Hey folks, it's Robin from Dear Headspace.
You know, planning to start a family can be such an exciting time, but it can also bring
some unexpected feelings like loneliness and grief.
And honestly, we don't talk about that enough.
That's why I'm really excited to share that Headspace has launched a new collection called
Support for Your Fertility Journey.
This is a collection of meditations and roundtable chats featuring our amazing teachers and
coaches that open up about their own journeys.
They'll help you navigate those tough moments like waiting for results or dealing with
difficult news.
And the best part?
It's totally free.
No Headspace subscription is needed.
You can find it anytime in the Headspace app or at Headspace.com slash fertility dash support.
We're here for you whenever you need us.
Headspace Studios
Hi, I'm Dora and welcome to Radio Headspace and to Monday.
Before we get started with today's episode, allow me to introduce myself.
I'm a meditation and mindfulness teacher here at Headspace, of course, and I'm a
registered psychiatric nurse and a birth doula.
So as you can imagine, I have a lot of stories from my career and passions.
But as a dedicated student of life, I also have a lot of personal experiences that I'm
really excited to share with you all.
So thank you for joining me today.
As I mentioned, I'm a meditation teacher and I often have one-on-one sessions with
people in my community, wanting to deepen their meditation practice or learn a few techniques.
One of the reasons I became a meditation teacher was to offer my guidance to my community,
the black community.
So many of my clients just happened to be black women.
Anyways, there was one particular day I was in a client session with someone I had never
met before.
And the client I was working with, let's call her Ruby, was explaining to me that in the
past year, she'd experienced the loss of 10 family members, which would be devastating
for anyone.
When I asked Ruby what she was hoping to achieve in our time together, she softly said,
I just want to learn how to breathe again.
And to be honest, I was slightly taken back by her answer.
And as we continued to talk and connect, she explained that she was the only person in
her family that always had to be strong and stay positive for everyone else.
And she felt like she never had the chance to truly share and express how she was feeling
with her loved ones.
And from what it sounded like, this was truly suffocating.
And when she tried to seek support from her family, she was told to stay positive and
be strong.
But even the strongest amongst us still need support sometimes.
And our conversation got me thinking about how we define strength.
Even for a moment now, just think about what strength means to you and where did you learn
this idea of strength or what does it mean to be strong?
I know growing up, staying positive, being strong, keeping it in the house was constantly
affirmed by my parents and older relatives.
So being strong meant not showing any emotions, not expressing how I'm feeling, and most
definitely not crying.
And I was thinking that maybe some of us need to redefine how we think about strength.
For me, I grew up around strong women.
Women that had to be fearless, independent, and tough.
I've only seen my mother cry once or maybe two times in my life.
The one time that I can distinctly remember was at my grandmother's funeral.
It was a gloomy, gray day in London and my mom and her three sisters were standing beside
the casket as it was about to be lowered into the grave.
And as the pastor began to pray, my cousins and I began sobbing.
I remember looking up at my mom and her sisters and not a single one of them had a tear in
their eyes.
And it was the strangest thing.
Like the head matriarch of our family had just passed away and for my mom, it was like
nothing had happened at all.
So it's moments like these that remind me of where I had learned what it meant to be
strong and what my mom thought it looked like to be positive.
So again, coming back to that question of where did you learn what it means to be strong?
And beyond strength, who or what shapes our definitions of these different attributes?
As children, we grow up observing and learning about different things due to our environments.
But as you become adults, I think we're given a second chance to redefine how we want
our lives to look like for us.
As I get older, I'm starting to realize that adulthood is me learning how to re-parent
myself in so many aspects of my life.
To be human is to experience the full range of this human experience, which is created
from our thoughts, emotions, feelings, and sensations.
Now I know I'm a bit biased, but this is why I'm so grateful for meditation, because
it gives us this opportunity to sit with those emotions, to become aware of those different
archetypes, and to help us in choosing differently for ourselves.
So I'll leave that here for today, thank you for listening, and I look forward to seeing
you back here tomorrow.
