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awaken

My Awakening

December 9, 2021 by Nicole Ayers

I’ve been asked many times what pivotal event ignited my passion to help women make peace with their bodies. For me, it was a series of moments, over years, that built like steps on a high-dive ladder. With each event, I climbed a little higher until I made it to the diving platform. Then I inched my way past the safety rails until I was standing on the edge of the board.

I’d love to say that once I was gripping that board with my toes, I wholeheartedly leapt off the diving platform full of the awareness I needed to execute a fancy double flip, triple twist, water entry as smooth as velvet dive. The reality was a heart-palpitating, gut-churning false bravado that would have probably resulted in me crawling back to the ladder, except a bout of dizzying vertigo took charge and pushed me off the board in a sideways sprawl that knocked the breath out of my shocked body when I hit the water. Only after I clawed my bruised body to the pool’s edge and laid myself out on the hard but precious concrete did I realize the initiation I’d just passed through.

Over the next few weeks, I’m going to wrangle my memories about the most vivid events that sparked my awakening. Because I tend to write the stories that are the loudest when I sit at my desk, this retelling will not be in chronological order.

Part 1 – The Dream

I had a dream experience that still takes my breath when I recount it: I was in labor and gave birth to a baby girl. She looked like a sleeping angel, swaddled in the white hospital blanket with blue-and-pink stripes. She wore a jaunty little hospital cap that the nurses had added a bow to. She was perfection.

But she didn’t cry. She was alive but also not a part of this world. There was no spark inside her. I was frantic that she wasn’t crying, but no one in the delivery room was bothered. I looked at my husband and asked, “Why isn’t she crying?” He just shrugged and looked away. The nurses who had washed and swaddled her were not at all concerned. I screamed, “Help her. Somebody, help her.” But everyone ignored me, unfazed by my desperation.

I felt invisible and helpless and terrified.

Then rage slid like hot lava down to my bones. This baby should be crying and no one but me cared. How could I be the only one who cared?

If no one would help me, then I would heal her myself.

I dropped to my knees, lifted my arms, and unleashed a primal, guttural cry. The baby wailed so loud that I woke up.

As soon as my eyes popped open, I knew that baby was me. I was going to have to heal myself, to find my voice, to ignite my authentic spark. No one could do it for me. But I was ready, ready to love myself, ready for a bolder life.

And everything I needed was inside me.

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