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Birthdays! (and lots of other stuff)

May20

My birthday was at the beginning of this month. I uploaded some pictures and was going to just post a quick post, but then some days passed and then some more days. I added some more pictures and thought of more things to write and it has just been languishing in my drafts folder. Things keep happening and so I think I’ll add a couple more pictures before I post, blah, blah, blah. I almost deleted the whole thing since now May is practically over and my bday was weeks ago, but since I bothering uploading the pix, I’m just going to post it!

May is a busy month for us. It is my birthday and then Mother’s Day and then my mom’s birthday and my dad’s birthday and Zander’s birthday. We also have a whole group of our work party friends who have May birthdays (and playgroup friends too!). May 12th was the 18th anniversary of my first date with my husband. May 16th was the fifteenth anniversary of my college graduation. I feel like I’m getting old! And, it is weird to think about how close that college student girl feels and also how very far away she feels. My parents both turned 60—I had a surprise party/healing ritual for my mom as part of our spring women’s retreat as well as a ceremony for our 12-year-old work party friend whose birthday was the same day. On Mother’s Day, we had a family memorial ceremony for my grandma. In the middle of all these celebrations, I’ve been wrapping up the school session (including grading almost 100 papers…split up in two batches of almost 50), preparing for the summer school session, plotting with Mark about him quitting his job, trying to help motherbabies breastfeed happily, trying to stick with some kind of homeschool “schedule” for my kids (using the term extremely loosely). Oh yeah, and my tiny little sweet daughter also had major dental work under general anesthesia last Tuesday. One of my Facebook friends pointed out that no wonder I’ve been feeling taxed. Yeah, duh. I don’t know why I can’t extend myself that grace. Instead, I’ve been berating myself at various intervals about my “inability” to handle it all. I’ve also been planning our big trip to California. $2300 later and WAY too many hours thinking, checking, and strategizing, I ended up with five plane tickets and we’re going. We decided to to go ahead and make a full vacation out of it—Disneyland, tourmaline mining, Legoland, and Pismo Beach! My grandma’s committal service (which I am planning and facilitating) and her celebration of life luncheon is in Fresno in the middle of our trip.

This week as I tried to finish those last bleeping papers, I found out that I’d made a mistake with our plane tickets—having a p.m. flight from San Diego to Fresno rather than the a.m. flight I thought we had. I almost lost it. Flipped out. I’m serious. I felt like I had officially exceeded my actual ability to cope and that I may possibly break down in some way. More. Than. Humanly. Possible. To. Handle. As it was, we made the semi-bizarre choice to just buy some new tickets that restored the “rightful” a.m. flight schedule. These middle-of-the-journey tickets were only $68 each and we decided it was really a fairly trivial amount and we should just do it. We’re taking our family of five to CA with carry-on luggage only and we’re packing like a boss! Seriously, we’re rocking this thing.

Oh, and just this afternoon I also finished my twelfth class for my D.Min degree. I’ve got about 14 left, plus my dissertation. I have three in progress and signed up for two more to start during the summer session. How do I do it?!?!? Heck if I know. ;-) Maybe it is time to feel impressed at my own capacities again rather than mad at myself for not getting more done, for being “behind,” for staying up too late, for taking too long to return phone calls, for leaving some emails unanswered and books unreviewed, for being sometimes short-tempered, for screwing up a.m. and p.m., for not getting around to the blog posts I’d hoped to write, for not keeping up with requests for new sculptures, for not having a birthday surprise of some kind for my dad too, and for never feeling “finished” enough to rest.

Here is what I originally swiped from my Facebook to share about my birthday:

Uh oh. I spent the first 8 minutes of my 35th year still working on these dang bibliographies. This has been my worst/least productive grading stint yet (the CA trip planning/purchasing ate up my usual “free” day). I’m determined to have a FREE day tomorrow (okay, technically, today, but it doesn’t count until I go to bed!)–I’m going to wallow around in books and listen to guided meditations (you know, with the three kids climbing on me!) and plan rituals and celebrations and not do anything I don’t feel like doing :)

It is SO flipping hard to focus on grading these bibliographies when my brain is turning over Disneyland plans, hotel reservations, car rental, and also finding just the *right* stuff for my grandma’s memorial service. The good news is that I have some really rocking students this session and they make some of the grading easy!

–

Later update:

Thirty-four years ago I was born! As my birthday present to myself, I DID manage to finish grading the last bibliographies and I’m taking the day off to hang around and wallow in books. I think I might do a tech-off day (or, at least, a class-off day!) Oh, and I bought two tiny little Japanese dolls for myself at Goodwill too. I do birthdays right!

