Telling About It: Tree Pose Yoga Goddess Pendant

Jul10

In tree pose, she finds her balance
despite asymmetry.
Flexible, yielding,
strong, and steady.
One-legged and whole…

I created our Tree Pose pendant to remind me that “balance” does not need to be perfectly symmetrical or even. Balance is about finding your center (even if one “leg” of your life is taking more time/attention than others…)

I encounter many other women who express teetering on the edge of finding that elusive and possibly-not-actually necessary “balance” in their work tasks and mothering tasks. I have a friend who describes balance not as making things “equal,” but as being like tree pose in yoga—you want one leg to be firm underneath you so you can stay standing up, but your two sides do not have to actually be “equal” in order to be balanced. Sometimes my balance is weighted towards work-at-home tasks, sometimes toward parenting, sometimes toward teaching, but I know it will continue shifting and I’ll still be standing. Find your center. That is the mental reminder that instantly pulls my own literal tree pose into balance for me during my daily morning yoga practice. Find your center.

I’m in one of those off-balance positions right now while I finish up the summer school session, work with my Womanrunes class, and prepare for our Red Tent Program beginning in August. I got out my tree pose goddess and put her on as a reminder to me, both to find my center, but also that this sensation is not new or terrible, it is just is here again. I re-read this past post:

…As I’ve alluded to in the past, usually online teaching blends seamlessly into my day, often taking roughly the same amount of time and energy that checking in with Facebook would take. During the two weeks each session that papers are due (fifth and seventh weeks out of an 8 week session), the work suddenly feels unmanageable and incompatible with motherhood and I feel taut, tense, and drawn. The kids are need-factories and I’m distracted and impatient and consumed with the NEED to get these freaking things GRADED and OUT OF MY HEAD!

via The tensions and triumphs of work at home mothering | Talk Birth.

And, Tanner fell asleep clutching my pendant:

Tuesday Tidbits: Happy Father’s Day!

Jun9

“Fatherhood challenges us, but it also enlarges us and reshapes our perception of what is important in the world around us. As we take stock of this new world, we find that doing our job as a dad is inherently honorable and respectful, and brings to us the dignity that goes with the territory. Far from being emasculating, being a dad makes us men in the finest sense of the term.”

–Dads Adventure

Maybe it seems too early to offer Father’s Day wishes, but we’ve been working hard on our new Papatoto daddy sculptures and also finishing up our new birth affirmation cards for fathers which are coming up as the freebie in the June newsletter (subscribe at http://brigidsgrove.com), so I’m in the mood! I’ve been mining my blog for past father-relevant posts and have been re-sharing them from the depths of my blog archives. So far, I’ve found a breastfeeding facts book review:

“Since partner support of a breastfeeding mother is one of the most important factors in breastfeeding success, the short book Breastfeeding Facts for Fathers is a valuable book indeed…”

via Book Review: Breastfeeding Facts for Fathers

And three more reviews, one for homebirth dads:

The target audience for the handbook is easily summed up in the prologue: “…I’ve met far more men who have responded to their partners’ home birth wishes with a mixture of shock, cynicism, and fear…Far from being domineering ogres who just want to see wifey tucked ‘safely’ away a hospital, these loving fathers have simply had very little access to accurate, impartial information about the safety and logistics of home births versus hospital births.”

via Book Review: The Father’s Home Birth Handbook | Talk Birth.

One a handy little guide for any father-to-be:

“Humanity cannot invent a drug that can work better than a mother’s body can manufacture or a knife that is sharper than her instinctual nature.”

–Patrick Houser

Book Review: Fathers-To-Be Handbook: A Road Map for the Transition to Fatherhood

And a long-time favorite resource, Fathers at Birth:

I greatly enjoyed reading a book that explores and expands the role of men at birth. In addition to serving as a helpful resource for men who wish to be active partners in the birth process, doulas will find helpful tips and tricks in the book, and childbirth educators will find language and ideas for reaching out to and better connecting with the men in their classes. It is a nice addition to any birth professional’s lending library.

via Book Review: Fathers at Birth | Talk Birth.

