refute everything.
well that’s one thing i have learned in the two days of my midwifery training. refute it all. and then don’t.
i sit here, finally at home. my feet are up. a cup of strong chamomile tea is by my side and on the other is a raging fire. my throat is killing me. my chest feels tight. my head aches. and yet i feel better than ever.
it’s been all at once and exhausting and invigorating two days with Whapio, my new teacher. Things I have learned about her: She is tiny and wild. Loud. Quiet. Sassy. Sexy. All-knowing and humbler than humble. She is a midwife to life. She gives before she asks anything. She courts the altered state. She lives by Heart Mysteries. She has about as much medical knowledge in her petite head as any Doc I have ever met. She teaches intense anatomy and physiology so we can understand how mystical our bodies truly are. HOMEOSTASIS RULES (and we should tattoo that on our eyelids) She is so fucking funny…I don’t know how long it’s been since I have laughed this hard. She is an elder and a teacher, but she also gives her of herself as a friend and person. She has apprenticed with Birth. The Menonite woman taught her to stand back, or come close, or be where it suits the mother. She wears like 10 gauge earrings shaped like spirals in her ears. Her silver hair looks like a convertible carefully styled it. She teaches how to open our Nadis every morning. She likes to say “You know what I mean? You know what I’m talking about?” with a southern twang and look around the room with a big old smile. She wears long velvet dresses and fur scarves. She is a blessing.
I am in love.
I am also so tired I could cry. My butt is numb from sitting. My heart is gushing.
I have been given the best gift for myself in a long time. It’s everything and nothing like I expected.
The day before I started this immersion was a really, really hard day parenting. I realized that I didn’t like or want to maintain this full-time position anymore. It was TOO much for me to handle. Six years of nothing but this. It was a low moment of wanting to run away. Now, it was also hard because I was so anxious to start the training. The girls knew it was coming. The baby knew too as she would not get off my boob. Like tarzan, she hung there ALL DAY while i walked around the house trying to organize and get the home in order so their dad could maintain our rhythm (lesson: let the dad find his own rhythm). The feelings that had surfaced in response to the Haitian earthquake were so physically intense . So instead I broke down, sobbed not only in front of my kids, but to my kids about gratitude and thanks and said waaaaay more than I needed to, but oh well. And at one point I fell on the floor and questioned whether or not I should be doing this training. I was a writer, not a midwife. We were broke and my husband was going to go down to 4 days a week. What was I thinking? And then it hit me. I didn’t care what the fuck it was. Electrical Engineering or Midwifery. I needed some time. Time. Space. Space.
I am glad it wasn’t electrical engineering.
There is something subtle that has changed in me. Perhaps it’s because I have spent 2 days away from the house, no worries, daddy with the kids, sitting on a wooden floor for 8 hours straight. Maybe it’s the altered states she continually tries to bring about in the room. I don’t know what it is, can’t really speak of it yet, but a little fiber danced differently in me. It’s good.
Thank you all for support in the journey. So many of you are midwives in life, each day moving like a loving ghost in my presence, watching, holding, bowing, allowing my work to unfold, undisturbed and perfect. Bless up to all you magnificent and creative souls out there who have connected with my in such a loving way.