When I wake up and hear rainfall on my birthday I always feel like the planet is wishing me a happy birthday too (there was a heavy rainstorm the day I was born). Alaina told me I should have a cake with “nonnie babies” on it. On my actual birthday, my mom took me to a tea room in a neighboring town for a birthday lunch and then I came home with three kinds of tea and the kids and I had a tea party! (in many ways an excuse to eat sugar cubes and this involves sort of obsessive negotiation over them rather than just enjoying ourselves!) I asked the boys if they would play with Alaina so I could have an easier time getting ready to go. After about ten minutes, Lann said, “whew, she’s pretty much like an energy tick.” I rolled! I love having a nine-year-old and a toddler. So much different and easier than having a toddler and a preschooler was.

Okay, so here is a gallery of the pictures I meant to post on several occasions, plus some more I just added in today:

Tuesday Tidbits: Real Life Friend Blogs

Apr30

Late Monday night I was folding laundry and my Tuesday Tidbits theme suddenly struck me—I want to give a shout out to my real-life blogger friends who write on a variety of interesting subjects. I always enjoy their posts and I love getting a glimpse into their minds and their unique thought processes by reading their words. Most of us have a lot going on in addition to our park-mom encounters with each other and it nourishes and inspires me to learn more about these women through their writing, as well as actually knowing them in person.

Cara and her husband Mike and their two homeschooled teenagers have been building a straw bale house over the past year and write the blog: Our Hand-Built Home. They are one of the families that we have our work party with and it feels good to be a part of their homesteading journey! Mike and Cara walk their talk and their commitment to their simple, sustainable living ideals is inspirational.

Hope shares her thoughts about her multiplicity of interests on Hopeful Insights. I enjoy her various 30 day experiments and also her thoughts about health at any size. She’s also on Facebook.

Karen is a runner getting ready for the Princess Half Marathon early next year and documenting her progress on Losing the Glass Slippers. She’s also a fabulous photographer and is the source of almost all pregnancy and family pictures on my site (Hope above is also a talented photographer whose talents grace my pages!). I’m not particularly interested in running, but I enjoy peeking into Karen’s runner’s mind anyway and learning from her experiences. She’s also on Facebook.

http://losingtheglassslippers.blogspot.com/

(Yes, she took the picture)

Veronica is a now-long-distance friend who used to be local. She’s contributed a guest post here before: Guest Post: Don’t Touch Me… Don’t Even Look At Me. Now, she and her cousin have an amazing cooking blog called Pen Pals and Cookin’ Gals. I totally love it and want to make something from it every day! So far, I’ve only made the french toast, but I want to make All The Things. She’s also on Facebook.

Rebecca is another formerly local friend turned long distance friend. She and her sisters have a relatively new blog called Wabi-Sabi Sisters in which they share all manner of good thing, including recipes.

Summer is a friend who makes various appearances on my blog already from photos, to putting socks on my feet after I gave birth, to saying awesome things that I have to quote. She’s a real-life birthy friend, colleague, Rolla Birth Network co-founder, future Vagina Monologues collaborator, and supportive doula. Summer and I go way back with our lives linked since childhood in various synchronistic ways. She is sometimes outrageous and I love that she will sometimes say the things that I think about, but don’t say! She writes at Midwives, Doulas, and Homebirth…Oh My! and she is on Facebook too.

Shauna is the mother of a big, happy, homeschooling family and is such a fun, fun friend to have. She is an unassisted birthing inspiration and is currently preparing to welcome her family’s eighth baby. I love her attitude, her spirit, and how we talk over each other in rapid chatter because there is always So. Much. To. Say!!!!! She has been around the internet in various ways for a long time, but her current blog is Life with Seven Kids (and a bun in the oven) and she has a new Facebook page also. Oh, and she’s cute as can be! :)

Check them out, like them, subscribe to their amazing blogs, become a part of their diverse and interesting worlds, you’ll be glad you did! 

After listing all of these out I feel a little teary-eyed at having such great friends with such diverse talents, hobbies, and interests. Aren’t they amazing? Feel free to be jealous of me ;) I’m delightfully blessed to know and learn from each of these women. We should have some kind of Blog Circle of Awesomeness project together…

Womenergy (Womanergy)

Apr27

The day before my grandma died, my dad came over and said he’d coined a new word and that I could have it: Womenergy. He said he’d googled it and didn’t come up with anything. I googled it later though and there are a couple of people who have used it before, so I think my dad actually said Womanergy instead, which is still available. So, womanergy has been coined now too! :) I dozed off during Alaina’s nap today and when I woke up the word was in my head and so were a bunch of other words. I channeled a bit of my inner Alice Walker and wrote:

Womenergy (Womanergy):

Feeling fierce at 37 weeks last year.

