Public/Private: Gloves/Bareskin

There has been a lot of talk in the birth community about The Business of Being Born.
Natural birth advocates seem happy since it is a film that is clearly promoting women's education and informed choices towards safe and empowered childbirth experiences.
The medical community is raising a threatened fist, with a lot of comments about skewed statistics and woowoo medicine.
Now, my sense is that statistics in general are a crock of BS used mostly for propaganda. They can usually be dis-proven with a different focus group. The statistics in this film may be skewed, but certainly not any more skewed than those that the medical establishment uses to frighten women into what is often unnecessary intervention.

What this film has done is to bring something that is usually very private into the public sphere. Sure, 'A Baby Story' on TLC did it first, but they tend to highlight only hospital births with doctors screaming, women hooked to machines, flat on their backs and drugged to the point of delirium. I cannot watch 'A Baby Story' without wanting to throw something at my TV. Fortunately, I don't have cable, so I still have a TV.

I went to see the film with a group of girlfriends and one girlfriend's brave male partner. There were seven of us, all in the birth community, in a theater full of pregnant women, midwives, doulas and a smattering of men. A bit tragic since the film was truly preaching to the choir with that audience, but we have to start somewhere.

Here is what made me cringe:
Cara, the NYC homebirth midwife featured in the film, is not wearing gloves in three of the highlighted births she attends. Gloves, as I see it, are something everyone can agree on.
An abundance of latex gloves is a tremendous benefit and privilege of first world medicine. Even if you know a woman's health status, gloves are smart. Personally, I don't care if Cara wears gloves. This is her choice, and for whatever reason, she doesn't see them as necessary. My cringe though, was for the attack that I felt coming from the medical community. It seemed fuel for the argument that home birth midwives are untrained and unsafe. "Cara", I thought, "you knew you were being filmed. Why didn't you throw on some gloves?".

I went home with this thought. But the more I thought about it, the more my own thought bothered me. Why would I want Cara to put on gloves to give some sort of illusion to the medical community? Isn't that exactly the point? Home birth midwifery IS off the grid. We all practice differently and while the medical community attacks that, we embrace it. We see this diversity as the juice, the good stuff, in helping women choose the best possible route to having an amazing passage into motherhood.

I locate this thought in the binary between public and private, most things that occur in the body live in this space (hence, the body politic). Somehow, I want to prove to the medical community that homebirth midwifery is a smart, effective, cost efficient and SAFE way to have a baby, while at the same time remaining true to the nature and essence of midwifery which supports individual choice and interpersonal relationships. Clearly, Cara felt safe enough with these women to expose her bare hands to their bodily fluids. We should trust that. I may not make the same choice (even with my closest friends), but I support hers and her bravery in exposing that to the scrutiny of those who want to shut us down.

Perhaps more on this later. I would love to hear thoughts.

Dr. Grant's Gift to Women

I ended up at NYU hospital a few months ago after we had to transport a mama (possible placenta separation which turned out to be fine once we got there... still, better safe than sorry).
She was totally committed to continuing laboring as home birth-like as possible, so we had sort of set up shop in the L&D room. We had our oils and birth ball out and my co-partera was doing some EFT. The nurses were surprisingly great and everything was moving along as smoothly as possible (of course mama was still hooked up to all sorts of machines), when this guy walks in.

He walks past everyone in the room and comes up to mama mid contraction and says with a huge grin on his face "Hi, I am Dr. Grant and I am the Director of Obstetric Anesthesia here. Tell me something, do you find labor painful?"

Mama breathes through her contraction and then looks up at him and nods.
Dr. Grant then begins to push the epidural like a high class drug dealer. I have never seen such a hard sell. "Look, you wouldn't have an appendectomy without anesthesia would you? Why would you suffer like this? My wife had an epidural from the first pain she felt and we have three wonderful children, all c- sections, all healthy!"

