Are You Judging How You Feel?

FROM BECKY: Being 11 weeks pregnant, I am experiencing things I have never experienced before in my new body. The waves of nausea that come and go throughout the day, sometimes feeling like car sickness, other times feeling like I'm on a rocking boat on a stormy sea. The pregnancy fatigue that hits me like a ton of bricks even when I need to get things done and all I want to do is sleep! The new hormones that are surging through my body and heightening my emotions.

I have learnt through my Son-Rise Program training that I don't need to judge these things when I feel them, even though they are different, I can embrace them, sit with them and not need to fight them away. I can even go a step further and feel gratitude for them. Different is not worse, it's just different. I can greet each wave of nausea as a sign that my baby is developing to be strong and healthy. I can know when I'm too tired to stand that I have achieved so much today as I create a person! I can accept the way I feel when my emotions are extra sensitive and ride the wave with them. This is who I am RIGHT NOW! And I want to love and be kind to myself!

I'm sure as parents of a child with autism, there are certain ways you may feel that you give yourself a hard time about. Maybe you have a nagging pain in you back and you have so much to do that you are judging it. Perhaps you feel too tired to go into the playroom today and you are pressuring yourself to do so without accepting where you are. Your week could be so busy with chores that you don't have enough time to be present with your special child.

Take a deep breath, check in with how you feel, love yourself, make friends with this thing that you have been fighting and allow yourself to let it in, invite it in for a cup of tea! Yes, I know you want your back to feel better, you wish you had more energy, you crave more hours in the day. Judging yourself or the situation will not change it.

Give it a try!