Feeling fierce at 37 weeks in 2011.

Often felt when giving birth. Also felt at blessingways and circling with women in ceremony and rituals. Involved in the fabric of creation and breath of life. Drawn upon when nursing babies and toting toddlers. Known also as womanpower, closely related to womanspirit and the hearing of one’s “sacred roar.” That which is wild, fierce. Embedded and embodied, it may also be that which has been denied and suppressed and yet waits below her surface, its hot, holy breath igniting her. Experienced as the “invisible nets of love” that surround us, womanergy makes meals for postpartum women, hugs you when you cry, smiles in solidarity at melting down toddlers. It is the force that rises in the night to take care of sick children, that which holds hands with the dying, and stretches out arms to the grieving. It sits with laboring women, nurses the sick, heals the wounded, and nurtures the young. It dances in the moonlight. Womenergy is that which holds the space, that which bears witness, that which hears and sees one another into speech, into being, into personal power. Called upon when digging deep, trying again, and rising up. That which cannot be silenced. The heart and soul of connection. The small voice within that says, “maybe I can, I think I can, I know I can. I AM doing it. Look what I did!” Creates art, weaves words, births babies, gathers people. Thinks in circles, webs, and patterns rather than in lines and angles. Felt as action, resistance, creation, struggle, power, and inherent wisdom.

Womenergy moved humanity across continents, birthed civilization, invented agriculture, conceived of art and writing, pottery, sculpture, and drumming, painted cave walls, raised sacred stones and built Goddess temples. It rises anew during ritual, sacred song, and drumming together. It says She Is Here. I Am Here. You Are Here and We Can Do This. It speaks through women’s hands, bodies, and heartsongs. Felt in hope, in tears, in blood, and in triumph.

Womenergy is the chain of the generations, the “red thread” that binds us womb to womb across time and space to the women who have come before and those who will come after. Spinning stories, memories, and bodies, it is that force which unfolds the body of humanity from single cells, to spiraled souls, and pushes them forth into the waiting world.

Used in a sentence:

“I’m headed to the women’s circle tonight. I could really use the womenergy.” February 2013 196

“I felt like I couldn’t keep going, but then my womanergy rose up and I did it anyway.”

“Feel the womenergy in this room!”

“She said she didn’t think she could give birth after all, but then she tapped into her womanergy and kept going.”

“I hope my friends have a blessingway for me, I need to be reminded of the womenergy that surrounds me as I get ready to have this baby.”

Feel it…

Listen to it…

Know it…

In the air, in her touch, in your soul.

Rising
Potent
Embodied
Yours…

“For months I just looked at you
I wondered about all the mothers before me
if they looked at their babies the way I looked at you.
In an instant I knew what moved humankind
from continent to continent
Against all odds.”
–Michelle Singer (in We’Moon 2011 datebook)

“I believe that these circles of women around us weave invisible nets of love that carry us when we’re weak and sing with us when we’re strong.” –SARK, Succulent Wild Woman

“There is a wild tiger in every woman’s heart. Its hot and holy breath quietly, relentlessly feeding her.” – Chameli Ardagh

Circles of women (and art)...

International Women’s Day: Prayer for Mothers

Mar8

nursingmamas

This week marked my eighth anniversary as a breastfeeding counselor.  When I began, I didn’t how long I’d keep doing it and I’ve had a lot of discouraging rough patches with dwindling group membership in which I felt like giving up, but now I suspect I might end up as a “lifer.” When I started this work I had one little 18 month old boy. Now, that little boy is closing in on TEN this year! I’ve logged over 1200 contacts since my accreditation. I’ve learned so much from the mothers I’ve worked with and I continue learning new things all the time.

