I know so many people who are drawn to a place. They consider it their home. I've never had that feeling about a place. Yes, I loved the smell of the market in Kampala when I returned 20-odd years later. I'm guessing it stimulated something in my amygdala that my lizard brain appreciated. And I do love the Rockies, as you all know. I love remembering the feeling of being young and fearless, and I love the feeling of recognizing how tiny I am in the bigger scheme of things. Oh, and I love hanging out in my house in Montreal, I love the couch, I love the smell of patchouli in the air from my morning baths.
But drawn to a place? Having roots, like a tree or whatever? Not for me. I yearned after it for years. I ran to Africa and traipsed around there for a couple of years, trying to imagine myself at home. I joined various communities: the radical feminists, the Left, the Ultra-Orthodox Jews, the underground midwives. I created a large family and I generally feel "at home" when I'm with my kids and their spouses. I always feel at home with my baby grandson!!!
And I always feel at home when I out there running, placing one foot on the ground, then the other, then the exact same thing, over and over and over again, the farther the better. And I feel at home when I'm curled up on my couch, reading a good book. Or when I'm on a trip, going somewhere in a car or a train or a boat or a plane. In the Sahara desert in a truck. In the mountains of Morocco with a young girl who's leading me to a cool mountain stream.
But I digress. These are all the places I've been ... not really places I actually could call my home, in any true sense of the word. Although maybe .... maybe what I feel is home just ain't what you feel is home. Maybe my wanderlust is deep, so deep that only when I'm moving do I feel "at home". That's why I speak English with a kind-of British accent; French with an Italian accent, Italian with an English accent and a couple of words of Hebrew with a Canadian accent... it's why I can have wonderful conversations with people who I've never met before, and with whom I don't share a language. We use sign language, love, and a willingness to understand and be understood.
I've met many people over the years who have had to flee their homes to settle in a completely new place. I've met families with young children who left a home that was destroyed, who walked for miles only to get on a leaky boat, and if they survived that they walked some more and then had to live in a tents for months and then they could start their new lives in a new country... and they always had their old home in their hearts, even if they knew they would never go back.
I dream about the house I spent most of my childhood years in. But I don't look back and think "ahhhh, home." But if I just remember a feeling that I had in the back of a truck in Saskatchewan when I was fifteen, and I could feel the wind in my hair and I had no idea what was coming next ... "ahhh, home". Home, for me, is the movement from one place to another. It is never "we". It is always "I" and it can get lonely. I share my home with others - my husband shares it, and my kids and their lovers and my grandson. It's a big tent, but a moveable one. A nomad's home. A snail shell.
When I'm assisting a woman giving birth, one of my many goals is to create a "home" for her, for her baby, and for her circle. I do this in many ways: sometimes with my physical presence, sometimes with my knowledge, sometimes with suggestions for her about choosing her team of support. Giving birth to another human is about one of the biggest transitions a person can make, so if I can facilitate a feeling of being "at home" through that transition, I have done my job well. To clarify, when a woman is "at home" during her birth-giving experience, she feels as if she is at the center of that experience, which is exactly where she actually is. Many maternity situations these days successfully pull a birthing mother away from that center, and away from that home. Whenever she is told that she "should" or "shouldn't" do something; whenever she is made to feel ignorant or foolish; whenever she understands that she hasn't somehow lived up to other peoples' expectations of her, then a birthing woman will feel exiled from her home and pushed out of the center of that primal experience.
And I want to make clear that I am not saying that it's only experiences that are within hospitals, or with OBGYNs that can make a woman an exile in her own birth experience. It's more common within these institutions, for sure, but then again the majority of women now in Canada are giving birth within institutions. I am saying, however, that WHOMEVER and WHENEVER and for WHATEVER reason a birthing mother is spoken to, she must be spoken to with respect, with humility, with honour. There are social media influencers who are shaming women every single minute, with "facts" about her birth choices and her life choices that are just not true. There's a whole world out there full of people who want to drive a birthing woman from her home, by imposing their own personal choices upon her.
We all need to find a home where we can dwell with some measure of peace. When babies are born in environments of fear or anger, they don't feel that peace. Good things can come from stress and desperation: women who have been torn apart are now trying their very best to repair and heal the birth environment for others to come. I love to do a big huge houseclean every so often: where everything is turned upside-down and cleaned before it is put back in its rightful place. I air everything out, make things smell nice, repair broken things, clean underneath.... maybe we need to do a little housecleaning!
Please reach out if you want to be part of the new birth attendant course @mbcdoulaschool!
*from Philip Roth's masterpiece The Human Stain.
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