Father’s Day represents an important milestone for us, since it was this time two years ago that Mark gave his notice at his job and took the leap into a full-time home-based life with the rest of us. This was prompted in many ways by his desire to spend more time with his family, which I wrote about several years ago in my Fatherbaby post:

We have discussed how each of our babies has been a catalyst for big changes in our home situation. Our first baby was the catalyst we needed to move away from our by-the-highway-no-yard townhouse in a city and onto our own land in the country near my parents. Our second baby was the catalyst we needed to finish building our real house and to move out of our temporary house and into our permanent home. So, we are now wondering what kind of catalyst our baby girl will be?

via Fatherbaby | Talk Birth.

She was the catalyst to finally make the leap and now that we have Tanner, Mark finally gets to spend that precious year of babyhood with the baby and the rest of us. Here’s that catalyst baby girl and her daddy now:

The wild raspberries are ripe a little earlier than usual this year and though we often make one on Father’s Day, we’ve already enjoyed a treasure of a cobbler from those we picked over the weekend. Here’s last year’s post with the recipe:

…I consider any berry picking expedition to be the very definition of success as long as there are enough berries to make a cobbler! It was so delicious I felt like sharing my version here, in case any of you would also like to enjoy one with your family during berry season.

via Recipe: Wild Raspberry Cobbler | Talk Birth.

Happy Father’s Day!

“The absolute miracle of a birth and the emergence of a new human being into the world catapults both mother and father into the realm of awe and wonder. They are flooded with non-ordinary feelings and energies that support a deep connection not only with the newborn and each other, but also with the mystery and power of life itself.”

–John & Cher Franklin in FatherBirth

Introducing…Papatoto!

Jun5

“When he becomes a father, a man leaves behind his life as a single individual and expands into a more inclusive role. He becomes a link in an unbroken chain. And in doing so, he himself undergoes a birth process–the birth of himself as a father.”

–John Franklin (FatherBirth)

Just in time for Father’s Day, we’ve finished our first ever father-baby sculpture. This seated father and child sculpture is 3 inches and colored with a beautifully swirly mica pigment. He is custom created in the color of your choice by request in your order (color choices: blue, turquoise, russet, lavender-gold, rose-gold, gold, bronze, copper, gold-bronze, purple, or green). He is a nurturing, loving figure! Papatoto means “fatherbaby” and represents the continued, symbiotic, connected relationship between parent and child that begins in the womb.

This fatherhood sculpture was created in collaboration with my husband to capture the father-child bond and how the baby learns to explore the world from the secure base of daddy’s lap. A new standing father with child on hip is coming next.

Birth affirmations for fathers coming up as our next newsletter freebie, so make sure you’ve subscribed!

“Nurturing is not a genetically feminine attribute. Tears and laughter are not the province of women only. The last time I looked, men had tear ducts. They had arms for holding babies. They cared about their children. And they cried at births…let the shared experience of childbirth reclaim the human soul.”

–-Ariska Razak (midwife and healer)

Creative Ceremony Academy

May18

The Creative Ceremony Academy is a community of members who celebrate lifecycle transitions and pivotal moments through art and ceremony and use artistic expression as our means of story-telling and experience-sharing. We create art and ceremony in order to “tell about it.”

Upcoming classes from the Creative Ceremony Academy branch of Brigid’s Grove:

Facebook Group!

If you want to make sure you see our posts regularly, to engage with the birth art community, and to ask questions or share ideas about seasonal rituals, mother blessings, women’s ceremonies, or life cycle ceremonies in a safe space, feel free to join our new Facebook community! You will also be the first to know about new classes, books, and projects and will get sneak peeks of new sculpture designs and special bonuses not available to the general public. It is here that we’ll also offer rock bottom deals on sculpture seconds! (i.e. we’ve got a bunch of our Squatter’s Rights figurines with flawed hands right now. I don’t want to list them all separately on etsy, so they’re going to be offered on our FB group for a bargain bin price!)

New Squatter’s Rights Sculpture

May11

“Birth is not an event; it’s a series of sophisticated biological processes… Really, we’re talking about processes that should make us fall on our knees in awe.”

–Suzanne Arms

In our May newsletter from Brigid’s Grove, we introduced our new “Squatter’s Rights” sculpture of a mama catching her own baby. This sculpture has a lot of personal significance to me and I have found her image tremendously empowering for a long time. I have made a variety of different versions all expressing the same message: reach down and catch what’s yours.

…Would the new child coming from me be slippery like soap? I rubbed my fat belly. I loved each pound I gained, each craving I had, and every trip to the bathroom. Okay, maybe not every trip to the bathroom. But, I loved this growing baby. Tucked away like a pearl in the sea just waiting to be discovered. I was in a constant state of marvel.

