“There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens …” Ecclesiastes 3:1-8, NIV.
There are times we experience difficulties in our lives. After we are born, what follows is growth, change, and death. We go through different seasons of our lives, and our bodies change as we move through each season. When we don’t know what is happening to our bodies, our bodies give us signs or symptoms that help us or our doctor determine what is ails us and find a specific treatment. We have to pause when things aren’t right, take care of ourselves, and adjust our bodies so that we may flourish through the seasons in our lives.
One of the things I enjoy is going through the different seasons in the southeastern United States. Just like in most places in America, we experience spring, summer, fall, and winter. In our part of the Earth, we share all seasons from wet, hot, cold, and frigid temperatures. We know what season we are in because the Earth shows us signs of transition from one season to the other. We experience the changes and adjust accordingly.
In the fall, we experience a slight drop in temperature as the hot Atlanta summer fades into fall from late September to early October. And this is the false fall before the sun heads further south, turning the lush green landscape into earth-tone colors. Pecans fall to the ground. Squirrels scurry around to gather their harvest. As we move into late fall, temperature-deep leaves die and fall off trees. We reach for our sweaters or light a jacket before we dash out the door. Fall is the season of celebration of change and the abundance of our harvest. It is a time to eat together and be together to thank God for our mess.
When winter comes around, it ushers in colder weather. The animals that we usually see go into hibernation. We add another layer to shield our bodies from harsh elements, maybe a scarf, a hat, and a heavy jacket. The Earth freezes, and we retreat indoors.
In the spring, the Earth begins to thaw. It is a time for awakening and renewal. Babies are born. Rain washes over the land causing bare trees to bud and flowers to bloom. Birds return to our gardens and some journey north. Henbit and purple deadnettle weeds provide pollen and nectar for bumblebees and honeybees in early spring. White, yellow, and purple flowers pop up everywhere. Warm days return followed by rain that rejuvenates the Earth. Winter days hang on until the middle of April. Farmers and gardeners alike begin to plant for a summer harvest.
Summer is a high-energy season. The sun returns to its highest position to nourish the plants and warms our souls. We venture outdoors to soak up vitamin D. Children are home from school for a long summer break. All these seasons are part of the cycle of life on Earth. Although they are predictable and reliable changes that happen, things can go wrong.
If we are outside every day, we may notice these subtle or sometimes drastic changes in the seasons. This year, February was hot for a winter month. This abnormal experience may take us by surprise, give us pause to wonder what might be off. We adjust ourselves to face the unexpected.
A gardener or farmer might feel very frustrated if the winter vegetables suddenly put out flowers and call it quits because it is too hot in February. A plum tree may bloom too early then get frostbite causing early buds to die and not bear fruit. The plants and animals make their adjustments to the changes, and so must we make adjustments throughout the seasons in our lives.
As women and mothers, we go through many changes throughout our lives as we transition from one season in our lives into the next. We may float through the seasons with grace and ease, and other times we face struggles and great adversities. Just like in nature, we know all our seasons shall pass, each new season brings change. The uncertainties of change are what give us fear, worry, and anxiety.
When the season arrived for me to enter womanhood, I was alone, abandoned and left to care for my younger siblings. The war for Kenyan independence was being waged. My mother vanished and I didn’t know what happened to her.
I wandered around our village to look for her. A woman recognized me. She stopped to tell me what had happened to my mother. She was a prisoner, captured while constructing our home and accused of being a supporter and sympathizer of the Mau Mau, the people’s army fighting in the forest. Many of the village women who were accused of the same crime also disappeared into British gulags along with my mother.
Before I married my late husband, Jotham Gatungo, I knew we would have at least four children, if not more. When my season came to conceive our first child, I thought the nine-month transition into pregnancy would be grateful. The opposite was true. I found myself adjusting to so many things that I hadn’t foreseen. My mother had never told me how pregnancy and birth would alter my body, disrupt my hormones and impact my mood. I don’t recall whether my mother experienced these things. However, As a young girl, I remember the times when my mother complained to my father. My father seemed to understand my mother’s seasons and the complaint that came along. He was good at giving my mother the space to say what she needed to. He would hear her but kept as quiet and motionless as a mouse focused on something else.
It was tough to tell when my mother was pregnant as my mother was never forthcoming about the conversation about where babies come. In those days, it wasn’t appropriate to tell a young girl. And she joked that she picked out her children at the hospital or a local market. There weren’t cultural signs to show pregnancy like maternity fashion or baby showers; to make matters worse, pregnant women would wear flowing dresses or shuka fabric, an African fabric worn around the shoulders to cover the bust to waist by women that concealed her pregnancy. When my mother fussed at my father, I would defend my father. I asked my mother what my dad did that caused her to make so much noise to him. My father would smile when I questioned my mother. My mother never answered what my dad did, but instead, she ignored my question.
Looking back, I can now see that he saw the signs when her body changed, and maybe he experienced the cycle of birth in his way when my mother was pregnant and after, which allowed him to have compassion for her during and after the fact. My mother birthed nine children after me by herself in her home, while my father acted like a firefly by aiding her best he knew. When she fussed at him, his silence was his way of adjusting to the changes in her seasons. He knew that the fuss was due to pregnancy and that eventually, my mother would return to her happy mood.
