3 months Later

So many people are asking for updates!

Could it possibly have gone by so quickly? Could I now be home, struggling with my NARM application, getting homework done, dotting my i's and crossing my t's, making sure that everything is in place?

Some reality twist I have been through in the last 8 weeks. I haven't bleached anything in awhile. I haven't stood in circle at 8am going over the day before and discussing how many times the doorbell rang last night. I haven't listened to a baby's heartbeat in 8 weeks. I haven't heard the llanto of of newborn except in passing in the grocery store. I have spoken Spanish, but Castillano, to one of my friends. and to the criadas at the park who care for the neighborhood toddlers.

Sigh... I am back to being agringada.

I struggle with not feeling quite in my skin. I miss El Paso, I miss the clinic. I miss the kids school. I miss my sisters, who I could say anything to.

I have sisters here thank goodness, but they do not know what I have been through in the past year.

They are busy with their lives and children as I am. They are busy plugging on with daily tasks and chores. They are busy living the southern California life. Sometimes that means pretending that life is giving you the substance that you crave.
I am sure that feeling is universal, not unique to Southern California. At least I keep telling myself that.

I thought that having time to myself would be satisfying, but sometimes time stretches in front of me like a very lonely road. I miss being absorbed in the craziness. Making your own schedule and sticking to it can be daunting.

On the other hand I had a nightmare that I got in trouble for not giving someone a "consult" to an OB for constipation. If you have worked in the clinic you will find that funny.

I am being a bit melodramatic here, but it is complicated, life is hard in general I think when you are in transition.

I have been in transition for awhile and I am so very tired of that feeling that I have many hurdles still to cross. NARM, California Challenge, Homework, Applying for my License. It will take another 3 months to complete all of that. Meanwhile I am readjusting to being a full time mother and helping my children to integrate the last year, keeping up a household (poorly I might add), working on a lovely sailboat that needs tremendous TLC, and renewing relationships in my life that I had neglected.

Poor me huh? Really don't believe it for a minute. I spent the week on the bay, socializing, playing with my kiddos, eating too much, laughing a lot, sleeping 9 hours a night. The most strenuous thing I did was walk 20 minutes to an artisan bakery in Point Loma and sip coffee while eating walnut whole wheat bread with butter and jam. My life is incredible right now really. I am just a bit wobbly.

Having choices and privileges can be lovely and can create lots of anxiety. I am exceptionally grateful for my life right now. I am exceptionally grateful for my experiences the past year. I needed to stop and take inventory of what I have.

Thanks for listening. Now my dear sister midwives if you read this.......COME VISIT, salty air is good for the soul.

Vessel..

As I get closer and closer to the end, the end of the beginning at least, I meditate on what kind of midwife I will be.

And just last night I was asked to have a blessing ready for one of my private clients for her blessingway.

It struck me as a profound honor...and it struck me as quite extraordinary that it was mine to give...Finding myself in a place like that is...

A blessing.

A long time ago (almost 4 years)I attended a seminar with many midwives and doulas. Part of that seminar was to set an intention for the future.

My intention was simple. I wanted to be a vessel for the strength of women. At the time I envisioned it to mean birth...

that I would meet women where they were in their journey to birth, and provide what they needed to find their strength and their way through those moments.

And daily I ponder what that means, daily I renew that commitment to women, but it expands to mean all families that I have the privilege to attend.

It expanded to encompass...

Every time I touch a belly

Every time I listen to fetal heart tones.

Every time I do a Pap (yes it can be quite empowering for women when they are in control of the experience)

Ever time I listen....to a question, to a complaint, to a fear, to a joyful 1st cry of a newborn.

Birth is the lovely reward, birth is quite a gift for the midwife. I have found that being a midwife can be quite ego pleasing in those moments. You can get addicted to the reward, the love that flows from people in those moments, the joy of being in those situations, and the gratitude for your presence.

For some women it is the 1st time in their live that a care provider has showed them a measure of respect.

