I Love Housework!!

It's true. Although you probably couldn't guess it looking at the state of my home right now. Cobwebs everywhere. And dog hair. (update: I got a Dyson, and I vacuumed all that shit up)

When I first started doing housework, my mother was working teaching math at the university, and doing art in her spare time, and being a proper wife and mother. I thought she was a slob, so I cleaned up. It was probably an obsessive reaction to being a misfit adolescent, but it did teach me the thrill of cleaning.

"Some people may regard the little details of the physical environment as mundane and unimportant. But very often, the disturbances people feel come from the atmosphere around them." This phrase from Chogyam Trungpa's book "The Sanity We Are Born With" jumped out at me when I first read it, and it affirms what I believe about the simple tidying-up that we can do as housewives, as friends, as mothers, as roommates, as doulas. 

The table I'm working on is a little cluttered. I ran this morning so there's my running detritus. My agenda. A vase of flowers and in the distance you can see some stuff on my kitchen counter. It mirrors my state of mind these days: a little cluttered, some half-finished business here and there, some worrying issues in the sink.

Mother's Day was originally conceived in 1872, and was accompanied by a plea to all mothers to rise up and end war. It took almost 40 more years until Mother's Day was made a formal North American "day", and the one that was accepted into the calendar began as a liturgical tradition in a Methodist Church. 

The original Mothers' Day Proclamation, Julia Ward Howe 1870

“Arise, then… women of this day! Arise, all women who have hearts, whether our baptism be that of water or of tears! Say firmly: We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies. Our husbands shall not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause. Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn all that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience. We, women of one country, will be too tender of those of another country to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs.

From the bosom of the devastated earth a voice goes up with our own. It says: Disarm, Disarm! The sword of murder is not the balance of justice. Blood does not wipe out dishonor, nor violence vindicate possession. As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil at the summons of war, let women now leave all that may be left of home for a great and earnest day of council.

Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead. Let them then solemnly take council with each other as to the means whereby the great human family can live in peace, each bearing after his own kind the sacred impress, not of Caesar, but of God.

In the name of womanhood and of humanity, I earnestly ask that a general congress of women, without limit of nationality, may be appointed and held at some place deemed most convenient, and at the earliest period consistent with its objects, to promote the alliance of the different nationalities, the amicable settlement of international questions, the great and general interests of peace.“

~ Julia Ward Howe

Today was Mother's Day. I began my day with a text from one of my daughter-in-loves. Then a son. Then another son called, and I got to have a long discussion with my grandson (who's ten months old, so our discussion was mostly da-da. Da-da-da. Da-da-da-da, and so on). Then another son and his partner invited me for brunch, but I wanted to go for a long run so I declined, then another son called, and another son's girlfriend texted. I went for my run.

So much love!! There's love all around us. And somehow, for me, when I clean it's almost like I'm shining and dusting and uncovering that love, brushing the cobwebs off my worries, shining up my compassion, scraping off my resentments and my hatreds. 

I did three loads of laundry, changed the sheets on the bed, vacuumed and washed dishes, I dusted the wooden furniture and shelves and I replaced the screens in the windows. I watered all the plants. These simple tasks help me stay reasonably sane, in an insane-seeming world.

Every single one of you was born from a mother. Some of you are mothers yourselves. Let's hold hands, in motherhood, in sisterhood, as housewives, as writers, as athletes, as bank managers, as painters, as machine operators, as ourselves. Let's dust off our hearts and spread the love!

Shields, magic, bubbles, screens

 

One of the key qualities that a doula or a midwife seeks to make use of during her journey with a woman as she births is the ability to create shields, bubbles and screens. This quality is akin to magic, and it is hard to access and even harder to use skilfully. 

1. Shields can help prevent a birth attendant from bringing her own baggage to the birth room. To do this, we must place the birthing mother at the very center of the experience, so much so that our own desires, opinions, concerns, and emotional reactions do not really matter. At the same time, we must be constantly aware of the health and well-being of the mother and child, but not in an emotionally infused way. Rather, we have to notice what is happening, much like a Buddhist will notice emotions as they drift past during meditation.

2. Bubbles are wonderfully useful and I made so many of them when I was working as a doula in the hospital setting! A bubble is a protective sphere around the birthing woman. It can include her partner, you as the birth attendant, her midwife, her mother or whomever, but its main purpose is to maintain an emotional or spiritual "space" within which the birthing mother can find her way. Often the woman giving birth has other people's ideas and opinions floating around in her head, which can detract from the intensity of what she needs to do. The bubble will often give her the chance to be fully aware of what her body is doing, so that she can stop thinking through the event.

I will create a bubble by visualizing, but also with physical closeness to the woman (eye to eye contact, light massage), and also with carefully chosen words and a physical distancing (turning my back) from the people outside the bubble. Sometimes it will be necessary for the woman to move to a different room in order to fully accept and embrace the bubble.

3. Screens are effective when there is a danger of you, the birth attendant, becoming emotionally engaged with another person in the birth room. You must erect a mental screen so that your exchange with the other person doesn't infect the atmosphere in the room. For example, if the birth is taking place in a hospital and the nurse is feeling lonely and wants to chat about the patient in the next room, I always like to erect a friendly screen so that the nurse doesn't feel rejected but she knows that conversation isn't appropriate. On the other hand, if a member of the staff is being abusive to the birthing woman I will erect a very strong, impenetrable screen that shields the birthing mother and her family from the anger or ugliness that is taking place. This can be very difficult.

