The Spirituality of Birth + Book Giveaway: Birth on the Labyrinth Path

Jun20

I’ve been experiencing a fun trend in the books I’ve been reviewing lately—many new resources are being published with a shared theme of approaching birth from a spiritual perspective. There are resources now available for women from a variety of spiritual backgrounds, all honoring and respecting pregnancy and birth as experiences uniquely connected in an embodied way to the numinous and sacred, in whichever manner we choose to name it. I recently finished a class for my doctoral program and the subject of my final paper was “A Thealogy of Birth,” in which explored the sociopolitical, cultural, religious, and personal relevance of birth from a thealogical (Goddess-oriented) perspective.

I just reviewed The Gift of Giving Life which delves into the divine nature of pregnancy and birth from a Christian (specifically LDS/Mormon) perspective.
I then pre-reviewed the upcoming book Embodying the Sacred, which is written from a Catholic point of view.
And, earlier in the month I finished reading a gorgeous book with a non-specific spiritual perspective: Sacred Pregnancy
In the past, I also reviewed the book L’Mazeltov, which is written specifically for Jewish parents-to-be.

All of these resources are amazing and I’m so glad they’re available for pregnant women.

Now, I’m excited to offer a short review and a giveaway of another new book, this one written from a pagan perspective. Published by Pantheos Press, Birth on the Labyrinth Path is written by Sarah Whedon and focuses on “Sacred Embodiment in the Childbearing Year.”

My mini-review from Goodreads is as follows:

I really enjoyed this short book about pregnancy and birth from a pagan perspective. The reflections on the embodied, spiritual nature of pregnancy and birth were wonderful. It is very positive and reinforcing and contains great thoughts like this one: “A body that is curvier than it was before, maybe bearing stretch marks or scars from surgical procedures or tearing, maybe producing milk, is a body that bears the signs of delivering a human being into this world. We may mourn our smooth, skinny, unmarked maiden bodies, but at the same time we can celebrate the beauty of our storied, productive, and strong mama bodies.” Whedon also quotes this lovely passage regarding the connection pagan women might feel to the Divine: “I am the holy mother; . . . She is not so far from me. And perhaps She is not so very distinct from me, either. I am her child, born in Her, living and moving in Her, perhaps at death to be birthed into yet some other new life, still living and having my being in Her. But while on this earth She and I share the act of creation, of being, and Motherhood” (from Niki Whiting, “On Being a Holy Mother” in Whedon, p.)

I also shared some lovely quotes from Birth on the Labyrinth Path in my recent post on Birth Culture.

*********The giveaway is now closed. Ellen was the winner!*********

I’m also pleased to host a giveaway of a Kindle copy of Birth on the Labyrinth Path for one lucky winner! To enter, just leave a comment sharing one of your own thoughts or favorite resources about the spirituality of pregnancy and birth. The giveaway will run through next Wednesday (6/27).

Book Pre-Review: Embodying the Sacred

Jun20

Book Pre-Review: Embodying the Sacred

By Peg Conway

Reviewed by Molly Remer, MSW, ICCE, Talk Birth (http://talkbirth.me)

This week I was excited to have the opportunity to review a new book, not yet released. Publication is anticipated within the next couple of months and I will re-post then with the actual cover image and pricing details.

Embodying the Sacred is a beautiful new book with roots in the Catholic faith. It seeks to answer the questions, “how does birth connect with faith? How can we speak of it in religious language that lives up to the intensity of giving birth? How can spirituality be a resource for childbearing? And why are the churches, deeply concerned for the unborn, so silent about normal childbirth?” The book helps pregnant women build their “spiritual birth bag” through cultivating their inner resources and their embodied connection to spirit.

Written clearly and with a lyrical and intimate style, the book contains a variety of reflections, prayers, and activities to help women make a personal connection with their sense of the divine and sacred. Something I found particularly enjoyable about the book was that not only did the author touch on the labyrinth as a metaphor for birth, she includes literal, purposeful labyrinth walks in the suggested activities for expectant mothers.