I say that birth is the icing and the care you give is the sustenance( ok the cake :)

While that is ok to soak in that gratitude. I have seen many midwives live on that sugary reward.

So this post is a bit of a wandering yarn at this point but if you are reading, I think I am coming to my point.

I still hold that intention, to be the vessel. To meet families where they are at, to listen, to let their energy guide the interaction prenatally, in the labor and birth, and postpartum.

I have ideas, I have information and lots of it, I have fears and reservations, I have lots of stories, I have lots of things I put meaning into, I have imperfections (some would say too many).

But...somewhere in all of what I am, there is a place of emptiness. There is a place to allow other peoples wishes, desires, fears, strengths, stories too to guide my hands and heart to be exactly what is needed in the moment. Whatever that is.

After all the information and experiences I have had this year, that is still my intention, putting it out there in this place is a renewal of that.

May I always be grateful to be in the position...

to listen
to touch a belly (always with permission)
to listen to heart tones
to listen to fears
to have a fathers or mothers hands (not mine) to be the 1st to touch a babies head as it crowns
to be there when a complication arises and my hands are needed
to give lab results that are perfect, and imperfect
to help someone grieve

and all those other things that midwives do.

What a place to be in? Very ripe with responsibility but a place where you can allow the strength of the people for whom you provide that care, to guide you to do what is needed in each moment. Sigh.....

rules of being tagged

RULES - Post rules before giving the facts - Players start with eight random facts/habits about themselves - People who are tagged need to write their own blog about their eight things and post these rules - At the end of the your blog you need to tag six people and list their names - Leave them a comment on their blog, telling them they have been tagged and not to forget to read your blog.

who I tagged?

Durafemina

http://meconiumhappens.blogspot.com/

Mama Midwife Madness

another mama midwife

A womb of her own

My profound friend Ariel

I have been tagged.....

I have been tagged, playing a silly and kinda enjoyable blogspere game...a fellow blogger and midwife has tagged me so here it goes. It goes deeper with every post so read...you might be a bit surprised.

(should I really publish this?)
DISCLAMER

These are thoughts I think often and people ask me why I even write but why not? Our culture is so reserved, we are so guarded, we stay in our little bubbles, we try not to let others see our weaknesses. Truthfully others could take this information and make fun of me but really the only person that could hurt me is me. I suppose I could lose some friends but...well you know the answer to that.

8 SECRETs (or things most people don't know about me....)

1. Right now I have probably about 100 hrs of stacked up homework that could have been somewhat completed if I had just taken out more time when my kids were in school to do so. Now it is a looming monsterous pile of procrastination.

2. What I do to procrastinate...guilty pleasure? Uggg...sometimes I play lame silly computer games. When I start doing that, I know I am in deep, am seriously avoiding something in my life.

3. I am currently using the electronic babysitter (named KPBS kids) to make this list. Some of the purists I know would be shocked at my use of TV and videos right now to just get a few minutes to myself.

4. Sometimes I am shocked by the thoughts that I have about my fellow sisters. I sometimes think very mean things about them....my brain goes on automatic teenage girl at times and is very bitchy. It is usually at the end of the day, when someone is avoiding doing list or avoiding doing a difficult cita. Or I am avoiding doings something that involves bleaching or taking out the trash or filing. Compassion flies out the window and I want to throttle someone. I try to control my bitchy brain so that dumb things don't fly out of my mouth. Sometimes I can, sometimes I indulge the thoughts. Sorry sisters, I try, but my evil self sometimes gets the best of me.

5. I used to think that I was really stupid...I got S on every single category on my report card... I was put into the special catch up reading program in elementary school. I got C's all the way through high school. I still have learning problems, I just recently learned to read a map well. Sometimes I struggle with directions, r and L, anterior and posterior(not good to get confused with that in midwifery school but i am working with that). If you tell me something orally, especially how to do something complicated, like say how to suture, I want to cry. You have to stand behind me and show me step by step, don't tell me out loud, it will confound my brain. If you ask me to draw something, you will laugh, guarantee, you will want to laugh even if you do not do so out loud.

