the baby in my belly

Yesterday I was on the Today Show talking about women and jealousy, and in a couple days I’ll be sending out the video clip.

If you watch it, you’ll catch a glimpse of my belly.

There’s a baby in there, and God/universe/force of life willing, the little guy in my stomach will be joining our family in a just few months.

This is our first child. Eric and I are incredibly excited and we feel very blessed.

I thought many times over the past several months about how and when to share the wonderful news with all of you.

The early months felt way too soon. Telling twenty five thousand people about something in an email feels like inviting A LOT of energy to come back at you. I keenly felt an intuitive sense that I can best put like this: I needed to keep the amount of energy coming toward me/the pregnancy/the baby/ in proportion, somehow, with the newness and fragility and smallness of the life itself at that stage.

Then, after those early months, it just felt personal, quiet, intimate. I’ve loved that part of mama-ing, already, feels to me like creating a protected space, and I’m happy that I listened to that call.

There is something in this idea for all of us. What is in you right now that deserves quiet, protected space? Is there something you’d conventionally announce or talk about, maybe something that others conventionally talk about, but that, if you listen deep within, doesn’t feel right or ripe to share it yet?

Sometimes we don’t share out of shame or out of wanting to save face or avoid real feedback. I’m not talking about that. You know the other thing I’m talking about: respecting what is growing in you enough to discern the right timeline for bring it out into visibility. Respecting the period of growing underground and waiting for something to tell you its ready to come up and out of the soil.

I think we, women in particular, possess a native intelligence for knowing what to protect in silence and incubate. Yet many of us have to rediscover and then learn to trust that intelligence, which is our natural inheritance.

I so appreciate all the support and congrats and connection I can already feel coming toward me from you as I write. Thank you.

Be well.

Love,

Tara