Would I be able to physically do this? No, I don’t mean the labor, nor do I mean the birth. I knew I could do that. I got lost in thought as I planned in my head every moment that would come after my body did the work of labor. The moment would come once my body was ready and the crown of a child’s head pushed itself from me, the moment the child would emerge. That’s what I was planning for; I planned to catch my own baby…

via Guest Post: Squatter’s Rights | Talk Birth.

It is hard to express how much I love knowing about how these figures “speak” to the women who receive them. I started making them to express something within me and to speak to myself or remind me of my own power. I absolutely love knowing that they carry these messages to other women as well, not just me! An early customer of the Squatter’s Rights sculpture gave me permission to share her feedback on it:

I LOVE THIS!!! ❤ I JUST got my lovely statue, she’s gorgeous, I am in awe of your work, and I caught myself choking up a bit at how I look at her and it pulls me back to that most empowering of moments, Me-birthing my little rainbow.. Completely uninhibited.. THANK YOU!…They will be in a sacred space, helping watch over me as I go through Midwifery school… ❤ Thank you, thank you!! ❤

What a tremendous honor to be a small part of another woman’s journey in this way. It feels like a sacred trust.

Mother’s Day Giveaway!

May6

Our Mother’s Day celebration of motherhood continues with an awesome giveaway event! Four different goddess sculptures* and a copy of our Womanrunes book and card set. To win, simply leave a comment below (or on Facebook) letting us know which sculpture you’d like or if you’d like the book! For a bonus entry, subscribe to the Brigid’s Grove e-newsletter prior to Mother’s Day. Then, you’ll also get our Mother’s Day newsletter with free birth affirmation cards, centering handout, and several articles. 🙂

Still active is our coupon code MOTHER for $5 off a $15 purchase.

Giveaway will close on Mother’s Day evening and winners will be drawn by random selection on Monday.

(*giveaway contest sculptures are seconds with minor imperfections/flaws)

April Newsletter

Apr20

The April newsletter from Brigid’s Grove came out last week. If you missed it, you can view it here! We have launched some new cesarean mama goddess designs (see more about them in the newsletter). We’re also offering a new free birth education handout in the newsletter and a discount code for 15% in honor of Cesarean Awareness Month (use code: CAM15).

Make sure you’ve entered your email address on the right hand side of the BG site to receive future newsletter and special offers and product announcements.

Our May newsletter will include free printable birth affirmation cards, a Mother’s Day special offer, new mama goddesses (one catching her baby and one by request with her hands on her belly instead of above her head), and will feature the launch of our new ceremony kits! We’re particularly excited about our Red Tent Resource Kit, for which we published a new book/manual. We are currently working on developing an online class to go with it too as well as a Womanrunes immersion e-course.

The_Red_Tent_Resourc_Cover_for_Kindle

Grinding My Corn Sculpture

Apr18

It has been almost four years since I wrote my post about “grinding my corn.” In that time, I’ve added another baby, another degree, a book, and a business to my life (as well as lots of other projects!). I’ve also made necessary subtractions and deletions, some painful, some a relief. And, guess what, I still want to grind my corn! My husband works from home with me now and he, too, grinds his corn while parenting and personing. This is what I wrote in my original post:

This is what I’m talking about. There needs to be a third, realistic option (and not just for women. For men too. For families!). I have often expressed the desire to find a balance between mothering and “personing.” I’m seeking a seamless integration of work and family life for both Mark and myself. An integration that makes true co-parenting possible, while still meeting the potent biological need of a baby for her mother and a mother’s biological compulsion to be present with her baby. Why is the work world designed to ignore the existence of families?

via I just want to grind my corn! | Talk Birth.

It felt like it was definitely time for a new grinding my corn sculpture! It took quite some time between my original sculpt and making the new figurines a reality, but she’s here!

I love her and she sits by my computer while I write, on my desk while I teach, and on my bedside table at night. She reminds me of my own capacity—to grow, to adapt, to change, to balance, to hold, to care, to live.