This month as I sat in the circle at our mother-to-mother breastfeeding support group meeting, I looked around at all the beautiful mothers in that room. I reflected on each of their journeys and how much each one has been through in her life, to come to this time and this place, and tears filled my eyes. They are all so amazing. And, my simple, fervent prayer for them in that moment was that they could know that. Know that on a deep, incontrovertible level. I tried to tell them then, in that moment. How much they mean to me, how incredible they are, how I see them. How I hope they will celebrate their own capacities and marvel at their own skills. How I see their countless, beautiful, unrecognized, invisible motherful actions. How when I see them struggling in the door with toddlers and diaper bags and organic produce that they’re sharing with each other, I see heroines. They may look and feel “mundane” from the outside, but from where I’m sitting, they shine with a power and potency that takes my breath away. Moderating toddler disputes over swordplay, wiping noses, changing diapers, soothing tears, murmuring words, moving baby from breast to shoulder to floor and back to breast without even seeming consciously aware of how gorgeously they are both parenting and personing in that very moment, speaking their truths, offering what they have to give, reaching out to one another, and nursing, nursing, nursing. Giving their bodies over to their babies again and again in a tender, invisible majesty. In this room is a symphony of sustenance. An embodied maternal dance of being.

So, today on International Women’s Day, when I visited the woods behind my house, I offered up this…

Prayer for Mothers: March 2013 057

I offer a prayer for all mothers
may you breathe deep down into your belly
may you tip your face to the sky
let your shoulders soften
your forehead smooth
your eyes close gently
your lips part

And may you take a deep cleansing breath
from your feet on the earth
all the way up through your legs
hips
belly
chest
shoulders
and throat

And with this breath
honor your own capacities
marvel at your own resources
notice your strengths
celebrate your successes
listen to your own wisdom
recognize your own heart.

Take a moment to see
really see
how often you act with great courage
how often you act with deep love
and how much of your life’s energy
spirals and spins around your children.

See your worth
hear your value
sing your body’s power
and potency
dance your dreams
recognize within yourself
that which you do so well
so invisibly
and with such love.

Fill your body with this breath
expand your heart with this message
you are such a good mother.

Tuesday Tidbits: Bragging Rights

Feb26

“Before I had children I always wondered whether their births would be, for me, like the ultimate in gym class failures. And I discovered instead…that I’d finally found my sport.” –Joyce Maynard

“Our body-wisdom knows how to birth a baby. What is required of the woman who births naturally is for her to surrender to this body-wisdom. You can’t think your way through a birth, and you can’t fake it.” –Leslie McIntyre

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This week I particularly enjoyed a saucy post by my friend, colleague, and doula, Summer. Titled Bragging Rights, she talks about her own experience birthing a very large baby (nearly 12 pounds! I enjoy bragging about her baby too!) and whether or not she really “deserves” bragging rights on birthing a big baby. I absolutely love her concluding thoughts on the topic:

“…Frankly, I think all mothers get bragging rights on their babies births. Birth is awesome and amazing and power-full. Every mother must face it. Sure, she may face it differently than me, but it IS a labyrinth we all go through. This is the way of life. So, mothers, brag away. Brag about whatever part of your labor and baby’s birth made you feel empowered….find that piece, even if it’s just a tiny moment, and cling to it. Shout it from the rooftops!…”

What a great idea that all mothers deserve “bragging rights.” What are your bragging rights moments from your births, however they unfolded?

I immediately thought of one for each of mine, reflecting that each birth does hold a key moment for me, the first thing that comes to mind when I think about that birth, a moment of being power-full.

First birth: my moment was arriving at the birth center fully dilated after having worried I was “only two centimeters.”

Second birth: having a two-hour labor—it was a train ride and I DID IT. Wow!

Third birth (miscarriage): coaching myself through labor and being brave enough and strong enough to open and let go of my little non-living baby.

Fourth birthFebruary 2013 102: catching my own baby! By myself! With my own two hands! And, she was ALIVE!

“…the stories I see of birth in the media don’t reflect the intense emotions, the physical power, or the immense impact of the experience itself. Women screaming, fathers fumbling about, doctors doing most of the heroic work–these images don’t do justice to my experience. I felt empowered, strong, heroic in my efforts to bring my daughter into the world yet, I am painfully aware how little others see the heroism in my birth experience.“ –Amy Hudock (essay in Literary Mama)

“...if you want to know where a woman’s true power lies, look to those primal experiences we’ve been taught to fear…the very same experiences the culture has taught us to distance ourselves from as much as possible, often by medicalizing them so that we are barely conscious of them anymore. Labor and birth rank right up there as experiences that put women in touch with their feminine power…” -Christiane Northrup

