My Ancestors Got Me Pregnant
This is how I know
This is part 3 of a series of pregnancy stories that I’ve been sharing on substack.
The first one talked about the grief that came with the news of being pregnant.
The second one focused on my experience as an enby birthing person.
You don’t need to read these posts in sequence, but if you want to start there first, it’s linked here:
The average length of the gestation period for a human baby is around 280 days, aka 40 weeks, aka roughly 10 months. but for me, I feel like there’s a spiritual gestation period that is intergenerational, timeless, and predestined. While I didn’t know it at the time, feels like I’ve been preparing for the role as a birth giver and a parent since July a couple of years ago. .1
For my birthday that year, I spent it in silence at spirit rock, practicing with vipassana teachers like Kamala Masters, Joseph Goldstein and a team of insight-trained teachers. I sat on the adirondack chairs by the dining hall every day after lunch time, a cup of mint tea in my hand, sending lovingkindness to the wild turkeys that would stroll by every now and then. For the first few days of the practice, we were given instructions based on various mindfulness meditation techniques to help us notice the moment-to-moment experiences as they arise. A few days into the retreat, I could clearly see and feel that everything, no matter how pressing, vivid, beautiful, or agonizing it may seem at the moment, would eventually pass away. I watched most of my sensations arise and leave and felt comforted by the truth of impermanence. But after a few days of watching almost everything appear and disappear like moving clouds, a mild ache at the back of my heart between my shoulder blades started to reveal itself and stayed. This sensation was constant, muted, like a low hum at the back of my heart. I figured, what arose would eventually pass away, so I just kept watching it, and sometimes I’d send it lovingkindness.
Every few days or so, the teachers would offer 15 minutes of one-on-one dharma support. To be honest, I was kind of bored, and thought the conversation would spice up the rhythm a little bit, so I signed up to speak with a teacher. DaRa Williams’ presence was strikingly warm, aware, like an approachable royalty. It might sound like I’m putting her on a pedestal, but there’s a certain current or energy about some dharma teachers who are commitment to the practice. When I brought up the heart ache to her, she asked me how I'd interpret it. I said that it felt like sadness, sorrow, and broken-heartedness. She smiled and asked, what if you let go of these labels of sadness, and have a conversation with it instead? It might surprise you. She continued, this is likely ancestral and intergenerational. Go explore and come back next year at the BIPOC retreat for experienced folks.
I have been connecting with my ancestors since I was a child. when my maternal grandmother died, I was a toddler. that evening, I walked over to the kitchen where my mom was, and pointed upwards as if to gesture to an adult who was walking into our apartment. I then held hands with the air and walked over to the window, finally waving goodbye looking into a distance outside of the window. I later told my mom that my grandma, her mom, was here to say bye. There are more memories of seeing and communicating with spirits when I was a kid. Sure, I was scared sometimes, but I never thought it was strange cause Chinese folks know that kids usually have a better sense of the spirit realm. One of the employees at my parents’ company had an aunt who was a medium, and we would exchange ghost stories with each other during downtime at work.
But when I moved to the United States as a teenager, I was experiencing such an existential shock that I stopped having any encounters with spirits. Consciously, I stuffed down anything that’s un-American to help myself acclimate to this country, and that included anything deemed paranormal.
A few years ago, I binge-read everything that Brian Weiss MD wrote. In his books, he shared stories of patients who recalled vivid details of their past lives during hypnotherapy sessions. Like the buddhist thought of reincarnation, Weiss believed that our lives are continuous. There is no birth or death as we know it. Rather, we are spirits orbiting each other’s lives over the course of lifetimes. I grew up in Hong Kong, where the belief of reincarnation and the existence of spirits are embedded in everyday culture and language. In Hong Kong, when you see people in a rush to get somewhere, you would say something to the effect of "lol are you rushing to reincarnate” (which is basically saying that the person is in such a rush that they might get into an untimely accident and die).
I didn’t make it to the BIPOC retreat the year after, but I did started having conversations with the heart ache. At a sit towards the end of the retreat, my paternal grandmother, who had passed when I was a tween, showed up in rage. I won’t divulge the detail of this encounter because she had since asked me not to tell everyone about this.2
This achy-ness continues but it didn’t bother me much. Several months later, I woke up one day with my back stuck. Unable to get up or out of bed for a few days, I asked my partner to fix me (he’s a naturopath doctor with chiropractic and Craniosacral training). He massaged me a bit, but he held off on giving me a full treatment and referred me to a local Craniosacral therapist instead. He said, our relationship was too close for the treatment to be effective. Just like how a therapist shouldn’t be the therapist for their partner. I was offended cause why would I pay a stranger if he could do it for free? But he’s got a point, so I went.
