My story of trauma healing with art

We planned and prepared for a healthy home birth as best we could, but the Universe had other plans, and after an emergency transfer my daughter was born with forceps and taken away to NICU with Meconium Aspiration Syndrome. Looking back now, I can see how I didn't allow my birth to progress because I didn't feel worthy, safe, empowered in my life - and we birth how we live. I couldn’t hold my baby for three days, or feed her for five. After 10 days, we were finally able to bring her home, and I then added healing birth trauma onto my existing to-do list from childhood trauma – and my art was forgotten once again.

Our sessions together initially focussed on learning about the chakras – the seven main energy centres within our body – and developing practices to help heal, open and balance them. This had quite a dramatic effect on my holistic healing, and I started to see big changes in my life: finding it easier to set boundaries with wounded family members, starting to dress vibrantly and feel safe to take up space, finally connecting with my wounded inner child, beginning to see signs that I was feeling fundamentally more held by our Earth and loved by our Universe – and one morning I realised there was nothing stopping me starting an art shop straight away. All the reasons I’d told myself in the past for why I couldn’t do it ‘yet’ suddenly didn’t mean anything! I realised I didn’t need a business plan and a mapped-out product range, and competitor research and branding – I could just paint a picture, put it on my Etsy shop, if someone liked it they could buy it – and if not, I had a nice time painting it!

Despite everything we’d learnt in antenatal classes and hypnobirthing with my first daughter, I didn’t fully understand birth (particularly what was going on in the womb and what surges were all about), so I made myself drawings of the ‘up’ and ‘down’ stages to help myself feel safer with the sensations. Our doula thought they were great and said she thought others would find them useful too, so (feeling dubious anyone would want to pay for a scan of what I saw as a fairly ‘amateurish’ drawing) I added the diagrams to my Etsy shop (hidden at the bottom though!).

I hadn’t intended to make any more downloads, until one day I had three people buy my birth diagrams (thanks for the nudge Universe!). When I shared on social media that I’d received the orders, I got two more! The fact that I had just made money without ‘doing anything’ felt miraculous (and deeply uncomfortable!) so I thought – I had better make some more of these! I may not have achieved either of the home births I wished – but nothing has dented my belief in physiological birth. I am honoured that my handmade birth education materials are contributing to the community of birth workers across the world who are working so hard to educate and support women to take back control of their births, and re-learn to trust their bodies and their babies.

When I made my own website I underestimated how much my admin would increase and how it would take time away from the arty stuff! Coming from a background of digital marketing and customer experience optimisation, I find it hard to let things go and feel constantly driven to ‘optimise’ everything and keep growing. My main challenge recently has been trying to do too much, and not giving myself enough time to just enjoy painting for the joy of painting, so I am aspiring to paint more – and work less.

With every painting, I have practised the belief that what I create is worthy, and soothed the voice in my head from childhood telling me ‘you’re not a real artist’. I have learnt to see that what I make really does have inherent value – and actually, it is the birth education materials with my cute ‘childish’ drawings that I now love the most. Because they are the ones that come authentically from my inner child. I feel blessed that I can call myself a mother, an artist, and now a birth worker too.