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There is something about writing. Something that I love about it, being lost in the words and paper, or rather, right now, my keyboard. I'm not overly worried about grammar or structure or anything other that words flowing from my mind through my hands and out into the world.
I've had a block, that has lasted.........well, a very long time. I wouldn't call it writers block, i would categorise it as a life block. To busy to write, to hectic to think, to overwhelmed to get the word out of my head. I have an iPhone full of voice memo's of ideas and thoughts and posts that never quite make it out into the world. Late last night, computer in my lap and in the final hours of the moon, a moon that has been particularity hard, stressful, intense and tearful, I finally wrote. I wrote a letter that started out as a communication between parents and teachers and ended up being a love letter to my daughter. My fierce, fiery, highly sensitive daughter, who frequently takes much of my available energy. What she says is true. No one is the boss of her. She is her own boss and that is the most important thing I can teach her, or rather what she teaches me: that there is nothing wrong with her. That she is a gift to all of us and what she is bringing is an opportunity for more love, more tenderness, more understanding. As I wrote my letter I realised that it wasn't just about my daughter. My words spiralled out in a long line behind me as I realised that what I was writing was also a love letter to my 8 year old self. The little girls, frequently misunderstood and often feeling like there was something wrong with her. As as I advocate for my daughter, I am also advocating for my past self. Sending the healing down the read thread, to that little girl inside. Time is not linear, always moving away from us, but in a spiral, bringing us back to moments where we can heal those parts of ourselves that have remained unseen, unloved. And such a balm, is the magick of awareness, of consciousness, of seeing the shamanic dimensions of behaviour issues! I closed my computer, lay down and had the first night of sleeping though the night in months. The moon shifting into its new cycle as I slept. The morning bringing in new intentions for this cycle. And so I write. back in a place I love. fingers at the keyboard. Mind going faster than I can type. voice memo's reminding me of all the things I thought to say. Piles of paper with scribbles nearby. Cup of tea going cold. And so I write.
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It's very, very early this morning.
The sun is just starting to lighten the sky. I got up to go to boot camp but realised that I have one more week of school holidays to get through so thought i'd use the early morning for writing instead! Precious, quiet moments that have been lacking the last couple of weeks. I started a crowdfunding campaign to support my mission to have a permanent Red Tent for women on my land in my community. It has been a vision and a dream of mine to create this space for a very long time. I have gone through many versions of this space and am blessed to be receiving support to fund this dreaming! You can check out the campaign here www.gofundme.com/2bzmwp98 and if you feel called to donate I am so grateful. I remember returning from my first vision quest, when my baby was still a baby, and we had returned home from being away camping in the cold for a week. I had barely managed to sit down with a cup of tea when my phone started pinging with messages. A woman in our circle of friends had received some really challenging news and we needed to pull together and support her. And so began my journey into holding space for women. I was working as a doula at the time, and had embarked on my training with the School of Shamanic Womancraft because there was such a huge YES in my soul that I couldn’t say no. I had thought that the work would be an amazing complement to my doula work but It turned out to be so much more. It changed the whole trajectory of my life. That first circle that I held I was so scared! Even though these women were my friends I was scared and nervous about putting myself out there and not doing a good job. It was such a huge learning curve for me. I had to navigate a shift in friendship dynamics, holding a sacred closed space but also making space for other women who were yearning for a circle. I had to learn deep lessons of my sacred wound, that would play out over and over again until I finally figured it out. Or at least a layer of it! As I worked more and more with the processes I realized that a large part of my calling was the Red Tent. The name given to the spiritual practice of menstruation, the practice of bringing consciousness to our cycles, to understand how we hold the