These methods can be used outside of the birth room as well, in stressful situations in all walks of life. Just get your magic on, and you can create a peaceful dwelling for yourself and those around you.

The Magic of Meditation

I always tell myself I'm going to start meditating, then I do, but I only keep it up for about a month or so before other things become more attractive. Like running or sleeping. I've read a lot about meditation, and I know that physiologically it makes a difference to how our bodies process stress hormones, how our blood moves, and how our bodies function in general.

But since I'm not a meditator, how can I access the kinds of things I want from meditating, without meditating? What do I want to feel? How do I want to change my body and my mind? What's my goal?

My goal is inner peace. My goal is world peace. My goal is a healthier body. My goal is a better temperament. My goal is a better birth experience for women. My goal is to be a better person. My goal is to be the best ......

Hold it right there! "working on yourself", having a "goal" in terms of self-discovery or self-care, or healing from trauma or whatever... these are not useful. Why are we starting at a place where we are intrinsically broken? Why don't we start from that place where we are whole? If you can sit with yourself for one minute and be grateful for ... grateful for just being. For the little things that may give you pleasure in the here and now, then that is good. And that's all it is.

Life is made up of tiny drops in the ocean. Do something, it will have effects. Don't do another thing, that will have effects too. I try to experience that physiological state that I imagine meditating achieves when I lie in bed. I move my consciousness through my body and check where little glitches might be, and then I fall asleep. It's when I'm running that I can free my mind. When I run my goals disappear. I run to get lost. I run to lose mySelf. I run to run.

Lying Fallow

I've had times in my life where I've been lying fallow, waiting for the next cycle to begin. I think I'm just coming out of one of those times. I may have seemed busy, either to myself or to others, but the busyness was a superficial activity like the microbial activity on the surface of the earth. 

In a way, I think I was lying quietly, waiting to capture something that can't be captured. That elusive prey was a feeling of belonging, of being recognized and acknowledged. I lay so quietly, wanting that thing, that I started to forget who I was. So I started to be someone else, who I really wasn't.I started saying yes when I meant no, and no when I meant yes.

Living through the pandemic has thrown many of us into looking more carefully at our lives and our choices. I've been noticing weird parallels and similarities between my life and choices and other people's - people who I would never have admitted a similarity to had it not been for this dramatic event we are all living through.

I went to the desert a few weeks ago. I love it there. I would move there tomorrow if ... 

I love the clean-ness of the air there, not clean in the environmental, physical sense (although it does seem quite fresh), but clean almost in a spiritual sense. The wind blows, the sand moves, the bunnies jump around, the desert truly and clearly doesn't give any indication that it cares about you or notices you, in the sense that you can't anthropomorphize it like a shady tree or a sweet babbling brook.

So the desert gave me a chance to strip myself (figuratively, folks) naked and ask myself: who am I? 

The pandemic has given everyone this opportunity: a chance to be alone, to ponder, to daydream, to change our "normal". Have we done so? No, we have not. 

But one thing the desert always shows us is that there's always another morning, when the wind is blowing and the sand moves lightly. It's not too late to wake up and make a move. It's not too late to recover the land that has been lying fallow. It's scary, though. To be honest with yourself. To say what you believe. To engage in a discourse with others, instead of either deleting people (guilty) or falsely agreeing with them (guilty).

Well, my answers to that age-old question (who I am) were not super clear. The desert doesn't actually give you the answers, it just gives you the peace and quiet so you can try to figure them out. 

• I'm a woman 👩
• I'm a wife 👰
• I'm a mother 💞
• I'm a runner 🏃
• And a Grandmother!!!! 💓

And then there are all the microscopic things that we add on, like extra toppings on the pizza: midwife, writer, cafe owner, saxophone and clarinet player, traveler. I'm good at Trivial Pursuits. I don't like green peppers. I was shocked by the Liberal's reaction to the demonstrations in Ottawa. I don't mind breaking rules if I think they're unjust. I have three Pfizer vaccines in my body. 

Maybe fallow is the time we can separate fact from fiction: separate those things we do "just" to impress others from the things that we do instinctively. Or even the things that we do to impress ourselves, even those things can be recognized by the harsh light of the desert. 

Now is a time in our world when we are moving further and further away from each other. We are drawing thicker and thicker lines between ourselves and amongst ourselves, with little chance of repair. It's time to take some breaths and lie down. Feel the earth under you. Remember what's real. Remember what's true.

Knife's Edge - Life is Suffering

Today, I am grateful for the Edge. My gratitude alphabet is moving slowly, and I got stuck at E for Edge.

I like to live on that knife edge, where you never really know what's going on, but where you're so keenly aware of the Mysteries that life is always interesting. I get really, really sad sometimes, along with being really, really joyful, and what often keeps me balanced is the thought that "life is suffering". This means that whatever happens, if it's good, is a gift, and if it's not good, well, life is suffering. So you never really expect that things will be excellent, and then when they are, you're pleasantly surprised. 

So, how can we keep the joy in our hearts? And how can we keep our feet from being cut as we dance on the knife's edge?

1. Open your mind. Maybe you're wrong. Maybe you're right. Whatever the case, it's not worth building fences.
2. Keep on loving.
3. Remember, you're always at a crossroads. There is no easy chair you're gonna sink down into.
4. Keep on moving.
5. Be attentive! With all six of your senses. Open up as much as you can, and say yes when it's time.

Stay loving. Keep dancing. Play on the edge. 

Birth Uprising Manifesto

I have been thinking a lot about my basic values, and I've come to the understanding that these five simple words spell out my goals, in terms of my life work with families through the childbearing year, and specifically with women through their reproductive life journeys.

