonna be something really important with this. Regardless, I had the same doctor that birthed me, which feels really cool. Um, so they broke my water, and then that's when I felt the pain of contractions, and they were intense and they were on top, they felt like they were on top of each other. And all of that fear, all of that shame, all of that stress and anxiety that I had been carrying, including intrusive thoughts, including this feeling like I can't breathe, it all came rushing to the surface. And there's a moment, so we were able to have a birth videographer, which I'm really grateful that we did, because I I love to watch this back every year. I love to see the process that I went through with birth and to see the moment that my daughter entered this world. Um, and there's a moment when the contractions are really going that you can see me like hitting my third eye, like hitting my forehead. And I remember it's because the pain was so much that I was starting to feel like out of my mind. And what was happening now, I understand what was happening is I was really fighting, surrendering into that. And I want to be clear, Petocin contractions are fucking awful. Like they are very, they can be very intense very quickly as opposed to whatever progression my body naturally might have done. Um, and so it's it's interesting to think about that process of everything being so controlled and knowing part of the personality that my daughter has today in not wanting to be controlled, not wanting to, or have the semblance of anybody controlling her. Like she is very fierce and wants to be in her own power, which of course she does, like everybody does, right? Um, but it's it it it can be, it can feel really threatening to her, even simple, um, even simple asks, which we'll talk about about that later. But um, so these contractions are are really revving up. And my doula is there, she's doing some body work on me, and I think at this point, so my dad had offered to be in the room with me. And during labor, I remember that my grandparents on my dad's side had come to be in the room like before before the contractions really had started. And I had I had some nervousness because there was a piece of me that felt this need to be in solitude during birth, not solitude in in terms of like being alone, but I really didn't want to be surrounded by a bunch of people that were just gonna watch me. And that isn't to shit on my family for being there because I'm really grateful that they were. And what I had an opportunity to do then, and and I wasn't able to take it, was to be able to use my voice and say, This is what I need, this is what I want. Which again, as that power revs up, as that life force revs up, all of these areas that I have kept myself small with, you know, these protections of shame, of fear, they got brought to the surface too. And so at some point, at some point, my doula had asked my dad for me to step out because she could tell that I needed that solitude, and she also could tell that I wasn't going to be able to tell him that out of fear of disappointing him. And that caused quite a bit of tension between my dad, or from my dad to Ledula. My doula, like that didn't cause her any any tension. That's part of what she um is there to support with is to protect the space of the birthing person, and she did such a good job with that, and it's also not to shit on my dad and say, like, he was a terrible person in the space, he wasn't, but what was happening is I was really needing this space to be in my own bubble and at the same time experiencing a lot of this fear, and yeah, fear is the best way to put it because as the contractions were happening and this pain was overtaking me, I started to feel fear and panic about oh my god, it's happening. Like I'm about to birth a baby, what am I even gonna do with the baby? Like, how do I even know how to be a parent, right? All these things that I've been thinking about for the entire pregnancy were really coming online. And then coupled with, I can't even tell my own dad I need him to step out of the room, while at the same time, my mom was not in town. She left town to go, they they had like a house that they um, like a second home that they had in a lake and a state away. And she had left because from her from what I understand from her perspective, she wasn't wanted around during the birth. And so she left. And that really hurt me because again, I'm stepping into this play, this new place, this new role in my life where I felt like I belonged in a different way, you know, with with people who've been through this process, and my mom wasn't there. And I I've become really clear, like when I'm sick, when I'm hurting, I want my mom. I I want her, and we have not had the relationship for the most part in my life where I could I could like be with my mommy, you know, but that same feeling was there, and it was coupled with all this pain of her not being there, and it felt like abandonment. And I can also understand from her perspective, we really didn't talk, and when we did talk, there was a lot more anger coming from me, and so she didn't know how to navigate that either. Much like, you know, when Maidula asked my dad to step out, he had a lot of anger that came up for him that he directed back at me, not placed it on me, but he felt the need to unload that to me in the days following the birth, which understandably he had feelings about because he was there to support me. He had traveled in to support me. And it also was not, I was not the person that