I am really smart on paper, I am really good with languages, I am a fantastic teacher, I am quite artistic (not with drawing). I am wonderful with other things, it just takes me a bit of time to learn certain things... I eventually learn them on my own terms.

6. I grew up very poor, like no running hot water, leaky roof, screens instead of glass windows, DIRT POOR. Mostly caused by parental alcoholism, addiction, etc...Ever read Bastard Out of Carolina? That book pretty much sums up my childhood. It was a brutal. I feel like it was not me who experienced that but it was you know. People who have "overcome" childhoods like that are called surviors.

7. 10 + years of therapy didn't hurt either, well maybe it did hurt a bit. Sometimes therapy is painful, sometimes therapy leads you to believe that you can separate yourself and overcome things like that, to the point that you overcompensate and want to be perfect. Like white picket fence perfect...I strived for much of my life to be white picket fence perfect and still do sometimes. I am materialistic and still trying to make up for being poor by having a nice house and nice car and nice things knowing full well these are superficial longings that cover up a deep insecurity.

8. I love the idea of giving up all my possesions and sailing off into the sunset. That dream is very close to being realized...

SEE HERE (and for my dear friends this is not a secret) WWW.SAILMAKANIKAI.COM

Morning

Just a quick bit before I am off to shift. It is quiet and I rarely get these quiet, sacred moments to myself.

I working on little sleep, so forgive me if I ramble. The sky is blue, with clouds dispersing bringing humidity...It reminds me so much of my island home.

Can one miss two places at once? Can you feel homesickness for two places at once?

Hawaii calls me back with this EL Paso morning, and San Diego's beauty has me craving a walk at the Cove and breakfast at the Bungalow.

Sigh...I keep telling myself to be present but the workload at MLL is causing me to regress to "calm waters."

New students coming in who read my blog will soon understand that work load.

I have one word for you "Surrender"...Seriously, you will never know another time in your life when you are stretched so your boundaries. I know I write a lot of the beauty of MLL, but you also need to know a bit of the shadow so you can cope.

Here is my mantra right now, telling myself that this is temporary madness helps...In the future, after MLL...

You will rarely fold laundry at 2am in your real life.

You will rarely be filing at midnight again...

You will do very few 36 hour days...

There will be few 4+ cup blood losses...

You will have few times that you are up 24hrs, have class, then go home, get as much sleep as humanly possible in a night, then have shift again...

10, 1 hr appoints in a row will probably be a rare occurance...

Vulnerability.

I do not know where to begin to unravel the long ball of yarn that is this topic.

I am in my last semester. I am crossing over, have my foot poised to begin a new phase of my life while still living the intense world of MLL.

I have sadness over leaving. I am so incredibly grateful for the families that come into the clinic. They are the most loving and gracious people that I have met in my entire life. I am sure I will meet more in my future practice, but I have been immersed in a culture that still relys on family as a main support, where an appointment that I do with a client might involve 5 people listening to the baby's heartones with a fetascope. Where a birth might involve 4 cell phones ringing at the same time. Where in the middle of the night the doorbell rings 10 times because 10 different people are walking in to check up on a laboring mom. It is not considered interference, it is considered love.

Yes, sometimes it can be a bit overwhelming but it is mostly amazing.

I am so independent, and have been taught very well to rely on myself in times of intesity that the contrast often brings tears to my eyes.

Students being to take on-call clients when the are deemed ready to give continuity of care and you get even closer to the woman and the families. When you chooses your client, you are choosing the family as well.

One of my on-call clients came in the other day in labor. She saw my face and promptly melted, sobbing in my arms, tears streaming down her face. I got scared and thought something was wrong.

It wasn't, she was expressing the pure emotion of transition, she was expressing a complete vulnerability and trust that I rarely feel. It moved me to cry along with her.

She had a trusting relationship with her family, she has assumed all of her life that it extends to the rest of her world and that it included me.

These woman have so much to teach me. The rawness of that moment still brings tears to my eyes.