Safe and Sacred Birth Choices.

Let’s start at the end and work backwards to the beginning!

1. Choices

2. Birth

3. Sacred

4. and

5. Safe

1. Choice

Choices are so important! And in our reproductive lives these days, we do have many, many options and choices. But sometimes we’re presented with choices that we feel have been already made for us, or we don’t understand what choices we have. This is where the idea of informed choice comes in.

Informed choice and informed consent are often used together in a medical setting, but they’re not the same at all. Informed consent means that you’re agreeing to something that someone has explained to you. I said yes to something that you kind of explained was an absolutely necessary thing I had to do.

Consent means I said yes. The informed part can be really vague.

Informed choice can mean that too, but real informed choice means that all of the options are explained to you so that you fully understand them - and their consequences. And then you can make a choice.

A real choice. And that choice, just like in what we like to call consensual sex, might be “no”. "No", I don't want to have a child right now. No, I don't want to be induced. No, I don't want you to do that.

I want choices to be informed, respected, and real for women during their reproductive lives.

2. Birth

Well, birth is where we all come from so it’s pretty important. But birth choices, for a woman, can also mean making the choice not to give birth. Ever. Or not to give birth right away. Our choices around birth start with whether to have a baby or not and move through the whole process after that choice has been made, and beyond.

If you decide to have a baby, then the complex choices start: where will I give birth? Who do I want with me during this childbearing year? How do I want to be treated while I am pregnant and birthing? Why am I being offered this medical choice, or another one? When will my baby arrive? Can I decide when I’m going to give birth? Why does my labour not start? Why does this hurt? What should I do?

There is so much education and respect that is not available for women during their childbearing year.

I want every woman cared for with respect, humility, love, and compassion.

3. Sacred

The word sacred can mean different things to different people. Lots of you might feel some resistance or annoyance with the word. That’s okay. Except that this word might be a key to understanding the childbearing year, women’s reproductive life, and even life in general in a different way. In a way that recognizes and affirms that we are not ultimately in control, that there is something bigger and more wild growing and living through us. Even if it’s chemical reactions, or hormones, or nature (whatever that is) or Spirit, Creator, Universe or God…. if we start to imagine that we aren’t the captain of this boat, ESPECIALLY if we are attending a woman during her childbearing year, then that humility will lead us to a place where we can actually provide better care. If we understand that the body isn’t just the body, and it is made up of physical things and also things that we can’t really name, like emotions, intuitions and thoughts. And that the body and those more unnameable things work together to make not only that human being you are accompanying, but also yourself; So that we come as humans to assist, to attend, to accompany other humans, but never as a higher power or an authority.

Sacred care in birth leads to better physical outcomes, happier babies, happier mothers and a better world.

4. and

"and" can open up so much possibility … I just included it because it’s one of the five words …and why shouldn’t a simple conjunction mean as much as another fancier word? And for me, this is the truth of working with women throughout their reproductive life; again, it’s a question of humility. Who am I, fancy person with years of study, to think of myself as fancier than a simple person who has asked for my assistance? If I decide that she can no longer teach me anything, then I’ve closed the door to real healing. That little word “and” can teach us a lot: it’s a little insignificant word but it binds the two parts of the sentence together. Like love.

Every birthing mother deserves to birth in love.

5. Safe

I’m not going to talk right now about the dangers of childbirth. Just ask Dr Google and you can scare yourself silly. I won’t tell you all the scary statistics or tell you the horror stories. But what I will tell you is that our maternity system, the global maternity system that we have in place right now, is hurting women and babies. The affluent women are surviving technology-led birthing practices that take no account of the whole human beings in front of them. The less affluent women, and the black and coloured women in the US, are being treated worse than animals and are being denied decent care, either because of poverty, racism or both.

I want a maternity care culture where the safety: physical, mental, emotional and spiritual, safety of the woman who is birthing the child (or children) is the absolutely most important thing in the world at those moments, for the people attending her.

I am working hard towards this goal.

This week, I’m crying for the mothers I’ve served. The details aren’t necessary for now but I’ve spoken to six women this week; one with a tragedy; one with rage against her doctors; one with a potentially fatal diagnostic error; one with a natural birth that was interfered with; one is expecting to birth alone; one setting her boundaries hard and high.

Women shouldn’t have to fight for their right to have good, respectful care during their childbearing year.

My demands are:

Birth attendants (doctors, midwives, nurses, doulas), do you know that there is a whole movement of women who don’t want to be cared for by you, because they don’t want to be treated badly? They are not children, they are humans with whole lives, and they want to be able to make choices that may be different from yours. These women also deserve SAFE care. Here are some suggestions:

Take some lessons in self-care. This is not an option. You can’t care for others, especially for those who are bringing a new life into this world, if you do not care for yourself.

Cultivate your ability to love others. Love is not an option. You must love the woman you are supporting.

Leave your ego at the door of the birthing room. No, you are not in control. No, you are not the captain, and, no, the buck doesn’t stop with you. You are an assistant, a vessel, maybe even a highly trained one. But your job isn’t to provide judgement.

Be honest. If you don’t want to take extra time before you reach in with an intervention, take the time to explain why and ask yourself honestly if you know what the consequences would be if you waited. If you’ve never waited, and there are no studies to show what happens when you wait, then it’s all superstition and you don’t really know. If you say, “I’m not comfortable with not waiting, but there are no studies to back me up” then a dialogue can begin. If you say, “We have to do blah blah or your baby will die.” then there’s no dialogue, just fear and power and ego.