needed to have that anger be put on. I was in a very vulnerable, tender space, and that that was something that he didn't know how to navigate either, you know? So I'm going through these contractions. I like how I keep coming back to that. Eventually I will get through the contraction part of birth, I promise you. Going through these contractions, and I'm also experiencing a lot of deep sadness about my husband not being there. Because for many years in our relationship, my husband was like my emotional support blankie. He knew a lot about you know the intrusive thoughts that I had, the anxieties, the anger. And when I look back on it now, I can see that the way the way that I treated him was like he was my emotional support blanky. It was very codependent, and I often needed reassurance from him that I was okay. And this was an opportunity for me to experience being in that fear and really having to be in it without having a crutch of his presence. And it was really hard. And for many years I carried a lot of resentment towards him, even though we both made the decision for him to join the military. I carried a lot of resentment towards him for not being there. And he also didn't get to be there for her birth. I mean, that's a huge rite of passage for any parent, whether they're the ones birthing or the ones being part of or in support of the birth. And so I have a lot of empathy for him in that too. And not getting not getting to be there in that transition. And so the contractions became too painful too quickly, and eventually I said, I would like the epidural. And I'm sure that sounds so calm the way I just said it. I'm sure I was like, I would really like the epidural. Or, you know, whatever. Give me the epidural. Um, and so they brought it in, and here's the other thing, I was really scared of that too, because as a kid, I was terrified of needles. Anytime I'd have to get my blood drawn or get a shot, they would have to hold me down. And I have a memory of being held down by like four different people at one time just to get my blood drawn. And so, you know, I knew what epidural needles looked like in terms in terms of how long they were, and the contractions kept like coming in in these massive waves. And I felt like I needed to move right through them. And as they were giving giving me the epidural, the nurse, I actually don't remember if it was the nurse or if it was my doula, leaned over. No, it must have been the nurse, leaned over to me and said, You have to sit still for this, because if you don't, it could like it could go poorly, which I was in such a fear state that when she said that, I totally froze. And I remember feeling a contraction come on, but I was so frozen that all I could do was whisper and be like, It's happening, it's happening. Like the contraction was there. And anyway, they gave me the epidural, and then I couldn't feel the contractions anymore. And sometimes, sometimes when I think about that, I I want to be clear that I wouldn't change a single fucking thing about any of my experience in becoming a parent, even now, even all the things that I feel shame about, even the things that have been hard. And sometimes I wish that I could have experienced going through the full depth of that pain and really surrendering to it, because I do think that the last six years has been a deepening of surrendering to that pain. And not that I wouldn't have experienced all of these things, but you know, who knows? Um but I think that I I wish sometimes that I could have experienced the fullness of that pain and and really letting go into it to see what would have happened. So as the epidural started to take effect, I was able to get some sleep, and of course, as I slept, things began to open, they came in to see how far dilated I was, and eventually I was ready to start pushing. And at that time, I felt this need to have my dad come back in because I felt guilt for having him come all this way and not have him be part of the birth process. Now, I did want my dad there, and I still felt like I wanted to do this in solitude. And now I understand that that's a very normal, natural experience when someone is giving birth, that they want to like go off, be alone, birth, because it's such a process of being in between worlds. And again, this is why I say sometimes I wish I could have surrendered deeper because now knowing the connection that I have to senses in my body, I feel that I could have accessed being in between in between worlds. Um, however, this was this birth was the opening, the big opening for me to really lean into being in touch with my sensory experiencing in my body, which deepens my psychism. And so I asked my dad to come back in, and I began pushing, and they asked, Do you want to see while you're pushing? And I was like, Fuck yes. So they set up a mirror, and I got to watch her come out, which was so cool. And then afterwards, I got to cut her umbilical cord, and I remember the first thing that I said when she came out was, oh my god, look how long her fingers are. And here's the thing: I was terrified. I was terrified. Like I'd spent nine months creating, forming, being in such close proximity and connection with this baby, with this creature, with this being, right? And then she comes out of me and I'm like, who are you? Because yeah, she's been with me, but I don't really know her. I don't know her mannerisms, I didn't know what she looked like yet. And so this began the process of her and I getting to know each other. And so, yeah, they placed her on my chest, and