How to do interventions with words

Return. Re-focus. Re-shape. Re-shift. Reflect.
Those 'Re' words all have to do with turning something around. The 'Re' is an intervention on the word itself.

People ask how the trainings went and I realize I am uncomfortable with the word because it sets up a necessary information hierarchy.
So, I have been using the word workshop, because I think it is more descriptive of the dynamic of Olivia and I as ‘facilitators’, not information providers.

It seems to me that issues of power are largely issues of voice and inherently, listening- who feels empowered to speak, who is listening when one speaks and how that voice shifts or effects change.

The last few workshops were magical. We were talking about how the war effected birth, and used playback theater techniques of having women share their stories and then other members from the group ‘playback’ and act out the story they heard. What happened was that as the stories came to life, more and more women wanted to share and the details in their narratives began to grow more and more vivid. Stories of pushing babies out while hidden in barns and gunshots are being fired down below, stories of running in labor to escape abduction, stories of giving birth alone in the bush while villages burned to the ground in the background, I could go on and on but you will all hear the audio soon. These stories were enacted with such talent and love and enthusiasm I was brought to tears many times.
Women in general and especially women of color and especially women of color in third world countries and especially women of color in third world countries that have been ravaged by war, have historically been and still are, an underheard population. In order to create a holistic health space where each midwife is an equal part of the team, I cannot think of anything more important than cultivating voice. Cultivating voice inherently cultivates listening, cultivating listening cultivates questioning, cultivating questioning cultivates best practices.


As the workshop continued I asked the questions: How can our stories act as a political intervention? How can what we do as midwives help to shape and shift this countries next generation?
Women broke off into groups and we discussed the questions and tried to come up with answers that led to direct action steps.
As I have written here before, apathy is a very real coping mechanism after severe trauma. Those who study poverty cycles note that ‘the sense that one does not have any personal power or ability to make change leads in their own lives is the key to the continuation of poverty’. Apathy, or a sort of numb waiting for others to hand you information creates the necessary conditions in which a community can accept with little resistence, gross violations of human rights.
So how can midwives create an active space? One in which there is a sense of individual investment in the work and therefore, community change.

I want to ask the same questions of anyone who might be reading this blog as well. How can we use our agency as women with voices/stories as both political intervention and as medical intervention? How can apathy be addressed and redressed, reshaped, redone?

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