Community Birth Workers

Our Rainbow House attracted another knock on the door today from the cousin of my neighbors' grandson who walked her over to say hi and let me know how much she loves the house. Her and partner are expecting a wee one and was surprised and excited to know about my birth support services and network of lovely providers for her to chose from. She thought she would have to go to Alsea to have a home birth. This young lady was friends with several people that know of me, her partner's cousin is a friend of my son's.

Friends and family, sister birth workers, please talk to your neighbors about what you are doing, tell them about safe options in childbirth, talk about how important it is for mothers and fathers to be supported and informed so they know that there are people in their communities that are available to them to find the birth they want. To CREATE the birth they deserve. It is about all of us and we are all affected in so many ways by the system of care in which babies are brought here. If you are one of those people that think because you are finished having kids or never having them that birth isn't important, think again. Read this book: Childbirth and the Future of Homo Sapiens by Dr. Michele Odent.

Be aware, be a resource, know your referrals among your circle of friends and loved ones, Business partners and network circles.... You might be the link that makes all the difference in the world to that family.

In Lebanon, OR there are at least 4 Midwives, 2 student midwives, at least 7 doulas, 3 childbirth educators and people meeting regularly to learn and create more community among women and surrounding birth in particular.

Please have a look at some of the local Birth workers in my community:

Birth With Liz
Midvalley Birthing Sevices
Growing Family Birth Center
Makawee Birth Assistance (obviously myself)
Corvallis Doula Network
Gentle Beginnings Midwifery Care
Heart Of the Valley Birth Center

Money

Many years of my life have been spent with short term goals in mind because the short term was so uncertain while being poor and having little resources to draw from. Days go by, weeks, months, without ever considering what will be happening in the next year, 2 years, 5 years, 10. After all, there is no way to even think about possibilities when you don't even know if you will be in the same house or town. That is how it has been for me since I was a young teen.

Someone recently said to me, "If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans." I couldn't agree more. I realized several years ago that as soon as I spoke the words, my fate changed. As soon as I said," I'm going to do (insert clever plan on making money or improving my family's quality of life)," I could literally feel my insides changing to make it difficult or impossible. Even as I listened to "The Secret" on audio a few years ago and thought that she might be onto something and noticed the way I would challenge the Universe to provide my desires and changing my thoughts to make it seem like it was a success when things happened, I could remember all the times I spoke my thoughts and everything grew further out of reach. Do we live by the law of attraction, willing our desires and needs to us, creating our reality? Or, is it more like God laughing as he taunts us with close successes and dreams that never come to fruition as some kind of challenge to live harder and build us up stronger? Well, for me, it is neither because I believe in neither God or fateful Secrets.

The last few weeks have been filled with consuming thoughts of how I am going to make my goals work. How am I going to take charge and make it happen without relying on God or mantras? I am browsing pages of options and then thinking, while looking at train schedules and class schedules for classes I want to take more than a year from now, that it is useless to try to find this info because it will likely change before I have the opportunity to use it. Realizing you can't exactly make plans for 3-5-8-10 years from now down to the details of transportation and time management is defeating.

The harder I look, the further I feel away from my goals and desires. I have to challenge myself about responsibility and attachments and sacrifices, about letting go of old ideas and which ones are worth holding onto. I am sick of reinventing myself. I know what I want to do, but it feels ever so out of reach and it comes down to MONEY.

You see, if you have money you don't have to rely on other people to help you out of the kindness and convenience of their hearts, you pay your way to what you need and desire. If I had money to care for my needs, I could volunteer at any service I wanted to give and we all know, I live to serve my community and the mothers and children and families and even the critters, domestic and wild. Hell, I would tree sit and get arrested at demonstrations. I would camp out in front of the Capital and serve food to the homeless. I would do the gardening at CARDV and take elderly people to the park. I would be a volunteer midwife and serve birthing families as often as I could without any strings attached, if I could feed my own family and secure my own home and their futures.

I could be amazing.... if I had money.

