I’m a doula because what I want to be no longer exists,
I’m a doula because my soul remembers when things were different.
I believe babies choose us, believe unborn souls can draw us into their initiation if we have something of value to bring to their mother.
The sensitive ones know where to look, where to find the healers and birth warriors.
These days I feel more healer than warrior
And I hope there is still a place for me, in my quiet way.
My mother said my gift is; “you reflect back to people all that is best within themselves”
And it’s true, that doulaing is shapeshifting. How much of my soul, my integrity, my journey can I bring to this woman without compromising her inner voice?
Sometimes the holy spirit sets free something from your mouth you would prefer not to have said
That you were told not to say on the training courses.
For that baby, you were in the right place at the right time.
I’ve doula’ed for families with a single sentence without attending the birth.
I’ve signposted for women the system deliberately tried to confuse and mislead.
Watched as bright young mothers-to-be left my pregnancy classes and sometimes came back to baby massage so broken from what was done to them
Helped to pick up the pieces and remind them of what can never be broken within them.
They used to burn women like us at the stake, blamed us for stillbirths and horrors against women and children, to be “with woman” was to have your life on the line.
They don’t kill us now but I see my midwife friends have their spirits slowly killed instead, unless they can find a way to conform or become sneaky as hell.
How long ‘til they prosecute a doula for trying to be something that she isn’t?
Like the seven of wands in the tarot we have our feet in both worlds, and it’s a curse as much as a gift. Know your limits and let your boundaries be the structure you need for the magic to flow. Know when to step in and when to hold back. Be a humble student of the great mystery, witness to casualty and ecstasy.
Sam said when she dies she hopes her children don’t burn her art journals, and I said “it’s likely the people of the future will use them to find out more about this doula culture”
The ones who, once upon a time, would have been midwives
The ones with past life wounds
The ones who are a visible reminder of birth as sacred
The ones who are filling the gaps of a crumbling world with sisterhood and truth
The ones who keen with an ancient grief that something is wrong, so horribly wrong
The ones who were so gentle as they held the cauldron of the culture in their laps
And sang a song of wisdom and love, for the wildish women to be guided back home.
