Skipping record

I may sound like your favorite record, after a fresh scratch, that just keeps skipping. However, this summer seems to be a reflection on love. The reflection of new beginnings, new life, new births, and how love is constantly recycling. This morning I made a search on the internet to see what the word was out there about how ACOG is going to address the new changes in regards to VBAC's. Instead, I ran into this new journal called SQUAT. It has kept me returning at periods throughout the day to read the journal amongst my time with my sister, Jennifer, and her partner Sky as they await the arrival of their lil-bit.

This publication is awesome and speaks directly to my soul, even if on the outside I don't reflect the radical, anarchist, feminist midwife. At heart, once you get deep inside it's there and it's convicted and committed to transforming the lives of women through birth and way beyond that as well as transforming the birth environment.

As I sit in a house that is expanding it's vibration of love and the size of it's family, I am inspired by a quote from For the Love of Birth, by Jennifer Summerfelt,

Because when we are witnessed in the energy of Love, when we are held and trusted in our total greatness, we, as women, can give birth in love, and that ripples into our family, our community, our country, our planet, and our cosmos. I also believe that the men who witness the miracle of birth from a place of trust and love also become transformed and they, too, become the healers of the planet (SQUAT, Summer 2010)

My year 11 teacher would ask me, "So Becca, what did you think of that?" And I would say this now...The work of my hands is evolving and changing from where I ever imagined it to be or go. It has been asked hard to change since May and there is not a whole lot I can do about it. I have witnessed many a birth from a place of trust and love, much so that as I read this quote I can sit back and say I have been lucky. This place has completely transformed my view of living on earth. I've come to realize this past month I cannot turn back and hope for it to be the way it was, however I can move forward with just what Jennifer speaks of in her article "trust and connection."

Healing this planet is taking a lot of work and conscious effort on our parts. If it is as easy as tapping into Love and trusting it and moving forward in our doings from a place of love, then you'd think we would all sign up. Not so much so it seems to me. The greater consciousness has other work to do. But this small group of us out there doing this work, we're generating enough voltage right now to keep the light lit and for me keep sounding like a skipping record.

In closing, SQUAT also inspired me to reconnect with the activist and the inner-anarchist that is not willing to follow the grain and is totally inspired to healthfully disrupt the current state of midwifery. I'm over the current state I am surrounded by, because (guess what) I am selfish and want to see change, continuity, support and most of all Love evolve. So as I commit to my path, I commit to change and r-EVolution. Just like my father and ancestors encouraged me to do.

Maiden-Mother-Crone

This morning my momma started an email with the following sentence, "Bec, since the day you were born, you have stolen my heart--just like your sister did-- and I have wanted you to have a perfect life." It was in this new day that I (not having yet birthed any children, yet witnessing many births) had an

ah-haa moment knowing that every mother I know wants the same thing for their sons and daughters that my mother wants for us.

In old traditions, the cycles of women were known as "Maiden-Mother-Crone." We enter times, now, where not every woman becomes a mother, physically. But energetically, there are many ways to tend to children and become a mother. We all have something in our lives that 'on the day it was born' our hearts broke wide open and our souls poured out, and whomphhh, we hope and pray that little thing has a perfect life. Yet, who gets a perfect life?

Maiden, we are, from birth until we start to swell and gestate. If you are a woman who choose not to gestate a baby, what in life have you been gestating, nourishing and caring for over time? What are you gestating today? What have you mothered to creation and continued to love, just like a child? Here in this place, we play, we create a mess and start over again, we experience joy, we fall in love, and we find ourselves.

Mother...Your body swollen, life force running through you, you caring for one thing like you've never cared for yourself. During gestation, what has inspired you creatively? What do you fear about the transition and how is this fear eased? How will this maiden transform into a mother? My mother has been a constant blessing, even when challenging, to the progression of my life. She is the only woman who believes in me with such strength and yet challenges me until I push off...She is probably like this because I "pushed off" from her womb in about 4 minutes once she actually began to push in labor. After the birth of becoming Mother, we grow up. Even if you become a mother later in life, you get to grow up AGAIN. Can you see the joy? Every birth, we grow into motherhood further and further. We get wrapped up in our "seeds" and tend to them, as we tend to ourselves, our commitments and to life. Age comes to us and our wised souls watch as our families evolve, our children(metaphoric or physical) leave us and begin their own lives; and as Mother, as woman, we begin again.