The places that I am vulnerable are here in these pages and in the arms of my husband and in my role as a mother to my children.

The rest of my life is mostly business. I do not breakdown in my friend's arms, nor in my mother's, aunts, cousins, my doulas, my playgroups, my midwive's. If I have a problem, I may speak about it, rarely with emotion, I scratch the surface in my writing and intellectualize it.

When I was in labor I wanted to be alone, I coped in my brain visualizing my body opening.

Watching a laboring woman cope with her labor by relying on others always blows my mind, watching a laboring woman just unfold in her vulnerabililty moves me because that is so difficult for me to do.

I know that I don't stand alone in this, many of us independent, self sufficient, intelligent, strong, California (and other places) girls do not express vulnerability often. We keep much at a distance, keeping a close circle of friends and a therapist.

There is a whole set of circumstances that brings us to that independence. It would take a book, not a blog to explain them, but you who read here know exactly what I mean.

So here is to trust, to vulnerability, to rawness and to relying on our sisters. I covet my independence and my strength, but....but maybe there is much that is missing from my life as well.

Always having your guard up takes a lot of energy.

Another Exceptionally Ordinary Birth

This was a birth that I assisted at.

A first time momma, very young, comes in with ruptured membranes, light contractions. She had care with an OB throughout her pregnancy, had only been to two appointments with us.

It was a beautiful day so she walked around a bit to get things going, through the hallway, into the back courtyard. She walked in slow circles for an hour or so and then went back to her room.

She listens from her room and hears another woman birthing. I was told that she became a bit afraid, a bit desperate all of a sudden, to have this over with quickly. She labors for another hour in her room. I am not privvy to what is unfolding with her after that point.

I am sitting at the back table, listening to a beautiful song with tears in my eyes, it was my 1st shift back after my fathers death.

Birth team is called (the sign that she is probably pushing and help is needed) Staff and I go into the room to find her standing, very disoriented and very frightened, the baby is crowning, the other student trying to make sure the baby is born safely. We move her to hands and knees onto the bed.

The baby is born wailing, wrapped up and passed between her legs. She just stares at the baby in disbelief . She asked what just happened. "Your baby was born" Her baby is scooped up lovingly after a long minute and welcomed with tears.

A birth like that for a momma can be like plummeting down a roller coaster ride. It takes a while to not feel dizzy and disoriented about the surroundings.

I think that is what pushing is all about, the threshold crossing. When a woman doesn't feel like she pushed, when the baby rockets out, she might feel psychologically spacy, like someone just pushed the fast forward button on her live and skipped a big scene.

My third baby was like that so I know, I had the same reaction that this woman had..."what just happened?"

Another exceptionally ordinary birth...

Exceptionally Ordinary Birth

Every day that I step into the clinic I wonder what birth lies around the corner, what unveiling of the inner most sanctum of a woman's world will I be priviledged to experience.

Most doulas and new students who have experienced hospital births revel in the birth that shows the primal. The woman squattting, the woman shrieking, the woman pushing her baby out on hands and knees. Birth without interference. Birth without the intellectualization.

At MLL I have seen lots of those births when the woman follows the natural flow of her body. Over and over that is what I see. There are a lot of fast births at the clinic. Fast fast fast.

My last shift a woman came in with contractions spaced about every 5 minutes apart that had begun an hour prior, I was the only one to do the labor check. The clinic was a bit busy (understatement) and so I went through the normal set of questions to see what was happening with this womans contraction pattern. This beautiful woman smiled and answered my questions. The only way that I knew she was contracting was that she would take a deep breath at what seemed like the peak of her surges. She was incredibly serene in the midst of what seemed to be intense laboring. About 5 minutes in, after listening to heart tones, I saw a thin sheen of sweat on her forehead and felt her back. She was working hard and the temperature of her skin gave it away.

I checked the front of her chart for any pertinent info (that is where we document if a woman wants a water birth, if she is RH-, etc..) HISTORY OF FAST LABORS written in bold lettering. Ok, well still need to do the intake process.

