The Woman Of My Dreams

Women always have this picture in their minds of what the perfect man would be like. There is a sort of check list. Different people have different ideals. For me, it was important to have a strong guy (Check!).

In the same way, I have a picture in my mind of what the perfect *me* is like. I have been dreaming of this version of me for quite some time now. It all started with Bunny's birth. I had this vision of her birth worked out in my head. How it would be so sweet, and loving, and yes, hard. But a good kind of hard. The kind that you struggle through and come out on the other side feeling like you could do anything. Needless to say if you have read my birth story, that dream did not come true. It was instead replaced by a nightmare of a birth. Only three good things came out of it. The first was Bunny herself. The second were the words my husband said as I held my daughter for the first time. The third was the woman of my dreams. My dream me. I realized that the reason I didn't get what I wanted in Bunny's birth, was because I wasn't who I needed to be. I was shy and weak. I was ignorant, and scared because of my ignorance.

As the days went by, my body slowly healed from the damage that had been done. I began to grow stronger than I had ever been. One night, I caught a glimpse of her. My dream me. It was only for a moment. I felt her welling up inside of me, and had to let her out. She knew... *I* knew what I believed in and I stood up for it. I believed in me. For the first time ever, I believed in myself and my body. I spoke like I had never spoken before. I don't think that I changed any one's mind about birth that night, but I didn't set out to. I did however, set out to change myself. To become who I need to be.

I have become more and more like my dream me over the past couple of years. I have done things that I was much too shy to ever do before. And now I have finally had the birth I was meant to have. This time around, things were much different. Though I still struggle with shyness, it is something I almost always find the strength to overcome. I am very educated in birth and many things that go along with it. I was not afraid because I knew without a shadow of a doubt that having a homebirth was what was right for me. I feel like I have been waiting so long, just to get to where I should have been from the start. Now I am finally free to move on from here.



I have a picture in my head of what my dream me looks like. A list of things she does and can do. Here are a few of the things on the list:

• She wears her hair down a lot more than I do. It might be braided or clipped back, but it is very rarely in a messy bun, like mine is almost everyday.
• She weighs about 30lbs less than I currently do. That is what I weighed when I got married. That is what I weigh when I feel good about what I weigh.
• She hula hoops. How sad is it that I never learned how to hoop as a kid? I am going to learn.
• She is up for trying new things and going new places. I have gotten better about this. I tried tacos for the first time recently and it turns out, I love them. Makes me wonder what other things I would love if I hadn't already written them off. Time to take a few chances.
• She drives. When I was a teen, I never had the desire to drive. I learned how, and was actually pretty good, but I never got my licence. I have gotten my permit and let it expire so many times that I am pretty sure I know all the test questions. Not driving is now an inconvenience. I need to drive.



This list changes from time to time. There are so many more things that I hope to do at some point in my life. But I have to start somewhere.