Carla and how she won the arguement

This was a writing assignment for my arguementative writing class. The essay was about arguement history and how I may have thought one way and changed my mind after listening to a different point of view.

I used to think that holding a license to practice a skill, such as herbal medicine, acupuncture or midwifery was the right thing to do in order to ensure the safety of the public. It seemed that this form of regulation could make sure that those people providing these services were held to a certain standard, had to have a reasonable amount of qualified education and that someone was looking over their shoulder to make sure they were doing the right thing. I figured this would protect the public and the practitioner alike.

I even held a license as a massage therapist. After 600 hours at school learning the very basics of anatomy and physiology, bare minimum techniques, paying a few hundred dollars and completing a state test, I was set out to the public to practice massage in a variety of settings from chiropractic offices to five star hotels and spas. I thought I knew it all. Then I realized there was a lot I didn’t know and that the schooling had not prepared me for the real job and the variety of issues I would encounter in the people who lay on my table. In fact I was less qualified out of 6 months in school than I would have been had I learned from an apprenticeship in an office that dealt with the kinds of ailments I wanted to specialize in. And I sure had no clue how short lived my career as a Licensed Massage therapist would be or how hard I would have to work to earn a living or the types of obscenities I would have to deal with because of misconceptions about the scope of practice of a professional massage therapist.

Now I am pursuing a career in midwifery. Most people view midwifery as much more encompassing of a medical profession than massage therapy is, and certainly there is more contact with bodily fluids and some bigger risks involved, but to be honest, it is not too much different. But the common perception is that anyone helping pregnant women deliver their babies should have at the very least a nursing degree and many years of school. The requirements to legally practice midwifery are different state to state and in Oregon licensure is currently voluntary. Licensed midwives are required to pass a state exam after meeting some requirements including attending a minimum of 40 births and being capable of doing some clinical skills like blood draws, suturing, CPR and neonatal resuscitation. Dues are paid to the state and you become a member of a council. The board of directors that run the state regulatory entity are compromised of a few midwives, OBGYNs and public figures. ( note that there are no midwives on the OBGYN board of regulation) They determine the scope of practice and give midwives permission to use controlled substances (like medicines to stop hemorrhages) and carry oxygen. They also restrict the services of midwives to certain low risk clientele, as well as make the determination of who falls into that category.

I thought this was a perfectly reasonable way of regulating the safety of the public as well as making sure that midwives were practicing in a way that they couldn’t get themselves in trouble. I thought this was a great way for doctors to feel comfortable supporting midwives as a back up physician in the case that the midwives needed to refer a client to them or seek help in complicated situations. This system also allows for midwives to be paid through insurance companies, both private and state funded. What I didn’t realize was that the board of people who made the decisions on who can practice what on and what category a woman falls into (High/low risk) were not taking into account the most recent scientific data available that would allow for a broader range of practice. That is until I read a well spoken argument from the director of the school I am now attending to become a midwife. Carla Hartley is a long time educator of midwives and activist for rights of parents to choose how and where they birth and who attends their births. When I first encountered her and started reading the blogs she has posted about the subject of licensure in midwifery, I thought she was an extremist and she was out of her mind. I listened because part of me knew that what she said made sense, but I had no clue just how much until I started apprenticing with licensed midwives in the state.

During my apprenticeship, I watched one of my preceptors struggle with upholding her duty as a licensed provider and give the best possible service to her beloved moms. I watched as the boundaries the state put on her work were stretched as she consulted with physicians, researched, and served her clients who were also consulting, researching and doing everything they could to ensure the safe delivery of their baby. Under Oregon law, a licensed midwife has to refer her client to an OBGYN if the pregnancy exceeds 42 weeks. A mother who was on the cusp of being “high risk” due to her age had hit that mark in her pregnancy and labor was not coming on anytime soon. She had no other “risk” factors with the exception of one high blood pressure reading that resolved on its own and could have been caused by the stress of knowing that if she didn’t produce a baby in the next few days her plans of her dream home birth with her trusted midwife would be ruined by red tape. This mom and dad tried everything to self induce so they could legally have their chosen care provider perform the duties they hired her for, despite all the scientific research that said she was safe and could have patiently waited for her baby to arrive. I honestly believe that the pressure to perform and the inability to just relax and surrender to her body and baby prevented her from going into labor, like an animal being watched who just wants a private spot in safety to give birth to their baby. After a week of fighting and even refusing a scheduled cesarean, she finally surrendered to the pressure and submitted to a cesarean to birth a healthy, normal weight, baby girl.

