Matrona Diaries #2- Keeping it real & talking about the Golden Hour

I had good intentions. A blog per week. Its been a month. How did that happen?

I usually have good intentions and its the execution or discipline that can sometime fall short. I find it really difficult sometimes to keep commitments I’ve made to myself and I do a good job of beating myself up for not meeting those commitments. Sometimes it feels like so much is happening, the world changing so quickly, that its difficult to gage how much capacity you will have for creating the things you desire. Best thing I can do is just start fresh each new day, so here we are and if you are reading this, thank you for the time you take to do so. Hopefully you aren’t feeling similar to me in this space.

Regardless of the time it took to sit down and write this, I knew immediately in week two of the Matrona that I would blog about Golden Hour. I first learned about the golden hour reading the book Magical Child by Joseph Chilton Pearce. Reading this book gave me an new perspective on birth, postpartum and early childhood development, and while all aspects of birth are miraculous and sacred, the golden hour in particular has a criticality to how the burgeoning new family bonds and starts their journey together. I was able to recognise that this experience did not occur during my birth, and see some of the downstream effects of what that had done to my bonds with my family and the way we operated and interacted with each other. Boiling down a lifetime of a challenging relationship with my mother and father, I could see with impact the lack of golden hour had, and since learning of it, I have seen its effects- and what life looks like for people who have experienced this, and those who haven’t.

The Golden hour is the time immediately following birth, where a mother and baby (partner can be included as well) share uninterrupted bonding time. Usually this is done with skin on skin contact, the mother holding the newborn, connecting, bonding, soothing the newly birthed child. Perhaps the newborn is still covered in the precious vernix they were coated in as they passed through the birth canal, and perhaps she is gently rubbing that protective coating into the baby resting on her. This gentle massage is the first time mother and baby are co-regulating their nervous systems together. Relaxing from the intense journey they have just travelled together, and resting before they launch together into the many more journeys to come.

In this time, the baby and mother are receiving a cocktail of hormones that cascade post birth, including oxytocin, the hormone of love. They are looking into each others eyes, finally seeing each other face to face and the baby is recognising the voice they have been hearing in utero. If the baby and mother are able to rest and relax into this bliss filled place, natural instincts have an easier time kicking in, like the instinct to feed. Being right on their mothers skin, they can smell the milk that will be released to nourish them. They can see the dark nipples and line up their mothers belly through their newly adapting eyes. These hormones tell the mothers body that the baby is now out of the womb. Oxytocin, while creating a cocktail of love, also relaxes smooth muscle tissues, signalling to the uterus to start contracting back to a smaller size now that it is unoccupied, and signalling the placenta to release from the uterine wall. What is most helpful during this time is to leave this process uninterrupted and undisturbed until the mother naturally feels ready to transition out of this time. This is their time, and it is sacred.

If you could imagine this experience from the baby’s perspective, they have just completed a very intense journey to arrive in their mothers arms, and being surrounded by completely new environment and surroundings, their anchor to this earth is still their mother. To be separated from her, especially immediately, can not only interrupt the physiological hormone cascade but has created separation from that anchor, and the developing psyche has now experienced a fracture to their connection to the world. In a sense they have the potential to become untethered.

Speaking from my own life experience with my mother, I had felt a deep lack of bonding with her for as long as I could remember, and grew to be an anxiously attached adult. I had a very typical western hospital birth in the 80s. My mother delivered me on her back, I broke her tailbone on the way out, and I was caught from her body into the gloved hands and scrub wearing medical team in the delivery room, where I was immediately carted around by these blue strangers to be washed, weighed, tested, bundled up head to toe and then placed into the arms of my very overwhelmed and emotionally undernourished mother. All this was very normal and just how it was at the time. We struggled to connect, I struggled to breastfeed, she struggled to heal from the trauma and bond with me. She was just as bewildered as I was, and that is how I see her face when I look at photos of my birth that my father took to document the moment. When I read Magical Child, I saw many places in our relationship where that feeling was initiated and then reinforced, the lack of golden hour being a very specific experience I could look to. My mother left her physical body in 2022 in the same hospital she gave birth to me in, and in her passing I have been able to make so much peace with our relationship, and find compassion and forgiveness for the way we were. It makes perfect sense to me now.