After his long winded pitch and still no candy takers, Dr. Grant pulls out the big guns.
"Look" he says "have you read my book? You never heard of it? It's called Enjoy Your Labor!"
He moves quickly out of the room and returns with two signed copies of a shiny book with the image of a pregnant belly with sunglasses balanced on the front; no doubt intended to conjure up feelings of lazing on the beach with a margarita.

The proselytizing did not stop.
It was as if Dr. Grant believed he had found Gods gift to women and it was his duty to spread the word. To share the gift. It had similar feeling to those moments when well intended born agains have tried to save my soul. After several unsuccessful attempts, Dr. Grant shook his head and stated that some women just feel they need to be a martyr and left the room.

At some point, I opened the book.
Here are a few choice excerpts found on his website:



A sure way for women to expericence painless childbirth


I did not read much more. Only to the point when he says that he believes the C-section rate should be higher than one in three because it is so safe.

I have read plenty of natural birth advocacy books, and believe me, I know many are every bit as slanted towards the positives of the midwifery model of care as this book is slanted towards complete interventionist and technocratic model- however, this book just infuriates me.
It is an abuse of power and obstetrics to be so medically one sided and opinionated. It is his job to inform the patient of the risks and benefits of the procedure, not sell it like a used car.

Dr Grant, who are you to decide what importance the labor process may or may not have on a woman's experience of transition into motherhood.
And honestly, comparing childbirth to an appendicitis? What? An appendicitis is an emergency surgery. Nobody is suggesting women go into c-sections without anesthesia. But the correlation between natural childbirth and men having an organ cut out of them is beyond ludicrous.
Stating that women will be able to push more effectively with an epidural because they will have better control? Excuse me, when is total numbness a better source of control than being able to move and feel your own legs? And Dr. Grant, the medical evidence on this one is not on your side. Most studies show that women with epidurals take significantly longer to push their babies out, often leading to increased fetal distress, forceps, episiotiomy and c-sections. There is no evidence that suggests epidurals help the pushing process in any way. You just can't find it.

And lastly, on his website under 'book reviews' you have a bunch of moms exclaiming the wonders of their epidurals:

"A must for all mothers-to-be! Enjoy Your Labor dispels the myths that are all too common. Finally, the straight scoop from the best source. Thanks to Enjoy Your Labor, I was able to make an educated decision regarding anesthesia and to finally rest easy knowing I could advocate for my own pain relief." - Katie Cullen, mom, San Diego, California

I have to question using phrases like 'able to advocate for my pain relief'. Since when did women have to advocate for the right to be made numb in a labor room? It seems we haven't come so far from the Twilight Sleep era after all.

Too Posh To Push

Last week at a restaurant on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, a group of women gathered for lunch, martinis, and to discuss their Cesarean sections. There was one pregnant woman, sipping cranberry juice and seltzer, she was deciding whether or not to become a member of “Too Posh To Push”, a collective of women who have scheduled and advocate for other women to schedule cesarean sections so that they do not need to enact the ‘primitive’ and ‘uncivilized’ drama of childbirth. The existence of the “Too Posh To Push” movement makes the embodied experience of childbirth a performance necessary only for poor, the rural, or those who (gasp) chose it

Who ‘should’ be having babies, and the method in which they do, is clearly socially constituted.
By its very animal nature childbirth is a rupture of civility and femininity. It is also a physical rupture, a rupture of skin, of water, of fluid and blood, and of two bodies separating. The “Too Posh to Push” women are advocating to enact a prescribed discourse of motherhood which says that the blood, sweat, tears and moans; the fluids and sounds of childbirth are threatening to their identity and thus, the performance of entry into motherhood. Those who advocate for it promote staying ‘honeymoon fresh’, suggesting intrinsically that after being stretched out women become less desirable to their men. The childbirth ‘event’ is thus planned and carefully staged within notions of ‘good’ femininity (one can even wear makeup and not sweat it off), rather than the random, un-timable and ‘out of control’ event of natural childbirth. The women scheduling cesarean sections, separate their ‘self’, their notions of motherhood, from their bodies. The fact that the medical institution agrees to these planned Cesarean sections speaks volumes about where pregnant women are located in ‘the body politic’.

