The worst type of betrayal you can experience

A number of people have reached out to me since reading my post Ultimately, Why I Chose To Have A Baby.  Aside from an incredible amount of love and support, I also received a number of comments and thoughts reflecting on my experience. Many women told me how they felt that they didn’t exercise enough of a choice when it came to this decision.  They shared how they had believed “that’s just what you do when you get married” (an email from one of my aunts underscored this, sharing how “back in the day” she didn’t feel like there was a choice).  Others felt that they wished they had had more time between getting married and having a baby, but again felt that they didn’t really have a choice due to age or spousal pressure.  Others just wished they had thought about it more. 

The comments and emails reminded me of a realization I had come to a while back.  Through a few situations, I came to realize that the worst betrayal one can experience is neither the betrayal of a friend, nor the betrayal we may do to others and the anguish that follows.  The worst betrayal we can experience occurs when we betray ourselves.  When we make a choice despite knowing that we truly, deeply, want something different.  Unlike other situations, no matter how much we try we will never be able to justify the choice to ourselves.  After a self-betrayal you are left knowing you had the answer in your gut, but you didn’t have the courage, self-confidence, strength, self-respect, self-love, self-worth, self-care, self-value, to not betray yourself.  The result is a betrayal deeper than you can experience any other way.  It’s a betrayal to your soul. 

Every day we have to make choices as life is filled with them. From big ones (“Let’s have a baby!”) to smaller ones (“Let’s go to your parents for the holidays”).  For a very long time I constantly betrayed my soul.  I was more concerned about other people’s wants, needs, feelings, and dreams.  Often (almost always) at the expense of my wants, needs, feelings, and dreams.  Through lots of work, I’ve gotten better at not only not participating in self-betrayal, but also allowing for the flexibility to make space for the wants and needs of those around me.  This is a fine balance and art that changes with each relationship, yet with three key points as a must:

• Recognize when you are about to betray yourself.  Call it whatever you want to call it, you know the difference between a battle not worth fighting and a flat out self-betrayal.  Recognize when you are crossing over and be honest with yourself.
• Speak up. Voice what you want.  It is so hard to do, but so necessary.  Just often voicing “I need more time”, “I want this instead of that”, “What about going here?” is the first step towards not betraying yourself. 
• Work towards a better solution. It doesn’t have to be 100% what you want, but it sure as heck doesn’t have to be the one that leaves you in self-betrayal.  There’s always another choice.  Even if the choice is “We can’t make a choice right now, let’s wait for more information”. 

When you spend time strengthening your muscles behind these steps, you get more comfortable being at choice.  And then you start taking responsibility for your life, so that you are more than happy with where you are tomorrow.  The people around you get used to this and adjust.  They learn to work with you for a better option other than the one that betrays you.  They begin to respect your “No”, your “Yes”, and your “Maybe”.  And through the creativity that opens up, everyone wins. 

What are your thoughts?  Have you had the experience of self-betrayal?  I would love to hear from you, so please leave a comment below.  If you enjoyed this post, share it with your friends and family!

Lots of love,

Judith

An interfaith marriage and our new baby

Religion, spirituality and faith have been particularly highlighted over the past 5 months as my husband, who is a dedicated practicing Hindu, and I get ready to welcome our baby.  I was raised very Catholic (school in the Dominican Republic run by nuns, my mom had Bible readings each night at home, etc.) and still very much find solace in my faith (part of my 90 minute meditation practice every morning consists of reading the Bible).  When my husband and I got married, plenty of family members approached me with questions: What’s going to…happen?  How are you going to make this…work? What are you going to do about…you know...religion? I always found these questions to be quite odd.  Here, I had met my soulmate, the man of my dreams, everything I didn’t even know I wanted in one person, and I just couldn’t imagine worrying about our different faiths.  “It will just work itself out” I would think to myself and answer those around me.