Other restrictions that are deemed safe by the WHO and several colleges of OBs include extended labor and 2nd stage, VBACs (vaginal birth after cesarean section), and in some states multiples and breech presentations. For some parents, the idea of going to the hospital and risking episiotomies, major abdominal surgery, infection, and even death is too much and they prefer the comfort and familiarity of their home and family as support people. Restrictions that hospitals put on people and policies made to protect the hospital and staff can and do create many problems that they are supposed to prevent in low risk women. Home birth has risen 20% since 2004 due to these very factors. Licensing midwives in a way that prevents them from practicing their skills on a case by case basis is taking a choice away from mothers who deserve the right to choose what they and their babies are exposed to during birth. Statistics show again and again that planned home birth is as safe as a hospital birth and in some cases safer for low risk mothers. Many of the issues that have been presented as high risk or outside of normal are not as risky as these deciding boards have been making them out to be and these decisions seem to be more about filling the pockets of the doctors and hospitals than about the actual safety and concern of the mothers who want the choices.

I was absolutely blind to these circumstances until I read Carla’s take on it and then saw for myself how the one-size-fits-all laws restrict perfectly healthy, educated women from making decisions in their own best interest. My husband likes to argue that regulation of midwifery is necessary and if the problem seems to be the way in which we are regulated, than I should seek to change the implementation, not licensure, but I still think that licensure is the problem because our culture will never allow natural medicine, alternative therapies and non western medicine to be autonomous. There is too much money and power to gain in surgery and pharmaceuticals and if a cheaper, safer way of maintaining one’s health became widely accepted in our culture, they have too much to lose. I don’t see how this paradigm will be shifted until people start becoming educated about their choices and demanding to have access to them as well as holding themselves responsible for the choices they make. If people were encouraged to be responsible for their decisions, they couldn’t blame the doctor’s or midwives when something doesn’t go as planned, they would have to see how their choices effected their outcome and how they can do better next time around, if they are lucky enough to have a next time.