Christina Aguilera is the latest celebrity to join the club. Christina honey, labor lasts a day or two. A scar will mess up your bikini style forever.

lessons in normality

It's the last day of 2007.
Yesterday a few of the November babies I caught came to brunch at my house (yes, the parents were also invited).
A few older babies came too and we munched and sipped mimosa (well, the parents did) and as is apt to happen among new moms, everyone traded birth stories.
These are all women I have worked with who entered into giving birth within the midwifery model of care. Each woman had varying levels of success with this, depending on where she chose to give birth (a few were home, one birthing center, one hospital).
So, after some swapping dramatic tales with happy endings, somebody asks 'does anyone ever have a 'normal' birth?'
I was shocked to hear this asked in my circle of mamas! We are so conditioned to think about birth from the biomedical model that even those who escape its boundaries and have positive, self fulfilled home births, compare their experiences to the parameters of 'normal' established by obstetrics! I exclaimed very quickly that yes! you ALL had normal births! It is not abnormal for a cervix to take a pause in its dilation (even a five hour pause). It is not abnormal to go two weeks over your 'due date'. It is not abnormal for pushing to take a couple of hours. These are things the body does to get a baby out! There is nothing more normal. It is trying to place the body in a box of time management that is abnormal!
Everyone laughed and agreed.
But I had to sigh a little inside. It truly is hard to escape something so deeply engrained. It's like unlearning how to breath.
Happy new year y'all. May you all remember how very, very normal and beautiful you are!

This is like watching a train wreck

Childbirth Ecstasy

I lifted these videos from the unassisted childbirth website.
First of all, the one up top almost looks fake.
Her hair, her makeup, her smile, it's all so 'I Love Lucy'.
Does this woman get off on pain or is she really feeling THAT good?
Either way, I'll take what she is taking, please.
Additionally, are these births taking place in France?
The vaginal birth of twins (in the video below), especially a breach twin, would never be done in an American hospital. I love how quiet all of the assistants are and how they allow the babies to just come out. The mom is so wide open and calm. Totally animal. Totally beautiful. Totally resistant to the technocratic model, and yet in a hospital. Who are these women? Who are these attendants? I want an interview!

Partera

'Nuff Said

US Maternal Mortality Rate Increasing
The maternal mortality rate in the US is the highest it has been in decades, according to statistics released in August by the National Center for Health Statistics. The US maternal mortality rate was 13 deaths per 100,000 live births in 2004, compared to 12 in 2003, which was the first year the maternal death rate was more than 10 since 1977. The major direct causes of US pregnancy-related deaths are blood clots, hemorrhage, complications of medical conditions, and eclampsia and pre-eclampsia.

The report says the increase in maternal deaths "largely reflects" more states' use of a separate item on the death certificate indicating pregnancy status of the woman. A rise in the number of caesarean sections could be a factor in the increased maternal mortality rate, some experts said. Race and quality of care also factor into the maternal mortality rate. The maternal mortality rate among black women is at least three times higher than among white women. Three studies have shown that at least 40% of maternal deaths could have been prevented with improved quality of care. The rise in obesity might also be a factor. Finally, more women are giving birth in their late 30s and 40s, when risks of pregnancy complications are higher.

The report is available online at www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr55/nvsr55_19.pdf

Yes, Chinua, Things do fall apart

Watch this on NY Times.com.
It is a short news blurb on the women of the Congo.
Some of the women I worked with in Uganda were refugees from the Congo. I feel anxious when I think about how big, how long, how devastating this war has been to so many thousands of people.