And it has worked itself out.  As I write this I can’t help but get a bit emotional at how beautifully it has all come together.  Respectively, our faiths have only deepened more.  We’ve come together and fueled our belief in something greater than ourselves, an energy that is powerful and that speaks to the billions of people on this earth in different “languages”.  We believe these “languages” have manifested in different religions (Catholic, Hindu, Muslim, Christian, etc., etc.) but all point in the same direction, with the same purpose, and arriving at the same message.  We routinely converse about God, The Universe, that greater energy, and we constantly help each other deepen our faith.  If there is one characteristic of my husband that I adore, that I know is foundational in the strength of our marriage, and that I know has helped me evolve into a better version of myself, it is this one. 

So, how are we going to take all of this goodness and integrate it with our baby? One step at a time.  We’ve agreed that the purpose of bringing a soul into this world is to create the opportunity for him to have a positive impact on the world, hopefully helping the human race evolve even more (see my most recent article on this by clicking here).  We’ve decided that we can create this opportunity for him by building the right container for him to be in.  And so it has become our mission to expose him to as much faith and love as we possibly can. 

Once we found out that our baby could hear our voices, my husband started reading him the Bhagavad Gita at night.  We read him a section and then have a brief discussion on the takeaways, just to make sure our little one is understanding all (and us too!).  I read him the Bible every morning, along with A Course in Miracles.  We hope the little one is already coming up with his own opinion on this greater energy and his own conclusions on his manifestation to be a force for a greater good. 

Our integration of faiths is only becoming more and more exciting!  We can’t wait for his baptism a few months after his birth, where I dream of doing something incredibly traditional (my mother is already planning on having his outfit made in Santo Domingo).  We are also looking forward to doing our child’s Mundana next year, the Hindu sacrament where a child’s head is cut/shaved. 

We do not see the need to pick one religion, any of them will lead him to the message of love and faith.  What we will do is walk the message alongside with him, each day and each moment as best as we can.  We will use all of the “rituals” in our religions as milestones to remind him, and ourselves, as to what matters most, and the importance of incorporating this energy into our daily lives. 

The questions on what religion we are going to choose for the child are starting to come.  My answer: What does it matter?  As long as we focus on love and helping him be a force for good in this world, it will work itself out.  We could choose a religion and have no faith and no foundation in love.  That is the opposite of what we want.  I could not be more confident that it will all work itself out again.  

I would love to hear from you, so please leave a comment below.  If you enjoyed this post, share it with your friends and family!

Lots of love,

Judith

Ultimately, why I chose to have a baby

I have wonderful news.  Today, I am 5 months pregnant!  I could not be happier and the past 5 months have been a true blessing; I am amazed at all that I have experienced. 

In October I will have been married 5 years…5 years filled with those around me asking me: “When are you going to have a baby?” I have always known I wanted children.  Yet, it has always been more about “timing” for me.  Aside from timing, I always knew I wanted to feel aligned to the decision in a higher, spiritual way.  Given all of the meditation, mindfulness, and awareness work I have done in the past few years, I can FEEL when I am aligned with something greater than myself and when I am not.  Despite being married for a while, and the fact that I soon will be approaching my mid-30’s, it wasn’t until the beginning of this year that I truly felt aligned. 

I did not want to have a baby “just because” it is the thing to do.  Yes, as a Latina, family formation is paramount.  As the years passed, my family became more and more concerned over my decision.  They even pulled some pretty outrageous ways to influence me.  My grandmother kept telling me my family would not be complete until I had children (how scary).  My aunt who battled breast cancer went so far to tell me that the longer I waited, the more at risk I was at having the cancer (even scarier and…kinda mean).  Yet, I refused to be bullied into the decision.  I needed to feel it in my bones and I was not going to take a step further until I did. 

It was a constant conversation with my husband.  We discussed the reasons why we should bring another soul into this world.  From a self-benefiting perspective, we knew that a child would develop us spiritually as human beings.  We knew we would feel love like no other with a child in our lives.  That our capacity for kindness, compassion, and forgiveness would be tested, strengthen, and expanded in no other ways than through this experience.  I wanted this level of development.  I wanted this level of evolvement.  I wanted to see how much humanity I had in me, and how much more I could develop.  I wanted to experience that level of selflessness for another human being in those moments that only a parent experiences.  Yet, these self-benefiting reasons just weren’t enough.  I couldn’t bring a soul into this world because it’s what you do, because it’s what completes your family, because of fear, or even because it would make me a better person and better able to serve my community and those around me.  Even if some of these are excellent reasons, I wanted/needed more.