Embodying the Sacred speaks to the chord of the holy and sacred in all pregnant women, but readers should be aware that it uses language and prayers strongly rooted in the Abrahamic religions and uses predominantly masculine imagery and language for God. Women from a variety of faith backgrounds will find material to connect with in the book, but may find it necessary to substitute or modify the prayers to suit their personal beliefs and practices.

Pregnant women who are intrigued by the idea of building a spiritual birth bag and who are ready to dig deep and to go beyond the scope of traditional pregnancy and birth books will find a rich resource in Embodying the Sacred.

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Disclosure: I received a complimentary copy of this book for review purposes.

Book Review: The Gift of Giving Life

Jun18

Book Review: The Gift of Giving Life: Rediscovering the Divine Nature of Pregnancy and Birth
Authored by Felice Austin
Authored with Lani Axman, Heather Farrell, Robyn Allgood, Sheridan Ripley
ISBN: 9780615622521
542 pages, softcover
http://thegiftofgivinglife.com/

Reviewed by Molly Remer, Talk Birth

Written for women who wish to delve into the divine nature of pregnancy and birth from a Christian perspective, The Gift of Giving Life is co-authored by several childbirth educators and doulas who are also members of the Latter-Day Saints (LDS) church. The book is rich with the stories and experiences of dozens of LDS women who share their birth stories and reflections. These additional stories are sprinkled throughout the body of the text, making it very easy to read and “digest” in small sections. The stories represent a wide breadth of experiences—I anticipated many of them to gloss over the difficult parts of pregnancy and birth, but they address both the nitty-gritty, challenging aspects and the transcendent. I especially appreciated that women’s experiences with pregnancy loss and baby loss are integrated throughout the book rather than relegated to a specific subsection. A helpful touch is that stories dealing with loss are indicated with an awareness ribbon symbol, so that if a reader does want to avoid these stories, she is readily able to do so.

As a non-LDS woman as well as someone who does not identify as Christian, I did encounter many segments that had little relevance to my own experience of or interpretation of the world. For example, it was startling for me to come across repeated statements that seemed to hold a literal view of “Satan” as a real entity holding some kind of power or control over people. That said, I was impressed with how deeply and solidly integrated the text is with the spiritual teachings of the LDS faith. For women who wish to permeate their pregnancy and birth experiences with an intimate and intricately woven connection to Christian theology and scripture, The Gift of Giving Life is a faith-based treasure.

As I noted in my recent interview with one of The Gift of Giving Life‘s co-authors, I am fascinated by the concept of Heavenly Mother and really enjoyed the sections of the book that touched on the relationship with Her. I also enjoyed the book’s explanation of Eve’s pivotal choice in the Garden, which was very meaningful framing of the event in a way that was completely new to me.

The Gift of Giving Life has much to offer both to pregnant women and to birth professionals. It will likely have most appeal to those with LDS connections and to members of other Christian traditions who are familiar with scripture and wish to apply these messages to the childbearing year.

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Disclosure: I received a complimentary copy of this book for review purposes.

The Gift of Giving Life: Interview with Sheridan Ripley

Jun8

This interview with Sheridan Ripley is a stop on the Virtual Book Tour for The Gift of Giving Life.

Q1: Many people liken the writing of a book to giving birth to a baby? Did you find this an apt analogy?

YES! We (the co-authors) brought this up a lot. It was like we were gestating together and ideas were growing and growing. The first trimester I actually felt like I missed as I joined the group at the beginning of the 2^nd year. It was a 3 year process so the trimester analogy works well.

The 2^nd trimester we had plenty of energy and got a lot done and things moved forward quickly. We had that happy, easy 2^nd trimester.

That 3^rd trimester felt SO SLOW!!! It was the editing, book layout, more editing. Details and more details and felt so long. I know I felt so heavy and weighed down by the process. Luckily we had each other for support and we made a great team.

Finally we were pushing the baby out and while there were little hold ups along the way, it was so exciting. The triumph we felt as we finally held our book in our hands was pretty amazing!

Q2: I’m fascinated by the concept of Heavenly Mother and really enjoyed the sections of The Gift of Giving Life that touched on the relationship with Her. Can you explore more about how LDS women might find strength and connection in this image of the Feminine Divine and how she might aid in giving life?

