Discover your Potential

I have an assortment of interesting classes, workshops and get-togethers happening at my cafe over the next few months.

Here's a taste of what's to come:

Most exciting, I am organizing a long-term study group. I'm very motivated to find a core group of birth companions who are interested ...
We will be focusing on the prenatal experience for about nine months, then moving on to labor, birth and the postpartum after that. If you would like more details please email me.

Events in the upcoming months:

October 28 and 29 ...  learn about cooking and baking with chef extraordinaire from Caffe della Pace.

November 15, from 6-9 pm, learn about postpartum herbs with Jenny Bee. For more details, see event here.

November 19, from 6-7:30 pm, Doula Cafe! This is a place where doulas and doulas-to-be can get together at the Peace Cafe. We share birth stories, life stories, laughter and more on the third Sunday of every month.

On November 26, Jenny Bee presents Yoga for Doulas One (Prenatal). This is a must for anyone who is learning how to doula or already practising. Yoga for Doulas Two (Labor and Postpartum) will be offered in January.

                                                                         

When the S!*@*#t Hits the Fan (and you get splashed)

Midwives have a kind of cute expression for it. "Meconium happens." Meconium is the sterile black sticky poop that babies have in their guts until they are about 3 or 4 days old. Some babies poop it out in the womb (not great). Others spray it all over everyone when they're being born.

I'm not big on euphemisms, generally. Let's talk it out and use the correct language, ya? But sometimes, you just feel like you've been crapped on.

Yip, and you're there, underneath the working parts, wishing you were on vacation. So, what to do? What do you do when someone poops their stuff out on you?

Unfortunately, this tends to happen more frequently when you are a caring person. I don't know why. The poor sod who has some stuff to work out doesn't really understand what's going on and they often regret their misdeed afterwards: "I don't know what came over me". Or they are so confused they think the whole episode is your fault: "Well you know I am sensitive about ... blah blah." We can theorize forever about what makes people tick, or explode. But ...

This kind of thinking is EXACTLY the opposite of what you should be doing. It's not about that other person. It's not about Frank Zappa, or whoever it was that just pooped on you. Imagine a newborn baby, slippery and new, who just happens to spurt meconium all over your clothes, face and .... everywhere. You don't blame the baby! Right?

How can we effectively live through the experience of being dumped on? First of all, this advice is NOT for people who are being physically attacked or threatened. I am talking about emotional dumps that make you feel bad, for an hour, a day or a year.

1. If it's something that happens over and over again with one person, you need to take a good look at the relationship and figure out what you're involved with. What is it inside you that needs that dynamic? Do you need to end the relationship?

2. If you've decided to continue a relationship, despite the occasional dump, you need to understand the emotional activity inside yourself when someone takes a dump on you. We react in two ways, and both ways involve a mental loop that keep repeating inside your head. Some of us turn the hate inside, and go into "poor me" mode, remembering ancient and not-so-ancient hurts, reminding ourselves of all the times someone wasn't nice to us, listening to that voice inside our head that says: "I hate you because you are a loser". Harsh.
Others react with anger, and take their anger out on anyone and anything around them. "How dare you do this me! I'm gonna hurt you bad, and also you, asshole, because you can't drive worth shit!"

Let's get to some fundamentals here: Peace. Love. Most of us want inner peace, and everyone wants love. So, how to get there? Best to avoid emotional road accidents. Like the midwives say, meconium happens. Really bad meconium can happen, stuff we have no control over. The least we can do, then, is regain some control over the things we CAN control. And we can start with our reactions.

Phase One: Person does an emotional dump on you. Breathe.

Phase Two: Distance yourself.

This is their poop. If you can't distance physically without making it worse, then go away emotionally. Be mindful. Feel your body. Let go of tension in your muscles. Breathe.

Phase Three: Disconnect the loop.

Remember, the other person is doing something, not you. Don't react. If the loop starts, go back to your breath. Feel your body. Breathe.

Phase Four: If you can, connect with the compassion inside you.

