Girls Just Wanna Have Fun

Girls just want to have fun.

One of my friends posted a meme earlier along the lines of - if you could tell your 15 year old self five words what would they be?

Through my head ran warnings, style advice, so many things that I could tell myself to change my life just a little but not too much, to make myself happier and more positive. Don't worry about exams, do your hair different, tell that person you like them? No.

I realised "you're allowed to have fun" was enough ❤

Even as a young girl I struggled giving myself permission to let go, to be free, to not feel like there was an angry person constantly over my shoulder telling me I wasn't working hard enough, I was going to end up pregnant, I was selfish, irresponsible. Call it Catholic guilt or whatever you like, but my inner critic was very big and very real. I let so many joys pass me by.

Or I took them guiltily and secretly and waited for my cosmic punishment.

Then I realised that this advice was perfect for me and for women everywhere right now. Patriarchy has convinced us we are made to toil and suffer and having fun makes us 'bad girls'.

I see women beating themselves up, martyring themselves, measuring their worth based on how much they give to others. You are already valuable because you are human. You were born to play, to sing, to dance and to have fun.

We have so much maiden wounding among women where we feel guilty and selfish for chasing what makes us feel good. After your bleed as you enter that playful, explorative mood, how can you heal, cast off the critic and learn to have fun again?

Woman

Woman

You are the evolution

They tried to hold back.

You who hold the key

To birth

Death

Rebirth

They tried to imitate

Your bleed

With their sacrificial god

And by spilling the blood

Of others.

They tried to silence Your spirit.

Called you dirty

Unnatural

You whose body contains

The whole of the mystery

Of the world.

- Jenny Wren

Birth Hurts

I have spent most of the evening crying.

For a long time the story I told myself around my first birth was largely positive. Waterbirth, no intervention, started my passion and career for birth work.

And I didn't speak about it much due to not wanting to offend.

But I still carry so much hurt from it. And this has been forcing itself to be processed over the last few weeks.

Not just the atmosphere or the words that were said, but how I was never given chance to bond in the first few hours. For no reason. Me and my son were treated as separate and when I eventually got him back I didn't recognise him. Since then feeling like he wasn't mine.

It is amazing how such deep wounds at a pivotal time have ripple effects into your life together. How important those mammalian instincts are at the very beginning. How delicately things need to be managed.

I'm allowing myself a good mourn and a cry today for always feeling not good enough.