A Divine Hangover

In early 2019 I began sharing some of the backstory that led to my career change on social media.

On one hand, it was freeing to be so honest and vulnerable. On the other, it was very uncomfortable. I knew where the story was headed, and it was very difficult to sit in the darkness of each chapter day after day.

I also hadn’t anticipated the response I would receive.

In the span of a month I received countless messages and phone calls from friends, acquaintances and virtual strangers. Some expressed sorrow for not having been there for me at the time. Others expressed anger that I hadn’t told them what was happening, and yet others celebrated my courage. It was surprising, humbling and a very mixed bag.

By the time I reached the part of my story where I moved to New York, I was having a difficult time processing everything. The story was about to get darker and I simply couldn’t hold for everyone else’s experience in addition to my own, so I stopped writing.

Interestingly this happened just as I arrived in New York to host a workshop. I got very sick that week too and could hardly finish workshop prep, much less write the story. I tried to revisit it when I returned to Arizona a week or so later, and I had clearly lost my steam.

In hindsight, I believe it was divine protection.

A lot happened during my time in New York that I was deeply ashamed of and the truth is I wasn’t quite ready to open that can of worms for myself, much less for the entire world to see.

So the Universe stepped in.

Fast forward to April 2020.

After two months of consciously working to co-create a baby, I woke up one day knowing it was time to take a pregnancy test. It was less of a thought and more of a knowing; or intuition rather. A few moments later I learned I was pregnant.

What does my pregnancy have to do with New York, you ask?

Well, nothing – but apparently everything.

When I first discovered I was pregnant I felt great. I was so happy that I didn’t have any morning sickness, and then one week later the world came crashing down. I was so nauseous I could hardly move from the bed to the couch. My skin looked grey and all drama aside, some days I believed I wasn’t going to make it through. This experience lasted for eight weeks.

It felt like the worst hangover of my life and then some, but without any of the “fun.”

The timing of my morning sickness also coincided with the early days of the pandemic. While this made it easy to keep our news private (because I could hide at home with relative ease), it also led to suffering in silence. As a result, I felt sick, isolated and alone and often found myself crying on the couch.

It was a scene that felt eerily similar to my time in New York.

When I realized this, I began having flashbacks. Memories, mostly unpleasant ones, came flooding in each day. They woke me up at night, and hours passed during the day as I relived events of my past.

I felt haunted.

A week or so later, I found myself angrily wondering why morning sickness was part of the birth/creation process. It then occurred to me that, spiritually speaking, there might be a purpose to this experience.

As I’ve mentioned in past posts, when you set out to do or create something new, often the first order of business is dealing with the things that have consciously and unconsciously been in your way.

Said another way, we have to make space for the new by clearing out the old. 

That’s when it occurred to me that through my morning sickness, my body was purging what no longer served me in order to make room for the new life coming through. It wasn’t logical, and yet it made sense.

I also hadn’t been willing to face my feelings about New York on my own, and this spirit baby helped move the process along.

This idea still gives me comfort to this day.

Whether it’s just a good story or not, it’s a reminder that we always have a choice as to how we perceive our life’s circumstances. We can see something as an opportunity, or we can view it from the place of a victim.

I experienced both during that eight-week window. One was awash with gratitude and healing, and the other was filled with sadness and despair.

After the new thought came in, everything changed. I began to forgive myself for the judgments I had been holding against myself from my time in New York. I began to love that young woman who made decisions because she thought they would result in greater acceptance and love. And I finally understood on a much deeper level that it all helped me get to where I am now: happily married with a job and life I love, feeling free in my own skin and with our first child on the way.

There are no regrets.

I finally made peace with it.

I may never know if my theory about morning sickness is correct, but I also don’t believe there are mistakes with the creation process.

Do you believe in magic?