Look at the person who is having a fuss. Shine your love on them. Don't say anything, and don't get a sucky look on your face. Just sit with compassion and love. Breathe.

Phase Five: Get on with your life.

Do something physical. Yes, go for a run! Maybe take a break from the dumpster, if you can and you feel it is necessary. Have some fun. Be aware the looping can start at any time! Breathe.

Do Not:

1. Explain. No reason to! You do what you need to do. No need to rationalize, describe, justify.

2. Give advice. The person does not need your unsolicited advice. You can only protect yourself from damage if you fortify your own emotional immune system (using breath, mindfulness, attention to your body and by avoiding toxic activities like explanation, bad tape loops, and self-pity).

3. Take yourself too seriously. 

 

You can change the world! 

 

One good habit at a time. Join the fun side! Be mindful, be compassionate, be loving and kind. But don't make a comfy house for yourself underneath Frankie's toilet, or you're in for a world of pain. 

City Life Political (infrastructure, heavy machinery, and water?)

Let me say first of all that I am grateful to live and love in a city where I know that I am safe, I can get health care when I need it, I have enough to eat - and more - and I'm not in imminent danger of being murdered when I step outside.

I live in better conditions than millions if not billions of people. One of the things I live with is this concept we call democracy, and it means that we have the right to vote: our votes will be counted, and they will mean something.

So, here's my two cents worth:

The beginning, August 16, 2017

The city of Montreal has needed infrastructure repair for a very long time. They've decided to rip all the streets up now, and they're finally doing extensive work all over town. Great! I don't know the ins and outs of how much the federal push for infrastructure improvement has to do with it, or who is "pushing the envelope" to whom ... but I do know that while many of our citizens are driving around town gnashing their teether in frustration with roads closures and the like, some of us are actually living in a construction zone.

It's been touch and go with our water supply. You might notice those white pipes in the pictures? Our water comes through those. Every so often the taps don't run at all ... but we've learned that we can't have the washing machine on and try to have a shower at the same time. But we're used to water issues, we used to live on an isolated farm in rural Italy where I would walk down to the spring every day with my twenty liter jerry can ... a little different when we're all busy and it's Sunday night and we all want to do laundry and prepare for Monday morning but hey!

- is it legal for citizens to walk freely amongst moving heavy machinery? (no other way to get off our property)

- is it fine to have emergency service vehicle access severely limited? (meter long and meter wide ditch in front of our houses)











- is it ok not to have garbage or recycling pickup for over a month?

- more trivial quality of life concerns: the noise, the extra dust, the effects on our social life (people with small children or disabilities or both cannot access our house easily)

So, my question is, which municipal party would have managed this construction fiesta in a way that better served the interim needs of the population?

Happiness

It was field hockey at a grammar school in east London that turned my mother off organized sports, and I inherited her dislike of all things “gym” for many years. The good news was that I grew up close to the Rockies and so spent much of my spare time hiking in those lovely mountains, running up and down trails like a mountain goat.

I also played the clarinet, and for fun my music teacher would get us to lie down and put heavy dictionaries on our bellies and teach us to breathe with our diaphragms. As an adult I kept myself fit: for many years I hauled cement, small children, water and wood and as we renovated and ran an old farm in Italy.

But years later, I started running. My sister took me for a run one day and I was hooked! I had run a little before then, around a park, wearing unsuitable clothing and big old tennis shoes. In 2012, just after my father died, I went for my first real run. In 2014, after my mother also passed away, I decided to try a race. In 2015 I ran my first half and since then I have run several races, and I try to run at least two or three times a week. I did a half last year on my 60^th, beating my PR by four minutes at 2:33.

Its not quantity that matters, though, with running.  That’s the beauty of the sport. Its what you do with it, how you incorporate running into your life, and what you learn from those hours on your own or with friends, moving quickly through your world, conscious of every footfall.

Everything I’ve learned running can be applied to life itself.

What have I learned?

I learned about gratitude. I’ve learned that every run is a gift; my health is a gift; every full breath I take is a gift.

I’ve learned to accept my body, which I used to look upon with disappointment and disdain. It may not be perfect, but its still running after all these years!