Through lots of meditating and reflection, I kept asking the questions.  Why have a child? What purpose does it have? I kept on asking God, The Universe for guidance.  And then one day it all became clear.  I felt aligned.  I realized that my child, like all future children, has the potential to be a light in this world.  Once my husband and I are gone, could it be possible for us to leave a human lineage behind that makes this world a better place?  A human lineage that evolves this world into something better?  People that bring forward light, so much needed today, rather than darkness.  Forces of good, that will live, and help others live, lives of values and purpose?  Now I am not naïve.  I know that there are no guarantees.  I know that I can want my child to be a light, but that things could be different.  Yet this is different than wanting your child to be a doctor or a lawyer.  This has nothing to do with me and any unfulfilled dreams.  It is about something greater than myself, it is about the greater good.  So if there’s even a chance that my husband and I can create people that will improve society and help the human race move forward through just being…being love…kindness…patience…however they decide to manifest this…wouldn’t this be an incredible thing? 

I remember the excitement, love, and peace I felt when I first experienced all of the above.  I felt aligned.  I felt a deep knowing.  It felt natural, like breathing, eating, and sleeping.  I was ready.  I wanted a baby.  I wanted to be a mom.  I wanted us to be parents.  And today, I am looking forward to relishing the next four months of experiences and welcoming our beautiful baby boy over the holidays.  I couldn’t be happier to have done it my way, when I felt aligned.  

I would love to hear from you, so please leave a comment below.  If you enjoyed this post, share it with your friends and family!

Lots of love,

Judith

When you do this, The Universe conspires in your favor

Never miss an update // Read in Spanish

This past weekend, I did a workshop at the 2015 Youth Health Summit at the San Francisco AIDS foundation.  As with all of the workshops that I do, participants are not the only ones learning, I am also learning a ton from them.  My learning this time?  A reminder of the most important thing The Universe asks from us in order to best serve us: Show up.

Wrapping up a great day with the participants!

Myself and the participants had decided to show up on a beautiful Saturday afternoon in San Francisco.  If you live in California, you know sunny weather is hard to come by in SF.  Not only that, but there was a big baseball game and The Golden State Warriors, San Francisco’s basketball team, had just won the national championship two days before, so there was a big party going on in their honor.  Despite this, all of the participants showed up at the foundation ready to learn how to live a better life.  It sounds so simple, but the simple act of making the effort and showing up in life is the #1 thing that is often needed.  We often want things to change, but we don’t start by showing up for ourselves.  We want to lose weight, but we can’t show up at the gym (or even infront of our TV with an exercise DVD…or around the block to go on a walk).  We want to start a meditation practice, but we don’t show up early in the morning for 5 minutes to just breathe. 

We can make all the plans in the world, we can have the most incredible dreams, but if we don’t make the simple act of showing up, nothing will happen.  It’s scary to show up, because what happens if we do and, well…things don’t happen as quickly as we want them to?  Or what if it’s hard? Yet it has been my experience that when we show up time and time again, the world, The Universe, rises up to meet us.  When we believe enough in our dream and in ourselves to put in the effort and take the baby steps necessary, getting past the inertia, the boredom, the fear, the discomfort, the sacrifice, the trade-offs, we start sending messages to the world and The Universe.  Opportunities start appearing, doors to knock on begin to manifest.  I cannot tell you that it is easy.  The reason we choose not to show up for ourselves is because of all of the things we have to overcome.  Yet, let the participants of the 2015 Youth Health Summit serve as an example.  The simple act of showing up on a sunny Saturday afternoon is a step in the right direction.  Eventually these steps start adding up and life does start to improve.  One day you wake up and wonder how you got to the place you always wanted to get to, until you realize it was the accumulation of the baby steps you took over time.  The simple, small times you showed up to an event, showed up at the gym, showed up for a meeting, showed up late at the office to finish a presentation, showed up at the grocery store to buy healthy food, showed up in what you thought were the most insignificant ways, that added up in into the most significant way.

I would absolutely love to hear from you, so please leave a comment below!  If you enjoyed this post, share it with your friends and family!

Lots of love,

Judith