With the recent peace talks I wonder who will be the first to surrender. Surrender in Military definition is when soldiers or nations stop
fighting and become prisoners of war. Of course, nobody every mentions
that the white flag is usually conditional. There is always something
we just can't give up. Something we will still die to hold onto. And
what happens if there are multiple truths, perspectives, ideas we are
all clinging to the death for? Who surrenders what? So we negotiate
surrender. I'll give this up if you give that up, and then are we
even? Men sit around in suits and sign pieces of paper that are
contracts on other peoples lives. Surrender becomes the compromise,
and at once, the center of the story.

Its kind of like, Yes, Chinua, Things do fall apart: I can't talk my
way out of it. or into it. Just have to lay still and accept the
uneasiness as it washes over my broken body. a wave, pushing over
sand. And sometimes, when I wake, I am no longer who I thought I was
At ALL. I am only the pieces held together with blood and piss and
tears. Chaotic energy sparking into ash at your feet, blending into
the Earth as a molecule of something bursts into nothing and is gone.

Women of East Africa. Women all over who have been violated in the name of a battle being waged by men. Women who give birth and die for political violence.
I offer you my hands. My heart. My voice, which I am so privileged to have been taught how to use.
And yet I feel as powerless as you. When one woman is violated, we all are. Rape as a tool of war makes all of us prisoners. How do we shift what has already devastated? In the hearts of the men who rape. In the boys who are now growing and being raised by mothers who conceived and gave birth in violence. How do we shift the cycle?

These photos were taken by me in Uganda. Child Mothers to the left, and a TBA with a child she caught in an IDP camp to the right.

The 'Best'

I want to dialogue with the idea of 'the best' doctor.
I hear that a lot. It seems everyone has found 'the best' doctor to fit their needs.
"They have to operate, but he has the best heart surgeon in the United States".
"My gynecologist is rated number one in cervical cancer treatment".

First of all, who is doing the rating?
Second of all, what are they basing the ratings on? Lowest number of patient deaths? Highest level of training? Best bedside manner? (highly doubtful), Sexiness? (more likely.)
A small amount of research has led me to believe they base it on statistics which show the most performance with the best outcomes for the least amount of money paid by insurance companies.

It certainly is a comforting thought. Having the best.
We all want the best, but clearly, by nature of the word itself, only one person can inhabit that position. You are either 'the best' or you are not.
Seems like a strange binary for a field that needs to heal an entire world of people.

Read Rafael Campo's book 'Desire To Heal'.
It is a poetic look into empathy and the twisted business of being 'the best' doctor.

I love this belly. So often what is right beneath the skin seems so far away, so unimaginable, so un-real. And then you see the contours of a foot, skin pressing up against skin, and the distance is lessened, the body understood, everything just makes a little bit more sense.

Uter-"I"

What is a uterus?

"Uterus: 1. In the primates; The organ in which the young are conceived, developed, and protected till birth; the female organ of gestation; the womb. b. In other animals: The matrix; the ovary 1753. 2. Bot. a. = PERICARP 1676. b. In fungi: The envelope of the sporophore 1829." -- Oxford English Dictionary.

Uterus, then, appears to be a medical or botanical term. My uterus is there to perform a reproductive function, as in other animals (and fungi), and in some ways it is not dissimilar to a nut shell (pericarp -- the pod, husk or shell of a fruit). This description does seem to lack depth and breadth, being purely about physical form and function, but then that's exactly why I recognize it as a scientific definition.

So aside from its nutshell function, the cultural relationship of uterus to 'woman' is an interesting one to explore. What happens when our uterus betrays us by not holding life? Or when we lost it to illness? Or what happens when a perfectly functional uterus turns fifty and stops serving its life purpose? I am interested in a discussion of uterus vs femininity or gender roles in particular. I am most interested in an international discussion because I am sure it varies - I mean, shit, it probably varies from brownstone to brownstone here in Brooklyn.

A laying on of hands

Shamanism is in and underesourced Western medicine is... out?
I don't think so. However, this article seems to point to the idea that somewhere in the international consciousness indigenous practices may have a place. I think those spaces where what used to work, and new 'innovative' (I locate that problematically) ideas can mix, are the only potential we have for effective health care in rural communities.

