A note on care: Content warning: This post contains sensitive content, such as miscarriage. Reader discretion is advised. By reading this post, you acknowledge that Marianne van der Reest LLC is not responsible for your individual emotional response to the content.
Honestly, I’m always so grateful and honored for the women who are ready to trust themselves, and trust me with this deep and beautiful work. But I’m especially happy when they feel and notice internal shifts that help them move forward, exactly in ways that feel supportive to them. Because, you can ‘think’ you want something…but when the body isn’t ready, there will be no movement whatsoever…that is where you’ll notice…’why am I stuck? I know I’m goal oriented; I generally know what I want, but this ‘thing’’ (whatever it is you desire to move towards to), is just not happening. That is where I am happy to support you! Below a snippet of a beautiful session with one of my clients who booked a single session (The Embodied Clarity Shift) as she resonated with the childlessness within my work and was curious. I am sharing her experience with her consent, as always, and she has read this piece before sharing.
Who is she? She is an intelligent, successful woman. She loves her life, she is grateful for the richness and the freedom she enjoys, but she is also struggling with the pressures of motherhood, or perhaps motherhood not happening for her yet. She feels she needs to make a decision about freezing her eggs soon (everyone is telling her to do this), but she just really wants to know what her inner body wisdom is saying about all this, and how she actually feels about all of this, without the noise and or pressure from others. She mentioned she was just going through a difficult breakup and she was interested in my work because she recognized herself as being childless and all the complicated and layered feels this can bring. She noticed she might be pushing the feelings and the decision-making process away. She shared she had a miscarriage the year before with her ex, and she’s not sure if she’s even processed that, either.
What happens in a session? As always, we start the session by grounding and dropping into the body, to really tune in to what is going on inside. We notice different threads of tension, and she chose which one she would like to start with and what question she had for the session. She mainly wanted to explore where the pain of not being a mother yet was in her body, and she wanted to be able to hold it and to face that pain. We dropped back into the body again, and we gently followed where certain topics/questions were showing up in her body. While exploring this, she noticed and shifted through different sensations and feelings within her body. She noticed tenderness, crying, and sensations on her sternum and upper chest. I slowly guided her, at a pace that felt comfortable for her to explore this deeper. This led to her noticing anger, unfairness about not having met a good man yet, and she shared she was feeling pretty pissed about that! Noticing and feeling this anger (and moving through this with guided tools), she started to notice a heavy grief underneath that anger, and sadness, about her miscarriage that she experienced before. She wanted to explore these feelings deeper (they were present in her throat and her vocal cords), and by allowing them, she felt a release throughout her body, and she noticed a shift. She felt calmer. She felt as if she was literally holding herself, and her grief, noticing compassion for herself and nurturing energy towards herself. We then proceeded to expand this calmness throughout her body.
What did she discover at the end of the session? She mentioned that she now knows she is able to hold herself in the process of making this decision (of possibly freezing her eggs), compassionately. She also felt a lot of release from grief about the baby that she lost previously. She also shared she is now allowing herself to actually feel that grief, and she doesn’t have to push it away any longer, she knows she can hold it. She then mentioned that the date of her miscarriage was actually coming up, and she wants to honor that. She decided she will do so with a ceremony/grieving day the upcoming weekend. Another next step she was going to do was to journal about how she feels about freezing her eggs.
Just to show you how beautiful and powerful your inner body wisdom is, and how it can help you when you listen to it and allow it to guide you! This doesn’t mean of course that her grief will be ‘over’ or a decision will be made in one or two sessions, but she is releasing tension and moving forward in her life, in ways that feel good to her, yess! And I’m extra grateful to share that we will be working together again, pretty soon! This time we’ll dive deeper into her own embodied decision-making process surrounding her possible path to motherhood!
Work with me✨:
I currently work with childless women and women in perimenopause, helping them design and live a luscious life, even though life has been different than hoped/planned/expected.
If you’d like to gain inner body wisdom clarity on something for yourself regarding possible childlessness, your path to motherhood, or grief surrounding childlessness, I’m always here to support you. I’m here for all of your phases of childlessness; whether you’re on the fence, feeling that biological pressure point, or craving to create a delicious life beyond the childlessness box, and / or redefining your identity, (not willing to be defined by the childlessness box, but anchoring into the fabulous woman you are), I’m here to support you, always🤍!
More information on the Embodied Clarity Shift:
https://www.mariannevanderreest.com/the-embodied-clarity-shift
Book your single session here: https://calendly.com/marianne-van-der-reest/embodiedclarityshift
Curious and ready for a deeper transformation? Book a free, no obligation, connection call where I’m happy to connect, get to know you and share more about The Unbound Woman, a 6-month coaching journey, for the woman navigating childlessness and still craving to re-author her own delicious and unapologetic life, despite it not having gone as planned, hoped, or expected.
https://calendly.com/marianne-van-der-reest/free-connection-call
More info on the 6-month journey:
