A Birth ReLOVEution

Leigh and I met through a mutual friend and I immediately warmed to the bright light and joyful spirit she exudes. Her writing is full of truth and kindness and I know you will enjoy her thoughts on birth as much as I have!  – Monna

A Birth ReLOVEution

By Leigh Steele 

“To be strong does not mean to sprout muscles and flex. It means meeting one’s own numinosity without fleeing, actively living with the wild nature in one’s own way. It means to be able to learn, to be able to stand what we know. It means to stand and live.” – Clarissa Pinkola Estes

To know the details surrounding my births, one must first know that they were preceded by a conscientious desire to dive deep into the spiritual work of birth.   I suppose this is a disclaimer of sorts for the somewhat abstract and lyrical method in which I tell my story.

My decision was not to VBAC, or HBAC, or to have a natural birth, or to birth at home.   While my last two births encompassed all of those minute details, they were singular in the lessons they revealed to me.

Like a circle of sacred stones laid out before me, I was given the choice to fall powerlessly into Fear – letting it overwhelm me – or to meet the transformational fire of Fear head on.  What emerged from that rite of passage – along with a trust garnered through deep support and evidence-based information – were the home births of my last two children.

It also reconnected me to the elder-women who unfurled their own bodies from their mother’s and, in that one great act of choosing amidst fear, made a home in my very DNA.  This is story of the medicine woman inside of me that is inside of you.  She is unafraid to confidently wrap her heart around her words, speaking from her own place of power, rewriting {her}story.   She names her desires, grinds her doubts into daily bread, and raises her eyes to the horizon as she places one foot in front of the other.  She is unhindered and unraveled and, with a soft heart, walks strongly upon the Earth.  It is, of course, with the medicine of the medicine woman in which I gave birth.

I didn’t embark on this journey as a lone warrioress.  Beside me and surrounding me were my tribe of women who would hold the space for me to address Fear, honor her, and transmute her into the breath of birth.  Within me was a primal knowing, relearned by diving into soul-work that lies at the source of each of us.  In the ancient lineage of our mother’s womb, we were all bestowed an inherent intuition, a shared wisdom.  By tapping into this, I found a freedom to express my most sacred wishes for my baby’s birth.

Our culture may tell you so, but it isn’t new-age, or hippy, or crunchy, or fringe to wax poetic (or un-poetic) about a woman’s authentic power, divine purpose, and tender yet wild nature.  It is our collective truth and to deny it is to rip up the roots your grandmothers planted in their fertile fields.  To mock it is to un-thread the stitches from the quilts that your great-grandmothers wove as they waited for the soup to cool.   We are worthy of feeling firmly embedded in our ancestral belonging.   Looking within in this way offers us a well-loved compass for life’s most challenging moments, including childbirth.

“Every woman who has the karma to bear children has within her the spirit of the birth shaman.  This spirit is composed of the cumulative wisdom of many lifetimes…and also the wisdom she has learned from the women in her family about childbirth and child rearing.  Equally important, the birth shaman contains the mother’s vision of the world and the philosophy she has evolved to survive, learn, and grow in it”.  – Walter Makichen, author of “Spirit Babies”

You see, the woman who chooses to birth in the hospital with an epidural is no different than me choosing to birth my babies in a tub of water at home.   We are one in the same, and particularly in that moment, connected by the altered realm of birth.    We both have trepidations and worries and heartfelt wishes for how we hope our babies are welcomed.  And we each find our way to birth through the channels and people and methods in which serve us most authentically.

The energy it takes to fully surrender to the Unknown path of birth is complex.  We are all in different stages of our life-paths, willing to invest a certain amount of depth and breadth into the story that will be our children’s births.   In the blank space between the words and moans and exhausted smiles are chapters with the same heading:   ReLOVEution.

And the greatest not-so-secret of all is that when we lay down the welcome mat to Fear:  we are all medicine women, we are all birth sha{wo}mans, we are each other’s most mighty allies.

“I hope you will go out and let stories happen to you, and that you will work them, water them with your blood and tears and you laughter till they bloom, till you yourself burst into bloom.” ― Clarissa Pinkola Estés

♥ Inspired by my star-sister Misplaced Mama and the book she gifted us I’m a Medicine Woman, Too! ♥

 

About Leigh

With a BA in Communication from Ottawa University, Leigh was able to put her life-long love of words to good use as a business writer for a financial institution. After ten years in the cubicle world, Leigh shucked the spirit-draining environment of Corporate America and suited up for a job with the big bosses: as a Stay at Home Mom with a penchant for blogging.

After birthing and motherhood led her to experience her “authentic self” and a rejuvenation of her spirit, Leigh began advocating for women and babies as a birth doula. She also recently acted as the Vice President, and a staff writer, for the Arizona Birth Network.  Her latest venture is to gather tribes of women who want to delve further into birth-work with the launch of her doula e-course called “The Holy Work of a Doula”.

Leigh lives a small and crazy life in the lushness of the desert in Arizona with her three kids and husband.  She writes to survive personally and occasionally writes to survive financially.  You can find her rambling here and there.

Read more about Leigh’s work as a doula at http://thisholywork.com/