I believe I am a literal child of a Heavenly Father and knowing that he is a partner with a Heavenly Mother and together they are able to love billions of children, helps me to have faith in my ability to love and raise my boys.

Knowing that our bodies are patterned after their bodies also gives me faith that my body can grow and birth babies! We are mortal and there are instances when medical intervention is needed, but the majority of the time birth is safe. Our bodies are created to create!

As we connect with other women in a supportive loving way we can feel connected to Her because we are each created in Her image. Maybe that is why when women gather around women in childbirth we feel so uplifted, powerful and humbled at the same time.

Some women really feel a need for a connection of a mother figure, especially while pregnant. I have an earthly mom who I am very connected to and she was very helpful during my pregnancy, so I didn’t personally have a desire for a connection with a Feminine Divine at that point.

However there are women who may be missing that mother figure in their life and we all have a deep desire for such a connection. Knowing that there is a Heavenly Mother who stands beside Heavenly Father to help guide us and protect us especially during this time of pregnancy and birth is powerful.

Meditating and pondering on the idea of a Heavenly Mother and how that can help us as we give the gift of life and then raise our children is the best way for me to connect to her. I actually just took time to do this as I hadn’t really thought of this question until you asked it.

That is the great thing about our book and having so many contributors is it will speak to different women, because so many view points are included.

Q3: Do you have any specific tips for women wishing to incorporate more spiritual practices into their pregnancies?

We actually have a newsletter that moms can sign up for where they get a free 20 minute meditation MP3 as well as 5 tips to have a more spiritual pregnancy/birth. I think for each mom it may look different. Prayer and meditation are great places to start, as you will often get inspiration on where to go from there. I also love Mother’s Blessings as a way to have the strength of other women buoy up the pregnant mom. She can benefit from feeling their love and spiritual support

Q4: When women in the birth stories say they asked their husband for a blessing or that their husband gave them a blessing, what does that mean?

A blessing is similar to a prayer. All male members of the Church who are prepared receive the priesthood, which is the authority to act in God’s name. One of the ways they can serve others with the priesthood is by giving blessings by the laying on of hands. They can give blessings of healing or for comfort and guidance. In some cases a wife might ask her husband (or other priesthood holder) for a blessing before or during birth.

I know for me in my first birth, it was so comforting because with my first birth my husband gave me a blessing when I was concerned about the Thing 1’s lack of movement. In the blessing he said he would be born when he was ready. When we discovered that he needed to be born by emergency cesarean immediately even though I was only 34 weeks, I had peace knowing that my husband had just blessed me that “he would be born when he was ready.” I knew everything would be OK.

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Thanks for the interesting interview and the review copy of The Gift of Giving Life, Sheridan!

Visit The Gift of Giving Life site to sign up for their newsletter and to receive a free Meditation MP3 as well as tips to help increase spirituality in your pregnancy and birth.

For my readers I have a coupon code for 10% off a copy of The Gift of Giving Life. Click here and after you add the book to your cart use this coupon code. GWFWXR3F This code is good until Father’s Day 2012.

Book Review & Giveaway: The Wisdom of the Healing Wound

May15

The Wisdom of the Healing Wound: A New View on Why We Hurt & How We Can Cure Even the Deepest Physical and Emotional Wounds
by David Knighton M.D.
Paperback:216 pages
Publisher: HCI; 1 edition (June 1, 2011)
ISBN-13:978-0757315619

www.wisdomofthehealingwound.com

Reviewed by Molly Remer, Talk Birth

Written by a vascular surgeon who specializes in working with and healing nonhealing wounds, The Wisdom of the Healing Wound is a book addressing the many types of wounds we all experience in our lives: physical wounds, psychological wounds, and spiritual wounds. After discussing the mechanisms of healing, types of wounds, and the value of wounds, David Knighton moves into an explanation of strategies to help yourself heal, caring for scars, getting help, and lifetime healing. I especially appreciated his explanation of how we have both physical and emotional “skin” and that in a relationship there is a “relationship skin” that envelops both people (i.e. a mother and her baby). In various ways that emotional skin can become damaged, rough, thick, or thin, just as our physical skin can be damaged.

