Go Or Flow?
Is your birth preparation balanced?
When preparing for birth it is so important to find a balance of doing and being, the masculine and the feminine, structure and surrender. We need equal parts of both for a holistic and well-rounded approach to birth.
Are you more in your "go" or in your "flow?"
"Go" activities may be things like writing lists, doing research, antenatal education, formulating a birth plan. Obtaining knowledge and skills is so important.
Being too much in our "go" means we can create anxiety, fear and tension in the body. We can be so focussed on what we don't want we lose the perfect environment for getting what we do want.
"Flow" activities are things like nature walks, dancing, nourishing your body and daydreaming. Coming into our body and pleasure seeking creates a wonderful environment for ourselves and our babies to relax.
Being too much in our "flow" means we don't know our options and we won't have the vital information we need to support the birth we want when engaging with the system.
Are you happy with the balance you have/had during your pregnancy? What could you do/have done more of?
A Mother Who Hears
There are times I can't write
Because I'm trying to create the world I want
Through the power of my speech.
The pressure is building
With collective grief
There are days when I can dance the rage
Through the moving of my body
And there are days
Where I stay stuck and staring.
I've been following the red thread
Back to Asherah
In the sands of the desert
Where the priests tried to hide her
Made us swallow the lie
That we needed to be punished
That our Mother never was
Never loved us.
And their god sounds just like my rapist
When he says
Do as I command
Or I shall shower you with my vengeance.
And now I need you to understand
They don't only lurk in the dark
They are the ones who bought
And bartered for a body
Of a stranger
Or through the marriage ceremony
On the nights she is
Too tired
Too drunk
And he thinks he has the right because
Man
Came
First.
There are buildings in the cities
Where children play with the men who
Violated their mothers
And in our bones we remember
When lineage came
Through the female line
Before we were shut behind doors
And policed
So each man would know which was "mine"
When everybody knows
A seed thrown to
The wind
Buried in the earth of She
Who Births All
Belongs to nobody.
I've been praying to Mary
Because I think she understands
As she holds the broken body
Of the man who said
"There is no sin, just forgetting you are holy."
And it's taken me this long to find the words
Behind a church
Designed to hurt
And I wonder how much more I can take
Of these body tremors and tears
So I pray another time
To a Mother who hears.
- Jenny Wren
My Tears Are My Medicine
For a long time my only request, was let me feel, let me heal, let me learn to love.
I should have known to be careful what I wished for.
You so often hear from women "I am afraid to cry because if I start I can't stop."
I understand this
Because I cry weekly.
I joked to him that putting eyeliner on in the morning is a futile endeavour.
Or maybe my own joke with the universe
As God has me meet them halfway.
Because they know that
My tears are my medicine that waters the parched ground of my feminine heart.
For the old version of myself who could not and would not let go.
Afraid that if she dropped her guard for a second
Her castle would fall to the enemy.
Now I am a woman who is too much,
Who has softened beyond all hope of return
A woman who wails and writes and prays
And soaks in hot water
And lets herself be kissed better
Where once I would go still as death
And leave my body, teeth chattering
To escape the pain.
My body still lets me down
My body is tired of living in fear
But now this body has learned to let itself
Be soothed
And the sadness moves through me
In a space safer than any I've known.
And when I am spent,
Instead of running
I've learned to stay.
- Jenny Wren
