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