September check in

Hello ladies! I am on the home stretch of phase 2 and about a week away from requesting phase 3. I wrote a research paper on why we should lower the cesarean rate and hve ben looking for a way to publish it. This was an assignment for my technical writing class and I got an A. I consulted with my writing teacher and she has said that this is a totally publishable paper and I would like to send it out to be published, just don’t know where to send it to. She was very impressed with my research and writing skills. I have attended one more birth since my last check in. It was a friend of mine. It was a great home birth, my first water birth attended and I learned very valuable lessons. The mother self induced with herbs and castor oil a week before her due date and the baby was tiny and covered in vernix which leads me to believe she easily could have stayed pregnant another 2 weeks. She had a long latent phase and was anxious. The baby’s head was not in a centered position and so she really had to work with the small contractions and encourage her baby to move into a better position. The other student midwife had an optimal fetal position book that they were going over and so Mom tried a few different things like side lunging during contractions and sitting with her body positioned forward to better engage baby’s head. Once she was in active labor thing moved well. The biggest lesson I learned about birth at this experience is that no matter who you are or how much you know or think you know about birth, when you are in the moment and you can’t surrender, it is easy to become frightened and irrational. There was a period during transition when Mom was trying to escape labor and I knew what was happening and was in awe at the power of the body’s chemicals to disrupt someone’s conscious thoughts and beliefs. I was supporting the family members present and comforting them while it was difficult to listen to mom fight her labor. They were worried and I encouraged them to trust that this is a normal part of transition and it just means that she has some things to overcome and that she and the baby are fine and she will be pushing soon. I asked them to trust that the midwife would not put her in danger and is monitoring her well, knows her well enough to know if she needs to transfer and they are doing fine. This period lasted about 15 minutes and then mom started pushing. Baby was out in 45 minutes, caught by dad, in the water, it was fantastic. The midwife did a great job of supporting Mom only when she needed it and staying hands off the rest of the time. It was a beautiful birth. It was amazing to watch the Mom, her mom and sister, and her husband all work together and have to overcome obstacles in their own thinking to surrender to the power of birth and allow things to happen as they were intended to. I came away from that birth recharged and fully engaged in pursuing more apprenticeship opportunities that will work with my schedule as they come available. I have been invited to come to an office in Albany for prenatals and office work and will be called when I can come to a birth. I am excited about this and think that it will work out for the time being. I have also been invited to attend a birth with Lennon and went on a prenatal appointment with her to this client’s house. This one is a VBAC. Apparently 4 out of the 6 moms she knows who planned a home birth transferred to the hospital so she is doing her best to trust and try her hardest to get ready for this birth. This will be a journey for sure and I am looking forward to watching her transform through it all. I have some confusion about a situation that happened in my area about a baby dying at a home birth with an unlicensed midwife. The newspapers are vilifying her, but I see the most issue with the mom who didn’t do enough research and was not empowered or supported through her decisions. I have so many concerns and probably misconceptions because of lack of details. I am planning on attending the OMC meeting on Friday in hopes of clarification and to monitor the situation as the volunteer licensing in Oregon might be at stake if this mother gets her way. It irks me because if she thought she was hiring a licensed midwife, why didn’t she look her up? Why didn’t she ask questions at the prenatal appointment about what equipment the midwife uses and her policy about transfers? I guess I just want the comfort of knowing that this midwife did everything in her power to help this mom and I hope the papers are wrong. I feel horrible for the mom and her family for the loss of their baby. I only wish that she would have had the care from the beginning taht she deserved and that this situation can be prevented through proper education and practicioners honoring their clients wishes and empowering them with information so they can make decisions that are right for them. The resources are there, people need to be encouraged to use them. So based on all that, I am also concerned about how I should proceed with my education. Do I need to be preparing for my NARM and Licensure? Do I need to step up my studies to obtain these papers faster than I had intended working on it before? How should I plan things out, what if they take away the option of apprenticeship and I have to go to a different school? I am committed at AAMI and prefer this method of schooling, especially considering I am already going to a University for my BA in Human Development and Family Sciences, should I be looking at nursing instead now? I would prefer to be learning psychology and neuroscience, not nursing…. I think that the psychology is more pertinent to midwifery than nursing at this point. Ughhh the decisions…. Let’s see…. Well, I am also planning trip to Haiti for next December to go to the Mamababy Haiti birth center. I sent an email with questions about how I can legally organize fundraisers and plan for a group of me and a few friends to go and haven’t heard anything back. I read through the website and the handbook and FAQs and am trying to get prepared as much as possible. I think 2 weeks there could take out a year of waiting to attend births here and will help me get closer to my primary care under supervision part of training if I am indeed needing to prepare for the NARM. I also am motivated by the non technological aspects of working in Haiti with minimal resources and learning real midwifery skills without the safety net of a prestigious hospital within a few miles… real life midwifery in a setting that requires it. On the side lines, I am also working on filing a complaint with the State of Oregon Medical board about hospital policies surrounding the unnecessary removal of my daughter’s appendix a year ago. It is very much a mirror to unnecessary cesareans, circumcisions, and tonsillectomies… The whole, you should be glad it wasn’t worse/had a healthy baby/you don’t need that part of your body anyway/ there was no real loss mindset of our culture. Lawyers won’t pick up the case because there is no $$ value in it and all I can do is fight the board for policy change about informed consent and how when information changes, so does consent, and how a child is anesthetized. My daughter has a right to her body, her whole body, even if an appendix is perceived as not having any use, if you go in expecting to see an infected appendix and you go in and see a normal appendix, you don’t remove it “just because we were already there” and don’t come in laughing telling me “at least you don’t have to worry about appendicitis anymore.” Oh! And my favorite book find since I last reported was a CDROM collection of 34 antique midwifery books from the 1700-1800’s (for $5 on Ebay)! The few I have browsed were fantastic! It amazes me how much we had to “advance” in medicine to learn that they already had it figured out pretty darn good in the 1700’s, even the male doctors in Europe had respect for birth and knew when not to intervene. The writing is almost poetic in some of the books. I was really surprised!