I felt like I was bothering her a bit with all of the questions required for this process, so I took a minute out to observe really what was going on.

In that minute she stated "ay, I feel something below" her voice became elevated and her smile was gone from her face. She wanted to push.

Ok, time to get to a room.

She walked, rather gingerly, head held high, smile on her face to one of our birth rooms. I called for staff and this woman lay down, was checked for completeness (per protocol) and pushed her baby out into the world. The baby had a nuchal hand, a nuchal cord weighed 8lbs 12 oz and it came gently into my hands despite all of this.

This all occured in the clinic without anyone knowing what was going on besides me, the staff midwife and another student assisting.

And this is not the 1st time this has happened to me, usually I am awoken at 2am, barely have time to put on gloves, and at 2:15 am have slippery beings glide right into my hands.

It is incredbily, quite ordinary.

Sometimes I feel it is a bit dangerous to post stories like this, even though our culture needs to hear more of them. Most of us don't have births like these.

I know, lots of questions, lots of things to ponder. What makes it so easy for this to unfold over and over and over again?

Trust? Faith? A fit body?

And then judgement that we have for ourselves if our birth is not like this, if our birth doesn't unfold so easily, if we are not smiling during contractions.

What key does this woman carry to unlock herself so easily?

Descent

The intention of this blog was to write about birth and my experiences at MLL and it has gone beyond that to a deeply personal sharing of all that has unfolded.

I haven't posted about my experiences much lately at MLL, mostly because I have been in the metaphorical underworld.

The western world has a strange view of the underworld, a fiery place perhaps... but the underworld in myth is very different than that.

http://members.tripod.com/~ideomagi/library/inanna.html

There is an incredible story of Inannas decent that I tell in my Birthing From Within classes about a woman on a journey who decends to the underworld to give birth. It is a story of the stripping off of all of the images that we posses of who we are, it is a story about a deep journey into your shadow self, it is a story about crossing a threshold into another way of being.

Innanas decent is an ancient story of a journey with many facets and a journey that we take in our own lives as we transition into any new phase of life. It has a universal theme, mostly directed toward the female archetype.

So my journey into the underworld has been a long winding path and a stripping down to the bone of who I am. Some of it had to do with my fathers death but much of it has to do with the intense process that is MLL. For awhile, the process to becoming a midwife became too difficult to speak about. I was a bit stuck in politics, difficult births, difficult interactions, difficult self reflections, a heavy work load etc... to even begin to share lovely birth stories.

In short, I was in the underworld.

The story also speaks about ascent. After Inanna "gives birth", she begins her renewal and her journey back into the world. The original myth does'n't elaborate on that journey too much but that is where I am now.

It is May....In September I finish the clinical experience. And then what?

Parting with the Ashes

Photos is of the flowers spread during my father's memorial service. The background is Lanai. It was a beautiful ceremony done with much ritual and song. I couldn't have asked for a more beautiful goodbye.

Grief part 3

MY FATHER’S body

Is ashes now…I had to fax a note to Nakamura’s mortuary. It said this “This note authorizes Nakamura’s mortuary to creamate the body of Walter McAnally.”

I spelled cremate wrong.
That is so far the only part that I have in the transition of his body to spirit.

The last time I held his hand was in August. Brad and I flew to him, he said he was sick so we went to see him. He would not tell us what was wrong, mumbled something about Rehad, needing to get off of the sauce. He could not drink and live at the same time.
Apparently the drink was more important than his life.

I am so glad that I followed my gut and said goodbye. When I drove away from his Lahaina house, I knew that it was goodbye. His closest companion didn’t seem to think
So, his boss seemed to think he would choose to live somehow.
Oh crap, this story is probably going to far.

But you can see friends who requested that I update my blog, that grief has anger in it too.

It sucks to be angry at someone who is gone. I know, I know, it is part of grieving but it still sucks.

I know my body relives the first abandonment at 3 years old when my mother left him, and he fled to Maui. I didn’t see him for 15 years…I don’t remember that 3 year old me and the grief that must have generated.