mysteries of birth, growth, full bloom, decline, death and rebirth in our wombs and see this mystery played out every month. That we are the holders of a magickal elixir, that weaves magick within and without. That we can heal the earth by returning our blood to her each cycle. I started foraging through op shops and discount stores for curtains, cushions and floor coverings. It’s amazing how many red furnishings there are when you start looking!! I had the first Red Tent at a community market put on by our school. I borrowed a marquee (a blue one!) and made a sacred space amongst the bustle of a market place. I held a circle in that space and that was my first real stepping out into the greater community as “I do this” I stepped into my priestess self. Oh but the lessons that came from holding the space in a public space! I'm pretty sure that I went home and cried from the sheer exhaustion and the challenge of keeping sacred a drop in space! I quickly learned not to take it personally when women left mid circle. Though the School of Shamanic Womancraft, Red Tent Dreaming was born, which was about bringing Red Tent to festivals around Australia! We created tents at The Goddess Conference, Rainbow Serpent, Seven Sisters Festival, Being Woman, and the Homebirth Australia Conference. Such beautiful way to spread the magick of this space with women. Circle with my women friends continued fortnightly, with more women wanting to come. So I created my "Honouring the woman" course as a way of supporting women to have a "circle 101" experience and then go to form their own circle. It didn't quite happen that way as everyone wanted to stay together! and so the circles grew. I started setting up Red Tent (a red marquee by now!) in my back yard in Toowoomba. it was lovely spot under the avocado tree and holding space specifically as Red Tent started seeing a shift in the women who came. And then we moved. New space, new women. I started off by hiring a room one a week as a practice space and using it as Red Tent space monthly. That was hard! I could write a very long post on the pitfalls of hiring a space when you don't have enough of a name for yourself to attract any clients!!! Lets just say it was an expensive lesson that lasted 6 months. I had to really think about what Red Tent was about. It's certainly not about making money, as I have always, and will always run the space on donation. It's about women, community, holding, safety, healing, magick and connection. So I took the tent back to the backyard. Into my tiny inner city terrace backyard we went. Every month, putting up the marquee (a new one by this time, they don't last long!) and decorating it with all manner of soft, red fabric. I paid a seamstress to run 2 bolts of chiffon into functional curtains so i could stop pinning my thumbs on set up! and Red Tent Newcastle was born! It was a lovely year of connecting in the space, and really brought the energy and magick right into the inner city. I had conversations about sacred menstruation with people who had no idea what i was doing in my backyard. It brought Red Tent into the public eye, which was a wonderful consequence of me just trying to find a space for my dream. And then we moved. And once again, I'm in that space of starting again. Only this time is the last time. We are not moving our children again, we want them to grow some roots and feel secure. I have space to build my dream here. The women are coming to my wee marquee that survived the move. They are coming in the dark, to the forest, showing me the depth of their calling and their bravery. So I am answering that by creating this permanent, weatherproof, soft, delicious Red Tent for them to come dream, talk, laugh, heal, gather. It is time. It is time for these spaces to fully exist, out of the dreaming and into reality. It is time to come together for our healing. it is time do do this work for all our relations. Soon it will arrive. Soon the platforms will be built, Soon the bamboo cleared, the lights set up, the fire lit. Soon there will be a Red Tent ready, open, for all women. Maiden, Mother, Maga, Crone. Welcome to the Red Tent  When I was a little girl my parents wanted us kids to play a musical instrument. Preferably piano, as we had one. I went along and unhappily played “march of the terrible trolls” (which I can still remember!!) until they let me stop. What I really wanted to play was the drums. No doubt influenced by Animal of the Muppets (wasn’t he everyones favourite?) I begged my parents for a drum kit and drum lessons. This was met with a big no, which at the time felt grossly unfair and awful, but in hindsight, I’m sure they were trying to preserve some semblance of peace in the house and not intending to squash a childhood dream. But what it felt like was a NO against my desires and my needs.