and I just kept having these thoughts of like, what the fuck am I supposed to do? What am I supposed to do? Um, I okay, I I know I gotta feed her, and and like she, you know, they had taken her over to measure her and all of that stuff, and they brought her back over. And I think I tried to latch her. I think she latched on very well. Uh, everything was fine. And then they left us alone for a little while. And at that time, in in between after she was born and they gave us a little bit of space, my dad was calling the Red Cross so that they could notify my husband, and then he was able to come home for about 24-ish hours. Um, so well, maybe even a little bit longer, uh, maybe 48. But they took us over to, I birthed her in the hospital. They took us over to the like birthing suites, and it was really interesting because you had to go underground to get there. So like they rolled me in the hospital bed with my baby, going to the the birthing suites, and we get over there, and again, I'm like, what the fuck am I supposed to do with this baby? And I just I just remember I kept watching her, like I was so tired, I was exhausted, but I felt wired because I'm feeling all of this pressure of like, I know that babies have to be taken care of. And like, I I I'm making myself sound like I really had no idea. I had lots of experience with helping take care of babies and children growing up. I have several siblings, and I'm one of the oldest. But in that moment after birth, when I'm still in between and just experienced this massive shift in my body, this massive opening in my body, both physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually, it's like all that knowledge kind of went out the window. And so I um remember that I swaddled her. I had these little like zip-up swaddles, I put her in, and the nurse at one point had come in and she was like, You have to put clothes on, like you have to put a onesie on under that. And I remember her looking at me and I felt judged, I felt shamed, but I was like, I don't, I didn't know. I thought you just put the swaddle on. And um at the same time, I was she was sleeping a lot, so like anytime that I would try to like put her up to my breast, she was just really sleeping, and there was also this pressure to make sure that she got fed, and so that was swirling in my head while at the same time, like you know, we talk about the pain of childbirth, but we don't really talk about the pain of what it feels like after you've given birth and all the different things you might experience, and so um, yeah, I didn't realize how sore I was going to be. So one of the things I really want to highlight here that's that's popping into my head is like I'm having all of these feelings of like, oh my god, I gotta get I gotta figure all this out. Yes, there's nurses coming in, they're they're you know teaching me some things, but something that was really important for me, a couple of things. One was that my sister-in-law came within I don't even know the day, maybe the day that she was born. She came, she brought her kids, and she brought two of her kids, I think, and just visited it for um maybe an hour and and then left. And then after that, my best friend Hannah had come, and then I might be getting some. Some time time uh timing of this wrong. But my best friend Hannah had come and and Hannah had also picked up my husband at the airport and like made him food and and made a sign and everything and dropped him off at the hospital and you know and my dad had been there and it wasn't until my husband came into the room that evening that I felt like I totally fell apart because I had felt all of this fear, and again, remember he was my emotional support blanket for a long time. I felt all this fear, not just about like the pain in childbirth, but all the things that I've been carrying for so long, and and then now this pressure of like what do I do? How do I like how how often do I feed her? When do I change her diaper? What do I put her in? When am I supposed to bathe her? How do I take care of myself as I'm still bleeding? And he walked in the room and I I just lost it. I started crying, and um and at the same time it was so beautiful to see him holding our child, like such a wild experience of thinking like we made her together. Yeah, I I remember feeling so exhausted, and at some point the nurse had come in and she had said to me that um like I could go take a bath, and I might have heard her incorrectly, like she might have said a sits bath, but I heard it as go take a bath, and I believe this is when my husband was here because I really didn't get a chance to take care of myself until he was there in terms of like cleaning myself. And when I went into the bathroom and I sat down in this tub, I really I felt like I gave birth twice. Like I thought I actually ripped from front to back. And this same the same nurse, I well, okay, so let me back up. So I'm in this bath and there's a reason I'm sharing this story, is because as I'm sitting there, I'm feeling a lot of oh, what is the right word here despair for this amount of feeling like I have to carry it all. I have to know what to do, how to be, and feeling like I I'm not going to have any space to care for myself and nobody's gonna care for me. And as much as I was so happy to be a parent, I was also terrified because I wondered if that meant that it was just gonna be a continuation of me not being seen or taken care of in my life. And that felt maybe despair isn't the right word, but maybe dread is the right word. And