The wise woman, the Crone, the auntie, the grandmother, this woman passes on the wisdom, the lessons and the unconditional love that she has experienced throughout life. She holds her daughter as she births her babies, life dreams, goals and losses. She endures the magic that is passed through our ancestors and generations, hoping to pass it on to a "seed" that will carry this wisdom into the wind. Her hair is gray, lines show in her face, and after years of watching her mother's and aunt's hold the wisdom she begins to carry the torch.

With my birth sister about to have a baby, we three women represent Maiden-Mother-Crone and what a profound time it is in our lives. Midwives "mother" women into motherhood all the time. Today, I write this as a new mother sits at home with her week old baby girl and to me revels in the love she feels. Today, I write this for all of you exploring your phases in womanhood. May you find light in your transformation.

Blessed be!

Over valleys and mountains

I started an email to a friend this morning this way:

Ever wake up and have one of those days of liberation? I did this morning and I realize that everyday we can imagine the wrongs and the rights, but what about just believing and encouraging the ones we love and ourselves into being or doing exactly what each of us is going after? So much creation.

Inspired by the reflective work I have been doing, while waiting for 2 mother's to birth their babies in to being I am also presented with my own daily life. With space and time for reflection, I am reminded how we delay and liberate one another. How by, in birth per say, an energy present in a room that doesn't believe in the birth happening because it's taking too long, or a cervix isn't dilating fast enough or whatever it is in thought CAN and often does hold a mom back from birthing naturally. For the simple women, birthing women are at their peak of intuition during the birth process and they pick up on everything. The reality is that we all need support. That we all need a spine to lean against every now and again, because we can sometimes forget that our spine holds all our weight every day. Our spines give us the backbone to stand tall, reach wide, embrace, and let all that weight sag with relaxation so we can restore.

I come to the time in my year to re-certify my neonatal resuscitation certification, so I will be heading down to Salt Lake City for a day course with Karen Strange. Her teachings always remind me that newborns breath, more than less. She empowers providers to believe that NNR is not as stressful and frightening as we imagine. I have had frightening in my life. However, inspiring a newborn to breathe who is taking it's own time to come around is not frightening after my time with Karen and seeing how gentle midwifery resuscitations are and can be. Midwives, always remember this, care for low-risk, healthy women and full term pregnancies (generally) so the resuscitations we see are very different than those in the hospital with preterm newborns or newborns whose mother's receive medication during labor. Okay, so your adrenals pump when you have to help a newborn breathe-it's just different.

As I read through these study guides and manuals, I thought about how much we in our quick paced society forget to breathe. And what happens on a cellular level when we forget to breathe? What tension is created? Do we create disease? Or do we just ignore and move on, sort of thinking we're breathing? I think breath is the most important food I can eat each day. Fortunately, I have chose to breathe mostly clean mountain air that inspires me to live deeper, wildly and in tune with myself in relation to the earth. Fortunately, I have chose to explore breath taking views as often as I can. What I am remembering right now, the last few years I was committed to a different process than breath taking views. Committed to the process of learning a new teaching, midwifery and the normal birth process, and now that I am a working midwife I can return to my normal breathing pattern. I can return to breath taking views, but as a solo midwife I have to make and plan for that time.

So what am I breathing: powder when I can, my health, my new family, snow, my feet touching the earth, water, the wild feminine, a good dog, reconnection from the past that bring love and light, both feet in, my natural consciousness returning, art and furniture design thoughts, and always ways to better and expand my business so when I do want to travel I can take every minute of every day of that time to release and grow and leave the place better than I found it.

Peace to you.