End of July Check in

My check ins are too few and far between but that is not because I am not doing anything…

I am still maintaining good grades at community college. This term I am taking technical writing, speech, medical terminology and eastern religion. All of these classes are giving me opportunities to expand my midwifery skills, from writing papers and studying for my technical writing paper which is on how and why we should reduce c sections.

This Wednesday I will be delivering a 5-7 minute informative speech about how the home birth rate has risen 20% since 2007. I plan on video recording this and using it on my blog and website for informational and advertising purposes. I am really looking forward to this project.




The medical terminology class has been very challenging and fun at the same time. I spend more time on that class than any other class at this point and have been taking weekly quizzes averaging about a “B.” I remember a lot of it from taking A and P for massage therapy school, but that was over 10 years ago and it is a good review!

The Eastern Religion class has been very “enlightening” and I am learning some very wonderful things about mindset and the role of suffering in life and how to overcome it from ancient texts and practices that suit me very well. I am going to a Buddhist temple for an assignment and am looking forward to learning how to better meditate and keep focus and centered and not allow my expectations or attachments to rule my life. I might even stick with this routine of going to “church” as Westerners would call it, Temple as Easterners do, on Monday nights as part of “me” time.

I spoke with someone in the college about teaching a childbirth education course as part of their community parenting classes. They were not very receptive and even went so far as to tell me they would not want to present a conflict of interest with the hospital’s classes. I had to inform them that the hospital’s classes would not be the same as my class because I was going to get down into depth of the actual physiology of birth, including the hormonal changes and aspects of the environment that will help maintain safety for the mother and baby both physically and psychologically without the use of any interventions, keeping the focus on NORMAL and not on medicalized birthing. She wants me to present her with my resume, references, a full outline, bibliography and an interview when I am ready to get started. I am looking forward to the challenge and my goal is to be teaching a summer class there next year, that will not only appeal to expecting or planning parents, but also some of the nursing program students as well. It will be at least a 6 week course covering pregnancy, birth and postpartum. I hope I am not biting off more than I can chew planning this, but I am certainly up for the challenge!

The bookshelf is getting fuller. I found a great deal on 3 ring binders at a 2nd hand store, 21 for $5, can’t beat that! I have been getting organized still and working on the list of assignments for phase 2. At this point, I am 2 weeks behind where I intended to be, but I feel confident I can make up some of that time now that my husband will be home more to help with the kids. The downside to that is that he will be home and also contribute to the distractions… ahhh, married life!




I have been working on my herbal knowledge and practices as well. Studying the local herbs, where to get them and what they do. I have even been consulting with some people about their ailments and helping them find herbs that might help out with things from allergies to infectious wounds, menstrual irregularities and headaches.

I love being a student midwife. I really really do!

