It was such a surprise blessing to remember our blog today, especially just after the Awakening The Dreamer symposium that was here in town this weekend. Your last post was a welcomed reminder of what it feels like to live the same life but in an awakened state. Since my first visit to the doctor, when it was proven for sure that I was pregnant (I don't know, I still had this idea that maybe I was making it up) I have been in my own world, like this dream that prevents me from finding anything else interesting. It is such an exciting thing, but also so immense and I think I am working at fathoming exactly what's happening. When school started, and even now, I felt like I was just winging it. I had nowhere near the overwhelming drive to be the greatest teacher ever, like I had last year. At first this really upset me, as recently as this morning actually. I felt like I was failing, I was being irresponsible and flaking out of my responsibility to work- to a place at which I've worked really hard to arrive, but if I think back to the habitual ball of nerves I was last year I think I'm grateful for a shift in priorities that has shifted my perspective a bit. And for the record, I don't think any of my peers would call me a deadbeat teacher at school. I am completely at the whim of my physicality in being pregnant, that's one of the first things I figured out. I am wakened at all hours of the night to pee, I am wakened in the wee hours of the morning feeling starved, I am ravenous one minute then stuffed to the gills the next and then ravenous half and hour later, I am incredibly gassy. I have passed the phase of being sensitive to smells, but let me tell you: a Roman subway in the summer is not the place to be when you're in this state. This feeling of being so firmly planted in what my body wants has ended up being another enlightening- I can only do what I can do, which is all I've ever been capable of but maybe didn't really understand before now. I can't be a perfect art teacher. I can do the best I can do, and maybe that's all that has ever been expected of me. Well of course it is! It's even cliche! What a gift it has turned out to be to realize my limitations. That sounds so wrong. Maybe it makes more sense to say I am learning that my desire for perfection was more limiting than what I can actually attain.
The photos included here were taken Friday, at 14 weeks. The first is a close up in profile of the bean's head and tummy, the second one is yoga in utero- a bit of a downward facing dog pose with rump in the the air and legs tucked under, the third is another profile of the whole bean.