Separate from my own experience and fresh in my learning of golden hour, I have seen how this critical time has impacted other families, other relational bonds and our society overall. I see this as one starting place for us to help heal the wounds that tend to permeate society. How can we start that? I think it is by informing mothers about the golden hour during pregnancy and protecting this experience for those who will be giving birth in the future. We also need to inform adults that are on their own healing journey, and hold space for the processing of this experience if one becomes aware of their own experience being less than ideal. In my case, I had a wonderful friend who is a massage therapist facilitate for me a ceremonial experience for recapturing my golden hour. She comforted and soothed me, petting my hair and gently rubbing my back as I laid on her massage table in the fetal position or in child’s pose. I could feel my nervous system receiving an upgrade and balance that I had not experienced before, and the effects of that experience have remained. My ability to regulate my nervous system vastly improved, my anxiety has diminished and I am healing the ways I show up in relationships based upon my fears and anxieties of separation. It felt miraculous, and also made perfect sense to me. I am so grateful to her intuition and tender care.

There is so much to birth, and while learning about these commonly missed and vital developmental moments, it can sometimes be very deflating and depressing just thinking about how much suffering this has created in the world. In these places I always like to remind myself that we have the power and the capacity to heal what we have experienced that created suffering- all is not lost. I am so grateful for that to be my experience and my prayer is that every mother and child who wish to have their space and sacredness respected and protected receive their golden hour, and that every child who did not receive it, is able to find the awareness to reclaim it.

My Matrona Diaries- The Beginning

This February I started a course of study, a year long devotional, at a school of thought called the Matrona (thematrona.com). From its own description on their website, The Matrona is a portal to the new millennium- which brings to mind thoughts of etheric gateways and cosmic entities, and yet nothing could be more grounded into the realm of this planet (and also less understood) than the portal of birth- the entry point of the human being into the collective dream of the planet. One of the mentors to the founder of the Matrona and head teacher- Whapio (much more on her to come in these diaries I’m certain)- is a medical doctor from France named Michele Odent who revolutionised what one could think of a birth hospital after he saw what kinds of results women were having if their births were undisturbed and set in a warm, inviting, comfortable environment built for them and their partners to enjoy the experience of birth. He opened peoples minds to water birth and ideas like allowing for lots of moment and no interference with the mother during her labor. Not only can birth be warm and inviting, it can be cosmic, orgasmic and psychedelic. In the reverse, and as many of us have experienced in this lifetime and been lead to believe through religious and cultural zeitgeist and the representation of birth in entertainment that the only way birth can be is painful, traumatic, or even tragic and heartbreaking. Each birth is as unique as the person being born. Birth through the mothers womb and onto the planet is just the initial template for a constant cycle of death and rebirth for that infant to be in. Once embodied, they are in a constant state of creation with the forces that are present in their bodies and energetic fields. We are all in this cycle now, which includes our cultures and communities, our families, our environments and anything we choose to feed ourselves with or give our energy and attention to, the body in a constant state of birth death and renewal, until our animating force or soul, decides to leave the body that entered the planet at birth. From womb to tomb, a constant cycle of birth and death in varying degrees.

My journey to finding Whapio as a teacher and the school known as the Matrona has been a deep one that I walked through in a season of solitude. I can feel that season going through its own death so a new season can be born of openly sharing more of my journey and personal navigational experiences with this community- tiny as it may be in this moment. This wisdom that I’m getting to learn is worth recording in my own way and my intention is that you are able to take whatever activation you need for your best and highest good and for the good of the planet from my expression. This course of study is giving me hope- for myself, for my family and the children who are asking to be born at this time and to their families, and for the planet. I will be creating a weekly blog entry to share the poignant moments I’ve experienced from the week of studies I’ve just completed, as this is also a place to practice discipline and consistency, loyalty, devotion and commitment. Thank you to anyone who takes the time to read it- I appreciate your energy and welcome your feedback, comments and questions. Thank you to my sister, Stephanie, and her blog, Tons and Bunches. Not only is she an exceptional writer and her kids are the cutest, but she has shown me what consistently documenting can mean to preserving things that matter, as well as being more intentional with what we create because we are paying attention. I’d also like to dedicate this initial post to all the new sisters I have met through this course of study with me, and especially the women I have found myself to be in study groups with. I am so grateful to have these newly blossoming communities in my life and look forward to watching them bloom and grow into the powerful yet gentle forces of nature they are meant to be in the world.

