Q: I’m trying to get pregnant and for a few years I’ve been having fertility treatments. It’s not happening, and I wonder how to deal with that. It feels like it’s taken everything from me.
John: It’s taken everything from you because you’re making the prospect of being pregnant mean too much. You’re giving it meaning that it doesn’t have. You’re taking meaning from everything else and giving it to the possibility, the wish, the need and the want of becoming pregnant. So working on becoming pregnant is depleting your self.
Q: I don’t feel I can let go of it. How is it possible to go through this without depleting?
John: By remaining profoundly honest while trying to get pregnant. Then you are honest to something that is more profound than you having a baby. If you’re not honest to what is more profound than having a baby, how are you going to raise this baby? If your way of being matters more to you than becoming pregnant, that way of being will also be how you raise a baby.
If your way of becoming pregnant isn’t the same as your own being, then in trying to become pregnant you are separating from your own being. You’re increasing the distance between your self and your being, and while being less and less like your own being, you’re wanting another being to come into your body and grow.
Your heart needs to become like your womb. When your heart is like your own womb, the tiniest little bit that you know the truth of in your heart will grow in your heart. If you take your self to heart because of being taken by what you want and need, then there’s no room for your being in your heart.
The only way that you can deeply parent is for your heart, in all of your parenting, to be like your womb. That begins before you have your baby, and it needs to flourish in all of your life.
If you love your womb you will make your heart just like your womb … whether you have a baby or not.
