Dear Motherhood...

Twice per month By the Moon students and alumni have the opportunity to connect face to face online in addition to their classes. Sometimes we teach and learn, sometimes we're offering support, sometimes we are celebrating together, it all depends on what the group is going through and needs.

At one of our recent checkins, one of our Holistic Reproductive Practitioner students shared with us part of her healing process and it blew me away.

"Dear Motherhood,

I am writing to release you for all of the expectation I have put on you over the years and to apologize for putting so much pressure on you when I have been avoiding looking at myself. That is a lot of pressure to put on anyone or anything. I have used my desire for you as an excuse or a way to avoid finding the happiness and wholeness within myself.

I still want you and I also know that without you I will be complete, whole and happy. I am sorry to have put so much expectation on you. My fear of not being enough has held me back from exploring who I am the way I should. I acknowledge that I was doing the best I could with where I was standing and I also own that I used you as a goal, as a cop out.

You are indeed a worthy and noble goal and role, a beautiful space to be in and a wonderful contribution to community and the world. You are perhaps the most magical form of love and I am so grateful to be able to work with parents and pregnant people. I honour, value and hold you in awe. And I release you from all of the roles I tried to keep you in.

With much love and the deepest of respect,

me"

Surrender is not easy. Can you feel the power in it? Hearing her read us this letter that she wrote moved me for multiple reasons. One, it shows me so much forward progress. Surrender is the process of becoming unstuck on the journey to manifest anything. It opens the crown chakra and welcomes and nurtures a connection with divinity, consciousness, higher self. Guidance floods in and brings with it peace and faith. It's our way of letting go of the steering wheel, of no longer trying to control our destiny, but to open to the learning that we contracted for ourself before we forgot who we really are.

It also moved me because one of the key philosophies of By the Moon training is that we commit to self work and self healing. We can only take others as far as we have come. By the Moon students commit to stepping into their own work. It is easy to learn how to heal others as a way to avoid looking in the mirror or avoiding what our own work is. It is easy to point the finger away from us to avoid exploring our own opportunities for evolution and expansion. Practitioners who commit to continuous healing and self work will be the most successful and beneficial and I am so proud to share this journey of healing with them.

This was a moment where student becomes teacher.