Remembering the shadows of the early days with my beautiful boy, Bodhi

I remember the morning I took this picture so well. A nondescript morning, other than the fact that we were home and settling into our new lives together. I was overwhelmed with love for this little boy, watching the new dynamics of our larger family, yet my Mama bear was having a hard time accepting everything was under control now. I was obsessive about tracking every irrigation, every nursing session, and watching him for the most minute sign that something may be amiss. This level of alertness combined with hormones crashing started bringing unwanted thoughts. The great what if’s. They would come out of nowhere. While carrying him up the stairs, I had a flash in my mind of accidentally dropping him. To say it was horrific was an understatement. It was as if I was living it in the moment. It came again at bath time when my mind asked what if he drowned. Or when I saw anything small enough to fit in his mouth as a life threatening situation. This was beyond normal parenting concerns. This was my body’s inability to accept that we were no longer in danger. Since there was no real danger my mind started manufacturing unreal ones. I didn’t feel like I was going to do any of these things. I was trying to protect him by out thinking our environment, but it was an unpredictable and debilitating my joy of the experience of being a new mother to a newborn. I didn’t talk about it much out of shame and fear. What good, loving, and reasonable mother would have these thoughts? Yet, when they weren’t going away I did talk to my husband and my best friend about it. They did not judge me and the vowed to support me. One day, when my sister came to visit Bodhi and me, I completely melted down over a her borrowed blanket I improperly washed. I felt like an udder failure. If I could not do something so simple correctly, how was I possibly going to keep him safe? Relief from this torment came in the most unexpected way. I had dabbled with crystals the years since becoming a massage therapist. Before his surgery in March we made a visit down to Free Spirit Crystals to get a few crystals for Bodhi’s recovery and overall healing from Hurschsprubg’s Disease. Just before leaving the shop my eye became entranced on a crystal in the very middle of the bottom shelf at the center of the store. Anyone who knows this shop as well as I now do, knows this is one of the hardest areas of the shop to see. The crystal was dark and smooth with little green circles, almost like moss growing on a rock. When I picked it up, it fit in my hand the same way a computer mouse would. It was comfortable, easy to hold and be held by. I had no idea what it was called or it’s particular healing properties. All I knew was I would not leave the shop without it. On the way home I looked it up on my phone and sure enough it was kambaba jasper. Amongst its long list of healing abilities there it was... getting rid of unwanted thoughts. I felt a quiet hope and gratitude for the guidance to this gentle healer. That night I laid on my side facing my son in his sidecar co-sleeper. I placed my right hand on the jasper between us and said a prayer. We both slept well and after each feeding we returned to our positions. The next morning I woke and felt like a wet blanket had been removed from my energy. That day I had no surprise visits of paralyzing fear or flashes of the worst. I continued to use the crystal each night until one day I just knew I didn’t need it any more. This experience gave me faith in the healing ability of crystals. So much so that I didn’t care in the slightest that some of the nurses at children’s hospital laughed at my request to tape a small rose quarts (infused with the love of our entire family) to his palm during surgery. Faith in my intuition and my guides was all that mattered to me. Slowly and gently I have continued to grow my work with crystals both personally and professionally. I compare learning them to learning spices and herbs when cooking. You learn them one on one and then it just makes sense on how to blend them for a deeper experience. I was never assessed for PPD, but I’m certain I had a form of it. I am in no way saying that crystals are the only way or even a better way of handling this. There is no one-size-fits-all for thriving in life. There is only trust and faith in oneself to know what is right for you. Many blessings and peace to you all Erin Zedler