Wendy K. Laidlaw

We've previously been in this nice, warm, safe bubble of umbilical fluid.

And then suddenly we are being shoved out into the world.

We're probably having our bottom slapped and we are like, wow, bang, we're having lights, we're having sensory overload.

And if the mother has had a very traumatic pregnancy or there's been tension at home, we would have picked that up even just from the womb, even just with the fluids and the energies and what's coming into the baby.

Already that could have preset the baby to be sensitive.

So I think what, again, what I'm trying to say here is I'm hoping as part of this journey, there's a learning to acknowledge and accept the degree of sensitivity that we have as a major strength.

It might seem a kind of oxymoron.

It might seem almost a contradiction in terms, but it's not.

I couldn't do the work that I do if I didn't have the degree of sensitivity, yet I know the strength that I have.

Sometimes people mistake my kindness and sensitivity

And they try and push my boundaries and they try and they misinterpret who I am.

But then that's up to me now on where I am in my journey to put boundaries in and reinforce the protection that I need for myself.

So as we are thinking about our early conditionings.

it does pay kind of homage to almost allow yourself some gentle thoughts as long as it's not too distressing or upsetting as to kind of what was it, what would it have been like for little you when you were born?

And I see this in a very kind of you can do it from a sensory perspective.

You can even just as I'm asking the question, you can think that I feel safe, even though I didn't have any language, I didn't have any thoughts, feelings or beliefs or any context as to kind of, you know, what that meant.

Did I feel safe?

I know from my own upbringing, my mother used to tell me quite regularly that she didn't want children.

So I always had this feeling of being an inconvenience and she didn't want me or my brother.

And it's funny because it never upset me on a surface level, as in it never made me want to cry or anything because that was just a fact.