Family Mandala Project

Jan18

As I’ve mentioned a couple of times, my family participates in a work-party co-op with four other families who live within the same 20 mile stretch of highway. We alternate houses every other weekend and work on each other’s household projects (for example, tomorrow we are building interior walls at a straw bale house as well as plastering the inside of the exterior, bale walls. Earlier this month, the men put underpinning on the bottom of a family’s mobile home to weather proof it for the winter, while the women made soup and muffins, finished our family mandala project, and had a birthday party—including rocking homemade Creeper pinatas—for one of the kids inside). Each family gets about 5 turns at their own house per year and goes to another family’s house about 20 times. While we’re not perfect, I really feel like this work party has been one of richest blessings of the past year for our family collectively. I hope to write more about it for an article someday, because we’ve created something pretty rewarding that seems fairly unique. At the beginning of December, we decided to invite the members of our work party co-op over for a winter solstice/New Year family ritual. We wanted to have a family project to do together and Mark and I came up with the idea of creating a family crest or mandala. My dad made a wooden circle for each family and each family designed their own “family symbol” to put in the center. Then, at our next work party we each added our family symbol to every other family’s circle—so, the end result was each family’s personal symbol in the middle, flanked by the mini-version symbol of each other family…

Perhaps a picture will illustrate this better…

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See what I mean now? :)

For my own family’s symbol, it was important to me to communicate that we each have our own paths (labyrinth) and our own unique gifts (tiny personal symbol each), but that together we make a beautiful whole. We had some debate with the kids about what personal symbol to include for them. It was important to me that it be something they genuinely wanted to include and not my idealized conception of what it should look like (i.e. a peaceful waterfall or something!). Lann, of course, wanted a Creeper head and Zander opted for a “Wolfgang” head. Wolfgang is Z’s kind of alter ego/imaginary friend/invented character. Wolfgang is awesome. He doesn’t feature as prominently in Zander’s narratives as he used to, but he was really important for a while there. My favorite Wolfgang story is this: “When Wolfgang rides an airplane, he stands on the wings. And, when he jumps off, he lands standing up on a skateboard. Rolling in lava…” So, that little brown devilish looking face is supposed to kind of capture Wolfgang. The rainbow is for Alaina, the gem is for Mark, the footprints are for Noah, and the seated mountain pose goddess is for me. The four other work party family’s mandalas surround ours (on on theirs, ours surrounds theirs).
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After we got home from the work party, I decided to embellish the white space around ours:

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When we came up with this idea, I originally envisioned them eventually hanging over the front door of each family…

It doesn’t actually work for each family to do that, but it did for us…

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After we hung it up, as I looked at it I said, “hey, this as a whole is our work party symbol!” Each family is unique and beautiful on their own, but when we join together, we create something bigger and more lovely than we could on our own. That basic truth is what underlies the whole functioning of work party and it is cool to see it symbolically represented above the door. I look forward to having these families come over during the year and add more of their handprints to our walls…

The Amethyst Network December Blog Circle: Holidays After Loss

Dec8

I’m a founding member of the miscarriage support organization, The Amethyst Network. We’ve been hard at work over the past month restructuring our website, clarifying our vision, and expanding our offerings:

As part of our efforts at sharing stories and creating healing circles, we are launching blog circles here at TAN. Each month we will post a brief message introducing the theme for the month, and inviting you to participate in the circle. All you need to do is put your name and link into the Mr Linky widget at the end of this post, and your blog post can be included in the circle. Posts are welcomed throughout the month (and beyond if you write something later and want to share). We hope you will participate!

The theme of the December Blog Circle is Holidays After Loss.

To participate in the blog circle, I immediately looked up an old blog post from the Christmas season in 2009. I experienced my first miscarriage in early November and so when I hit the holidays that year, my loss was very fresh and raw and I remember countless moments of sitting with family members having “happy” celebrations and feeling at the desperate edge of tears the entire time, but trying to be good spirited for my other kids and also not “ruin” the holidays for everyone else.

This is what I wrote…

Missed

Posted on December 21, 2009

…I no longer have the feeling that I “should” be pregnant. It feels “normal” to not be pregnant now, whereas a couple of weeks ago I felt the loss of the physical experience keenly—that embodied connection—and I still “felt pregnant” for about three weeks or so following my miscarriage. I would have to keep reminding myself, “I’m NOT pregnant.” Now, I feel “normally” not-pregnant and I actually feel really good in my body and pretty good in my life. There has been a shift from “I SHOULD be x number of weeks pregnant” to “I WOULD have been x number of weeks pregnant.”