When I got pregnant with our first child, I was uncomfortable, irritated, and constantly cried to my husband. My late husband was also unprepared to support me through the pregnancy, I was his first case study. Growing up during and after the war of independence didn’t leave me with the tools I needed to be the mother I wanted to be. I was learning myself and my husband and then a new child. Our culture doesn’t prepare men to support birth. Men in my culture rarely have anything to do with children in the early years except conception. With the community’s disappearance, my husband was powerless to make me happy, and I didn’t have the support I needed from the childbearing women who would have been in my village. I was working in a boarding school surrounded by a community of boys in boarding school.
When my husband would get irritated by my discomfort, he would say to me, “you have a problem, and you are the only one who can tell me what I is wrong and how I can help you.” How could I find the words to describe what pregnancy was doing to my body when I didn’t understand the changes myself? His comments angered even more and made me cry even more. I went through these cycles of upsets without knowing what had caused the emotional problems in the first place.
At some point, I decided to attune to my body. Something wasn’t right, so I went to see my practitioner. My doctor informed me that I was depressed. I had heard the word depressed, but I had not known the meaning or what it was like to be depressed. I asked the doctor how she could tell I was depressed. She said, “you have tears in your eyes and a crying voice.” I never understood what it meant, but the doctor prescribed Prozac for six months. The medication restored me and helped me regain my happiness. I never realized that drugs could help alleviate my suffering until late. We don’t know what we don’t know until we share our struggles and allow others to truly see us as human beings doing the best we can.
After each of my five children’s birth, my life changed in various ways depending on the birth’s chronology. I would feel sad and cry at times. My first two babies were born one year after the other, and the next two were close in age. I had suffered a miscarriage along the way and that was emotionally difficult for me. I couldn’t grieve for my loss because I was a working mom with four little children who needed me in every way.
My husband traveled on church business. At the home front, it was our family maid and me. I was a new mom. I was lonely at home, and I missed my husband. I was constantly exhausted because I worked every day. Then I would go home to manage small children who needed every minute of my attention once I walked through the door. And that was a joyful season as a mother, yet it was also problematic in many respects. I hadn’t fathomed how incredibly taxed I would be mentally, physically, and how isolated motherhood would be.
Self-care didn’t exist in language or practice. What was known to me was that the season of small children would end, and another season will begin. It is the way it is. Change is certain. Seasons begin, and they end. Children come into the world, and they alter our minds, bodies, and souls. How we get through seconds, minutes, hours, days, months, and years with grace and ease depends on our faith in God.
Our last child was born 15 years after our first four children. The older four were transitioning to middle and high school as the new addition exited my womb to join our family. I was in my mid-40s, starting over again. I was faced with a new dilemma because now the doctors considered me a high-risk pregnancy because of my age. But I had no worries because I had four healthy natural births, but I was treated differently as a designated elderly mother. Raising a new child began another season in my life that would continue into my next life phase.
When it came time for my season to transition to menopause, I entered a new realm that was unfamiliar to me. Hot sweats began. I gained weight, and my heart raced, I felt lonely among many people, no one knew what my season. As I went through the days, months, and years, I felt ashamed of my body sweat, especially in wintertime. Some nights, I awoke in the middle of the night to my heart racing. I would shake my late husband awake to ask him if he heard my heart pounding as it felt as if it was pumping outside of my body. I had to consult with a physician to understand how I could take care of my new body. At the hospital, the doctor prescribed some estrogen tablets, and within six months, I had a renewed experience of my body. And my vitality was restored.
Unfortunately, medication has its limits, and side effects are possible. I developed a blood clot and stopped taking estrogen and was hospitalized for eight days to remove the lump in my blood that had started at my right leg, below the knee and migrated to my upper thigh. I was put on coumadin and monitored for six months, and then I continued menopause peacefully. Now I am living up to my name and enjoying old grace and ease of age I choose myself and happiness. I permitted myself to love someone again, and I remarried. God has given us one life to live to the fullest. He wants us to live our best life, to be compassionate, especially to ourselves, to allow ourselves to experience his love, and to practice forgiveness. Our stories are important because they will enable us to connect, free ourselves, empower each other to live our lives in service. What is the takeaway here? When we tuned to our bodies throughout the seasons of our lives, we are better able to care for ourselves so that we transition through the changes while experiencing ourselves just as God has created us in his image: whole, complete and perfect. There is ample literature about women’s health issues, yet we cannot assume that all the women have got the message. I can share my experiences and say to mothers that though we are too busy with the family, household, and work, it is necessary to get in touch with what is happening in our bodies and help the body have full functioning with less stress. We are growing old in the era of information; read the literature available; connect with your doctor and other practitioners who can help set you on your path to living a whole life.
Romans 12:3-8
English Standard Version
Gifts of Grace
3 For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned. 4 For as in one body we have many members, [a] and the members do not all have the same function, 5 so we, though many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another. 6 Having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use them: if prophecy, in proportion to our faith; 7 if service, in our serving; the one who teaches, in his teaching; 8 the one who exhorts, in his exhortation; the one who contributes, in generosity; the one who leads, [b] with zeal; the one who does acts of mercy, with cheerfulness.