Hero's Journey Lesson 1: Phoebe

I’m doing some of the assignments along with the girls, so they’ll have examples. Here’s Lesson 1, shot off a few minutes ago.

“Write a three paragraph essay on how a helper or mentor has come to your aid in facing or overcoming an obstacle in your life.”

I was both thrilled and terrified the day I found out I was pregnant with my oldest child. I immediately began to research everything about pregnancy and childbirth, and asked all the women I knew about their experiences. Most of them were less than helpful – and just made me more scared – but one woman helped me immensely. My mother was by far the most valuable resource I could have had as I approached the birth of my first baby. My own birth was somewhat precipitous and exciting, as I was born six weeks early. I arrived just a few minutes after my mother got to the hospital. Having weathered that, her easy manner and reassurance was worth more than all the books put together.

The world of twenty-first century pregnancy is a daunting one. Eat this, not that! Never that! Exercise regularly, but not too much. You need these tests, and these exams, but they all carry risk, and all have varying degrees of reliability. If you don’t do everything exactly perfectly right, it will all go terribly wrong and it will all be your fault! And then the actual labor and delivery, well. Hospital, birth center, or home? Doctor or midwife? Drugs for pain relief? Induction or augmentation of labor? Caesarian section? The mind reels. However, my mother cut through all the information overload with a calm tone. “Everything will work out. When I had you, it was all different, so I can’t say what you should do. But whatever it is, it will be the best thing, because you’ll know.” She had had a hard time with pregnancy, with several losses between my brother and me, but she kept trying. She told me stories of labor, “like a rubber band getting tighter, takes your breath away!” She remembered the early feeding troubles, crying baby, crying mother, milk everywhere, but perseverance overcame. She made me feel like I could do it too.

And I read many books, and asked her about many things. She never told me I was wrong, or silly to consider something, even if she thought it was farfetched. (Although she still does tease me about my somewhat frantic nesting efforts and the quest for the perfect baby shampoo.) There is no other person in my life who helped me as much in my journey to motherhood, now traveled eight times. I have six daughters, and I feel sure at least one of them will become a mother. I hope I can be the same solid presence in their transformations from singular to plural as she has been in mine.