Years ago, over twenty to be exact, I started teaching a doula course with another powerful woman who I grew to love and respect. Unfortunately, our relationship ended with some rancour and bitterness, on my part at least, and we went our separate ways. She became very ill and survived Stage Four cervical cancer, and she is still a teacher, a powerful woman, and so much more.

On February 8, 2024, a young student/friend/mentee to whom I had become very attached finally chose to end her life after a struggle with mental illness. It was a tragic blow for everyone around her, and it hit us all that we don’t have much time to live, and what time we have we should make use of. 

Her death was the catalyst that brought my estranged friend and I back together: obviously we are both older and one hopes wiser, and over the years we’ve learned  to live a little more gently with ourselves. She is indeed a Wise Woman. But part of her wisdom, part of her courage and her fortitude are precisely the things that could (and didn’t, because of a combination of luck, love, and inner strength) have brought her down. The world is a better place with her on this side of the grass, and she is willing to embrace that.

Part of her power is precisely her recovery from her illness. Of course, part of it is God-given and part of it is sheer grit. But how can we imagine that a person we admire for their strength and inner peace and ability to love got that way by being perfect from birth? No, in fact, the women that become strong, powerful, loving, wise, become that way through and because of hardships, scars, disappointments. 

One of the women I work alongside completed a Birth Attendant training and she now attends mothers during their childbearing seasons. When she was a recent graduate of the course, she asked a practicing Birth Attendant if she thought it was ok if she’d never had a natural birth. In fact she’d only given birth by c-section and had never experienced a normal birth as a birthing mother. The Birth Attendant told her absolutely not, that she has to now experience a VBAC at home for her to have the validity she needs to accompany women.

Our culture has a weird relationship to scarring. We love the people who have “been through it”: the recovered addicts; the survivors of childhood trauma who speak out; the #metoo women; the women who had traumatic births and unnecessary c-sections who recount their transcendent VBAC or freebirth. But there are just as many people who haven’t gone through to that other triumphant side. The secret substance abusers; the private trauma sufferers; the women who were raped and never said anything; the birth trauma victims who never have that transcendent next birth. 

Life is messy and often the world doesn’t care. I believe that my scars and setbacks have turned me into a wiser woman: one who is able to be truly compassionate when I’m accompanying a mother who is making difficult choices. I can say “Who am I? She is the only one who can make this decision. It’s her life.”, and I can truly mean it. I’ve made difficult or complicated decisions that seemed wrong at the time, and even seemed wrong and were painful for years. And the repercussions of my suffering have seemed in some way to have canceled out other people’s suffering.

For example, I had a very traumatic and abusive c-section. I suffered and felt guilty for years. It affected my soul, if I can say that out loud. It affected my relationships with my children and especially the child in question. But because of that terrible experience, I threw myself into attending births in the hospital where I prevented many unnecessary c-sections and gave women that feeling that they were not alone. I couldn’t have done that without having been brought so low myself. 

If you are drawn to attend birth, and you’ve had a less-than optimum experience yourself, I am here to tell you that you are amazing!

If you are drawn to attending birth, and your birth experiences were transforming and powerful, I am here to tell you that you are amazing!

If you are drawn to attending women in their childbearing seasons, in whatever capacity and with whatever experiences you have as a woman, I would love to invite you to be part of our 2025 Birth Attendant course. 

And if you’re not drawn to birth, and you have scars, and you never got transformed and you never transcended … don’t worry! Feel your power! Jump from misadventure to misadventure! Keep a smile on your face and love in your heart and remember, you are wise!

Chasing Compassion

I always though compassion was one of those desirable traits, even a virtue, that you could feel for others. And even though I've talked the compassion talk for so many years, I have also walked the walk. I feel compassion for a person or a group of people, and I go and do something about it. You can google all my good works, I'm not interested in doing a CV of my compassionate activities.And I feel so much compassion for so many people in my life!

Is compassion even a good thing?  

The Dalai Lama says this: 
"From my own limited experience I have found that the greatest degree of inner tranquility comes from the development of love and compassion." 

Albert Einstein says this: 

"Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.”

And James Baldwin said this: 

“There are so many ways of being despicable it quite makes one’s head spin. But the way to be really despicable is to be contemptuous of other people’s pain.”

So, I guess if you're going to listen to some great thinkers of our time, you will decided that compassion is worthwhile... 

Feeling for others and doing kindnesses is a good thing. Putting yourself in others' shoes is a good thing. Getting out there and helping people is a good thing. 

