Leading up to Pregnancy

We are fast approaching our daughters 1st month anniversary and before the thoughts and memories get too far in my brain I’ve been really wanting to write out our labour and birth and pregnancy experience as it was truly the most incredible moment of my life the whole journey but especially the moment I felt her enter this world with us through my body. I’m so excited to share and im looking forward to seeing how this comes out. Such big moments in life are hard to bring words to or share about even in general but I am going to try between baby hug pauses, baby feeding pauses, baby burping pauses, baby pooping pauses and more baby feeding pauses… will get there! It feels appropriate to first start with leading up to pregnancy how did my life change so completely and what led me to this point!

Getting Pregnant

Preg·nant

/ˈpreɡnənt/

adjective: pregnant

(of a woman or female animal) having a child or young developing in the uterus.”she was heavily pregnant with her first child”

I remember laughing with my sister as she shared with me a comment our mom made:

mom: “well how did Johanna even get pregnant!?”

Georgia: “well she had sex mom”

In order to share the story of getting pregnant and pregnancy I need to go back on my life a little to piece some on the puzzle together. Prior to the news many pieces of my life and what I was working towards were fertilizing in my own self growth and liberation and got me to a point where I could embark on this journey, transformation and creation.

I found out I was pregnant in April 2022 after returning home to Canada unexpectedly after being “kicked out” per say from my paternal native country of Guadeloupe which I am not a on paper official citizen of. I thought I had 6 months in the country as a tourist but it was only 3. With 8 days notice; I had to pack up and leave. This meant: cancel my rental accommodation, make a decision about the 2 dogs I had rescued, book a flight, and say good bye to everything I really loved the food, the dancing, the weather, the routine, the friends, and my growing love, and more jarring the safety, stability and home I had built.

My intention for going to Guadeloupe in January 2022 was to find stability and security, to rent a home and build routine and structure and create a safe enjoyable home space where I could settle down. I had been in limbo for a many years as covid continuously canceled my flights to Guadeloupe I was constantly in short term lets say alternative housing situations. I would tell myself its okay as its only a couple weeks or months as my flight to Guadeloupe will be soon.. but then the flight would cancel. Ill quickly dive into this and then resume as it is relevant to why this intention and goal was so important for me and also I truly believe connected me to my partner and the life I am co-living now as I was able to do it individually first.

Adulthood Trauma

My life completely changed in 2019 after losing my first and full love in a traumatic death. Everything I had imagined about my life, my goals, my desires all vanished. I had loved him since I was a young teenager. I was very co-dependent to him and alot of my beliefs about myself included his perspectives and the way I saw and moved in this world was very much connected to being with him.

While he was alive in the last 2 years I had really started working on healing my codependence. I worked on healing this however with the goal of being stronger in my relationship and having a healthier relationship with him rather than just for myself. I started working on understanding what was going on in our relationship and why. As first loves who fell in love when we were very young we didn’t really know how to love in a healthy way yet we were just re-enacting the dysfunctional dynamics and coping mechanism we learned in our childhood and also unconsciously repeating intergenerational cycles of hurting instead of loving. We started becoming aware of this in the last few months before he died and we were really trying to work on ourselves. The co-awareness was a huge part in our healing. We really cared about each other and we were determined to free ourselves from these cycles and change and grow. He mentioned that he had heard once over the duration of a relationship you get to relearn who a person is at least 8 times.

When he died it was the biggest lost I had ever experienced and the grief was overwhelming and all consuming. My life stopped and I didn’t know how I would move forward or find purpose when everything I knew and wanted was suddenly gone.

His death in retrospect I see was a huge spiritual awakening for me. I became incredibly passionate about learning everything about death, I would listen to hours on hours of YouTube videos and podcasts and documentaries on people sharing stories of near death experiences, I became obsessed with quantum physics learning about other realms, and energy. I quickly realized even though he had passed our relationship did not stop there. There was more to our relationship and this was our chance to get to know each other a new again.