In the 7th grade and we could choose orchestra instruments I wanted to play percussion, but our music teacher thought girls were more suited to playing flutes and clarinets then snare drums and cymbals. and so I played that clarinet, learning notes and wondering at the total unfairness of denying girls the choice to play the instrument of their hearts. It wasn’t until I was 19, living on the west coast at university that I finally picked up a drum, a djembe belonging to a friend, and tapped out a halting, unsure rhythm. I loved it. I loved the feel of the skin under my hands, the weight of it between my knees and the music! I wasn’t a very good drummer, often trading drumming for dancing, but the rhythms spoke directly to my heart. I saved my waitressing tips and bought myself a djembe, determined to learn how to play it properly. It lit something inside me, playing that drum. Like I was suddenly connected to a giant heartbeat across the world. I found Layne Redmond’s book “when the drummers were women” and dove in to reading it feeling such a huge YES and discovered a big piece of what my heart and soul were desiring when I asked for that first drum kit. Connection. Connection to the whole web of life by connecting in with the heart of the great mother. I carted my drums from Canada to Australia, unwilling to let them go. Then one day I enrolled in the School of Shamanic Womancraft and the opening gathering of the four seasons journey was to make a drum! a frame drum, a medicine drum. I was 38 weeks pregnant when I sat down on the earth to make my drum. Candles lit, our circle connected. we chose our skins, deer, all from the same herd, soaked them and in the morning we sat on the earth and began weaving together our drums. To birth a drum is a powerful act. It is a deep unravelling and reweaving process of your birth. The story of how you were born. The story shows you how you “do process” in your life. How do you birth things? How do you make things? How do you bring things into this world? Telling the story of our births and unravelling the themes through sharing is then shown to us and experienced by us through the process of birthing our medicine drums. Once birthed, our new babies needed tender care until they were dry and ready to play. I played mine for the first time with my bare feet planted on the earth, my baby belly swelling and my smile wide. I had finally found the drum I was looking for. I played her that night with my deer tribe sisters, uniting our drums in the cosmos. She was played a lot in those first few weeks, and then played for me as I birthed my baby girl on our bed. Over the years I have birthed more drums and played hundreds of rhythms. The call of the drum is so strong for women. Maybe looking for the answer to their souls calling, maybe drawn to journey, to dance, to sing, to connect in with the earths heartbeat. The drum is also known as the Shaman’s horse, the guide to the other realms, the drum takes us into an altered state of consciousness where we can tap into our inner wisdom, where we can connect with other aspects of ourselves. Journeying with my medicine drum has been an ever evolving process. When I first started journeying I would experience the journey as if a movie were passing in front of my eyes. A technicolour visual experience. Lately I am feeling it so deeply in my body. If my owl flies, I feel like my own body is suspended in space. We need to listen so closely to the subtle messages we are receiving. But my favourite part of drumming? That part that shows me time and time again that we are all connected? When you gather a group of drummers and start drumming. It starts as chaos, everyone on a different beat, maybe not hearing the drum across the circle. It rolls around, in it’s own strange rhythm, looking for the moment, that magickal moment when everyone suddenly synchs up and the drumming takes on an otherworldly beat. Like the great mother is playing it, like we are just a channel for what she wants to say. Are you listening?  Lately I have been dealing with the most annoying and destructive emotions. Jealousy and lack, which is a very bad combination. I’ve been pondering these emotions over the last few days while the moon has been full and illuminating all of my emotions. Especially these ones!
I have had a very challenging couple of years. Moving my family from a stable, yet not-quite-right, country town to the inner city by the sea, which was beautiful and transformative but so, so difficult. Moving again, to the dream land has been amazing and the land here is so soft and holding. But the urgent energy of “do!!! do now!!! hurry up and don’t get left behind!” comes up and bites me. I find myself in a region full of amazing people doing wonderful things and that little voice pops up and tells me there is no space for me here. Don’t even bother. Just stay small, stay quiet. There is not enough. Everyone will get courses and workshops and gigs and gatherings filled except me. And the voice is triumphant! See, I was right, shouldn’t bother. That little voice has had a very big job. It is my loyal solider, standing guard to my sacred wound, lest anyone or anything dare to activate it. It’s been keeping me safe for nearly 40 years, and fully committed to the job. Last full moon weekend I sat in circle with beautiful women delving deep into our sacred wounds. Of course mine became fully activated, triggered, acutely drawing my attention in the weeks leading up to the process and beyond. If you’re going to hold a circle, you better be prepared to do the work!! I have been journeying with my sacred wound awareness for 5 years, since I first started learning the Shamanic Womancraft way. Each year, each time we re-visit this space, I feel the layer of the onion peel off and go a little bit deeper. My wound reveals itself to be far more complex that I initially worked with. The moon illuminating the parts of the wound that I wasn’t prepared to deal with before. The things I knew were there, but put into the later, too hard, too ugly box. With this revelation comes the full understanding of the archetypes that have been protecting me ever since. How those emotions of jealousy and lack and failure are brought in to protect that small child inside who is desperate to avoid re-wounding. So I dove in, being held through my own process by my teacher, skilfully taken back to the time of my wounding and feeling where I have carried that wound in my body for so long. I brought my power animals into that space, allowing black panther and snowy owl to hold me and help me as I navigated a form of soul retrieval and found the keys to my healing deep within. As the moon wanes and slips towards darkness I can see the gold. What a gift to be seeing clearly! What a gift to be able to see those emotions for exactly what they are. I am so grateful to envy and lack for flooding my body and heart. It has given me a dark and wild portal to go through and examine exactly where I am and given me such a deepening of my sacred wound. The important word of course, being sacred. This is sacred work we embark on when we choose to dive deeply into our wounds and to find the gifts of that wound that we create in the world. And on this dark moon I will let them all go, set my intentions for the new cycle, and witness the deepening of my process.   