I learned about competition. Every runner has a competitive streak, even if you’re just competing against yourself. Healthy competition is good; comparing yourself constantly against an ideal or another person is useless.

I learned about play. Running is fun! It’s great to run through the world, by myself or with my friends or my dog. Loving what I see and what I feel.

I learned discipline. The act of lacing my shoes and piling on the layers, when it is -16 outside and a light snow blowing can be an act of defiance. Running that extra few kilometers when I’m done and I want to eat and drink is a lesson. I can use that strength when life is not going exactly the way I want it to. I can breathe and keep my mouth shut and think good thoughts.

And I’ve learned that its not “running” that taught me: it was me! I ran all those kilometers, I trained my self to be disciplined about it, I worked on strength and speed, I got up early to run before work. I rested when I had to, and learned to eat better.

The biggest lesson, though, has been about happiness. You take it where you can find it, just like you go for a run wherever and whenever you can. And guess what, I’m happy!   

Sexual Politics

Back in the day when I was first becoming an adult and exploring my relationship to the world, we used to say "The personal is political". Generations that have come after mine have absorbed this saying so that what seemed revolutionary to us is a given for them.

A few years ago we had a big kerfuffle in the American midwifery community. There was a pitched battle between the old guard, feminists who believed that their fight for women's rights and the right to choose and women's right to power over their own bodies was their domain, and the domain of midwifery and the be-all and end-all of reproductive justice.

The new guard said, no, actually, we have a new and different way of looking at bodies. We have taken your idea that everyone could "be what they want to be", and be respected for that, and we've lifted it one step higher. Now we are fighting for the freedom to actually create our own identities, and for the freedom to be treated as people on our own terms, in our own inclusive language, freed from the restrictions that the "women's movement" imposed upon revolutionary change.

Heady stuff. I signed a letter that agreed with the original proposition, that, yes, we have fought long and hard for "women's rights". But several of my younger students and a couple of my friends came to me and said, actually your view is distasteful to us, and offensive to some. We are fighting a different battle, they said. You don't understand the basic concepts, or the rules of engagement, or anything really. So sit and listen and learn.

So I did. I took my name off the letter (actually its still on, but hoping for closure at some point). I sat and listened. I don't agree with everything I hear, in fact some of it I downright disagree with. But I do agree, and fully support, a person's right to passionately believe in something. I believe that to change is to live. I believe that just because I don't understand something does not give me the right to offend people or dismiss their beliefs.

Part of the huge gift of being on this planet for sixty years is that I experienced infancy, childhood, adolescence, young adulthood, young motherhood, older motherhood, and I am just starting to see the value of acceptance and flexibility. So I say to the young guard: so happy you are making changes. May you make them wisely. And when the time comes, may you have the grace to pass the torch to your children and their children.

Where Have You Been?

I was in Greece during the coldest winter for years, working to ameliorate the lives of refugee women, men and their families there. I'm haunted by it. Not so much by the stories, which are monuments to human destruction and human triumphant resilience at the same time. But by the ego-based failure of those who wish to help, to really do anything effective.

I just heard news from Raqqa. The families there have no human choice. Stay and die. Leave and die.

What will we do? What is to be done?

I remembered the stories I heard when I was in the camps in Greece. And this song was going on and on in my mind.

A woman with bomb pieces in her hip.

Families who know they will never see their homes again.

A man who lay bleeding for hours in Aleppo.

A child who was thrown from her father's arms to her uncle's, as her father was dragged back to Turkey.

A child who makes money for the family selling sex ... while her mother takes care of her baby.

A man who walked with his wife, children and his mother across several countries to make a better life, who is angry because he is stuck in northern Greece.

An artist who painted the pictures of terror.

A child with a look of horror who walked around the hotel lobby playing a tin drum.

A predator extorting refugees for money.

A volunteer leader who is cruel and greedy.

Some children in a military camp killing a litter of puppies.

A baby dying of hepatitis.

A young man dying while the doctors were at the gate being questioned for papers.