Be curious. Maybe some of the methods and theories suggested by others are actually valid. Have a look; open your eyes; don’t do a knee-jerk “NO!”. This goes for all of you – I’m not targeting doctors here. I know enough alternative practitioners who are quick to judge as well.

Be attentive. Medical practitioners have forgotten how to be attentive with their senses, and not with their machines: Sight, smell, touch, listening are the four senses we use (and we leave taste for dinner!). And intuition, and the important sense of humour! I don’t know of any kind of healer, where they’re a specialist with sixty years experience or a beginning midwife, who does not value the kinds of messages their intuition will give them, if they’re open.

Listen to the woman who is birthing. Who is she? What does she want? What does she know?

And here's some advice for all you women out there, trying to navigate the realities of your reproductive lives:

Be curious. Ask around and find the path that suits YOU, not your friend, your mother, sister, or even your partner.

Learn and keep on learning. Knowledge is power!

Reach out! There is a whole world out there, and there are people who might be able to give you the answers you are looking for.

Don’t be shamed! Whatever you choose for your journey is your very own choice, based on who you are, who you were and who you will be. Whether to bear a child, where, with whom, and how are all personal choices that don’t belong to anyone except you and your partner. If you feel shamed by a friend, a group or a professional, stay away!

Listen to your body.

Demand choices! Demand your rights! Don’t be bullied, even when you are labouring. If something doesn’t feel right, stand up and say no! If you can’t do that on your own, then hire a doula. If you can't afford a doula, find a free one! I guarantee you I will find you a free doula if you want one…

Know that we love you! Find a community, we are around.

For more information about Birth Uprising, leave a comment or reach out, you can find me!

Love, power, peace and love again.

Gratitude Alphabet (2021)

I am starting another gratitude alphabet because I had some pandemic blues last week and started a good old Pity Party. 

So here is what I am thankful for:

A is for Avraham.

Weirdly, my husband tells me that when we first met, when he was only 20 and I was 25, I told him I wanted five children!!! To his credit, he didn't run or try to hide like many men (and women) would have done back then. We were leftists! Revolutionaries! We didn't do such things as plan families or have babies; we were destined for bigger things...

Anyway, we had four sons and lived an idyllic life on a small farm in Italy until reality struck and we moved back to Canada. In 2000, I thought I was done reproducing but I wasn't! I gave birth to my fifth son in 2001.

Avraham is the most laid back person I have ever met. He's the tallest of everyone in the whole family. He loves to ski. He makes films. He helps me with my podcast. 

I'm so grateful that he is in my life. This year has taught me a great deal about being content with what we have, and about how things can change on a dime, and about how we aren't really in control at all. Avraham always taught me about love, patience, slowing down, living to your own beat.

Birthing in Love with MBC Radical Doulas

"attending a birth is a political act"

Montreal Birth Companions 

radical doula organization

In 2003, I started a doula training program with my then business partner, Lesley Everest. Over the first year, I realized that our volunteer requirement had the potential to change the lives of women, and I founded Montreal Birth Companions. During the summer of 2003, two of our first doula course graduates attended 14 births. These doulas accompanied women to the hospital to give birth throughout that first summer, without any compensation except the experience and the knowledge that they were honoured guests of the families that were bringing a new life into the world. Montreal Birth Companions, or MBC as it affectionately came to be called, was a radical, unique, inspiring organization that survived for 13 years because of the power and love of the women who served there. We never got funding, although occasionally a private client would give us an extra bit of money and one of our hard-working doulas would get a small stipend. Over the years, we served hundreds of families who would never have been able to afford doula care if we had not provided it. We accompanied many women who were completely alone, and others whose partners needed to stay home to care for other children, or who needed to work. As time passed, we started to gain recognition in the non-status communities and we served many, many women who were living without legal immigration status, and hence without health insurance. It was essential for these women to have the support and guidance of a doula, so they could give birth with as little intervention as possible and thus avoid huge charges (our most expensive birth was $30,000, which was the culmination of an induction, several days in labor, an epidural and various other interventions and medications. Of course this money couldn’t be paid up front, and the woman spent months trying to pay it back.) MBC fell apart in 2016, after some internal arguments about political views. It turned out that some of the doulas wanted a traditional organization with a board, meetings and all that. My view was always that the only mandate was to provide free doula service to marginalized families in need. So what was the need for having meetings or creating unnecessary structure? Well, it turned out, the need for structure is so that if a crisis occurs, you have a predesigned way to deal with it. Starhawk talks about this in her book Truth or Dare, where she explores all sorts of things, anarchist organizations being one of the oxymorons she shines a light on. Because when two of our doulas were sexually assaulted by one of our client’s “friends”, we had no structure to deal with the fallout; no one person who was in charge of crises; no list of things to do. And so I took it all on, and decided that I had failed everyone, and I stepped down. But now, looking back, I realize that it was an amazing moment in history! We accompanied women to have their babies in love, with companionship, within a circle of care and held space that they would not have had otherwise. We did this out of pure love, a dedication to women, a desire to give the marginalized folk amongst us the same basic rights (yes, having a circle of caring women around you when you give birth is a right!) that we affluent women do. We did all this without money or financial support from anyone, which gave us the freedom to do what we needed to do. It was a fine time, and I am still getting calls from women without health care who are seeking that support. I spoke recently with Julia Gordon, who was one of our volunteers, about what it meant to be part of such a life-changing, radical group of women. Here is our chat:

Baby Magic Montreal Birth Companions

Raise Love Consciousness with Maha Al Musa

When I asked Maha to give me one word to share her message with the world, she gave me three. Raise Love Consciousness.