But I feel it, somewhere it is buried in me, it is resurfacing.

And I think that is Universal, when someone dies, all the unfinished business, all of the memories, good and bad come up. The “proper” thing is to let go and remember only the good, to smile and cry and grieve the loss of the person. The truth is though that you are grieving your own personal losses, every one of them comes up again.

The losses are like a can of shaken soda, the cap comes off and the bubbles explode out.
All of the emotions, the good, the bad and the ugly…

Grief part 1

Beginning something, with words, feeling my way through the text.

I have had reluctant fingers, afraid that they won’t represent well, or afraid on an even more difficult sentiment, that I will get started and won’t be able to stop.

The emotions that I have been carrying around are a great sea trench. I have been floating over them, looking down and wondering to what depth the darkness goes.

I was afraid to take the plunge, to swim in them, in they mystery and depth.

But last Thursday, I had no choice.

A week has gone by since I got the news, via phone message, that sent me plummeting, iron weights on my feet, into that watery cavern.

The message from my uncle was that my father lay in the hospital with tubes in him, making his heart beat, breathing for him. He decided that methodone and alcohol would be the way to end his life, he decided that his body had betrayed him and that it was no longer worth living in.

I know he made that decision awhile ago, but last week he carried it out to a fatal end. Intentional? Unintentional? The answer to that will only be known to him. I can’t go there, the world of questions could make me crazy.

His decision did not surprise me, but the phone message shocked me, grief enveloped me, pulled me under. I was driving when I heard the message. It took all of my strength to turn my car around and be back where people would ground me. I couldn’t go home, Arno and the boys were out camping.

So I went back to the clinic where I was held as sobs wracked my body. I was taken home and fed and helped to figure out what to do.

If any of your read this…thank you. I couldn’t have gone at it alone.

I was stuck for a bit, figuring out how to deal with my father’s death alone. They had made the decision to take him off of life support and I wouldn’t be in Maui in time to say goodbye to his physical body.

So I did the only thing I could think of and that was to go to San Diego, to be with my older son, to connect with my father that way.

Arno joined me two days later, he had been out of cell phone range for two days. Not being with my guys was disorienting.

Grief part 2

Grief is a strange thing. There is not a set of instructions on how to grieve.

There are times when I smile and feel awful for doing so, I am not supposed to feel like smiling am I?
There are times when I can’t form a sentence, when I have delved so far into my inner world that asking a simple thing like “What time is it?” seems to drain all of my energy.

I cry at inappropriate times, standing in line to get on the airplane, at the bookstore counter.

Yet, I cannot cry at appropriate times either.

I feel huge anxiety every time I move into new interactions because people want to say the right thing to me. People want to give me comfort, want to embrace me, and when they do, the wound opens up fresh, the emotion threatens to send me sobbing in the arms of near strangers.

I wonder how people would react, casual acquaintances, when offering condolences, if I did just let myself cry in their arms.

The hardest part is staving off that wave of emotions with every new “I am so sorry for your loss.”

I know, I should just let it out right…I was taught to stuff it. It is not so easy to overcome that teaching.

Sometimes I want to carry around a notepad and just write out what I am feeling, for me that is so much easier.

I stumble over my spoken word, it cannot convey what it is that I feel. Spoken words for me just tumble around like rough rocks in my mouth. I cannot speak the depth of love and gratitude that I have, the depth of grief, I cannot speak tears into my eyes.

Uggggg......

In previous posts I had gone off on a vent of my evals...I was venting and was very much in my emotions and not in my thinking brain. Meaning I did not think how my words might affect other people. So I blogged, venting some frustration not realizing that I might hurt someone and I did.

I have had a lot of time to process those evals and the end it was my pride that was hurt, it still is, and so I vented. Not because the evals were inacurate, but because they were. It was difficult to deal with the feedback.

It is a tough line to tow, one which doesn't offend when you are offering up your rawness. I risked a lot and for that I am sorry. My intention was not to hurt but to get my frustrations out. I was too specific.

