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.