Lack. Loss. Limbs. and Love.

I have been reading 'Minding The Body' a collection of essays by women writers on the body.
I read it years ago, but it strikes something different this time around.
Perhaps it is the subtlety of shared experience that evokes a sense of closeness to my own fleshy body, or maybe it is just a point of entry for discussing something that is lived and very rarely articulated. Words are at once inadequate and yet simultaneously unveil truths that mimic the expansion and contraction of the lungs with every breath. Simple and so necessary.

It seems one of the overarching themes of the book is loss, or coping with a percieved loss.
Loss of youth, body shape, children, facial features, sexuality, wildness. Each writer finds a nugget of truth or wisdom in her loss, but nevertheless her discussion begins with a lack.
Must every discussion of women's bodies begin from lack?

I think about the body and loss, generally.
The body can experience physical loss, and does so every day. The shedding of cells, hair, skin.
The body can lose entire organs, limbs, and yet still compensate, heal and function.
Is the body ever really whole?
We lose partners and its as if our bodies have failed us somehow.
We lose hair, memory, muscle- the process of the bodies slow decline back into the earth is at once growth and loss.

Our bodies are always lacking and so how do we respond? We become obsessed with losing weight. Losing wrinkles. Losing spots. Losing any sign that we are alive and changing.
We expect to gain from that loss. Even as I write this, I have friends over getting ready to go out. I am quick, perhaps too quick in my application of product, so I find myself with a half hour at least to write while they apply makeup, tie straps, spray body splash and body shimmer. Each addition in compensation for a percieved lack.

However, I think in its own twisted way, we like it. We enjoy the process of compensation. We enjoy finding the edges of our lack and the process of defining those boundaries. We enjoy wearing strappy heels because we know the kind of power that extra leg boost creates.

So is lack the same as loss?
If you are born without a limb is it the same as losing it? Clearly we have a different emotional relationship to loss than to lack. Inherently, we spend so much time compensating for a lack, that we lose not only the potential for relationship with these bodies we live in, but also the potential for joy, for pleasure, for intimacy.

And since this is a blog in dialogue with medicine, I have to question women's relationship with their bodies in the context of our overall health.
I think its imperitive that we start examining our own relationships to our bodies and lack. Its ok to lose, but I don't think that loss must be defined in terms of lack. Prepare for a generation of women who define their bodies by what is, not what isn't. What we carry with us now, we pass on to our daughters. Historical memory is a very, very real. Thanks Grandma.

Pain as art or painful art?

Bob Flanagan's pain journal
How can pain heal?
How can suffering push the boundaries of compassion?
Was this guy just complaining or was he on to something?

He died drowning in the fluid of his own lungs. He used his lifelong terminal illness as a medium for voice and art. Some might call it masturbatory, but I think it lives on the in the trenches between total self indulgence (I mean, what/who doesn't?) and total humanitarian effort. That makes it edgier somehow. The conditions of his emergence make possible this kind of art. Only a nicely privileged white guy would have the balls to spend years of his life exhibiting and flaunting his pain- and because of that, we learn something. About him. About ourselves. Thanks Bob.

Systems and Cycles

Bodies into the earth, earth into soil, soil into food, food into bodies.
Somebody once described death this way to me.
I am interested in the documenting of the cycle.
The medical history.
The documents that narrativize and archive the biomedical story of our bodies. The human body is performed. According to Diana Taylor our personal histories are embodied through a repertoire of learned and responsive gesture. The residue of trauma or physical pain is embodied and so is pleasure. Medical histories however, seem to only be an account of that which is diagnosed or ‘wrong’. Most of us then, have a missing narrative of our actual health. I believe there is power in the narrative. The story we tell about our body actually affects the way we care for it. In every moment there are infinite possibilities for interpreting meaning, thereby making ‘truth’ a relative term.