Those who read this blog should know that it was a momentary feeling that I let sit on the pages of this blog. I considered changing it awhile ago but I didn't.

I apologize, I really do, everyone at MLL is amazing and I have learned both from my positive and diffficult interactions. I have learned some humility but I have so very far to go in so many ways.

Some might say that I should not censur myself and on some things I think I shouldn't but when it is a shared experience, it is a difficult judgement to make ya know?

At any rate it is late and I need some sleep...

I feel like I share so much of the beauty of my experiences here, and that mainly is what is expressed here(I would say 95% is joy). Part of that beauty is the contrast, the difficulty of this hard work and the level of intimacy that you have, the beauty of serving as a midwife, the priviledge of learning.

10 minute list

I have 10 minutes, thought it would be fun to make a list of things that I have experienced birth and prenatal wise in my time here that I am grateful for. It has been huge learning:

1. Nuchal hands in abundance
2. Babies in the caul
3. Only one nuchal chord
4. Placenta previa
5. Palpating a breech (a few times)
6. Polyhydramnios
7. Oliohydramnios
8. varicosities in strange places(I won't get too descriptive but you can guess)
9. caput
10. molding
11. 2 minute second stages
12. 3 hour second stages
13. PIH
14. Gestational Diabetes
15. Fainters
16. Hemmorhage
17. Placentas with various insertions:velimentous, battledor
18. Heart shaped placentas
19. accesory lobes
20. PROM-prom sucks
21. SROM that soaks through scrubs if you don't put on the waterproof gown.
22. Painless birth
23. Women who suffer in labor
24. 42 year old primips
25. 16 year old multips

and so much more. This list actually only took me 5 minutes! Cool tomatoe huh?

Instant sisters...just add birth and mix

It has been quiet here, in my blog but I would like to pose this question to the lovely human beings who read here. I would love to hear your responses.

I have been thinking quietly about the profound loss of so many things in our femininity, our connections to other women mainly, mirroring our connections to the devine feminine. I think of how as women we have so few things that link us together and how we can be so suspicious of each others motivations. It is difficult to trust one another at times because we have been so wounded by our culture (wether it is family culture or the culture that surrounds it)

I see it everyday, this guarding and unguarding that we do...the subtle dance of friendship, the subtle rules and rule breaking. Alliances forming, cliques forming then breaking apart.

It is interesting and painful to be a part of. We are such strong women at MLL, you can imagine how things could get difficult in such an intimate space with so much brillance and insecurity at the same time.

I have had some recent interactions with a fellow student that have brought me to place where I wondered if I had grown up, or if I was still stuck in the trauma of being an adolescent girl. It brough me to a time in my life where being "in" was so much more important than being myself. It was/is not pleasant reliving that.

I am in the constant process of healing and moving through painful things, like the birth learning process, the social process learning curve is just as steep here.

I haven't had sisters, I grew up with 5 older brothers. I have instant sisters now, for good or bad. Someone help me understand this whole thing. I am at a bit of a loss right now on how to move through it.

I am serious, share with me your understandings on how this all works...I should have the answers but I don't.

It is a silly plea I know....HELP!

Dreaming

I am going to ramble for a bit to see where this takes me, funny how I don't know....

This weekend I had the opportunity to visit Pam England in Albuquerque. Those of you who don't know who she is should know the title of the book that she wrote "Birthing From Within". At any rate she has been a mentor to me and a transformational figure in my life. How she has mentored me goes way beyond birth, she has taught me to find beauty in the mundane, beauty in what others might see as ugly, beauty in the moment.

She has mentored me to heal myself, silence my judge, nuture my child and develop my inner warrior. I have crossed many thresholds in her presence and for that I am grateful...

I got to see the inner sanctum of her world, her little casita in Albuquerque where she runs BFW and spend at least 2 hours with a cup of tea in my hand and warmth in my heart.