The boats arriving through the fog and snow.

Boxes and boxes of stuff sitting waiting in warehouses while paperwork gets done and people are cold and underfed.

Couples wanting to make love and condoms tied up in bureaucratic red tape.

A young man in jail in Turkey for no reason.

A family with a newborn with nowhere to live.

And what do you do now, my darling young one?

Gold Medals, Happiness, and Fascia

I ran my first race in 2015, a half marathon (that's 13 miles). I made it in 2 hours and 37 minutes, and I was really happy and proud. The next day and the next after that were painful and tough: my body seized up and I could hardly walk down or up the stairs.
Since then I have run another half marathon, a ten k and a 12 k. I love racing! My pace is getting faster as I work hard on my body to perform better and better.

I had some injuries: IT Band Syndrome is when imbalances and weakness in the hips and the thighs manifest as extreme knee pain. I did some exercises and fixed it. Plantar fasciitis struck me last summer, and it has been much harder to overcome. This is a condition where the fascia beneath the foot become inflamed and tight. It can cause unbearable pain if it is ignored.
Both these common runners injuries are related to inflammation or tightening of the fascia. The fascia can be understood as a sheath of connective tissue that covers much of the inside of the body: organs, glands, muscles are covered with slimy and fascinating fascia. It is that white shimmery stuff you can see under the skin of a chicken.

It holds us together. People are now suggesting that it is a vital clue to understanding the body in a holistic way.

As a midwife, working with childbearing women for over twenty years, I saw time and time again the effects of emotional states and attitudes on the pain and difficulty of labor and birth. I am not saying that a smiling and easygoing woman will have an easy birth. A big old smile during hard physical work really does help though!

The women I attended who had the most satisfying (for them), the easiest (for them), and the most joyful births were usually the women who tried their very best to go with the flow - to take the labor contractions one at a time, to smile and have a good time during the process. Very often, the women who birthed with such grace would have done yoga throughout their lives or at least throughout their pregnancies. This would help them figure out how to deal with a difficult physical situation - the necessity to hold a yoga pose even after you think you can't is a very good lesson for having children.

I started to notice with my Plantar fasciitis that the pain seemed to come in waves. Some days it would be fine, then it would get really really bad, then it would pass again. It didn't have a lot to do with the amount I ran, or my frequency or pace. It first erupted when I had a couple of mishaps that involved my left foot.
1. My dog ran me over when she was joyfully running down the hill. My left foot was super sore for a couple of days but I put comfrey leaves on and it was fine.
2. A month later I capsized in a canoe and banged my left shin bone up quite badly.
Then about a month after that, I was walking home in my flat sandals after a day at work (on my feet), carrying a heavy backpack ... I asked my husband to help carry it and his bag was also heavy, long story short when I got home my foot was KILLING me.

It got worse and worse. I read up on treatments. I used tape, massage, exercises. I stopped running for a while. I ran a ten k instead of a half in November. It started to pass. I joined a gym so I could run inside, started doing strength training, all the stuff ....

Then I noticed that it would flair up when I went for an angry run. When I went out to get my yayas out, when I was mad about some stupid thing some shitty person had done ... when I was working stuff out.

Now don't get me wrong, I know that our time running is like meditation, you can resolve things and bring peace and reach conclusions and find enlightenment. But we should not, ever! run like mad! Anger, hatred, envy, all the stressful feelings, disturb the smooth workings of our fascia. Just like when a woman is laboring to birth her baby, when you are running or racing, you need to let it go! Don't think about the pain, don't get stressed! It will have a direct, immediate and long-term effect on your fascia. This can lead to further injuries, to more pain, and ultimately a slower pace and less enjoyment.

Now, I make sure I do a little yoga-based stretch after each run: Mogul Muncher. I leave my worries at the door when I run outside, and at home when I go to the gym. I visualize healing in my foot. I am kind to myself. I let it hurt a little bit - after all, this old body has given me sixty years of great service!

My advice to you? Love your body! Shake your tail feathers! Let your body move! Keep those fascia loosey-goosey!