Today, I would have been 21 weeks pregnant and it has been a hard day for me. Our family has a tradition of having a winter solstice party each year. We host at our house (my mom then hosts Christmas) and it is a nice time. We use the occasion to reflect on the past year and the things we’ve accomplished and then set goals for the year to come—things we’d like to “bring into the light” as it were. We also give our immediate family gifts to each other on this day.

Anyway, I just really missed the baby today and also missed the pregnant-self. I felt really strongly how I would have been really looking pregnant by now and the baby would have been making himself well-known to others around me with kicks and rolls and so forth. I can’t describe it in words, I just really FELT it today. The non. The closed door. The two boys instead of three. It started when I opened up my set of Growing Uterus charts and The Birth Atlas from Childbirth Connection. I’ve always wanted them and I ordered them a couple of months ago when they had a wonderful deal. When they arrived, I had Mark put them away for Christmas. I didn’t think it would bother me to open them. I am still interested in birth, birthwork, and childbirth education. I’ve been reading other birth books and not having any “issues” with them, but opening the charts and seeing the point at which my own pregnancy and baby and hopes and dreams and plans arrested, was really difficult. The “cut off”/stopped/ended road point was right there in black and white and I had a strong and unexpected reaction to that. Later in the afternoon we went outside to go for a walk and also to place Noah’s memorial plaque. Standing there looking at it, I just MISSED him. And, I missed the experience of “would’ve” been 21 weeks pregnant–with my hand on my full belly, feeling my baby from within and outside, and having that communion and connection with him. I felt at the edge of tears for most of the rest of the day and just “down” and distressed feeling. I thought it would help me to write about it, but I’m not finding the words easily. I can’t explain or describe what it was I felt today.

As I mentioned, we use today as a time to reflect on our plans for the coming year. In past years, we’ve also each shared a wish for the coming year while lighting candles (the whole “even in the darkness, new light comes again” type of metaphor). In the past, I feel like people have tired of having to take turns saying too many things (we do the goal sharing and reflecting on whether we accomplished last year’s goal and some other things), so this year I just shared a little prayer—feeling like it summed up nicely what we each would wish for in the coming year:

Make me strong in spirit,
Courageous in action,
Gentle of heart,

Let me act in wisdom,
Conquer my fear and doubt,
Discover my own hidden gifts,

Meet others with compassion,
Be a source of healing energies,
And face each day with hope and joy.

(Abby Willowroot)

—

That year, I bought a special ornament for our tree with Noah’s name and birthdate and also the words, Born at Home. As I’ve shared several times, it is very important to me to have miscarriages acknowledged as birth events and it really, really mattered to me to have a homebirth specific ornament to recognize my baby. This year, it hangs on the tree next to our new family ornament for 2012.

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In 2010, when I got maternity photos taken, I made sure to include Noah’s angel bear in several of the photos to acknowledge his presence and place as a member of the family. And again, in 2011, I also included the bear in a photo session with me and the kiddos.

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This year when we got our family pictures taken, I made sure to wear my baby-in-my-heart pendant, so that Noah, still, was there with us in the pictures as part of our family.

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In September, my friend’s baby Tossie died at 36 weeks. To honor Tossie’s memory, she’s started a blog to help other loss mamas: Tossie’s Tree & Painted Rocks. One of the first rocks she painted was for my own little Noah. She took a picture of it at sunrise by her own baby’s special tree and it is lovely!

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The other posts in this month’s blog circle so far are:

Hope and the Holidays ~ Bainne Mama

Thankgiving After A Loss ~ Bainne Mamai

Special Ornaments ~ Mindful Serenity

Michele–Holidays After Loss (this post was especially good, very poignant, and from it I went to a variety of other interesting posts on her blog. Michele also runs Mending Hearts Bellies which focuses on childbirth education and doula support for post-loss families).
Holidays After Loss: Spirit Babies Ceremony

Taking it to the body… (part 1)

Dec4

The following is excerpted from one of my lessons in my recently finished Ecofeminism course.

20121203-150406.jpgIn Mara Keller’s essay in the ecofeminist anthology Reweaving the World, she explains that in our cells remember an ancient era of mother-centered life. As I observe in my own children’s relationship to me as their mother, this seems extremely logical to me. Keller writes: “The renewal I long for is a return of a reverence for Mother Earth and her abundant forces of creations; an affirmation of the sacredness of sexuality and enduring human love; and the belief in the inevitability of death and the immortality of the soul” (p. 51). Mother Earth is abundant and fertile and awe-inspiring, she can also be wild and unpredictable and dangerous and is deserving of reverence and respect.