I started studying as much as I could about energy and energy healing I became a certified reiki usui and kemetic energy healer and used these skills to connect with the other side. I worked on growing my senses of mediumship and deeply connecting to my dreams for messages and understanding of what was going on. I realized he was very much trying to help me heal and find ways to move forward the most important thing to not subscribe to simply suffering that there was more I was meant to do here and until I was ready he would help me heal the fullness of our relationship and uncover all its lessons.

In time I came to the decision I had to keep living and to find beauty in this world again to honour him I could not keep suffering I had to live. I compiled all my spontaneous poetry from the first year he passed and published a poetry book that released all the suffering and grief from my system and alchemized it to beauty. The release of this book Remembering Deathlihood liberated me to what was next. I had to really come back to myself and discover who I was as an individual. Now I was healing but for me not to be with any one else but to be with me and to live with myself in passion, truth, and bliss, to live and enjoy this life.

To fully understand the depths of death I believe leads you to understand the full depth of what is to birth and live and its purpose.
-Johanna Mercedes

I was fresh out of university and about to launch into career oriented work but instead ended up going down this deep spiritual path of energy healing, alchemy and passion and liberation based projects. A huge part of my healing was connecting with wild flowers and eventually I decided to expand my connection to them through studying herbalism. This was such a deep medicine for me that brought me so much inner liberation. I started understanding the cycle of life through the wild flowers I would work with they taught me alchemy between death and birth and the beauty and importance of every cycle we live. I launched a business IamMeeshaa to share the tools I was experiencing that were changing and expanding my life. Energy healing and home made organic herbal skin care products that shared the essence of healing and liberation. This was incredibly liberating and felt like a huge birth. It was birthing my true essence of liberation and freedom through the creation of medicine that I could share and it was so fulfilling.

The frequency of grief had fully changed to beauty and joy to support and love. I understood the power of death and the connection that is still very much present and the importance of liberating one another from suffering and allowing each other to grow and blossom. I know on the other side he is free through the power of forgiveness and true love. He helped guide me to my liberation until I found the strength to take over and guide myself.

We come into this world in a 9 month sequence and we leave this earth in a 9 month sequence of surrender. Release attachment to the outcome and surrender and yield to the evolution of this life. After death, The Gene keys helped me understand my purpose in this life and the elements I was meant to endure and heal and reach. Richard Rudd hosts virtual Gene key Retreats I attended The Deep Dive into Genius from June to October, 2020. This deep dive helped me rebirth from grief and death and realize how sacred this life is how every word vibrates and lives for eternity and emanates your legacy. I enjoyed this rebirth Sequence from Richard Rudd and invite you to take a listen when you feel called.
written on a previous blog of mine called Remembering Deathlihood January 21 2021

The Rebirth Sequence

Grounding and getting present in the human experience

We were a year and a half into covid my second covid tree planting season and suddenly it was clear as day this work is no longer fulfilling for me. I’d completed my time there. At the beginning of July 2021 I left the season early with some of my best offers and rates on the table for continued work in management but I refused. I couldn’t continue sacrificing my time and energy giving to this labour that was all consuming. It took all my energy to do this job I had barely had any energy left to dedicate to the projects and activities that were inspiring and expansive to me.

no attachments, home, or connections

all good things can become overdone or no longer serve as we progress through different stages of our life. Tree planting was very supportive to keeping me with no attachments, home, or connections and as much as this was needed for my healing and rebirth this was no longer fulfilling for me. I yearned a deeper connection to the human experience to be grounded, stable and secure. I wanted to live, create, and birth my business and more. Tree planting no longer gave me space or the means to what was next it was time to release this cycle fully. I was ready. I left with the intention of committing to work that brought me joy and that allowed me to have balance, energy, and a broader vision and connection to freedom, peace and financial stability.