Adding another baby to our family has really pushed us to our coping edge in many ways, sometimes it feels like we’ve tipped past the edge–piled dishes, piled laundry, piled recycling, undone requests, unresponded to messages, other kids wanting books read and projects done. We’re pretty maxed. Our house feels at maximum capacity. Our lives feel at maximum capacity. And, yet, I still reach for the and. Somehow, even when here at the edge, or over it, we do make room…

At one point when my first son was a baby, I was trying to explain my “trapped” or bound feelings to my mother and she said something like, “well what would you rather be doing instead?” And, that was exactly it. I DIDN’T want to be doing something instead, I wanted to be doing something AND. I wanted to grind my corn with my baby. Before he was born I had work that I loved very much and that, to me, felt deeply important to the world. Motherhood required a radically re-defining of my sense of my self, my purpose on earth, and my reason for being. While I had been told I could bring my baby with me while continuing to teach volunteer trainings, I quickly found that it was incompatible for me—I felt like I was doing neither job well while bringing my baby with me and I had to “vote” for my baby and quit my work. While I felt like this was the right choice for my family, it felt like a tremendous personal sacrifice and I felt very restricted and “denied” in having to make it. With my first baby, I had to give up just about everything of my “old life” and it was a difficult and painful transition. When my second baby was born, it was much easier because I was already in “kid mode.” I’d already re-defined my identity to include motherhood and while I still chafed sometimes at the bonds of being bonded, they were now familiar to me…

via I just want to grind my corn! | Talk Birth.

My new sculpture incorporates a small “offering” bowl (as her lap) that to me is symbolic of the fact that though her hands are full, she is still open to possibilities and offerings and can “hold” more, when needed.

Having another baby has really made me pare away a lot in my life, including very basic self-care things like regular showers! I’ve done it before, so I know it isn’t permanent, but it is still hard to feel like I’m trimming away so much that matters to me, while also having so much I want to offer, and constantly having to prioritize and choose. I’ve been looking at it as a sort of “sabbatical.” While I might not be able to do as much face to face projects as I envision and dream of, I can lay the groundwork, I can write, I can prepare and outline and imagine, while also sitting in my bed holding my sleeping baby. Maybe I won’t get outside every day and maybe I have to choose between the shower or yoga, since doing both in one day seems like too much to ask sometimes, but I can use this baby time to incubate new visions and grow while appearing stationary.

Here is a gallery of how I’ve been grinding my corn with my baby this month (click for captions)…

Working on flower crown tutorial.

Flower crown tutorial in progress.

Foot bath together after salt bowl ceremony.

“Helping” upack my altar supplies for the Red Tent

Doing laundry

Doing yoga with mama!

March Red Tent. Love how he’s looking at me without me knowing!

Greenhouse helper for Daddy!

Tanner was my baby-helper at last night’s Red Tent Circle at WomanSpace. It is hard to balance baby-care with circle facilitation (because baby helpers do things like bang the rattle on the floor instead of “passing the rattle”), but I’m still really glad I decided to offer these circles this year. It has been a rich experience so far.

I envision a life of seamless integration, where there need not even be a notion of ‘life/work’ balance, because it is all just life and living. A life in which children are welcome in workplaces and in which work can be accomplished while in childspaces. A life in which I can grind my corn with my children nearby and not feel I need apologize for doing so or explain myself to anyone…

via Corn grinding mama goddess birth art sculpture by BrigidsGrove.

During the Inner Mentor visualization we did last night at our circle, we traveled in time to meet ourselves twenty years from now. The first thing she/I told me is that my baby is now twenty. It felt like a shock to consider that, since right now is so real…

(Side note: this is my 1000th [published] blog post at Talk Birth! It is true that regular blogging eventually produces a significant body of work!)

Tuesday Tidbits: Cesarean Awareness Month

Apr14

It is Cesarean Awareness Month! We finished several new mama goddess designs this month and have a CAM-themed April newsletter ready to go out (subscriber freebie in this newsletter is a new birth education handout: “Can I really expect to have a great birth?” Sign up for the newsletter at Brigid’s Grove!)

Some Cesarean Awareness Month themed posts for this week. First, a meditation for before a cesarean:

You say you honor choices.
Can you really honor mine?
I will always honor the process which
brought forth flesh of my flesh.
I honor your births too.
Can you ever honor my experience, or will I
forever be a part of your statistics on
the way things shouldn’t be?

via Birthrites: Meditation Before a Cesarean | Talk Birth.

And, some past thoughts on helping a woman give birth…what is the balance between birth interference and birth neglect?