Chellis Glendinning in The Politics of Women’s Spirituality sums up the consequences of patriarchy perfectly:

“When women are faced each day with enforced cesarean deliveries, birth control that maims and kills them, and doctors who think them dirty, when we encounter rape, violence in the streets, job discrimination, sexual slavery around the world, pollution and nuclear madness, we realize that reclaiming the integrative ways of our ancestors must involve our healing powers on all fronts—from the medical to the social to the environmental to the political to the psychological to the spiritual. Healing the divisions that were imposed during the patriarchal era is the survival issue of our time and our planet. A world that systematically sickens its women cannot survive.” [emphasis mine]

Returning to Reweaving the World, in a similar line of thought, Paula Allen states that “a society based on body hate destroys itself and causes harm to all of Grandmother’s grandchildren” (p. 53). I honestly think that many, many children enter the world in an atmosphere of body hate (this can be true regardless of birthing environment). I read an article recently by the famous French obstetrician Michel Odent who explains that the human species may actually be losing the capacity to give birth on its own. Odent sums up the sobering conclusion of current research with this chilling observation: “after just 3 or 4 generations of highly technological childbirth, it seems very possible that our human oxytocin system is weakening. In other words, our capacity to give birth is weakening…” What will it mean for society if our human women can no longer successfully carry and bear new members of the species without significant technological assistance?!

So, planetary healing may actually rest in body respect and love. Allen explains that rejoicing in our bodies is how we show our respect to the planet. We can heal our bodies…”our own dear body, our own dear flesh. For the body is not the dwelling place of the spirit, it is the spirit. It is not a tomb, it is life itself” (p. 56). Allen asks the reader to consider how often we deny the urgings of our bodies. I ask this of women also—how often do you respond to the first cue from your body to use the bathroom? Usually, we resist several times—sometimes even hours—before finally going. If this basic, daily function we each experience multiple times a day is a time in which to deny and ignore our bodies’ messages, how do we expect women to then speak up for themselves in birth? To ask for what they need and to follow the instinctive dance of their birthing bodies? These same questions can be expanded to other areas of our lives as well of course…

Allen also has a refreshing perspective that now is not the time for tranquility. So often in New Age writings and Western-adapted Buddhist and Zen types of thought we see admonishments towards calmness, serenity, peace, and so forth and in the non-attachment and “I create my own reality” and “there is no reality but the present moment.” I appreciate this call for action and for passion, rather than a stilling of the emotions.

And, finally, returning to the body theme, during a recent women’s retreat one of the guests brought us each a card that reads: “Trust yourself. Take it to the body. She always knows.” I loved this and will explain more in part 2…

Strong, Strong…

Nov21

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I woke up this morning with this quote running through my head and thinking of a pregnant friend of mine. Since her story is not mine to tell, suffice to say, she had a long and winding road to reach this point and this evening she gave birth at home after having had a cesarean with her first baby! Yay! I’m so excited for her and for their whole family. One part of me just knew she could do it and the other part of me still worried that I was being falsely optimistic. It has happened to me before—that I supported and encouraged and hoped with the mother and despite all those hopes and dreams and wonderful, careful, thoughtful plans, the birth still didn’t go as planned. I also believe that all births are acts of courage and that mothers, whether they push out their babies or not, have the capacity to dig deep and discover strength beyond anything they previously knew. However, just, yay. I’m so happy and excited and relieved for this friend of mine :) The sculpture in the picture is the birth art piece I made after I actually gave birth to my last baby. She captures the pose in which I caught my daughter. My previous photo with this quote was of the pre-birth sculpture I’d made to address my pushing-the-baby-out fears:

Still figuring out the pictures with words app that I got. I love my nature spots in the woods as backgrounds, but they’re too busy and make choosing a text color that actually works almost impossible!

“Childbirth is power in its purest and most natural form–it is wild and uncontrollable and takes us on a journey of surrender. Birth is about so much more than babies being born. It is about a mother finding her inner strength at her most vulnerable and powerful moment, which begins her unique and lifelong journey of mothering that child.”

–Brianna Kauer (in Midwifery Today, issue 103)

And, speaking of thankful birthy goodness, Thanksgiving is tomorrow and that reminded me of an earlier post about the rest and be thankful stage!

