Wendy Watters personal life coach & emotional health care professional., Geraldton, WA Videos

Sometimes all you are required to do is to bear witness to the pain. Hold a container for the confusion, sorrow and unravelling.

She taught me a powerful lesson today. Mother to mother.

As a Death Doula a great deal of the medicine you hold is potent permission giving space for the waves of pain. Nothing to change, fix or do. Just be... together.

She searched for her baby from sunrise. Calling until she lost her voice. I have seen it happen like this before. And it pulls deep at the mother in me. I want to help her find her baby. I silently keep praying she just hasn’t looked in the right spot yet. Maybe she has arrived at the wrong island and got confused where she left it.

Two hours pass. She keeps wailing. Her voice wafting in and about as she mustered up something through her worn vocal cords. She comes up to me close on the island and I see she has been in a fight. Fresh wounds and lacerations. She looks right into my eyes with ‘have you seen my baby?’. I look around too, helping. But I know if it’s here it will reply to her call. Mother seals leave their baby’s hidden in the bushes and come back to call, the hungry baby answers and they are reunited to cuddle and suckle.

The searching mother lays awkwardly on sharp jaggered rocks next to me. That’s how exhausted she is. Not even trying to make herself comfortable, she is in too much pain anyhow from her wounds and her lost baby.

So I just sit there with her. My heart is in so much pain. I can feel twisting and longing mother pain in my belly. Nothing can be done. We just sit together for a while.

It teaches me, I can do nothing. Except just be there for her in this moment. I was not here yesterday, and I won’t be here tomorrow. I am just here now. Holding space in the void.

This is often all I can do when I am supporting someone in pain. Nothing can be done. Not touching you. Not interfering in your process. Just holding silence presence, love