All this is true, my friends. But what about compassion for yourself? What about ME compassion? Because if you don't do it, there's a chance that no one else will either. And what's at the root of compassion, fundamentally? Our own desire for happiness. The Dalai Lama himself says that the true route to happiness is by exercising compassion. I know that I feel really great when I do something kind. And its good: to be spreading love and kindness; to be compassionate; to love all the creatures as they are.

I'm starting to think about gratitude these days. Compassion is something that we can feel for others, and it makes us feel good, and it almost makes us feel proud of ourselves. But gratitude, I think, is a "cleaner" sentiment. When I feel gratitude, I'm not involving anyone or anything else in my emotional life. I'm just beinf grateful for what I have, or what I'm experiencing, or how I feel. Gratitude can come upon us without us willing into being. Compassion is something we learn, that we actively do.

You could say that gratitude is learned as well: we teach children to say thank you by saying thank you to them (at least I did). But I think gratitude is part of us. Humans feel gratitude when we look around at our beautiful world. Or at least I do. 

Anyway, the most important thing about Gratitude is that I'm wondering if its actually what keeps us alive. When we fail, when we despair, when we feel like shit and feel like there will never be a way out, a spark of gratitude is often what we can use to save ourselves from self-pity and despair. And when I've seen people really suffering, people who have really lost hope, when someone is in the darkest pit of despair, I see that their gratitude reflex is weakened. It's so hard to be thankful for anything when you are gripped by such a deep despair, and yet it is that spark of gratitude that can leave you with a tiny bit of joy that can keep you going until you finally can climb out of that hole.

Maybe I'm just going batty in my crone years, but I'm mostly grateful for everything. I'm finding it's just not worth it to be angry or to hold a grudge or to feel resentment or to want revenge. I'd rather head into the countryside and go for a long, long run, and feel the fresh air around me and feel grateful to be alive.

yes

Seize the Day! Its been one of my lifetime projects to always try to say yes instead of no. This has worked really well sometimes, and other times its led me to grief. But what joy, to experience something new just because you were open enough to say yes. And what clarity you can achieve by realizing for the first time that when you said yes you were opening up a chestful of tribulations that in the end would lead to transcendence.

Memory Lane

 I'm looking back almost 15 years to when I first started this blog and little gems are hidden at the bottom of the list, so I'm reposting some of them.

Grief

When loss jumps in, we forget to eat.
Why fuel our bodies when mortality has pushed its way into our daily lives?
What use are recipes, feather dusters, and soup when there is a huge hole where there once was a warm and loving person?
We do keep trudging though. There is chocolate, a glass of wine, and happiness far, far down the road, when the wound has healed enough that you can smile again, with your eyes as well as your mouth.

Winter Solstice 2010, Tahini Pasta

Shortest day of the year, that means the least light.
To celebrate, I made:

Tahini Pasta

In a small bowl, mix 2 crushed garlic cloves, one tablespoon extra virgin olive oil, 1/2 cup tahini, 1 teaspoon sesame oil, dash of soy sauce.
Cook 500 g. spaghetti, linguine, or other long pasta al dente. When it is ready, drain and cover with olive oil, then mix in the tahini sauce. Serve hot.

Roast Chicken and Potatoes

Place the chicken legs in a roasting pan, cover with olive oil and sprinkle dried sage liberally. Cut potatoes in quarters, with the peel, and put them in the pan with the chicken. Pour more olive oil, salt, and pepper to taste and put in a 400 degree oven for one hour and a half.

Steamed Savoy Cabbage

Cut savoy cabbage into small pieces and steam until just done. Pour olive oil, vinegar and sesame oil onto cooked cabbage and serve warm.

Trust Birth

What the fuck is that supposed to mean anyway? Trust birth, trust life, trust death. These are all reasonably meaningless utterances.

Let's unpack a little here. 

The phrase came to my attention the other day when I heard through the gossip-vine that someone didn't want me to attend her birth, because I don't "trust birth", because I gave birth in the hospital. I'll start at the bottom of this pile, and we'll move slowly upwards. First, I gave birth in the hospital. Do I feel defensive about this? Well, clearly, yes. Because it's a pedestal upon which those of us who gave birth at home can dance upon and those of us who did it in the hospital can feel ashamed about. Me? I did experience much of the hospital brutality I witnessed as a doula, and then I decided to attend women in their childbearing year so I could facilitate them feeling good about their birth experiences. And I did that, time and time again. Did I experience my own powerful and transformative birthgiving? No. My power and transformation came through small, difficult baby steps.

Does every woman who gave birth in the hospital not "trust birth"? Should she not attend the births of other women, in case she gets scared and fucks things up? Does every woman who gave birth unassisted "trust birth"? Or are things, as so often the case, much more complicated than that? 