By the time I saw the Craniosacral therapist, I could move again. But the pain on my back persisted and intensified. I was also experiencing a new but old symptom: every time I cry, I'd gag and/or throw up, as if something needed to be dislodged from the chest, just as I did when I was a toddler. This curious symptom made sense to me when my Craniosacral therapist said this at the end of our first session, “There’s something in the past that’s negotiating for its presence in the future, and that’s what you’re feeling right now.” My motivation for spiritual practices is rooted in ending the suffering that’s been passed down through generations. And I felt like this heart ache was an embodiment of pain that wanted to continue to live through me. But I refuse. I continued to be kind to my body and spirit, getting treatments regularly, and conversing with my ancestors. The back/heart pain never really went away, but it did calm down.
Sometime in the Fall last year, my partner and I started to have conversations about creating a family. I was resistant at first, feeling not ready for a life-altering responsibility, citing the climate crisis and capitalism as my reasons for not wanting to bring another life to earth. But still, I thought maybe I should learn more about parenthood before writing it off. So I talked to a handful of parents about why they had kids. I also chatted with friends about why they would or would not want to have kids. These conversations helped me realized that the climate crisis and capitalism were just my excuses for avoiding to talk about the depression I felt when I was a kid. Deep down, I was afraid that my child would be as sad as I was, and that it would mean I would have failed as a parent. I broke down when I realized the truth behind my resistance. My partner held space for me. The next day, I woke up feeling hopeful for the future. Acknowledging the work both my partner and I have done for ourselves, I felt optimistic about writing a different kind of family story than the one I lived through. And so we decided, in three years, we will try to have a baby.
Around the same time, my paternal grandmother visited me again during a meditation practice at home. This time, she was no longer resentful. Instead, she was apologetic and vulnerable. She said to me, I’m sorry. I wish I was the mother I wanted to be. I knelt on the floor and wept with her. I said to her, I’m so sorry, too, grandma. I’m so sorry that you carried so much pain. I wish you didn’t suffer. I haven’t spoken to her since then. But I know that she’s in a different space now. One that is free from the bondage of the past. Instead of seeing her alone, I started feeling more ancestors around me. They’re like a spiritual support team, watching my back with reassuring smiles.
You already know I got pregnant before the three year mark. But before I actually got pregnant, something peculiar happened. It was Thanksgiving weekend, my partner and I were visiting his family. His mom, per his request, made his favorite dessert, mung bean soup. Tempted even though I wasn’t supposed to have mung beans during my cycle, I had a small cup. His mom warned, mung beans are too cooling for the period! Be careful. But I thought, it’s just a tiny bit, I’ll be fine. Hours later, I started to feel unsettled and queasy. His mom was right. I started purging at the toilet. A quarter cup of mung bean soup turned into buckets of liquid gushing out of me. I felt like every pore of mine was puking, violently throwing away things that the body had held onto. It was as much of a physical purge as it was a spiritual cleanse. I was exhausted by the end of it.
Three weeks later, I got pregnant. It was as if spirit was listening to our conversation and said, Yup! They’re ready for a baby! But first, they needed a final purge to make space for this baby. Something tells me that this baby is a reincarnation of a healed ancestor. They’d be medicine for the world, and hopefully not mung beans. 🌎
Wow! You made it to the end! Thank you for reading my story. I wanted to finish writing this earlier, but being 9 months pregnant, I’ve been feeling so fatigued lately.
That said, this post probably has 10000 typos I’ll catch later. Thank you for your patience and understanding. I have more to share about my pregnancy! Please subscribe to follow along.
Because I believe that our life events are karmic, it’s probably more accurate to say that I’ve been preparing for this moment as a birthing person since I was born. But for the purpose of this story, I’ll start in July 2022.
I acknowledge that by writing about this online, I’m effectively telling everyone about this. However, I believe that the extend of which I’m telling this story here can both honor what she asked of me and serve to tell an important story of my lineage.
Such a beautiful journey, thank you for sharing. Your writing is so visual and captivating. Such a gift!