I can still remember being woken up by hoons down the street, by the bin truck making it’s daily rounds, by the mowers, the runners, surfers, the buzz of the inner city. Today I was woken up by the kookaburra song as the sun was just lighting up the forest. Every morning I hear the bird song. The same birds sometimes sing us to sleep. When it rains the barking frogs start their chorus, a conversation in croaks. So many changes I am still getting used to in our forest home. And so much to do! Lots of our energy has been expended on maintaining the grounds surrounding the house, keeping the weeds at bay and the grass short. But lately I have been drawn deeper into the bush. Coming out of my spiral house and venturing beyond it’s cosy edges. The bush around us is prolifent with camphor laurels. Trees, which grow into huge beauties, but behave like weeds, choking out the natives. At first glance, our little patch of forest looks like a sea of camphors. but if you pause, and look a little deeper the bush begins to reveal itself. I found the grandmother tree with my daughter, when we were having a boys-away-camping girls weekend at home. rather than looking where we were putting our feet, we looked up, and there her white branches could be seen in the canopy. A massive tree, too big to reach my arms around, with a perfect little natural altar at the base. here we placed our offerings, a green leaf and a red leaf. a moment of mother and daughter honouring the ancestors. we walked on. pulling up weeds as we went. scrambling down the steep slope. crossing the creek bed on a perfect little natural bridge. We spent a good few hours pulling out lantana and camphor seedlings on one of the only flat spots of the land. sweaty, covered in mosquito bites and feeling strong. I feel the land responding to me. I feel a deep sense of responsibility to her. Beyond our border the lantana is a jungle, left to grow and take over. On our side it is manageable. I feel the past of who lived here and loved this land before me. It’s mine to care for now. to listen and feel what it needs and how best to care for it. I always dreamed of having land. It was something that became so strong in my when we lived in the inner city. But I had no idea the hold it would have on me once we got here. It’s like this land chose us to be its custodians. There was definitely magick afoot when we found, fell in love and bought this space. I am now listening deeply to what I need to know.   On the first new moon of the new year we received the keys to our new home. Sometimes I laugh at how my world seems to slip into perfect timings even when i am not aware.
When I returned from my vision quest experience, I had an experience of feeling suffocated. In the bath with my daughter, her washing my shorn hair, I felt like i couldn't breathe. With the door shut and the bath curtain drawn, there was no air, no breeze, no sky. I remember running out of the bath, opening the back door and realising that an urban back yard was not going to give me anything close to the serenity of the bush. I remember thinking it would have been slightly more convenient to have discovered this before we bought our ocean city house. And so continued a process of unravelling within myself and within our family. The dreams we thought we were manifesting in that space kept hitting up against brick walls. Literally. I felt on edge all the time. Feeling anxiety and stress so often that I quit drinking coffee in hopes of calming down my inflamed and broken sleep body. My relationship with my partner was quickly unravelling. And we didn’t seem to do anything as a family except survive. This was no way to live. With all due respect to all of my friends who still live there, Newcastle felt toxic. The dust from the coal stacks was coating my car and front door, the morning air smelt like whatever chemical Orica was making that day and we could see the plumes of filth spewing out into the air. My back yard, stripped of bitumen and laid with organic soil and turf, was just covering over a hundred years of toxic sludge not far under our feet. The final straw for me was learning about the Williamstown spill that was slowly leaching into the ground water that we were drinking. I couldn’t bear the thought that we were poisoning our children just by living there. The toxic overlay began to permeate everything. Some people were incredibly horrid, my partner was stressed and at breaking point and I was drinking like a fish just to take the edge off. On Imbolc, we planted the seeds of a new dream, or rather the old dream, the first dream we had together, before kids and uni and work took us on a different tangent. We planted the potent seed of land, of community, of a forest with a little home that brings us together, of a life where being at home meant we could breathe, put our hands in the earth, listen to birds and watch the earth breathe and change around us. so here I sit, in my spiral house in the rainforest with a resident kookaburra the kids have named “Cookie”, marvelling at how the seeds planted on Imbolc were harvested at Lammas. That magick does actually work. That the intentions we set, the words we utter can change our lives. I had a magickal mantra that i uttered daily. Gratitude. Vision. Flow. those three words kept me focused and centred. They reminded me to always live in gratitude for all the amazingness of my life. That I am healthy, fed, with a roof over my head. With a family, friends, and work that is my passion. Vision to always hold it clear, unwavering. And Flow, to flow with what is, and not what i think it is. Those three words carried me through the biggest transition I have experienced to date. I was reminded of how I experienced transition with my first baby, long, difficult and lots of tears, and such was the transition to this new life. With a magnificent baby to behold when it was all done, the hard work worth it, the tears all dried up. And like with a birth, I babymooned with this new house, this land, this life. I walked my land. I stayed in the house listening to the constant rain. I learned how the rainwater tanks work, as rain is our literal lifeblood now. I hibernated with cups of tea and crochet, feeling shy and vulnerable in my new community. And then, as with a new babe, there comes a time to come out in the world. And so here is my rebirthed self. Living the life i dreamed for myself. Trusting that all will be exactly as it should be.  I recently received a letter from AHPRA (Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency) telling me that I needed to stop using the term “Shamanic Midwife” to describe what I do, because under Australian Law, “midwife” is a protected title.