I was thrilled to have a couple of hours chatting with Maha about childbirth, consciousness, sovereignty, feminism, bellydancing and her work liberating childbirth, women and babies.

You can reach her on Instagram, Facebook, or check out her website. 

Are you pregnant and looking for a guide to uncover your inner power? Are you a Birth Keeper who wants to learn more? Maha's unique birth preparation program is for pregnant mums who innately know that giving birth is meant to be a sacred, instinctual and an embodied experience and who are seeking an immersive and expansive experience as they flow through their 9 month journey. It is also for birth keepers wanting to reframe birth's purpose, be inspired by a view of birth that will raise human consciousness and understanding the journey from a sacred, wise lens to share with mums-to-be.

I am so honored to have the chance to speak with powerful BirthKeepers, Educators, Mothers, Artiists, Rebels ... Baby Magic is magical!

COVID19 in-house Day 51: Grateful for W

I've been thinking about which "W" I should be grateful for. This has been one of my themes while I'm out running. I've been arguing with myself, not out loud I hope... Words? Women? Or Wine?

Back in 1991, when I was pregnant with my fourth son, we were looking for a farm to buy and live on. We were living in a medieval tower in a small village at the time ... yep, there it is. Long story, but anyway we moved into this tower with no anything except the ghost of the poor guy who had lived in the top floor and drank himself to death, and a lot of birds, and we fixed it up, got some electricity and running water, and made a bathroom and fixed the roof, and made friends with the village people and ... eventually sold it to an artist from LA... 

So, in March 1991 we found our farm and moved there. 7 acres, a vineyard, fields, a spring where I got our 18 litre jerry can of water every day, a pond for the ducks and geese and for the kids to almost drown in... and a big stone farmhouse, and all that.

What I am grateful for today is wine. Yes, we had a vineyard and we had all the fun connected to that: the vendemmia, the pruning in April, the days in the fall when we would go down and wander through and eat grapes, the hot smell of sulfur when it would be time to spray the vines to protect them against mold...

I am grateful for pleasure, and fun, and being together with friends and family, and good meals with a glass of wine, and I'm grateful for the earth, and for the vineyard that we had, and for grapes, those bundles of sunlight encased in skin and jelly, and I'm grateful for the smell of sulfur, and the smell of wormwood that rose up from the earth on long hot days in the summer.

I'm grateful for the smell of the grapes as they are being crushed, and then when they are being pressed ... the click, click of the press as it is turned ... I am grateful for the acrid sweet taste of the mosto ... and then the taste of the new wine in January.

And, mostly these days, I am grateful for the fleeting pleasures we are given. I've had so many, and uncountable, and undeserved I'm sure. Now, more than usual, I am conscious that we have to take pleasure in the "now", and fully open to the possibilities of the "now". I don't mean tumbling into hedonism. I mean living fully with what we have now. A small glass of wine with dinner. The smell of a freshly squeezed lemon, and the cold surprise of homemade lemonade. The crispness of an apple. The comfort of a piece of bread (coincidentally, I made an awful loaf yesterday ... it is now nourishing the compost bucket...). The warm goodness of soup. The taste of a frozen pizza, eaten while watching a cartoon.

Because? Everything passes. Our vineyard, just over an acre of mostly red San Giovese, and some white... well, that place got all bought up when we left and now it's swimming pools, fancy houses, summer terraces. No more chicken coop, pond, wheat fields... and the vineyard is getting covered by creeping forest.

So, today I am grateful for wine, friends, love, summertime, wintertime, dinner, breakfast ... I am grateful... and I'm hoping you are too. 

COVID19 in-house Day 43: Normal? Who Needs It!

Today's gratitude letter is "y".

I was going to make "y" stand for "Yes!". I was going to write about acceptance. The beautiful messages behind the rainbows and "ça va bien aller". How we need to submit to the reality we are living, gracefully. How the very act of being grateful for what we have is a radical act.

Yes, this is all true.

But what about the "why" of Y? 

This crisis is giving some of us an unprecedented opportunity to ask "why"? Of course, people who are struggling to avoid violence, feed their families, and find shelter do not have the luxury of asking thoughtful questions. Their struggle is real, and it is getting more extreme the longer the pandemic forces them to stay home, or gives their oppressors a chance to exert power over them.

But many of us can, and should, ask why. I don't mean the little "whys". The questions about the details of our lives: the legislations, the rules, the changes, even the source of the virus and why it is happening now, in our lifetime ... these are important questions, to be sure.

Our lives right now are handing us a golden opportunity to ask WHY? What habits have I been living my life by, that I now have an opportunity to examine? What decisions have I made over the years that have left me feeling uncomfortable, and why did I make those decisions? Why have I not done what I considered to be the right thing? Why do I continue to live a life that I do not love and cherish? What is stopping me from changing my life, radically, if I decide that I want to pursue a different path? After all, we have just proven to ourselves, over the past few weeks and months, that we can actually make radical changes in our lives and still be happy, and creative, and productive.

Why would we want to go back to the old normal? Why would we want to get back on to the rat track, the spinning wheel of busyness where we don't see each other very often, we never eat together at home, we don't have time to cook, or clean, or spend time with our children, or sit and think and stare at the sky. 

I'm not talking about deciding to start a whole career change, at fifty, because you're bored. That's the easy way out. I'm talking about the more difficult questions: What does it mean that I have children and how much time to I really want to spend with them? How is it possible for me to live with this romantic partner for our whole lives if I can't stand to be stuck in the house with them for longer than a few weeks? What are my coping strategies and how self-destructive are they?  