So I am thinking today about how that narrative is formed.
Articulated.
Brought into light.
Processing about engagement style.
Strategy.
Effectively communicating so that a point can be heard.
Cultivating space for voice.
Opening channels of and for communication.
Medical histories miss the point.
Are we asking the right questions?

How can what a woman says be so different from how she feels?
Or rather, what she feels, be so impossible to say?
Where is that gap?
What lives in the space between? I sense that this space is fertile.

I think and write a lot about cultural metaphors of the body affecting healthcare and therefore, embodiment. As Carolyn Merchant demonstrates in the Death of Nature, this model originally developed in the 1600’s by Descartes, Bacon and Hobbes assumes that the universe is mechanistic, following predictable laws, which those enlightened enough to free themselves from the limitations of medieval superstition could discover through science and manipulate through technology, in order to decrease dependence on nature. In this model, the metaphor for the human body is a machine. As it was developed in the 17th century, the practical function of the metaphor of the body as machine lay in its conceptual divorce of body from soul, and in the subsequent removal of the body from the purview of religion so it could be opened up to scientific investigation. Consequently, the men who established the idea of the body as machine also firmly established the male prototype of this machine. Insofar as it deviated from the male standard, the female body was regarded as abnormal, inherently defective, and in need of constant manipulation by man. Conceptions of the body are bound to this notion that the body is controllable and predictable… something like childbirth is a radical rupture of this model.

So it makes sense that we can't narrate our bodies.
How can we push boundaries in a system thats structure denies its own validity? Is any sort of questioning a crack in a system that has no floor to begin with?
In a medical space that is built on the model of the male body, the narration of womens bodies becomes either an act of violence to the system, or to the narrated woman, depending on how it gets used. Depending on who is listening (more on audience later).

I understand that a gentle entry is always the better way.
To become culturally competent. To work within to shape the borders. To have an understanding of or empathy for the person's experience in the world before attempting to understand the way she embodies; culturally contextualizing the symptoms manifest in her body.
I still question how we question without becoming a tool for the same mold we are trying to break.

Bodies into the earth, earth into soil, soil into food, food into bodies. Have you ever seen life leave a body? Without breath the body takes on a different shape, a different meaning. The experiences of that person are no longer connected to the body but to the memory of the body in life. The stories. The narrative. What that body passes on, will remain in the medical narratives of its children, re-invoking its own story through its constant telling. I believe that disease is truly just the body in dis-ease. If medical practitioners can engage and align with not just the measurable symptoms but the actual events and feelings surrounding the body in dis-ease, we may be faced with new questions- and with new questions come new answers, new ways to heal.

I don't feel well today.
I woke with this unquenchable thirst. Guzzled water, took a shower, hydrated my skin, guzzled water, made tea.
Felt better. Running late to lead a workshop on prepared childbirth for young pregnant mamas in the Bronx.
Got on the subway. Morning commute style. Bodies mashed into bodies, ten sets of hands on a pole, sweat mixed with perfume mixed with drycleaned suits mixed with coffee/garlic bagel breathe mixed with hormones mixed with sweat.
I am reading a book about women's health issues in Islam.
The author was describing the experience of having her genitals mutilated.
Suddenly I felt nauseous. I put the book down but it did not pass. I felt that thirst again, then hot, then cold, my knees wobbled like I couldn't stand any more. My vision was blurred. I held on tight to the pole with both hands and actually put my head on the shoulder of the man standing next to me. There was nowhere else for it to go. He looked a little concerned but didn't say anything.
I must have looked bad because the next thing I knew someone was leading me through the bodies to a seat. Phew. I thought I was going down.
I put my head between my knees and felt my breath return to normal. My pulse slow down.
As I came back into my senses I had the clarity to realize how this experience is moving through my body, literally, like a turbulent wave.
The body is this amazing, resilient, renewing cellular structure. Shedding old and taking in new all the time. And yet there is something about the way that trauma meets the cell structure... it gets stuck. It manifests in posture, in illness, rash, fear. How do we move trauma through the body to promote health?

