As birth workers we bring a unique wisdom of experience to each family that we serve, but what I have learned the most in the last decade of attending birth is that I will only ever be a servant of the mystery.
Birthworkers hold the original design for birth in our heart and often in our bodies. But that is just the beginning of wisdom. What does it mean to hold space at the threshold of life and death? To be able to accept things as they are and not as they "should" be, from our limited perspective. To be able to hold the cosmic and the physical as one entwined reality.
You will learn at the altar of birth that you know nothing, while simultaneously you are part of the All that Knows.
Birth cracks a woman open and rebuilds her as a mother. For birth attendants, we will also be cracked open in ways that we need to be. Our limitations will be revealed to us. Space will be made for the mystery to enter.
Souls coming through come from a place of such love and nonduality that we would not be able to hold it if we could see the entirety of their design. So we are shown in fragments, in glimpses and synchronicities, dreams and intuitions.
I learn from you, you learn from me, and the wisdom is never depleted from the giving away it just grows and grows as we dance together in the cosmic mystery.
There is so much ongoing conversation about what a doula is or isn't, doula meaning "servant" or "slave", so many out there trying to reinvent and reimagine the role. To me it means to serve at the altar of birth with love, faith and humility.