What if you find out that you actually love staying home and you want to figure out a way to do so? What if you realize that you always find the most miserable approach to any stressful situation? What if you find out that you don't actually love being around people? What if you know, finally, what you've always wanted to do? And now that your mortality has suddenly become a little closer, you realize that you are just going to do it. 

Or not. You may decide to sit on the knife edge for the duration. Constantly reaching crossroads that you don't know how to navigate. Shooting from the hip, saying things out of turn, making new enemies and friends at the drop of a hat. 

You may decide you have had enough, that as soon as this is over (What is "this"?) you will head out, leave everyone behind, change your name and never come back. 

You may realize that everything you've been doing so far is an illusion; that life is suffering; that you have no use; that the world will continue without you as it always has. 

Think about it: what do you want to do? Shall we return to "normal"? Or shall we try to create something from nothing? 

All questions; no answers. I've never been one to tell people what to do; I was a hands-off midwife, always turning the questions of "what should I do?" back to the person asking, so that she could learn her true path. Because, really, you are the midwife of your own life. I am just here to remind you that NOW is the time that you can grasp on to a new way of being. Our window is only open for a little while. Far too soon, the world will be with us again, with its temptations of consuming and rushing and giving away our freedom. 

What shall we do?

COVID19 in-house Day 22: Birth and Choice

My dear friend Syd reminded me of something the other day when she suggested we all stop talking about "lockdown". Lockdown is something that happens is prisons. It's a scary situation when all of your freedoms are taken away. What we in Canada are living through now, most of us anyway, isn't that. It's scary and several of our taken-for-granted freedoms have been curtailed, but we are not in "lockdown".

I would like to take a minute to think about all the people who have had their lives deeply shaken by this pandemic: some people have lost their lives, others have lost loved ones. Some people's futures are changed beyond recognition, other people's present lives are changing as quickly as thought. In some countries, the biggest risk is starvation because there's no way to get out to get food and no way to make a living. In others, people are struggling to get by on what little they have.

But all of us in this world, together, are living through this historical event, whether we like it or not. We all have to figure out creative ways to live, to rise up to the new challenges we are faced with. Here in Montreal, most of the people I know are staying home, except for the health workers amongst them. Those brave souls are out in the hospitals and clinics, keeping us healthy, providing for the sick, and juggling their own lives and families with the needs of others.

I worked as a birth attendant for twenty years, and I trained doulas for fifteen of those years. One of the qualities I always valued in a student doula was flexibility. If a doula has that quality of making virtue of necessity; if she can take a challenging situation and make the best of it, then I am confident that she will provide the very best care for her clients. It's tough, sometimes, when a client wants her birth to go a certain way, and you as her doula know that it's unlikely that it's going to go that way. It's tough when your client is going to birth in a hospital where you know that the protocols don't "fit" with her beliefs about birth, or when things take a turn and interventions are needed. In these situations, I teach my doula students a few main lessons.

The first one is: when you and your client enter into the hospital, you are entering someone else's home. In the hospital, you don't make the rules. When you're in someone else's "home", you follow their rules. When your client is in labor is not the time to try to change the rules. A birthing woman should not have to spend her labor time battling with her attendants. She should have a realistic idea of what will happen. If she doesn't agree with the rules, then she should make other arrangements.

The second rule is: as the doula, you are there to support your client throughout the journey. In every scenario, with whatever tools you have at your disposal. Again, now is not the time to argue with the medical staff. Now is the time to concentrate on accompanying your client as best as you possibly can, so that their experience will be positive.

The third rule is: love your clients, love the staff, love the birth experience, love the baby. The more love you can spread around, the better.

Two major maternity wards (also here) in Montreal announced this week that because of Covid19, patients giving birth would not be allowed to bring anyone into the birth room. Not a doula, not a partner, not a mother. This has sparked a huge controversy and many people are angry, many are worried about how their birth will unfold, and petitions and news articles are all over the social media.

I do understand how scary it is to give birth alone. I've done it, in a foreign country, and it's not pleasant. (Actually, that's an understatement. It's traumatic and awful. But I didn't have a doula, and I didn't speak the language.) I believe that the maternity care system here in Quebec is broken: it's been broken for a long time - there aren't enough midwives; the laws around midwifery care were badly conceived; the maternity wards are understaffed and overly restrictive. In twenty years, I've heard many, many awful stories about giving birth in Quebec.

But this is the worst time to start to fix it. The worst time to try to change it. The worst time to push against a policy that actually will save lives.

It's a difficult time to give birth. It's a difficult time to stay alive. It's even a difficult time to die, as funerals are restricted. But this is a time when we can use all the resources we have to make our experiences better. So, doulas, I am calling out to you to do your very best work, and prepare your clients with love and compassion so that they can look forward to their birth with joy, and they can enter the hospital knowing that, yes, they will be cared for. The nurses are in fact there to care. You will be FaceTiming them from your home, guiding your client with your voice, letting them know that you love them, that they're doing a great job... using all the skills and creative tools at your disposal in the trying times.

After this is over, let's fight together for decent maternity care! Let's make a note that, yes, maybe hospitals should be for sick people and birth belongs somewhere else. Let's fight for more midwives, for more birthing centres, for an understanding of pregnancy as a normal, healthy event. But let's save that fight for later. For now, let's try to live together, with love. Doulas, be creative! Use your voice to provide support for your clients, where they are.