Some of the stories/case studies of the wounds experienced and shared in the book are difficult and disturbing to read about (particularly sexual abuse), so be prepared for that.

From the press release:

Dr. David Knighton has some remarkable insights about wounds and our ability to heal ourselves. “We’ve all been wounded,” he writes. “But, paradoxically, wounding is probably our greatest stimulus for health. As we heal, we grow.”

A leading expert on wound healing, Dr. Knighton delves even deeper into the mystery of human nature with his new book The Wisdom of the Healing Wound: A New View on Why We Hurt and How We Can Cure Even the Deepest Physical and Emotional Wounds. (Health Communications, Inc.)

“The goal in working with wounds of any kind — from the physical to the emotional to the spiritual — is to restore structure and function,” Dr. Knighton says. “That is the healer’s role. Ultimately, The Wisdom of the Healing Wound is about being human — about living fully as body, mind, and spirit. More importantly, it is about the powerful, transformative, and often surprising ways we can heal and thrive in the face of our wounds.”

“Life is full of wounds–physical, emotional, and spiritual. The wounded psyche and spirit heal in much the same manner as physical wounds,” Dr. Knighton explains. “It’s what gives the book a universal appeal.” People in 12-step recovery groups, people facing surgery or who have physical wounds that are slow to heal, people with emotional trauma or PTSD, military and abuse victims and the healing professionals who work with all these types of wounds are sure to see the usefulness of The Wisdom of the Healing Wound.

While not specifically intended for birth professionals, I think those interested in helping women process birth trauma as well as anyone working in a helping profession would find nuggets of wisdom and healing in this book.

You can also listen to a talk from the author here.

***Giveaway is now closed. Shawna was the winner!****

I also have one extra copy of The Wisdom of the Healing Wound to give away! To enter, just leave a comment telling me what type of wound you’re interested in healing/learning more about! Giveaway will close one week from today (on May 22, 2012).

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Disclosure: I received a complimentary copy of this book for review purposes.

Book Review: This Mother’s Life

May13

This Mother’s Life
by Nina Mohadjer
Paperback, 178 pages, $12.95
Infinity Publishing, 2011
ISBN-13: 978-0741467102
http://www.ninamohadjer.com/This-Mother-s-Life.html

Reviewed by Molly Remer, Talk Birth

This Mother’s Life is a novel in diary format about a woman, the mother of two teenage girls, who is going through a separation from her husband as well as through job changes. We follow her experiences with dating some other men and seeking a new job as well as her musings about motherhood, marriage, women’s rights, and life caught between two cultures (she and her husband are originally from Iran).

There is a higher than average number of minor errors in word choice and writing mechanics in the book and I stumbled over things such as a continued use of the word “loosing” instead of “losing.” The overall tone of the book is lightweight, casual, and surface, while at the same time feeling somewhat depressing. The narrator’s voice is often extremely plaintive.

This Mother’s Life is also bitingly funny in places–a favorite section, with regard to her mother-in-law’s questions: “Amir’s mom asks me constantly whether I take care of her son! I mean, hello, I should be responsible for my girls and not for wrapping your son’s penis in blue silk, right? Did I get a lifetime companion or a forty-year-old baby?”

Women looking for a quick read that touches lightly on some of the challenges of modern motherhood, will probably recognize something of themselves and their own struggles in This Mother’s Life.

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Disclosure: I received a complimentary copy of this book for review purposes.

Footprints on My Heart: A Memoir of Miscarriage & Pregnancy After Loss

Jan27

As of this week, my miscarriage memoir, Footprints on My Heart, has finally been published and is now available in eBook format via Kindle and Lulu, Inc. (epub format compatible with Nook and iBooks). There are a few formatting errors and some other general problems (like with the sample/preview–it is totally wonky–and with the lettering on the cover), but guess what, it is DONE, it available, and it is out there. I’m really, really excited about it and I feel this huge sense of relief. I still want to write my Empowered Miscarriage book someday, but for now, this memoir is what I had in me and it will have to do for the time being. I realized after Alaina was born and was, in a sense, the happy “ending” to my Noah story, that in writing my miscarriage blog I had actually ended up writing most of a book. So, the bulk of the book is drawn from my miscarriage blog and from this blog as well (for the pregnancy after loss content). I also included an appendix of resource information/additional thoughts that is fresh.