I also would like to mention that I have a Talk Birth topic on ScoopIt now. I primarily started it so that it could handily feed into my Talk Birth Facebook, while still leaving a more useable record for me to go back to/repost (things just kind of disappear off the page on Facebook and it can be hard to remember what the heck I’ve shared there if I then want to do a blog post about it). I was introduced to ScoopIt via LinkedIn when I started following a really well-curated topic about E-Learning and Online Teaching. There are very, very few birth-related topics on ScoopIt, so start curating one! It is fun and easy and, as I said, really handy for feeding content into your Facebook page or other media (I experimented yesterday with sending a post directly to WordPress and that worked too!)

I’m also thankful for several days at home to spend with my family and without a long to-do list. I have one final paper to grade tonight and then my calendar is pretty deliciously blank for the next four days! We can really use this. I need a stillpoint, a rest, and some time to spend on the fun things I want to do like wallow in piles of books and make fabulous new sculptures and go sit out in the woods and…and…and…

Thankful for all these people too! And, also thankful for fab new pictures from recent photo session with my friend :)

Guest Post: Don’t Touch Me… Don’t Even Look At Me

Nov9

This guest post is the first in my blog break festival. The festival continues through December, so please check it out and consider submitting a post! Also, don’t forget to enter my birth jewelry giveaway. This post falls into the Motherful category…

Don’t Touch Me… Don’t Even Look At Me.

by Veronica of Mormon Monkey Mama


Being a monkey mama isn’t all it’s cracked up to be sometimes. My kids still cry. I still have to discipline and direct my 3-year-old. Yesterday was especially difficult. Squirrel Monkey, 3 years (SM) is getting sick and Owl Monkey, 5.5 months (OM) is still sick. When SM is feeling sick, she is very testy. So, yesterday, she kept doing things she knew she shouldn’t to get my attention, acting out her physical feelings. She didn’t want to eat anything I gave her, she was whiny, and she mostly wanted to watch TV all day. So by the time my husband, Gorillaman, got home, I. Was. DONE. But I can’t be done. I have a nursling. And though that is often very zen… it wasn’t yesterday.

We put the girls to bed at 8:00. That never happens here. SM is usually up until 9:00 or 9:30. She went to bed easily. But OM, who usually goes to sleep pretty easily, was fussy because she couldn’t breathe.

So the mother abuse began…

FACTS:

*Baby toes are like a velociraptor‘s. I have bruises on the insides of my legs from OM taking her big toes and digging them into anything she comes in contact with. Most of the time, especially when we are nursing lying down, that is my leg, groin, or stomach, as she writhes around being frustrated about her inability to breathe easily.

*It’s especially uncomfortable, verging on vomit-inducingly painful, when the baby goes from nursing peacefully to clamp-and-twist in 0.2 seconds. It’s even worse when you have a recurrent plugged duct because of said baby’s latch. I know from experience… a lot of it.

*Babies have unbelievably strong fingers… the better to pinch you with. I have bruises on the insides of my arms and the tops of my breasts from aggravated little fingers that find purchase and CLAMP DOWN! Hand wrangling should be a class for pregnant moms.

*Toddlers/preschoolers have sharper elbows than the coffee table corners we protected them from a couple of years before.

My normally sweet and gentle Owl Monkey has become a baby badger. Ow. Add that to the bone crushing antics of a testing toddler, well, is it any surprise why I avoid any sense of intimacy on a day like yesterday? By the end of the day, when I have been poked, prodded, pinched, and pummeled by tiny hands, feet, and toothless gums, I don’t want to be touched. By anyone. I don’t even want to hold hands. My lucky poor husband, who has been away from his doting family all day, wants to come home and have some sort of physical closeness, even if it’s just to sit together on the couch and watch our show. It’s not fair that our jobs give us seriously different needs. But such is life so we both make sacrifices. So sometimes I snuggle, though it makes me feel like crawling out of my skin. And sometimes he takes a cold shower. ;) Such is this life of parental bliss. And bliss it is. For just as you think you can’t handle any more, your 3-year-old crawls into your arms again and needs you to snuggle her to sleep. Your 5.5 month old flashes that gummy, milky grin. And suddenly your heart is full again, the bruises don’t matter, and you hug your husband that much closer knowing that only the two of you truly understand…

It’s all worth it.

Veronica is a semi-crunchy stay-at-home mom to two girls and a sweet English Bulldog boy. She is passionate about breastfeeding, gentle parenting, co-sleeping, and babywearing. She spends her days chasing her 3.5 year old with her 23 lb 9 month old on her back! She hopes to encourage and support other LDS (Mormon) moms as they embrace the mommying counterculture and parent instinctively.

Originally published on Friday, July 13, 2012 at Mormon Monkey Mama