In these complicated and challenging times, let's pool our resources to work together! Spread the love!

COVID19 in-house Day 8: What is Normal?

Well it's been a week. Does it feel normal yet? Not at all! Our family is still spread around the globe, and although we talk most days - and way more often than when we are not going through a global fucking pandemic, and although we have a hilarious family "spicy meme" group, I still worry about my five chickadees and their partners. I leave the house to chase my shadow for a few k and that always puts things in a better perspective! Here are my thoughts from these days...

This week's challenges: realizing that we have to close the cafe for longer than we anticipated. Way longer. And although we have been given a green light by the government to provide take-away, I don't yet feel comfortable sourcing food, cooking and delivering it until we are sure that contagion is over. I worked for twenty years in health care, and I always approached every single one of the women I worked with "as if" they were infected with a blood-borne disease. Because that's the way you have to do it, because if not you're targeting groups who you've decided will be more likely to be carriers. That's how personal protection in the health sector works. So ... I have to know that I could be carrying it or ... anyway you get the picture.

... realizing that my retreats this summer in Italy are not going to happen. That is hard: two losses: fun and financial.

... living at home in our house with two sons, a husband and a nephew has its ups and downs. Ups? Everyone pitches in, lots of cooking, games every evening, company, also the house is large so everyone can indulge in "fuck-off hour" and find a private space. We have a yard. We have lots of food, booze, and books. Downs? Well, everyone needs to have a melt-down every once in a while and that happens. Luckily we all haven't had one at the same time.

... looking at the government sponsored financial assistance for small business owners like me and realizing there's not a lot happening. If I have a big company I can get a loan. If I've been laid off I can get benefits... I'm stuck in the middle...

This week's joys: talking to my three sons who live far away (nowadays even Ontario seems far away - and he's the closest!).

... organizing a women's retreat with my daughter-in-law for sometime-in-the-near-future, and talking with her most days.

... practising my saxophone, when I have the inclination... I'm learning but I want it to be fun...I know I should practice every day but hey! I want to take it easy. It's a lovely, friendly instrument and I'm just starting to make friends with it. My family banded together and gave it to me at a surprise birthday party when it wasn't even my birthday.

... being able to continue my Runstreak 2020 ... I started running at least a mile a day on Dec 31, 2019 ... and I've kept it up Every. Single. Day.

I am grateful to be healthy and to live in a place where I can still go outside to run (otherwise I would have to do a marathon up and down my stairs since I don't have a balcony).

--- eating so much good food! My husband is a great cook, and the wizard chef moved in to stay with us for the duration so ... every dinnertime is a feast!

Lastnight we had a family meeting about how we are going to live together given the recent changes in rules and regulations... here in Quebec things have gotten real very quickly, the way it's happening everywhere, I'm guessing. Now, we have to stay home and we can't meet with more than one other person. If you're a group of more than two you are either performing an essential service or you're living in the same house. We've been asked to not go out to do anything unessential, no visits or visitors, no playdates, no dates.

So we sat together, the five of us: myself as the senior, husband, adult son, young adult son and young adult nephew, and we decided what was essential and what was not. Essential: pharmacy (essential meds), groceries, and going to the cafe to pick up groceries from there. Non-essential: SAQ (booze), picking up a laptop from work, meeting a friend, having a friend over. The biggest deal was for my youngest son who can't see his girlfriend until this is all over.

Carefree summer days

We made the choice to follow the rules to the letter, and we hope that everyone does, so that we can minimize the spread and cut the pandemic as short as possible. It's still spreading. It needs hosts. Stay home! Connect online! Call your friends and family, don't visit. Here it is, clear and simple, from the Chief Public Health Officer of Canada

#Everybody - we must #PlanktheCurve for 🇨🇦!
➡️#SocialDistancing: keep 2 metres away from others; no visitors, no playdates
➡️#Washyourhands well & frequently
➡️Disinfect surfaces & high touch objects#COVID19 #StrongerTogether#FlattentheCurve

— Dr. Theresa Tam (@CPHO_Canada) March 23, 2020

COVID19 in-house Day 2: We Are One

When my youngest was maybe four years old, that meant I also had a six, nine, and eleven year old, we lived on a farm. Some would call it paradise: we lived in a beautiful old stone house, with a wood stove, terracotta floors, and a view of the fields and a huge old oak tree and a big cherry tree. We had a duck pond, with ducks and geese, and hens, a vineyard, a huge vegetable garden, a dog and a cat. We ate food from our own land, drank wine from our vineyard. I would walk down the path about 50 meters and carry 18 litre jerry cans of drinking water back to the house from the spring. On the down side, it was a project that involved a hell of a lot of work, and time and energy, without any financial reward, so we were pretty tired by the end of each day. It was a good, healthy, solid life.

One fall, my oldest came home from school with a bad case of head lice. Back in those days, in Italy, you didn't get the sucky letters from the school about how to treat it and how to isolate or whatever. You just dealt with it. Two of our family of six didn't get them. My husband clearly was not on their menu, and one of my sons. But I did, and all three of the other kids did. I have long curly hair, and my youngest did back then as well.

For a while, I tried to treat us individually. I used separate everything, I got all stressed about isolating, hard when they all slept in the same room. I carefully did all the things you're supposed to do. Nothing. The insect world was clearly winning.

Then one day, well into the winter, I realized that I was going about it all wrong. This was a case of the insect world against the human world! If I killed a louse on one head, the rest of them would just move to another head! I needed to look at the family as a whole, and engage in all-out, across the board battle against these creatures.