The perfect midwife

My idea of the perfect midwife is: someone who can be focused, calm, and fast to think of solutions. Someone who can facilitate growth while maintaining relationships that lead to sharing the same empowerment amongst the community as a whole. Someone who knows how to “pay it forward” and trusts that she can give willingly and know that she will receive what she needs in return. She is appreciated by the community and people trust her. He can be tough when she needs to protect herself or the people she is caring for, she can be brave when she has to do something hard, she can be quiet when it is time to witness and she can be available when she is needed for help. She is strong in her convictions but not afraid to learn from others. She is open to diversity in cultures and respects traditions and different belief systems. She honors her work as a midwife as a privilege and is gracious for the opportunity to help people who seek her. She knows when to say no to someone she cannot help. She balances her passion for service with her love of her family. She sets an example to the community of peaceful presence and responsible agency. She is happy to teach other women the arts that she possesses and knows that by enabling more people to practice, she ensures everyone a better life. She is ok with not living in luxury and appreciates the little things in life, she finds her riches in the relationships she builds and the people she calls friends. When things get difficult, she can calmly react and manage the situation and even if there is not a favorable outcome, she is confident and humble at the same time.

Here it comes....

When I started considering moving toward midwifery, I had a feeling it was going to be like considering to have another baby. We talked about it, made some plans, discussed what we needed to do. I wondered if I was ready for this commitment, all the work invovled, the responsibility, the learning, what am I getting myself into. Than the searching, looking trying, preparing, creating, studying on if I wnt to even go through wiht it. Then the reality hits, it is confirmed, I am spending money on books, tuition, confrences, interviewing with other Midwives, making business cards, creating a website, moving forward. I feel like I am hitting the 2nd trimester right now, about to pass through another landmark this week. This week is the confrence and I start my studies at Ancient Art Midwifery Institute. I know something BIG is waiting for me to find it and break through and I will see the world in a whole new light. My intuition that has lead me this far is presenting more and more reasons to trust my self in this journey and go with it. The more people I meet, the more books I find, the more I run into people who are beggin for this paradigm shift, people taking back their HUMAN RIGHTS in so many ways, all over the world in all kinds of cultures. We are coming HOME to the Mother to the Earth, we are reclaiming ourselves and our rights to LIVE and breathe and birth and eat and just live. I am so excited to be gripping this journey, growing, changing, evolving yet again into knowing myself for who *I* am. Fully exploring my purpose, my passion and my presence.

It is peaceful to trust that this is going to work out for the best because it HAS TO. I can't wait to be with my sisters and share this Love, this energy of Mother, and watch it grow and be passed on and nurtured.

My Prayer

Purpose:___Women who are ready to do the work involved in using birth to heal themselves and transform into the mother they long to be will seek me out and utilize my expierences and tools to achieve their goals. These ladies will not question my worth, they will be able to provide an exchange for services that will meet my needs and allow me to continue offering my support to women who need me to give them the sacred space to do their birth work and expereince Birth Heaven

Recognition God is within me as Spirit is within all things. We are all interconnected bringing each other into harmony and attracting each other to each other at the best possible moment. Spirit will let me know when to do what needs to be done, when to act, when to sit back, when to question and when to let go. Spirit will enable me to connect with other women’s spirit in order to accomplish their Heaven on their terms on their path, enhancing my own path as we walk together on a journey to transformation.

Unification: Through the Universe, all things are interconnected, th energy I hold within me is the same energy held and utilized by women of the past to achieve great things, to honor and love each other in sisterhood and motherhood. I am a tool to carry the Energy of Birth Heaven to others who seek it an are ready to accept it and move through it in order to share and bring it to the next generation of Light workers.

3.Realization: I let go of the fear that I will not be nurtured or cared for in the process of my exchange of services for the ability to continue nurturing and supporting my family alongside the community of women who seek my services. I will not carry the burden of holdin the importance of financial needs first and trust that I will get exactly what I need in abundance to allow for my family to thrive comfortably and happily which enables me to give my all to the women who utilize my services. The time I will devote to my clients to care for their needs will be refreshed with the fulfillment of my needs and we will balance each other out.

4.Thanksgiving: I give thanks to the Universe for putting this opportunity in front of me, for providing me with the right situations to make this happen and for making sure that the lessons and responsibilities are given equal energy to the energy I put forth. I Thank the people who have crossed my path on the beginning of my journey that encourage and support me to keep this faith alive, to trust in birth, to trust in sisterhood, to trust in the unity of the divine feminine that drives me to move forward.