On another note, I made it to and through the workshop.
I love teenagers. I really love New York teenagers. They are a special breed.
Some highlights:

Rachel: What do you think are some of the advantages of being able to walk in labor?
Girl dressed all in black: your boyfriend can check your ass out.

girl#1: Can I keep my underwear on when I am in labor?
Rachel: You can keep them on as long as you are comfortable... eventually they will have to come off.
girl #2: ... girl why you stressing about panties? You know white girls don't wear no panties!
girl #3: I don't wear panties either... I mean, I do when I go out, but when I'm in labor my labias be swingin'.

Girl asking question: As my pregnancy progesses, more and more people smile at me. Why?
Girl dressed all in black: Because you're fatter than they are.

Thoughts:
Maybe humor is an obvious answer to moving pain and trauma through the body. Its certainly an entry point for talking about it.

Fake it til we make it

You know, this work doesn't stop.
It spirals. Unlinear and intimately evolving.
Reflection is the ultimate power.
To see ones actions without the emotional charge, to be able to be objective with 'self' pushes boundaries and gently slaughters older versions of self, kissing her on the forhead and moving forward.
I think a lot about context. To speak of violence against women one must have context, compassion. To tell a story, to locate oneself, context is everything.
But context is relative to the teller.
One cannot speak of women without speaking of where they are.
That hospital which is running 735% over its capacity. That entire hospital is running on an annual budget of $500,000 including the salaries of everyone that works there (maternity ward, antenatal clinic, surgery ward, TB ward, isolation ward, etc ), is only marginally more disorganized than some of the New York City hospitals where one administrators salary alone might come close to 500k.
Everything is relative and context is everything.

I have fallen right back into my midwifery here. Seeing clients, attending births, answering the phone in the middle of the night to assuade discharge fears. And there is violence here. A friend of a friends baby died at an NYC hospital the other day. Her water broke at 22 weeks. Instead of hooking her up to fluids and trying to wait a couple of weeks for a viable fetus, the hospital induced. Telling here there was no other option. She did not question authority. Does the hospital truly have respect for a single black woman on medicaid? What is the value of her babies life? If this had been some rich white senator would the outcome have been the same?
Without becoming cynical, the questions must be asked. Contextualized. Brought into voice.

No matter where we are, birth is managed from a technocratic model. The story of the cells over the story of the woman. A white mans model. The two overlap and intermix, the story of the woman informing the management of the molecular tale. It is these moments of joining that fascinate me, inspire me to move forward with this work, to remain hopeful that the stories can evolve, if we give them voice.

In a world that promotes and seems to thrive on scandal, fear and violence, how do we keep hope alive and continue to walk with faith?

I always talk about 'faking it until you make it'- that positive affirmations, even if you are feeling down, can lead to actual manifestations. We believe our own bullshit, why not believe our own positives?

I have always been involved in women's work. Gatherings, ceremonies, ritual, comfort, laughter- the bonding that takes place to heal 'wounds' that just being a woman in this world invokes. It seems I was born into a generation and community of women who are given the space to do this.

Medicalized birth is managed from a mans perspective. The war that men create affects the way that women give birth, the care they receive. The research methods developed by men carve paths that women jump into, but rarely have voice enough to change. Men plant seeds, literally. Women negotiate that garden.

So where is the space for mens work? For positive evolution? Who is doing this work?

Women's work can only go so far without the men.

In all of the madness in the world right now, it seems particularly necessary for men to have a space to process and communicate with honesty, creativity and even vulnerability.

I want to invite the men in my life to question their own roles as partners, fathers, healers, teachers, leaders, and participants in the world.

You may not all jump to join into groups and bond with eachother, but keep the questions alive and active.

I also want to invite the women in my life to get behind every man you know who is open to the idea of activating this process.

Let's fake it will we make it people.

What are you fighting for?