I went back to one hairbrush. I washed all the laundry together in hot water and hung it out for 24 hours. The brothers went back to rough-and-tumbling together with their heads touching. I reduced my intense stress and anxiety. I continued intensive hair washing and cleaning but smaller brothers bathed together as before.

I was victorious! By realizing that we were one, by reducing my anxiety and concentrating on the matter at hand, and by lessening useless restrictions on having fun, I finally managed to vanquish these tiny creatures who were making our collective life miserable.

Ya, so? COVID19 is a killer virus, not just an embarrassing insect. True. Even more reason to look at how we are reacting to the crisis, and to understand better what our most effective tactics might be.  I'm not an epidemiologist, although I've been saying for a few years now that if reincarnation is a thing, then I'd love to become one next time around. But then again, I probably won't remember or I'll be a squirrel. What I have understood, though, is that the more people stay at home and limit their contacts with others, the less people will get infected all at once, which will lessen the global severity of the pandemic. So, if I'm staying at home with my family, there are five of us here. If we all get it, or if we all have it already, we are staying home and not infecting anyone else. If we all go out because we feel great, then that number of possibly infected people grows exponentially. And a certain percentage of those people will need medical care. So the more people out and about, the more really sick people will crowd the hospitals.

If we all stay home, the infection stays home too. The number of new infections is reduced, and the hospitals and health care workers can better manage the load. If we look at Italy as our example of what not to do, their population and their government ignored this simple rule for far too long, and so the virus spread like wildfire. We need to recognize that every single one of us is part of a bigger whole. I'm staying home, my kids are staying home, I hope you are staying home too.

And if you're not staying home because you're a health care worker, or part of our essential services, then thank you! Stay safe, stay healthy, stay happy.

Stay happy? I'm not actually an extrovert. I think I may be a little Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. I do love people, I love a party, I love chatting with people, I love running my cafe and making jokes and finding out about peoples' lives. But damn! Give me the four hour solitude of a long Sunday run! Put me in the mountains on my own and let me wander! Leave me at home alone for days on end! I do appreciate my own company as well.

Yesterday was a challenge. I got up early to have a little alone time, which was fabulous, except I wasted a large part of it on my phone looking at funny covid memes. Then the day just blistered by. We had a mid day crisis when my nephew was trying to decide if he should drive back home with friends (long car ride, not a good idea). The day filled up with worry and anxiety. I spoke to two friends who are over 70 and in isolation. My family is around the world and I miss them. What's going to happen? I felt out of control and extremely worried. What the hell? My cafe that I worked so hard for, stricken down by a fucking VIRUS? Where do we draw the line with our social isolation rules? Can we go to the workplace to pick stuff up? Use the copy machine? Can we go buy booze? Can my son visit his girlfriend? Damn, I don't know...

Good Stuff
So, I did intervals yesterday. My fastest pace was 4:34. Ha! Getting fitter at least... I am planning  a virtual book club. I sent some money to a friend in Greece working with the migrants. I kept my shit together.

Love you all!

COVID19 in-house Day 1: Tie Your Camel

Pray to Allah, but tie your camel to a tree. What does this mean? For me, simply, it means that we should trust that everything will work out for the best, more or less, but that we should also be active in our own destinies as far as possible.

Being born is a hugely dangerous activity, because it means you're gonna die, bruh. 100% mortality rate for those of us who are alive. That said, it's always nice if you can find a way to live longer, hence tying your metaphorical camel to a tree instead of relying on Allah to take care of it for you.

When I was just fifteen, I ambled up to the Trans-Canada and started an epic trip across the country. I vividly remember wearing a light blue windbreaker, and having a pencil and nine dollars in my pocket. Hitchhiking is never a good idea, not even in 1972, but I survived, and I collected some mind-blowing memories along the way.

Being the only vertical thing for miles and miles in Saskatchewan and watching a storm come overhead, being rained on, and then watching it leave was a memory that I still rely on when I'm thinking about life.

Standing on the side of the road for hours and hours in Manitoba, feeling very hungry, thirsty and a little bit scared, watching all the bigs cars and trucks pass as the passengers looked at me, a skinny kid with Janis Joplin hair and a light blue anorak. And then the most tumble-down truck in the world, that contained the biggest family I'd ever seen, stopped and gave me a ride to the next Nowheresville destination and crammed two dollars into my pocket as I jumped out of the truck.

And the guy who was so drunk he could hardly talk who only stopped because he wanted me to drive, and I'd never driven before but I managed ok, until we got to a city, then I parked the car, got out and left him sleeping like a baby, as he had done since he picked me up.

So, these are probably stories about when I should have tied the camel a little tighter, or perhaps my parents should have. Either way, I survived, with a healthy respect for Allah, and for rope.

Last week I was trying to balance trusting in God (fate, Universe, whatever you want to call it), with being cautious. I decided that it was safe for me to wipe down the tables at my cafe with disinfectant and to be more conscious about normal safety rules in the kitchen. I didn't touch the handles on public transport. We decided not to eat out.

Then things moved very quickly: I closed the cafe for in-house meals, switching to delivery. I stopped using public transit. We had a family pow wow about washing hands. And then, and now, things moved even quicker and I decided, as many of you have, to stay at home, to avoid unnecessary outings, and to bide my time at home.

My camel is tied very tightly to the tree. And I am praying, in my own way, that this crisis will pass soon. I'm lucky. I have most of my family around me, and I'm healthy, and we have lots of food and... of course I have my saxophone to play and I can still run outside and and and .... sending you all love. Take care of yourselves and each other.