It’s all in the Journey, Not the Timeline

WRITTEN BY LISA BORG-ANDERSON

Hello beautiful soon to be mamas! What if I told you focusing on the vision of what will be is just as important as what you are doing right now in this moment? 

Often we as humans try to be in control of our surroundings, our body, and what we really want. When we want it isn’t always up to us….because in the end, things happen and the journey in between is where the magic happens. Not all of it is magical, as anyone who is trying to conceive will tell you. We suffer heartache at longer periods, not ovulating, and loss of a new tender life. I, like many of you, have experienced these losses and while my path has led into motherhood already, I sit and hold space with my patients who yearn for the moment they learn they are pregnant.

I get the wanting to have things just so (I am also a recovering perfectionist too) but the learning to listen to our bodies has an amazing effect - we start to become more balanced. And the more balanced your mind, body and spirit are, the easier it is to see the improvements, which will lead you down the path to parenthood.

Learning to fine tune, listen to your body, and create a holistic plan to support all aspects of your fertility is important to the overall healing of your body which ultimately will support a healthier embryo, more relaxed pregnancy and happier experience.

Acupuncture does work to support more balance within the body. But often, what is needed is for patients to have a safe space to heal and to allow their true inner voice to be heard. Not only to be valued as they are, but to have this sacred unfolding of their intuition to return into their forefront of thinking. It is learning to reconnect if you will, to the self. 

You see, I am here to guide my patients in creating this new rebalanced or adjusted version of themselves. What they need is a guide. But every one of us is unique and the journey that we as women take into motherhood is just as individual as our whirls on our fingerprints.

What each person needs to do varies to find the balance that their body is asking for by creating cues in dis-ease or discomforts in the body.

Stresses and strains are often physical requests for our bodies to be treated with more care. More rest. Better food and more simplicity. 

There is often this urgent need to have already achieved the outcome of becoming pregnant as soon as possible. But your vessel in this life needs to be ready and we need to respect and thank the imbalances that have kept us safe and moving forward in our lives. Often a little too busy to hear the tiny requests our systems are asking for change. 

So yeah. Some of us, myself included, had to work on myself before I became pregnant. And like many of you, I too was in a rush. But my experience with countless women I knew was that if I hyper-focused on that outcome happening, I would miss all of the cues and adjustments I was making…tiny little bits of progress and improvement that needed to happen before my body was ready for a healthy, uncomplicated pregnancy. That and like many, I would just increase my stress level to the point of counter production about all the details. So instead, I decided that I was going to do a half marathon and raise money for the lymphoma and leukemia foundation…

Yep. Overweight, and past 35 and an over exhausted acupuncturist I decided to leave private practice for a year and go do something totally different…like working in the garden department at my local home improvement store and I just decided to focus on being the best version of myself.. and allowing my training for a run/walk 13.1 mile event be the journey I needed. It was harder than I had ever pushed myself. I met amazing people and trainers who offered advice but really, just went through the messiness of it all with me. I cried through some of it, had blisters and injuries and baked my heart out. I spent time in the hot Alabama summer creating step after step that lead me to November 2011 Savanah Rock and Roll half marathon..it was cold, dark and rainy. And the best part of that whole year was that my E (who is now 8) was along for the ride. Yep, on race day he was implanting himself and focusing on this journey for myself was how we became a family of 3, now 4.

And here is the WHY- from a traditional Chinese medicine point of view, when we begin to nourish our bodies with balanced approach these are the changes that happen

• Reduce stress 
• Improved sleep
• Smoother periods, improvements in ovulation and implantation 
• Improved digestion and elimination
• Intuition improves and connection with your body
• Relegation of reproductive hormones 
• Improved insulin resistance 

I encourage you to take out this journal prompt and dream big with me.

Close your eyes and take a moment, to investigate your heart and ask-what would it look like if I focused on my balance, my growth and allowed my body to smoothly bring this baby into this journey?

What would you work towards? Better sleep, less anxiety or something else? Creating the best version of yourself is one of the hardest things to do during trying to conceive because so many want to focus solely on getting pregnant. But caring for your baby means taking care of you first!

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