I’ve felt haunted by the desire to publish this for the entire last year. It took a surprising amount of work, as well as emotional energy, to prepare for publication, even though I actually did most of the actual writing via blog in 2010. Now that it is ready, I just feel lighter somehow and have this really potent sense of relief and ease, as if this was my final task. My final act of tribute. My remaining “to do” in the grief process.

If anyone really, really, really wants it and cannot afford the $3.99 for which I priced it, I do have it available as a pdf file, a mobi file, and an epub file and I will be happy to email it to you in one of those formats.

<deep breath> Aaaaaahhhhhh….

Book Review: Passionate Journey: My Unexpected Life

Jan14

Passionate Journey: My Unexpected Life
By Marian Leonard Tompson, Melissa Clark Vickers
Paperback, 176 pages
Published June 19th 2011 by Hale Publishing

Reviewed by Molly Remer

Passionate Journey by La Leche League International co-founder Marian Tompson is the story of a young mother who became known worldwide and was even referred to as “The High Priestess of Breastfeeding Mothers.” Written in a light and casual tone, many of Marian’s stories are familiar if you’ve read The LLL Love Story, Seven Voices, One Dream, or The Revolutionaries Wore Pearls. While theoretically a personal memoir from one Founder, rather than a history of LLL, because Marian’s personal history is intimately entwined with the organization’s history, the end result is very similar to existing books about LLLI.

The writing style is simplistic and ironically often fairly dispassionate in tone, perhaps due to having a co-writer for a first person memoir. Chronology jumps are occasionally confusing.

Several anecdotes made me laugh aloud and read them to my husband–such as a medical intern rushing to the physician after witnessing one of Marian’s three natural hospital births and exclaiming, “oh, doctor! How did you do it?” As a birth activist and feminist, I’m fascinated by the radical courage required at the time to support and promote home birth and breastfeeding. While LLLI has always been a “single purpose” organization, it has also always recognized something that seems to escape the notice of many professionals and consumers: that normal, undisturbed breastfeeding begins with normal, undisturbed birth. Tompson notes: “…having a baby at home is at least as safe as a hospital birth, and in most situations home birth is safer. New sciences and new research are helping us understand why giving birth in your own bed, surrounded by people who care for you, where you feel supported and can celebrate the birth, rather than just endure it, changes both the experience and the outcome.” Tompson had her first home birth in 1955 and went on to have three more children at home. Her daughters carried on her legacy, one of them returning to the family home to give birth to her own daughter. The Tompson family home was also the site of multiple family weddings as well as the almost unheard of home funeral for husband Tom in 1981. In a nice touch, reflective paragraphs from each of Marian’s seven children close the book.

An inspirational story of the twists and turns of an ordinary life with an extraordinary global impact, Passionate Journey reminded me of the deep importance and transformative influence of providing support and encouragement to women who wish to breastfeed.

via Goodreads | Passionate Journey: My Unexpected Life by Marian Leonard Tompson – Reviews, Discussion, Bookclubs, Lists.

A Year of Talk Birth–Free ebook (rough copy)

Jan11

Earlier this year I mentioned that I’d used BlogBlooker to convert my blog into a book so that I could copy the text into a year-end Wordle. Anyway, I decided I might as well make the finished blogbook available for download here as an ebook of sorts. It is pretty rough, since it includes comment text as well as “footnotes” of any websites I linked to. And, the formatting of pictures and other elements is a little funky, plus it includes any reviews or giveaways or quotes posts that I did during 2011. But, for anyone who wants it, here is a year of Talk Birth in pdf ebook format. I sent it to myself to read on my iPad and it was really pretty fun! It is a long document—410 page pdf. Enjoy!