Deena DiBacco
Initiation into Motherhood is a 13-month cycle — referred to as the Childbearing Year — which encompasses two months prior to conception, nine months of pregnancy, and two months following birth.
Of these stages, pre-conception is one that is often underestimated in its importance.
Preparing the body, mind and spirit for a soul’s arrival is exceedingly important — it’s like creating a sacred nest for your little spirit to rest. A place free of toxicity and energetic debris where your child grows and develops. What nest could be more important to create?
The months leading to my own conception were potent; I witnessed healing on every level — mental, physical and spiritual — in an unprecedented way.
My dedication to mind-body-spirit healing prior to conception seeded a sacred pregnancy — a dream my husband and I had been trying to fulfill for over three years, without success — and can also be attributed to the incredible magic that our son carries.
SPIRITUAL PREPARATION
My pre-conception journey began spiritually, with a medicine dive using Iboga, a visionary root native to Central West Africa. My husband and I have been Iboga providers for six years, and I’ve had many journeys since my first in 2012 — but this one was deeply spiritual for my own feminine healing.
It was my initiation into womanhood — a movement I had been avoiding my entire life. As an abused child, I always feared my womanliness. I remember the trauma of getting my first period, crying and begging God to take it away, taping down my breasts during puberty, wanting to stay a child forever.
But in my journey, Iboga pushed me to awaken something in me badly needing release. I recognized now was the time to embrace being a woman. Without this, I believe I would never have become pregnant.
By no longer denying the truth about what I am — a strong woman — and accepting and loving it by embodying the Goddess without fear, shame, or guilt, I became prepared to spiritually conceive. I gained respect for what a woman is created to be — a giver and sustainer of life. A literal bridge on which souls travel between the spiritual and physical worlds.
A potent piece in my medicine journey was the presence of legendary Spirit Warrior and Woman of Women, Grandma Kaariina, who was staying with me at my yurt home for two weeks. She sat with me during my ceremony, drumming and singing, mending the bones of a woman once broken.
She and I worked all the next day, and the days to come. As I integrated my Iboga teachings, Grandma took me deeper. We accessed parts of my ancestry where women in my lineage were abused, as well as parts of my own life and abuse. She ushered me to my feet and together we rose from the ashes to dance the song we were meant to feel — the movement into the feminine.
MENTAL PREPARATION
One of Iboga’s greatest gifts is a reset. The reset can be felt at every level of our being, but I’ve noticed that people are consistently humbled and awed by the mental reset it provides.
The day after an Iboga journey, there is a stillness of mind. And if thoughts enter, we have an opportunity to view them from a third-party perspective, watching them pass and consciously choosing whether or not to attach to them — something many of us have lost the ability to do.
When you work with Iboga, regardless of what your journey looks or feels like, you get your mind right. Every. Single. Time.
In this space, I shattered my old mental constructs surrounding questions like, “Can I conceive? Is something wrong with my body? Will I be a good enough mother? Will my child take on the patterns and traumas that I have played on loop in my own life? Will my child even like me?”
By clearing the mental slate and moving away from old stories and fears, my mind found a safe place to create new stories and truths, and the thoughts that were previously blocking my ability to offer a sacred womb dissolved. I cleared the space in my mind, and so there became space to birth a new chapter.
PHYSICAL PREPARATION
The final piece in my pre-conception journey was physical wellness.
I had been suffering from illness for years. After a trip to Central West Africa — spent barefoot and naked in the jungle, eating and drinking whatever was prepared by villagers, being bitten by countless mosquitoes, and enduring some intensely wild experiences — I returned to Canada tired, but feeling great.
A month later, I became sick. That illness did not leave me for over three years. I still don’t know what caused it, but healing began the day I stopped focusing on how sick I was — and consciously chose to get well.
After my Iboga journey with Grandma Kaariina, it became a clear priority to get my body and anatomical systems functioning again. Our combined downloads brought forth my next steps — acupuncture and hydro-colonic treatments, followed by an intense 8-month regimen of homeopathic remedies.
Both wholistic care professionals I sought out are masters in their craft, and the dedication with which I entered their care — as well as the high level of intuitive therapies they provided — resulted in me feeling better than I had before Africa, in under a year.
I had been apart from my husband for much of this time, while I was getting well. As soon as I was healthy, I flew to see him in Mexico, and within a week, I was pregnant.
It became obvious to me that on many levels, my body had not been functioning optimally, and I had not been healthy enough to conceive a child.
And with my anatomical systems finally working properly, it became truly effortless to conceive.
COMING FULL CIRCLE
Preparing myself for conception — by consciously nurturing the space of time before becoming pregnant — was the healing tool I had been seeking for years.
And while I personally benefited from healing my mental, spiritual, and physical wounds, the effect on my sweet boy is even more profound. Because I cleared dis-ease from all levels of my being, the path was clear for my son, and those old residues and energies did not stick to him.
The ultimate purpose of being an awakened human who is called to procreate is this: to plant seeds for a new generation, and assist in the sprouting and flourishing of a New Earth. One in which our children do not repeat the same negative patterns we have. In which they care for themselves, the planet, and each other. In which they recognize oneness in all things, and respond — instead of react — to all situations with Love. Not by trying to live life, but by letting life live them.
Raising children who don’t absorb the ancestral patterns and traumas we have carried means we must shed them ourselves first. Because we are the ones our ancestors prayed for. We are the ones whose duty is to break cycles and patterns, and clear a path of infinite potential for our children — so that they may create something far greater than we have ever known.
Conscious Conception waits just on the other side of this bridge, a bridge of mind, body and spirit preparation. Deena’s journey of Conscious Conception will be shared in next month’s CoCreavatars Newsletter.
Deena is a mother, wife, writer, and has been an Iboga provider for the past six years. She experienced her first Iboga ceremony in 2012, during which she awoke from the spell of a 10-year opiate addiction. Soon after, she traveled to Gabon, Africa — the birthplace of Iboga and home to its people, the Bwiti — and has completed a Full Initiation into the medicine wisdom tradition. She is also among the first nine Western women to ever complete a Missoko Bwiti Rites of Passage. Since, Deena and her husband have held space for nearly 1,000 other warrior souls to journey with Iboga. Her sweet son, Atlas Fisher, was born October 3, 2020, his 36-hour labour steeping in the energies of October’s first of two full moons, and under a sky bright with Venus and Mars in visibility. Her sweet little family resides on the Southern Gulf Islands of BC, blessed each day by the Spirit of the Water.
Deena is currently working on her website, www.consciouscontent.co, where she’ll be offering resources and guidance for other women walking the path to truth. To learn when the site goes live, and to be included on her newsletter list, email her at deena@consciouscontent.co
For more information about Deena and her husband Jeremy’s Iboga ceremonies, visit www.ibogajourney.ca