My friend asked me to go on a trip to Costa Rica. I could tell the trip was important to her and I didn’t have any major commitments at the time in Canada other than having major exciting breakthrough with developing and birthing my iammeeshaa business which was incredibly grounding and rewarding. I had missed traveling so I allowed myself to say why not. The problem with this trip was that there was no intention set. Previously while traveling I always had an intention helping on a farm, training horses, meeting family, doing remote work.. but this time I was literally just going for a trip accompanying an open itinerary which was different then how I previously traveled. not having an intention or goal for the trip made the trip become confusing. Many great lessons came from this trip including being realistic and honest with my finances, my desires, and objectives, and traveling with purpose and intention going forward where I could build a sustainable base to live and travel from.

Finances and Structure

It was sunshine and butterflies until this reality of leaving my primary source of income not only snuck up on me but slapped me straight in the face pretty quickly after returning to Canada . I had previously had the luxury of being very financially stable for a simple life supporting myself through university and traveling. I had never really had to confront finances seriously as tree planting provided this unsustainable, inaccurate get rich quick belief system programmed into me as I Ieft my teens that skewed my understanding of financial literacy and planning. It gave me freedom but only within this life cycle where I had no connections other then repeating the cycle.

In this new life I was building for myself that did not include tree planting; I needed consistency, reliability, and structure that previously was non existent. My lifestyle was not sustainable outside the tree planting life cycle. I didn’t have money coming in and had to come to terms with some hard realities and fast changes.

I was applying to work sending out so many applications and had a very strong resume graduating from Waterloo and lots of work experience however I had a 2 year gap on my resume that was concerning to employers I guess and this is when I realized the setbacks of adulthood trauma and navigating missing milestones because you are healing isn’t always well received in conventional employment discussions.

Facing off with this was wrecking my nervous system I started getting anxiety I had never experienced and extreme nervousness. I had no choice but to go inwards and trust myself what could I do. I had to calm myself by breathing and turning into the skills I have that would get me through this. I had the ultimate test to nervous system regulation and guiding myself through to calibration.

I decided to focus on my entrepreneurial ventures. My writing business and herbalism business. I had the skills to support myself independently even if I was not employed by anyone and didn’t have ei. And it worked I got just enough employment to get by. I remembered I could also dog sled and got a job guiding dog sled tours in whistler Blackcomb. And then was humbled into being offered help and accepting. for my whole life up until then I was operating with this belief system it wasn’t safe to ask for help and this experience was the beginning of completely changing that. I realized there are incredible people in my life and that it is safe and important to ask for help that suffering is not necessary and the beauty of giving and receiving. You have to be able to do both.

Discovering the Lands of my body

January 2022 a year of bliss lets go! My commitments were nervous system regulation, safe, secure, stable home, play, livelihood, dance, music, nourishment good food, and getting to know my body fully.

I flew from BC to North Bay, bussed to Ottawa flew to Montreal and took off to the destination I had been waiting two and half years to get to! Upon arrival in the sky looking at the beautiful butterfly island I started crying. I finally made it. I am here. I worked so hard to get here. I cried tears of joy. I felt freedom returning I am finally home.

I had an incredible 3 months.

I wrote a zine called Discovering the Lands of my Body which was all about coming back to myself over the last 2.5 years and discovering myself and healing from sexual shame and trauma returning to innocence and coming home to freedom and liberation of self. This book was all about releasing this shame, stigmas, traumas, and abuses out of my body entirely. It was a release to make space for the free and liberated woman I live to be.

All this inward goals I had were actualizing and magically I then met who would become my partner. the first moment we connected I just knew. my nervous system wasn’t thrown off with the trauma bond rush of butterflies but instead I felt a peace and confidence and and trust with him. I chose him going forward I allowed my protective barriers to drop and I allowed myself to open and share with him the places I discovered within myself that I could travel to. and I invited him to trust me and let me guide him to opening as well to galactic portal gateways. I chose to bring him there and we discovered the beyond a union and chemistry so potent we both opened and so did the portal of light to gift us our seed of creation and the purity of human life.

Little did we realize

The fertile soils were rich and I would soon be pregnant!

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