Let's break it down even further, and start thinking about the conflict between the medical system of understanding, and the story-based knowledge base that supports out-of-system birth. First, it's looked at as a dichotomy, which isn't true. Some doctors I've had the misfortune to work with in the hospital assume that because I'm a doula and support physiologic birth, I also homeschool my kids, don't vaccinate, and eat raw food. I may or may not, and its none of your fucking business, but we've got a bad habit these days of placing people firmly in airtight boxes. If I've given birth in the hospital, on the other hand, my package is that I give my children too many unnecessary antibiotics and vaccines, send them to school, and buy my clothes at WalMart. 

These are superficial and trivializing examples of a real problem both within and outside of the world of birth. We've decided that everything is either/or, and just as when you're buying internet service, people are seen as "bundles" and not as the intricate, messy, complicated, beautiful creatures they really are.

Now, let's have a look at what giving birth in a hospital actually means. What it actually means is that many, many women go into the hospital trusting that they will be treated with kindness, respect, care. (Are they "trusting birth"?) What often happens is that the people surrounding them in the hospital are coming to birth with a mixed-up, confused, and generally dangerous vision of what actually happens during human childbirth. I won't go into the details right here (but I'm happy to share them another time!) but for various reasons, the perceived risks and dangers of birth far outweigh the actual factual reality, which is that the huge majority of mothers and babies survive childbirth if they are not interfered with. The fear-based approach, however, actually precipitates emergencies, some of which are life-threatening.

Add to that our cultural and societal weirdness that assumes that women are weak (but not all women; the story goes like this: white women are weak and need protecting from themselves. Black women are understood to be very, very strong: so strong, in fact, that when they say something is wrong they are ignored). Add to this toxic soup our inability to accept the Mysteries, and the paradox that is the sexual and divine nature of childbirth and, well, you have a problem.

But not all women who give birth within the hospital system are abused! That's great, right? Oh, wait, but I don't want to hear any stories any more about a woman going in to give birth and ending up with someone else's fingers in their vagina while she is yelling "Please don't, please stop". (Notice she is saying please: we are so polite even in our worst moments). 

So as long as there is just one woman who still has to yell like that, while someone does an unnecessary vaginal exam or a brutal placenta retrieval or a killer fundal massage, I'm still convinced that hospitals are not safe for birthing women. 

And what are the options? Indeed. It is really lovely to be able to give birth in your own home, surrounded by people you love. Many women also want to have a woman present who has some birth wisdom, some experience, some skill. That woman will mostly be silent and invisible, but sometimes she'll peep in and make a suggestions or answer a question. 

Here's the role of a Birth Attendant described so beautifully by Lazarus Lake, who is race director for the Barkely Marathon, which is the most brutal endurance run in the world. The decision to simply witness and not interfere is a tough one, but can lead to so much transformation and joy!

"as a race director you have a responsibility not to let an athlete put theirself in danger.

at the barkley that can be a tough call.

the standing joke is that every barker starting lap 5

would be pulled off the course in any other event.

jasmin was damaged when she left on the third lap.

between 3 and 4 it looked like an open question if she would be able to continue.

but between 4 and 5 she initially looked like a corpse.

she perked up briefly getting her stuff together to start the last loop.

then her stomach rebelled.

watching her try and get things under control to leave i had an internal debate going on.

carl was really in charge

but he was occupied.

and i was supposed to step in and help him when needed.

i couldnt abrogate my responsibilities on a technicality.

so i needed to give the situation serious consideration.

normally it might be advisable to tell her she should get her stomach settled before leaving.

but this wasnt normally.

the clock was running

and every second had counted for a long, long time.

jasmin was not just some ordinary athlete.

she had proven herself many times over.

the weather was not life threatening...

but most of all she was on the verge of a transformative performance.

she deserved to decide the outcome of her race "out there"

so i just watched her head out into the darkness.

the rest of the story the world knows....

or knows most of it.

if you have not been "out there"

your mind cannot create an image of just how hard it is

nor of the sheer horror that is that course.

whatever superlative you went to apply to her performance,

it was better than that."

 "most of all she was on the verge of a transformative...." sometimes it is hard to watch a woman birthing her baby. Sometimes mother and baby need to work through so many challenges. Sometimes we have to step back and let the magic happen, and most of all, we have to trust the woman to decide the outcome of her journey "out there".

"Trusting birth" is another magical language trick that takes the focus away from the powerful woman who is bringing a new human earthside. I don't trust birth, I trust the woman. I trust her to do the work, to birth the baby, to put in the miles, to make her own decisions.