I was so grateful for a peek at how ordinary her life seemed. Sometimes I think the perception that we have of a figurehead of an organization can be that they are untouchable, and though she has never appeared untouchable, I have always thought that I could never aspire to be a person so centered as she is.

I noticed many things as I sat and spoke to this woman one on one. This was the one that was most powerful for me:

She is a master weaver of words. She doesn't speak as most people do, she speaks with tenderness, she speaks with images and she speaks with stories. She uses what she calls "delicious" speech. The words that come from her are carefully chosen for their affect...yes they are hypnotic and she is a master at that hypnotic language.

Some describe her as shamanic and I always wondered what that meant as I have never met a shaman. I always have envisioned that as a mysterious leader as someone who is capable of leading people across profound points in their life through ceremony and ritual. And she does that for many. But she does it unmasked...there isn't a mystery to it. She has mentored many about how to do this leading of parents across a threshold into birth.

I had my 1st mentor training almost 3 years ago but I have not delved into BFW as much as I would like, parts of me where afraid to because it is so very unconventional. My conventionalized mind couldn't always accept it.

And I see here at MLL how much it has helped me. I would like to bring a little BFW to the new students coming in. I think it might have a profound affect on how they experience MLL.

So why did I title this post dreaming? Not because I am dreaming of BFW but because of a story that Pam told me about how we dream our reality, how our perceptions influence our joy and how much we open our hearts to people.

How do we dream our lives?

I will give an example....

The photos I post here are of pure things, it is intentional that I do this. I love to capture the pure joy of moments. I think it sets the feeling tone before you read, dear readers.

So what if I posted photos ugly things, a piece big piece of raw meat or a car crash...

How would you then begin to dream my posts? How would you then receive my words with this simple change?

Pam gave and example that I will summarize:

When you are walking out in nature, up in the mountains, or surrounded by tall lush trees in the forest, how to you greet people as you pass each other on the path? Notice what your eyes and mind do when you see people in this setting.

Think of a dangerous city that you know imagine yourself walking there midday, how do you greet people? What do your eyes and mind do there?

Both of these situations are interesting are they not? In one setting you might "dream" people to be gentle and smiling. In the other you "dream" people to be in a hurry or to have poor intentions.

It is a really simple concept, one that most people are aware of. Pam calls it "dreaming" because it is something of the mind
and only of the mind that we create.

Then translate into your birth life if you are a doula or a birthing mother. How do your "dream" a cesarean birth with lots of interventions? Now how do your "dream" a homebirth lit by candlelight and warmed by soft music.

Most of the people who read this would dream the 1st one as awful and the other as lovely and transformational.

But haven't we met many individuals who would dream the opposite dreams that one was scary and the other predictable.

And we judge them as wrong.

Pam would argue that these are just judgements that we have and that homebirth or cesarean could have the same level of transformation...one doesn't have to be good or bad. It is how we help, as care providers, to shape the dream that is so important.

she rocks many worlds.

Ancient Ones

How can words describe a world made clean by snow...the tracks of history somehow made pure by the white blanket that covered it?

The only footprints visible were the ones made by our explorations on Saturday afternoon in the mountains of New Mexico above Albuquerque...

How such an amazing place was made empty could be explained by the 29 degree temperature and the new snowfall.

But what fun we had exploring the maze of below ground dwellings, that had existed way before a mission was created over 200 years ago.

"What remains today are austere yet beautiful reminders of the early contact between Pueblo Indians and Spanish Colonials. The ruins of four mission churches, at Quarai, Abó, and Gran Quivira and the partially excavated pueblo of Las Humanas or, as it is known today, Gran Quivira. Established in 1980 through the combination of two New Mexico State Monuments and the former Gran Quivira National Monument, the present Monument comprises a total of 1,100 acres."

This is an excerpt from the state government website, that it defines it as a mission is astounding. The mission church is such a small part of the ruins, the Pueblo people existed in that place long before religion imposed its structures. There are reminents of Kivas and sacred ceremony sites around the large church.

snow in our backyard!!!

and what do california boys do when it is freezing outside?