The stories we tell others and ourselves The human race has been formed on stories, and survival of it has been formed in the stories of fear, this is only natural when we’re living in the wild and need to know about the dangers that surround us to save our lives. But in the modern world stories of fear still take up most of the narrative. The stories that we tell ourselves and others can and do have huge impacts on how we live our lives, whether consciously or unconsciously these stories infiltrate our behaviour, how plans and our expectations. The culmination of my pregnancy and subsiquaint birth was built on stories and I actively tried to avoid the ones that were fear based or negative. I’m lucky in the fact that beautiful women told me their positive birthing stories which allowed me to focus on the power rather than the disempowerment that is so often felt, but it wasn’t just the birth. How often I was told, “I wouldn’t be able to do that” towards the end or even just after birth. These were stories that were from a place of caring and concern but ultimately fear based, stories of how life was going to be so much harder and therefore to not plan much, that to not expect to do anything for months, and that women feel so shit afterwards that you won’t want to be part of this world for a while I can understand that this may be the case, that we all find our own paths through this life and sometimes ours are harder than others, that a hard birth can result in difficulties afterwards and that we should t put pressure on ourselves to do anything that doesn’t feel right, but similarly it can also be a journey of magic, he can leave you feeling super human and bring something so beautiful into your life that the world suddenly looks very different I realise I’m a lucky one, to feel so good afterwards is a blessing but I also chose to focus on the positive, I chose to stay active up until the last moment doing things that topped me up and made me feel amazing, I chose to focus on the curiosity rather than the fear, and when I felt the fear I chose to let it flow through me but to let it go too. The story I told myself was nothing more than this is your time, and only you knows your body. If you scroll across you’ll see the moment my waters broke whilst I was still doing everything I loved, where labour was heading towards me and contractions were ramping up, but I still chose to make it memorable for the right reasons. Don’t get me wrong, sometimes these choices are hard, but they are still choices, and they are still stories. In life what story are you telling yourself and what stories are you choosing to listen to? I promise you when you find the story that suddenly empowers you, life changes before your eyes Xxx