so as I was sitting there in this tub and I'm really fucking hurting, I'm like, how am I gonna get my ass out of this tub? Literally, how am I gonna get my ass out of this tub? It hurts so bad. And I contemplated pushing the button that they had on the tub to get support, but I didn't let myself again. This this I've got to carry it all by myself. And so I'm saying this because that's part of the protection that is interwoven with shame, with fear of I've got to do it all by myself, I don't need any help. And motherhood opened up access for me to my life force in a way that shows me how patterns of behaviors like that are actually what keep me stuck, keep me in that same process of being ashamed, being afraid. Um, yeah, so eventually I did get my ass out of the tub, and we were able to spend some time together as a family in the hospital, and then go home and spend some hours together before my husband had to go go back. But in that time, in between him being there and leaving, one of the biggest issues that we were experiencing, meaning my daughter and I was in feeding. So she had latched right away after the birth. And now that I've worked with hundreds of families, maybe thousands of families, uh over a thousand families at this point, with you know, post-birth feeding issues, body mechanic issues, etc., this seems to be a pretty common answer or experience that I get is they latched perfectly post-birth. And that was the experience with Ophelia. She latched just fine at first, and then it became really, really hard for her. And so the way that I experienced that was she would clamp down on my nipples, and it got so hard. I remember one time, like we had just gotten home and I was trying to feed her, and she clamped on my nipples so hard, I screamed, fuck. And like I wanted to throw her across the room because it hurt so bad, and I was crying, and my husband didn't know what to do. He's like, What do you need? How do I like what do I what do I do? And I'm like, I don't know. I'm supposed to be the one, again, the same story. I'm supposed to be the one that can do this, and I can't do this. And and at this point, my nipples were starting to shred because of how often she was biting down. And part of the problem was that she was clamping and not able to actually suck in milk, and my nipples or my breasts weren't producing milk in a way that she was able to easily get them. In terms of like, you know, I didn't have like a heavy let down or anything like that, and so she did have to work, but she couldn't work. And I think what I'm actually gonna do is have another episode that talks specifically about the postpartum experience that I had with feeding issues and tongue ties and some other things as she got older that we experienced, but I want to circle back to this opening that happened. So I go from being pregnant, like I knew immediately that I was pregnant, and pregnancy was great, physically was great. Um, I felt wonderful emotionally and mentally, though, right? Again, all these things that were getting stirred up that prevents the full flow of that life force energy that was really, really, really moving. I mean, it was generating and creating life inside of me. And so my intrusive thoughts during pregnancy and then postpartum were the worst they'd ever been. And I knew I experienced intrusive thoughts, but I did not know this was a common experience for other people to have as well, especially in relation to the postpartum experience. And so after about 24 to 48 hours, my husband left and he went back to training. And he actually was there for another like three months or so. So for the first few months, it was just my daughter and I. Um for the most part. My dad did end up staying for, I think he ended up staying a week in total. My in-laws came, my best friend Hannah lived on the street over. I had uh another friend who ended up coming and staying a night, another friend who did the same thing. So I had some support here and there, but for the most part it was her and I. And one of the things that I recognize now is that in that process of birthing her, I opened up access to sensation in my body and to psychism in my body that I hadn't experienced for a really long time. You know, we talked about in previous episodes about how as a kid I was so in tune with sensation that it was just normal. It was natural for me to, you know, be connected to the world around me and the world within me. And as I had that disconnection at around six to seven years old, especially as it related to sensation, and especially as it related to pleasure in my body, I lost a bit of that access, I think, to psychic abilities. And what I mean by that is understanding what input, like sensory input, would tell me and what my intuition would understand about things based off of my sensory input. So, for example, what I understand now is that when I get a particular feeling that I haven't been experiencing until I'm around somebody, like let's say, let's say um I'm around somebody who is masking well, but they're experiencing a significant amount of grief or heartbreak. I will feel that in my heart space. Or I might feel that in particular, I will feel that in my left clavicle. And if it relates to their mother, I will feel that going down my right side of my arm. I didn't have, you know, my teacher Tanisha likes to talk about like creating a Rolodex of information based off of the sensory information that you get, so that you can have, you know, whether it be within psychism or in mediumship, when you have this