Do you really need to push so hard?!

What would happen if you just let go?

Inna May Gaskin once wrote that ours is the only species who fear birth.

A natural, sought after ability to deliver the potential within us.

This week’s wisdom looks at what this means not only regarding the physical generations to come but the creation of our own individual future.

“Birth death and suffering all bring us to the very edge of what our minds can understand.”

Ram Dass

I was going to die.

This was it.

At twenty-one years old, my life was over.

There was no other explanation.

Not even acceptance.

That would have meant I had some rational idea of what was occurring.

Control even.

I didn’t.

There wasn’t.

With a sense of completion.

I felt myself leave my body, and everything to which I had physically attached.

Time.

Birth plans.

Returning.

With each idea, dream, wish and hope for the future.

Home.

Beyond anything I had ever known.

Nothing had prepared me for it.

Despite doing everything “right”

“Change what you can, accept what you can’t and be smart enough to know the difference.”

Wally Lamb

I had been a “good girl” and allowed the Midwife who had just arrived (having dunked her feet in frozen disinfectant to avoid spreading foot and mouth onto the farm) to place her fingers where I adamantly didn't want them to be.

Assessing how well I was doing, based on her external measurement.

I hadn’t as was initially suggested merely started.

Instead, I was “fully” prepared for the transition that awaited me.

Watching my dear friend, a student at the time on the same course, lay out the equipment on our lounge floor.

My late mother supporting my son’s father to get the non-responsive fire working in our caravan.

Whilst my mother-in-law patiently waited outside.

I had maintained the environment for everyone, to ensure they were ready, held, and comforted, for the time when I would no longer be able to.

Aware of the stages of what I was about to face.

Wanting to remain conscious, I denied any pain relief.

Not realising the impact this was about to have on me and any future creations as a result.

“Death is not the opposite of life but part of it.”

Haruki Murakami

Returning to my body.

The very vessel I had absolutely no faith in.

In between my deepened ragged breaths.

I found myself remembering how easy it had all been.

To be told I would never have children.

After decades of endometriosis, adenomyosis, intrinsic scar tissue, severe long-term anaemia and half a cervix from cancer cell removal.

I had felt into something no professional knew as well as I did.

My own potential.

The wisdom within me.

With every wave of disorientation opening me up to the truth I found myself in.

Holding space and compassion for my ever-expanding previous doubt and fear as I reached and went beyond limited predicted dates of gestation.

I had stood my ground and decided to be at home.

Minus intervention.

To ensure a safer, easier, end of the life I had known.

Calling upon my own experience.

All I had seen.

Had the honour of witnessing.

So many in similar situations.

I wasn’t alone.

Students and teachers alike.

From here, I felt the authentic strength that this had been done decades before me and would continue to be a perfectly natural rites of passage.

“When you find a fear, that fear will either create or destroy you.”

Greg Plitt

Despite being ready, I hadn’t expected it.

Not the stretching.

Or the palpable change in the air.

This, alongside the hustle and bustle of those around me was as familiar as the panic in the voice of those who loved me.

I hadn't realised I was going to die.

It was so incredibly beautiful.

Leaving the room.

Everything I had assumed.

Imagined.

The noises now distant.

My need to encourage or rather entertain others gone.

It was just me and my body.

And the one thing I came here for.

My son.

It took surrendering.

Moving through creative contractions within my own emotional awareness.

Expanding with each bearing down, into my Soul’s psyche.

Going beyond any limitations I had placed on the scientific understanding of existence, myself included.

To come heart to heart with such a vast creation.

“It is said that women in labour leave their bodies. They travel to the stars to collect the Souls of their babies and return to this World together.”

Anonymous

Bringing this vision down through me.

Turning myself inside of who I ever was and could be, to something, someone further than I had ever been.

?I found a deeper connection to life and a far more spiritual relationship.

With the very thing that brought me, both of us even, into this World.

My body.

The one part, that although enthralled in the biology of it all.

I had avoided, mistrusted, questioned at times.

In this union - anything was possible.

Including the life I had once been so brutally denied.

“Conscious creation is our destiny, and we innately know that creation is our birth right.”

LeAura Alderson

Looking back on this now.

At a time when our own vision, and ability to deliver this, has never been more necessary.

As my small idea or hope prepares to turn twenty-four in a few weeks and currently towers over me with more facial hair that his father has on his head!

I am humbled at the journey so far.

Not only as a mother and healer.

But Midwife.

In a role that seems as infinite as the perception I have on myself within it.

Meaning to be “with woman”

The Feminine.

In all stages of innovation, the ability to receive, first, the very Soul or essence we are trying to birth.

Be it a physical child, relationship, healing, or career.

To hold space for it’s potential.

Purely by listening to the only structure, process, framework ever needed.

The human experience.

“Life is a labour pain; we are here to give birth to ourselves.”

Bernie Siegel

So, what have I discovered so far (other than Aristotle had it so wrong when considering the disposition of what a midwife should be- the lion's heart and hawks’ eye I agree with the lady’s hand, middle aged manner and lack of passion I’m not so sure of!)

Well as Socrates once suggested, Midwifery is an art form.

That chisels away until the essence held in every Soul can be found.

Not only an educational thought but teaching method, this obstetric observation guides the individual back to their own inherent knowledge.

To help find the truth within one’s own heart and spread the birth of innovative ideas.

Be those physical representations of the future or the understanding of generational and collective healing.

In this there are patterns of progress heard by all that are willing to listen to the old ways of manifestation.

The Universal laws and keepers of co-creation:

1-Take time to prepare where able prior to any internal-course (remember the value of the love you are making and in this in-body your own worth)

2-Ensure there is vibrational space for something new to be formed ( you can’t conceive with a placenta in situ!)

3- Embrace the importance of having basic needs met ( survival mode slows down labour pure and simple!)

4- Recognise the impact of a supportive, safe environment.

From productivity partners to Divine doulas!

5- Understand true change as the facilitator of any shifts (this includes the “we’ve always done it this way” argument!)

6- Appreciate the stages you may find yourself at.

Based on YOUR OWN measurement.

To avoid unnecessary trauma and active pushing against the energetic, emotional expansions that aid you.

7- Honour the deeper connection needed to trust and find faith.

In both the project you are gestating and ability to do so at a time that is right for all involved.

8- Become the steward of a greater vision

Not only of the creation but yourself in every transition, by caring for each part of it equally.

Remember that in this place of power-the womb, be it the board room, your own sacral centre or the very belly of Pachamama, is not a place to store fear or pain but create and give birth to life.

As you take on a whole new, yet anciently familiar connection to the very cycles of the Feminine found within us all and step into the Midwife of your own Soul you have always been.

“All labour has dignity.”

Martin Luther King Jnr

It is here I personally believe the greatest movement to be for humanity.

As we collectively do what is necessary to avoid becoming “stuck”

Rather than force the opposition.

Go against what our bodies need.

“Flex the head” of any human hierarchy.

Whilst ignoring the impact this has on the holistic wellbeing of the planet.

Instead, we must take a step back, allow what is no longer sustainable to be released as we embrace an innate inner guidance.

Open to adaption and the changing of our positions as needed.

By simply respecting underneath every deadline, conveyor belt consumerism, or corporate statistic there resides a person.

Born, against a one in four trillion, odd.

A miracle.

Of sheer unlimited possibility.

Waiting to be seen

By the only individual that truly knows how best to birth them…YOU!

May we all recognise the lives we are guardians of and nurture them for the labour of love they create from within us.

In deepest munay

Kirsty

X