Each graduate of the School received a letter, each one with threats of prosecution should we not comply with their requests to cease and desist. It has been a big process of letting go. I received my letter in the middle of selling my Newcastle home, which in itself was a massive letting go process. Letting go of a home, the ocean, our friends. Letting go of the dream that we thought it would be and having to accept the reality that it was too much, too city, too stressful. This letter was now telling me I had to let go of something else i held dear. The name Shamanic Midwife brought with it a deep resonance. We were midwifing women in the Shamanic realms, that is the unseen, the unknown, the inner worlds untravelled. It was a way of pulling us together. Shamanic midwives, facilitating transformations. It bound us together as names can. With the swipe of a bureaucratic pen, we were un-named. I have no doubt that the intention was to divide and conquer. It is a strategy that has worked well for thousands of years. I have no doubt that its just a modern day witch hunt, searching out those on the fringes, the ones who dare, and stamping them out in order to keep the status quo. But instead of torches and pitchforks they use regulations and fines to silence us. Or so they try. So we lovingly released Midwife. She who is with woman. She who facilitates transformation. She who has been taken from us, from all of us, wether we use her name or not. She has been taken from women and been “protected”. From what exactly? from women using her for their own support? their own power? We let her go, we drummed her name into the cosmos under a sunset sky. Women around the globe, drumming to release the Midwife and allow for what came next. For our work will never change. We are still there, drumming, supporting, processing, loving, journeying with women, holding space for them to drum, process, love and journey for themselves. The rebirth came. The (r)evolution to the School of Shamanic Womancraft. A Craftswoman, a woman who weaves her magick for herself, and all her relations. A Witch, a Shemanka, a Wayshower, a Priestess. We can claim all of these names, and know that the work remains the same. And remember that they can keep trying to silence us, but we will never be silenced. From my beachside window I am experiencing my second costal winter in a long time. My body is still remembering a mountain top winter with crunchy leaves and roaring fires. Costal winter is different. There are moments in the day where you think you could have a swim, and then the wet breeze comes up and another layer is added. I miss the crunchy red leaves.
Finding my resonance in land has been a process I am still in. Moving to the coast fit my Canadian-born fantasy of beachside tropical living. Who wouldn't want to live on the beach??? The reality is interesting. Wet ferocious winds. Salty air that feels delicious in your lungs but destroys all metal objects in your house. No trees. I thought that I would find home amongst the sand dunes and the wild waves. I certainly feel freedom when I walk through the elements. But my soul has a different calling. When cyclonic winds tore through out suburb a few weeks ago, I nearly wept at the loss of trees. There are hardly any to begin with and we lost so many. Less shade, less spiders, less birds, less peace. So how do we find the place that calls us home? When I was on my vision quest, I remember bashing through the bush in the rain. getting soaked as I kept going further and further. knowing my spot was out there somewhere. As soon as I found it I knew. right down to my bones I knew that I found the spot that would hold me through my quest. The thought of potentially losing it made me cry and I felt the surge of fighting for what had claimed me. So when I feel restless in the city by the roaring sea I will remember that feeling, that tree, that holding. I will find the place the resonates with me so deeply my roots will take hold. I trust that as I walk on mother earth, she will let me know when I have found it.  Today is the Autumn Equinox, otherwise known as Mabon, otherwise known as the 2nd harvest on the wheel of the year. The time of equal day and night before the earth tips us into the descent to winter. You wouldn't know it from where I am today. A sweltering 36 degree day and a crystal clear, rolling wave, inviting ocean. I swam in her beautiful waters today, possibly the last one until spring. The heat brewed up a wild storm of gale winds and now the rain.