5.Release: So MOTE IT BE!! My words are carried not just through the electricity of this interaction but through all of the universe, on their way to being fulfilled!

Birth Heaven Now!

I am so excited to be participating in this class with Stephanie Dawn. I received an email about how to sign up and instantly thought, "This is totally something I should be doing!" Stephanie has been warm and welcoming and has helped me considerably to be able to attend, despite my financial issues.

IN this class we are exploring and defining the old paradigm of birth as :
The Old Paradigm:

1. Does not honor women
2. Does not trust birth
3. Does not respect a woman’s body
4. Does not empower women to do right by themselves
5. Causes unnecessary fear around pregnancy and birth
6. Causes unnecessary power struggles with women
7. Unenlightened Birth Caregivers/”Medical Authority” who assume decision making on behalf of a woman.
8. Does not embody LIGHT and LOVE and PEACE and POWER WITH
9. Instead embodies FEAR, energizes POWER OVER, BODILY AND SPIRITUAL AND EMOTIONAL DISRESPECT and DISEMPOWERMENT


and the new paradigm:

1. Honors women
2. Trusts birth
3. Respects a woman’s body
4. Empowers women to listen to themselves; all aspects (emotional, spiritual, sensual, physical)
5. Birth caregivers and Birth Team energize and exemplify POWER WITH, which EMPOWERS, RESPECTS AND HONORS women ~ keeps playing field level.
6. Keeps choice and informed decision making with the woman
7. Enlightened and AWARE birth caregivers
8. Supports women to birth in LOVE, LIGHT, PEACE

This speaks to me in ways that I can not verbalize as well as Stephanie does. It was mentioned by one of the class participants that the new moms in our culture don't even realize that these 2 different worlds exist and that we need to be able to explain to them what they are up against and how they can achieve more than they ever imagined through birth. I worry about this all the time. How can I help bring awareness to someone who has not yet experienced the Hell or Heaven of birth. It is like leading the blind to figure out what color means. I fear that women may not take it seriously, may not understand the damage to their psyche, their soul that being disempowered can lead to. I want to protect them, to guide them and help them in anyway I can, yet I feel as though there is no way to approach this to ladies who have been so oppressed and abused in the past that they see no problem with the old paradigm.

Stephanie uses an image in her workbook of a sketch of a woman laid on her back on a flat hard surface, tubes attached to her with IVs, blood pressure cuff, heart monitor fetal monitor, several hands around bottom half of her body holding instruments like scissors, clamps, scalpels, vacuum extractor, forceps and she seems ot be unconscious, prone, empty, given up, dead to the world.... It is obscene to me. When I think of the recent images I have found in books and videos of exctatic births, smiling women full of life and love and freedom to express them self through birth, to transform their souls in the process of birthing, in becoming a mother through determination and sweat and tears of joy, overcoming their fears, moving through their previous ideas of what it should be, ignoring the lies that have been ingrained into our brains for so long, looking at the image of this victimized woman incites horror.

To think that women willingly put their entire lives in the hands of doctors everyday that result in trauma that is unnecessary is enough to debilitate me with sadness. But I am choosing to rise above this sadness and turn it into passion to teach, to inform, to love and to protect the sancity of Womanhood and seek the light in this darkness.

I will do my best to educate and trust that the Universe will bring me families that are ready for this path, people will seek me out because they are ready to experience something other than what they have been lead to believe as the only truth there can be. I am special in my own way and have much to offer to our community. I know that I can make a difference and just by me being present and focused I am opening up choices and leading people down a path towards something bigger and better than they ever dreamed possible.

After my last birth, 7 years ago, I still process and reprocess that experience and learn from it all the time. As I study more and understand more, I see ways in which I can still utilize that strength to grow and become the woman I am meant to be, the mother I am and will continue to be and I will mother more than my own children.

I am so filled with excitement as I make this journey. I read a quote today that said if the ship doesn't come in, swim out to it. I am knee deep and ready to tread water to get to this ship. I am meeting it half way as it makes its way to me!