All in all is all we are (or my thoughts on how we all have the same mother)

Human cells after conception

I am not a doctor or a midwife, but rather a woman who sees the process of conception, pregnancy and birth through a spiritual and metaphysical lens. This lens is deep and yet remarkably elegant and simple, and it has helped my spiritual path feel more real and illuminated. I see into these spaces intuitively and in doing so I am able to feel and connect to my own divinity and to the divinity of other humans and the universal consciousness that is all around us. This allows me to better recognise the illusion of separation and the way that illusion creates the challenges it does for us individually and societally. This is my attempt to share some of the womb wisdom I have been gathering that demonstrates this connection and elegant design, and my intention is to spark a conversation within your own spirit about how it is you came here to be reading this today, in the body you are blessed to inhabit, for this life you are currently living. This will likely be a series of posts I create, as birth is rich with all kinds of wisdom.

Ovum & Sperm- The building blocks and how they fit together

Fact 1: The Sperm Cell (male reproductive cell) is the smallest cell in the male human body

Fact 2: The Ovum (female reproductive cell) is the largest cell in the female human body

Fact 3: Sperm work as a hive mind- there are different types of sperm with different anatomy, jobs to complete and roles to play. Ultimately the type of sperm that enters the ovum and creates the spark of life of conception is known as the golden sperm, whereas other types are setting the stage and getting the ovum ready for fertilisation. The myth that the fastest sperm to the ovum is the one that enters within is one we have all been taught often and is not the truth of the process

Conjecture: The Ovum is not the genetic material of the mother carrying the ovum, but the smallest possible space in which to hold a bubble of the primordial void, or Ain Sof as it is described in sacred texts such as the Holy Megillah or the Kaballah. The divine space where no thing exists and yet all potential options exist at the same time. The Golden Sperm, the Light Body carrying the genetic code of the father, enters the void, the ovum, and sparks mitosis, cell division, and then genetic material of the mother starts to enter into the ovum, combine with the golden sperm, (or light body) and begin to multiply both the cells of the embryo and the cells of her own body. The body of the mother carrying the child starts to change, one of which being the blood vessels enlarge (which is why many women can feel faint) and her body begins to create more blood from her own stem cells to then use to weave together and grow a placenta the size of a dinner plate, a bog of waters to hold a baby and placenta together in one unit (a flexible egg if you will), and a baby, all done over a period of 9+ months. Literally we are knit together by divine intelligence inside the primoridal void of creation that exists within our mothers womb, in every ovum cell she carries, and in every ovum cell in creation. If this is the case, we would all have the same place of beginning or said another way, we all have the same mother.

The Why for this blog

Back in 2020 I left social media after a toxic on off relationship with it and other human beings had left me pretty shattered. I’m sure some of that over time will be shared in future blog posts when it feels right to share those kinds of stories. In being shattered I withdrew from the world for a time, keeping all my energy to myself in order to rebuild and I did so away from the digital realm. I think this served me well by ensuring I was focusing on taking care of myself and making decisions that were not influenced by anything other that what felt good to my soul and where was my heart calling me to be?

It has been some time since I have shared what is on my heart in a public way- if I ever even did share what was on my heart in a public way before. One of my wise teachers said to me that “to be a light in this world you have to be available and be seen in order to be of service”, and of course being seen can mean many things depending on who you ask. So this is me putting my proverbial light on to be seen, available and of service to my brothers and sisters, my human family.  I have a deep call in my heart to be of service to humanity, and though it has taken me some time to get to know myself and identify and refine the gifts I have to share (a forever process really), I could not be more delighted to bring those offerings forward to those who’s path aligns with mine and who wish to receive.

Part of this adventure back into the digital realm is also a creative outlet- A space all my own to share the musings of my spirit and soul (and perhaps my thoughts on the difference between the spirit and soul). My desire is to capture though written and video blog posts things that are of particular passion or interest for me and my intention is to represent myself as authentically as possible, for the best and highest good for myself and anyone who interacts with the content I create and share, while giving myself permission to be an ever changing, evolving and expanding being, forever shifting and flowing, back and forth into balance. 

This is being stated more so as a declaration for myself: I will not apologise or ask for permission in this space, because I choose to see this space as an extension of myself, human and divine, perfect and flawed with no need to be anything other than who I am.  All that being said, if you are someone who is reading this and anything else on this site, I ask for your forgiveness in the moments where our points of view are in conflict, or in moments where what I share about myself triggers difficult feelings for you, and I ask for you to take only the things shared here that resonate with you and your journey of life. We all deserve safe space to express ourselves and this is my attempt to build my own.  Thanks for joining me on that path in whatever way you do.