After tucking my children into bed I went out into the howling and played my drum. My inside out drum, my blood drum, my witch drum. She keeps calling me to play her with my hand and not a beater. I feel the vibrations come off her face and travel down my arm through my body. There is no playing fatigue, no sore arms, just a sensation of energy moving to and fro, from drum to body and back again. Balance. Balance between the worlds. Balance between the sleeping cherubs tucked into bed together with the dog and the kitten and creating spontaneous ritual in my back garden. Balance between the desire to continue knitting and sipping champagne with friends and the need to take two tired children home. I am living in that space in between. The magick. The place where I sink deeper into self trust and self love. How are you feeling balance in your life? or not? Sometimes when I am in my brick terrace house with it's tiny garden, surrounded by city, when I am riding my bike through the city, when I am doing the school run and the pre-school run and the dance classes and birthday parties I feel like the Red Tent in the paddock becomes a dream. Did i really spend 4 days sleeping under stars, drumming a Glad of wild women shapeshifting into animals under a full moon? Do I really have that sisterhood that spreads from Tasmania to England and beyond? And on the nights of wild wind and dark moon strings I remember that yes, that is actually my life. And I give great thanks for this dark moon, showing up with the winds, blowing out the cobwebs and transforming all that no longer serves. and brings me back to balance. xxx It can be tricky to doula when you are away from home very often. Babies don't really care about their doula's schedule! As my life is pretty busy lately my ability to take on mamas is difficult. I started wondering how I can keep myself in the birth world and still do all the other things I do. I thought maybe I should be a doula for women having Elective Caesarians. and immediately dismissed the idea. How would that even work for a doula? Doulas are all about natural birth right? isn't that why women hire doulas? to have wonderful, amazing, empowered births? But shouldn't all births be wonderful, amazing and empowered regardless of how the baby comes?
The very first birth I supported was a homebirth. I was a new doula-in-training and I was lucky enough to be chosen by a beautiful woman to support her second birth. To say this was an amazing birth imprint as a new doula is an understatement. That birth showed me that women birth in their own time, space and energy and to witness such an unhindered woman in her full power is a privilege. but sometimes the privilege is to witness an entirely different sort of birth. Soon after I supported a woman who chose to birth in a private hospital. After a long day and night of labour, this wee babe and his mama were taken in for a c-section. I will never forget the moment that the Obstetrician turned to me and said "are you coming in?". In public hospitals, it's pretty unheard of for anyone other than the partner and (hopefully) the midwife to attend a woman going into theatre. In public hospitals its just so damn full in there there isn't really room to accommodate other people. But private hospitals are totally different. I had a split second to make a decision and of course I was going in. I hadn't left this woman's side for over 20 hours, I wasn't leaving now. It was all of our first time in an operating theatre. I sat next to the mama while her partner took photos and watched his son be born. I clearly remember every moment of the surgery. Every moment of breathing with her. Every moment of stroking her forehead as I looked into her eyes. Every moment of holding her gently as she waited for the first cry, the first breath of her beloved child. I remember going home and crying for hours from the tiredness and the emotional upheaval. A surgery was not the birth she wanted, but it was the birth she and her baby had. It has been many years since that experience and I have learned so much in that time. I am so utterly grateful for being able to hold that family in their initiation to parenthood. and I am so grateful to that doctor who allowed me the privilege of holding a woman through such a transition. Caesarean births are a rite of passage to motherhood as much as any other birth. A baby born, a mother made. For some, it comes because of a shift during labour. because of interventions, because of medical issues, because of many, many reasons. And for some it needs to be the way from the outset, because they want to, because they need to, because sometimes thats just how it is. As I travel deeper into my work as a Shamanic Midwife, I feel all of my old judgements and knowings fall away. As if I have any idea about what a baby and mama have chosen for their soul journey of birth. As if I can say what is right or best or ideal or optimum. All I can do i support what is unfolding right now and trust. Just Trust. And in this space of love and trust I put it out to the universe that I am open to this new possibility in supporting women in their transitions. And I gratefully receive the women who feel called to be shamanically midwifed through their rite of passage no matter how they bring their babies earth side. with love x Sequoia |
Sequoiamama, witch, shamanic midwife, doula, healer, coffee lover. Archives
July 2016
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