input coming in, then you can understand what it means. I didn't have that yet. But in birthing my daughter, I opened up access in a much deeper way to all of this information, which makes so much sense because when we birth, we are between worlds. We are our bodies are a portal between worlds. And so um, after this experience, because of all the shit that was in the pipeline, so to speak, I was experiencing a significant amount of stress while accessing this sensory input in a new way. And so very early on, I had a lot of intrusive thoughts that prevented me from doing certain things, such as I could not go into my kitchen or make myself food, because every time that I did, I had an intrusive thought about stabbing my daughter. I did not want to do any of that, and every time that came in my head, it scared the fuck out of me. Because I thought, what like what kind of monster am I that I love this baby and want to protect her with all of my being? And my mind is doing this, it's it's showing me this. And so my my father-in-law, he's like, he loves to take care of people. When when him and my mother-in-law had come into town, he had made like a cookie platter that I needed to go take to the nurses, which was such a beautiful thing. I didn't end up taking it because one, I just I just didn't, like I didn't have the time, energy, or space to be able to do that with a newborn. But I ended up eating this cookie platter, like that was my meal. That's for my meals for a while because I couldn't cook for myself. And I had friends that came in and cooked for me. And I remember one day that there were three or four of them over, and I don't even know if she listens to this podcast, but um, one of my friends had opened the the fridge and it was bad. Like it there was a lot of old food, it was full. I just I I couldn't go in my kitchen, and she's like, Liz, and I knew because I could her I could hear her open the fridge, and I was like, Yeah, and she's like, Do you do you want us to clean this for you? And I felt so ashamed, but this was another process of me surrendering into the pain of that shame because I let her, I let them, I let them clean it, I let them cook for me, and I just accepted being cared for. And I I'm really, really grateful for that experience. And that has been like one of many in my experiences of being a mom, is it's very humbling. So I had these intrusive thoughts that were happening, and at the same time, because sleep was also, I mean, you know, in the in the if you if you have a newborn, you know that like you're not sleeping. And when you are sleeping, it might be like 30 minutes, it might be, you know, it's whenever the baby is sleeping. And Ophelia did not sleep. This was part of the problem that I'll talk about in another episode. But she had a hard time settling, and so she cried all the time, which meant that my nervous system was constantly on edge. And it could have been a mixture of both two, like we could have been feeding each other. I mean, I was just on edge in general because I was by myself for the most part, and I was feeling this overwhelming responsibility to take care of her, and I didn't know how to take care of her. She wasn't eating, she was losing weight. Um, they she had dropped down to failure to thrive, and it and that intensified my intrusive thoughts. So I remember one one who knows what time of day it was, one day, um, I was laying there and she was sleeping in the bassinet next to me, and I remember hearing voices. And now I understand that in my experiencing what was happening was I was hearing, I believe, my team talking to me because it it felt soothing. It felt um you know, like I was really, it was at a breaking point with what we were going through. And at the same time, it it scared me because it was sensory input that I could hear it so clearly, and yet I didn't know where it was coming from. And I'm sharing this because this is part of how I access information. This is Claire Audience. Claire audience of all the Clairs is one that is more challenging for me to access because it requires a deep level of surrender for me to be able to access. And in that moment, I was at my wit's end. I was so tired and exhausted, and so that sensory input could come through with hearing. And yeah, so this whole story of this whole experience of birthing my daughter, the whole point of me sharing this is that this was the next big area in my life that I accessed my, I'm gonna say sexuality, but what I mean more is my life force energy in a dramatic way, a powerful way, that both exposed my connection to my body through sensory input, but connection to also to psychism and to my personal power. And at the same time, it also revealed many of the areas that prevented me from being connected to that. So my hope is that in hearing this story is that it gives you permission to open to what life might be inviting you into, what deeper layers of trust in yourself, in your intuition, trusting in the process of surrendering, even if it scares you, even if it's something that is uncomfortable for you to experience. Because the more that we can see these layers of conditioning that keep us small, or these patterns of protection that get put into place for good reason, but that can be revealed and re-patterned into much more powerful and healthy ways. My hope is that you can allow yourself to be open to that, to be honest about that with yourself. As always, thank you for listening. If anything resonates, please feel free to reach out, and I look forward to the next episode.