There can be a specific element of “smugness” within the natural birth community that has been gnawing at me for quite some time. A self-satisfied assumption that if you make all the “right choices” everything will go the “right way” and women who have disappointing or traumatic births must have somehow contributed to those outcomes. For example, I’m just now reading a book about natural mothering in which the author states regarding birth: “Just remember that you will never be given more than you can handle.” Oh, really? Perhaps this is an excellent reminder for some women, and indeed, at its very core it is the truth—basically coming out alive from any situation technically means you “handled it,” I suppose. But, the implicit or felt meaning of a statement like this is: have the right attitude and be confident and everything will work out dandily. Subtext: if you don’t get what you want/don’t feel like you “handled it” the way you could or “should” have, it is your own damn fault. How does a phrase like that feel to a woman who has made all the “right choices” and tried valiantly to “handle” what was being thrown at her by a challenging birth and still ended up crushed and scarred? Yes, she’s still here. She “handled it.” But, remarks like that seem hopelessly naive and even insulting to a woman whose spirit, or heart, has been broken. By birth. Not by some evil, medical patriarchy holding her down, but by her own body and her own lived experience of trying to give birth vaginally to her child.

via Helping a Woman Give Birth? | Talk Birth.

An educational video and some cesarean infographics from Lamaze: Lamaze for Parents : Blogs : How to Avoid a Cesarean: Are You Asking the Right Questions?

And a VBAC Primer from Peggy O’Mara: VBAC Primer | Peggy O’Mara

Some thoughts on the flawed assumption of maternal-fetal conflict and how that impacts the climate of birth today:

I think it is fitting to remember that mother and baby dyads are NOT independent of each other. With a mamatoto—or, motherbaby—mother and baby are a single psychobiological organism whose needs are in harmony (what’s good for one is good for the other).

As Willa concluded in her CfM News article, “…we must reject the language that portrays a mother as hostile to her baby, just because she disagrees with her doctor.”

via Maternal-Fetal Conflict? | Talk Birth.

And some past thoughts on Birth Strength:

“Women are strong, strong, terribly strong. We don’t know how strong until we are pushing out our babies. We are too often treated like babies having babies when we should be in training, like acolytes, novices to high priestesshood, like serious applicants for the space program.” –Louise Erdrich, The Blue Jay’s Dance

via Birth Strength | Talk Birth.

(I would revise this slightly to say “until we have birthed our babies,” since strength is found in many different birth, postpartum, breastfeeding, and mothering experiences, not only in pushing out our babies. I still love the quote though!)

Small Business Saturday: New Projects!

Apr11

April is Cesarean Awareness Month and we’ve been working very hard on some new sculpture designs to offer in honor and recognition of the cesarean birth experience. (We’re also working ahead on some cool new father sculptures to unveil for Father’s Day!) They should be ready in the shop by early next week.

The April edition of the Brigid’s Grove newsletter will have a new discount code, articles, links, and a free birth education handout.

We’ve gotten stocked up with some sparkly new treasures in preparation for our new mother blessing and ceremony kits, which will be launching soon!

And, speaking of kits, here is a sneak peek of a big project we’ve been working on…

We’ve finally made some new, taller mama goddesses! These are close to four inches and make perfect birth altar centerpieces.

They look very similar to our smaller figures, so it can be hard to distinguish which is which in the etsy shop. The larger sculptures are those priced at $22. Here’s a comparison pic for size:

I like the compact size of my original figures—they fit nicely in your hand as well as still looking nice (I think) on a birth altar space. They’re also portable enough to travel—I usually take one with me in my purse to my classes and set her on the desk while I’m teaching. However, we have had quite a few requests for larger figures, so we’re doing our best! Even the larger figures aren’t exactly large though and after some failed attempts at going even larger, I’ve realized I’m okay with making them the size I like to make them, rather than trying to please everyone and losing some of my own connection with what I create.

In late March we were excited to attend the WomanSpace grand opening in Rolla. It is an amazing place and I’m so excited about it and proud of my friend Summer for making the vision a reality! The community is so lucky to have this resource available. At the grand opening we had a little booth with some of our items as well as a table for participants to make some free jewelry. Our location was a little out of the way of the main action, so we didn’t make as much free jewelry with people as we anticipated (mainly kids!), but it was a fun time and I enjoyed seeing and talking to many different people (and also feasting on some really good appetizers from Icebox Cookery).