Birth matters.
And not because there’s a unique, fresh, innocent, [adorable, snuggly, pink, delicious] new baby that comes into the world as a result.
It’s because as that unique, fresh, innocent, [adorable, snuggly, pink, delicious] baby is born,
so too is a woman.
A wise woman who is love, she is of love.
She looks at you with different eyes once they have cast a first glance at the child she grew and nourished inside of her. They are welled with tears and yet steadier. Stronger.
She is stronger than she ever thought she would be.
Her self-doubt, dissolved.
She is deeply, inherently, in-tune with her instincts. She is confident, not just in birth, not just in mothering, but in her ability to go forward in her life
asking for what she wants
letting go of what doesn’t serve her
standing in her deepest power
At least, this is what we hope for. This is the potential of birth.
But as women, as a society, we overlook this potential.
The vast majority of us think of birth as something to be gotten through, numbed and distracted. A means to an end. We give up our agency and our power and we hand
our complete transformation as women
over to a medical system that is completely and utterly disconnected from the beating heart of what birth could possibly be, if we would only let it.
I blame no one, for ignorance is nothing to be blamed for: ignorance, by its very definition, releases the bearer from responsibility – both onus and, as my dear friend often reminds me, the “ability to respond.”
But I offer this:
What if?
What if we took back birth? What if we embraced it as the transformation it is? What if we went into this transformation with our eyes wide open? What if we were supported to realize our own power through the event of birth in a way that can never be taken away from us? What if we placed the medical system precisely where it belongs within the context of birth, which is to say, only when truly necessary, and then supported women to ensure that necessary really meant only that.
What if every time a woman gave birth, we, as a collective, took back a piece of the power that has been systematically and systemically disallowed us.
What then?
What if?
I don’t like to use the world revolution lightly,
but….