One of the things that intrigues me about the HCG protocol I’m about to start is the fact that HCG is a hormone created in a woman’s body when she’s pregnant.

(Nota bene: nothing of what I say next is grounded in medical knowledge, nor is it intended to claim medical knowledge or scientific accuracy. I’m dancing with metaphors here.)

I’m having a hard time putting it precisely into words, but there’s a resonance for me both in the imagined process of a mother’s body producing HCG as part of the protection and nurturance being created for the fetus, and also in the image of the fetus being nurtured and cared for during gestation.

I see myself and this detox journey on both sides of this coin. Certainly a big piece of the journey is to learn to care for myself in different — one might even say “more mature” — ways. To be a stronger mother to myself, in a manner of speaking. (I’m bookmarking that side of the coin for another day.)

Another area of practice and growth for me — which is what’s noodling around my brain tonight — is around receiving support and nurturance, and maybe rewiring some of my old patterns around that.

Let me own this up front: I am not so good at receiving help, support, love or affection. I don’t need to do the detailed forensic autopsy on why that’s so. Take a sensitive girl child, raise her in a patriarchal system with an average life’s share of bumps and bruises and into-every-life-a-little-rain-must-fall, add a dash of intelligence and ambition and you might get someone who decides that her version of strength should be of the “I am Lobo. I hunt alone” variety.

So, obviously, some of the sessions I have scheduled for this week’s trip have very precisely to do with the doctor’s consult around the HCG prescription, learning how to administer the injections, all that stuff. But the center I’m working with has a whole team assembled to help give me lots of other layers of support. Tips for grocery shopping and cooking, both within the immediate dietary restrictions of the HCG protocol and beyond it. Other sorts of bodywork and energy work. I’m even staying at the Center’s “guest house,” and the house manager (and/or other center staff) will be helping drive me around to my different sessions and appointments.

I know these folks. I absolutely trust them, and I know for certain that they are going to take good care of me.

And yet. My inner control freak is not entirely happy with the idea of letting go of the steering wheel, both literally and figuratively. And the fact that I am so strongly feeling the limitations of my capacity to receive and to accept — even in something as simple as accepting car rides instead of taking care of myself through a rental car — well, that’s as clear a sign as any  as to why it’s a good thing for me to try and  unwind some of these old habits around false independence and isolation.

Time to try letting the care in.

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Image credit: http://www.pixton.com/schools/embed/uneyvcdq