Visualize the kind of life you want.
Think positive and positive things will happen.
Write the story of your life.
Think it and so it shall be.
We’ve all heard sentiments like these. The power of our imagination is great, so great that we can shape our lives and experiences because of it. I never used to believe this — my religious dogma prevented me from believing anything other than what I learned on Sundays and in Bible study –and I always chalked it up to some ask the universe type shit.
But I’ll never forget what happened when I gave birth to my youngest child in 2005. This is the only concrete example I have of using visualization as a tool. Now remember, this would be the sixth time giving birth in nine years — to say I was afraid of the pain of childbirth would be a gross understatement. I had zero appetite, I wasn’t sleeping enough and I was still trying to take care of my other five children — 1, 3, 5, 7 and 8 — before our family would grow by another tiny human. With dark circles under my eyes, I would absentmindedly rub my belly, watch my kids build forts and think of the discomfort that I did not want to experience again. I was so overcome with anxiety it would make me run to the bathroom.
I was a mess.
To make matters worse, every time my body started the labor process, my mind would shut it down. My midwife encouraged me to meditate on verses overcoming fear and that helped. What also helped was envisioning the birth. It was the only thing that calmed my nerves and let me go to sleep at night. It was so reassuring. So, during those darkest hours of the night, while my family slept around me, I dreamed of my youngest child’s birth.
My positive birth visualization read like a checklist: I wanted the birth to be at night because I had the birth tub set up in our sunroom and the sunroom is like a bajillion degrees in August.
Note to self: do not give birth in the hottest month of the year.
If I gave birth at night, the air would be cool and fresh. La luna would be out, helping me along the way. I thought of a cooling breeze coming through the windows and blowing the curtains. I focused on the people I wanted there. I imagined all of my other children peacefully sleeping at their grandmother’s house. I could hear the music playing, I could see my husband by my side. I felt my baby in my arms, chubby and soft and wet. She was healthy and strong. I imagined the relief I felt after a victorious birth.
When the time came to give birth to my last child, would you believe me if I told you that it was exactly the way I visualized it? Down to the specific detail of the breeze blowing through the curtains of our sunroom at two in the morning. I’ll never forget those swaying curtains! For years I held on to that memory and encouraged women to visualize their births in the same positive way.
But isn’t it peculiar that I never adopted this practice of visualization to other areas of my life? I didn’t keep going! I stopped visualizing!
I recently listened to Oprah’s Super Soul podcast featuring Amy Purdy, a Paralympic bronze medalist who lost both of her legs at the age of 19 as a result of bacterial meningitis. The podcast title is The Power of Visualization if you want to listen to it. In the podcast, she talks about being born a daydreamer, and how daydreaming naturally turned into visualizing. In her darkest moments was when she did the most visualizing. I could so relate to this because I’ve always been a daydreamer and long before I was visualizing childbirth, I was visualizing a happy family living together with their children right at the time my parents were divorcing each other. It was how I put myself to sleep as an 8-year-old girl. Of course, I didn’t recognize it as visualizing my life at the time but I certainly do now.
But it’s this question Amy asked herself that literally blew my mind.
If my life was a book and I was the author, how would I want this story to go?
Admittedly, my life looks a bit different than I thought it would (creaky 40-something knees, raising a house full of teenagers alone, closing the chapter on a 22 year-old love story, the promise of a blooming art career). But when I heard this, I almost felt giddy. The deliciousness of the possibilities sunk in. For so long I’ve considered myself a storyteller — God made me this way. Little did I know I have the power to be the co-creator of my own story. I now have more freedom to rewrite the story of my life than ever before. I have so much more dreaming to do.
So do you.
The self-portrait was created using the Procreate app on the iPad Pro. I’m learning how to use it and loving it so far.
