beyond my wildest dreams

hi friends. i have been waiting to post this for a long time now. i start to think about what i will write in this post all the time, and i get really nervous and excited, so guess what...i'm just going to blurt it out, finally, right now, with a huge explosion of mental and spiritual fireworks like a parade's calliope in the sky:

I'M PREGNANT!!!!!!!

for anyone who doesn't know our background i'll try to put it simply: we have been trying for a really.really.really. long time. a loooonnnng time. i have had countless conversations with friends and loved ones in which i have said, "i just know it is going to happen for us somehow, someday." i tried never to be too concerned or make it a big negative stressful deal in our lives. but you probably all know or intuit how badly we want to be parents; i feel like it is blatantly and utterly obvious. luckily i never had the kind of experience where i struggled emotionally when those i loved got pregnant and had babies; on the contrary, i have been completely overjoyed to have plenty of baby love in my life. but still, all along, i have had such longing in me. pure wild tameless longing. i seek to express it otherwise but i don't know how. it is something i have dreamt all my life: to be pregnant, to breastfeed, and to mother. i knew there was a chance that i would need to find new creative ways of mothering, or that we would eventually adopt. but if you have ever struggled with fertility, you may have glimpsed the pure life-breathing desire to conceive a child within one's own body. there was no disregarding it. my body, mind and spirit craved to be with child.

and not a moment has gone by, not one moment, in which i am not eternally, blindingly, astonishingly grateful for this fact. 

maybe so grateful, in fact, that i tend to be worried all the time that something might go wrong. i am not ashamed to admit that and have found that expressing myself honestly helps me deal with fears and anxieties in a healthy way. pregnancy, at least for me it seems, is a time of worrying. before this, i have never considered myself a worrywart. i think of myself as the most laid-back, go-with-the-flow, non-anxious member of my family. that's why i love road trips. i can eat anywhere, sleep almost anywhere, set off to climb any mountain in any terrain as long as i have some water.

ha! not anymore. now that my body is growing and protecting new life, i find that i am much more hesitant about what i will do, where i will go, what i eat, who is around me, what place in my house i want to sit, what i will read or what film i will watch, how much work i will do, what i will lift or touch. it's crazy! did any of you other mothers experience this?

there are a hundred, a thousand, life-altering things i could talk about related to this. i am still getting comfortable with the idea. every day seems so slow. and yet i look back to early november, right before i found out i was pregnant, and it seems like yesterday.  climbing hills in joshua tree, spinning on the beach at big sur. i was just barely starting to suspect, but i wouldn't even admit it to myself yet. i have always been so careful not to "get my hopes up." and yet, my own body's hopes were up. i was wild with energy and love on that trip. that's why i chose to post these pictures. i was studying the Wild Woman, the woman who runs with the wolves, and i was running. 

embracing the wild woman, what i was really doing was embracing myself as mother.

despite my worries, there are things i am so confident about. i am confident about bringing up a happy child in this world. through all my journeys, through wild times and quiet times and days i feel young and days i feel old, it is something i have always felt strongly about. i cannot wait to show my love and enthusiasm for this earth and its inhabitants to a new person. i can't wait to watch darin imbue his child with mysticism, with rampant curiosity, music love, wild humor and vivid active knowledge seeking.  

and truly, at the heart of it all, i am confident in my body. i always have been and i am determined to continue to glow with health and energy. a part of me has not made this easy on myself. i sink into the couch. i eat too many sweets because nothing else sounds good. there were definitely difficult, exhausted, anxious times in the first trimester. not much of a cryer, i have wept. not much of a whiner, i have whined. just ask anyone i live with. everything is changing in my life (and you wondered why i've been blogging less ;) and i am sure there are a million changes to come. but i will face them with spirit and love and kindness, and be true to myself. to me, that is what makes a mother. a wild woman, a true woman, and a mother at heart.

i'm starting my second trimester and i am really, really, REALLY excited. i've had more energy the last week or so, less nausea, and a lot of pure bliss.

there are so many more things i want to say, but for now i am going to leave it at that. my excitement. i hope it is bursting out of your screen about now, cause that's how it feels.