Wild Girl

When my hair hung

Like heavy ropes from my head

They thought that made me light.

"Hey, wild girl," the boys would say

"Come save me from myself.

I've been waiting for one just like you."

Almost verbatim, I promise.

Oh,

You had me so wrong.

Because the woman who wipes the mud and grass

From her feet

Before she paints her toe nails

Is unbearably heavy.

Like the pounding of the waterfall

The roots of the plant

The anchor of the ship

The weight of the lover

The child in the womb.

You wanted me to teach you to be free

And instead I made you

Face your fears

The emptiness you try to run from.

So I began again.

We women make our own initiations now.

Now I wrap my fairy tendrils

Tenderly

With arms burned by the sun

Crown myself wild woman

Not girl

And now you can look

But

Can't

Touch.

- Jenny Wren

Rhiannon as an archetype for birth trauma - story as medicine

Rhiannon as an archetype for birth trauma - story as medicine.

The story of the goddess Rhiannon in the Mabinogion has come into my thoughts many times recently as I now have been supporting women and listening to birth trauma stories for around 6 years.

After Rhiannon makes the sacred marriage with Pwyll (in the old days the Goddess would choose the king as custodian of her land), she bears him a son. The midwives wait until Rhiannon is sleeping and fall asleep themselves. When they wake the baby is gone, and in fear for their lives they smear Rhiannon with animal blood and tell everybody, including Pwyll, that she has eaten the baby.

Rhiannon's punishment is to physically carry people up a hill on her back, a punishment that she accepts until she is finally vindicated.

Historically and even today, infanticide is the worst thing women could be accused of. When we are working in birth and with birth trauma, it is vital to remember this genetic memory.

While the rulers of the Old Testament can kill as many babies as they see fit, for a woman to have an abortion, to be unable to bear children or have many children die at birth was to be viewed with suspicion and in worst cases killed as a witch. This is because the baby is seen as the property of the patriarchy, who decide who lives and dies.

You can see the ultimate projection - the accusation of infanticide placed on women when it is the male rulers who practice it.

When you work with women you often hear them say "I could never forgive myself if I didn't listen and something happened". When we unpack this belief we don't find that the woman genuinely thinks something will 'go wrong'. She trusts that her choices are best for her baby. What she cannot tolerate is the idea of being blamed by her family and the wider culture.

Ultimately it is the fear of her own death that she is prepared to sacrifice her health and happiness for, both socially and literally.

This is huge. This is ancestral. We have women voluntarily sacrificing their bodies because of epigenetic memory. Women with birth trauma will say "I knew it was wrong but I couldn't take the fear and the pressure" or like Pwyll, Rhiannon's husband who punishes her, "My partner let it happen and didn't advocate for me".

This fear generally is only resolved when a woman follows her instincts and intuition, does what she feels is right, and has a good outcome. Then she learns to trust herself implicitly.

In the story the midwives are terrified they will be blamed for the loss of the child. This explains obstetrics perfectly, a practice that cannot accept death, that sees nature and therefore women as dangerous and unpredictable, and consequently a litigation system that always wants somebody to blame.

Rhiannon accepts her punishment and in the story you can see the woman who is consequently shouldered with all of patriarchy's fears of death, birth, female sexual and bodily autonomy, and made to carry them, to her own detriment. Like Rhiannon, women carry this grief and shame with them for years until they find somebody to listen.

You see women with birth trauma blaming themselves. When Rhiannon finally meets her son again she renames him Pryderi which means 'sorrow', and it is a heartbreaking example of how what should be a sacred and joyous transition to motherhood is forever tainted.

Women can use the archetype of Rhiannon to help them to believe they were not to blame, that they are only responsible to themselves and their babies, they can reject the fears and suspicions of the patriarchy that do not belong to them.

With love xxx

My Grannies Were Witches

My grannies were witches

And my dad sprinted from one matriarchy

To another.

It's no wonder I turned out like this

When where I come from

Women rule.

Winnie the white cursed her husband

Her jailer

With urine from the chamber post

As he sat in a drunken stupor

"It's raining!" He exclaimed.

She was turned away

From a women's refuge

Who thought a violent husband

Was a home.

He died abruptly

And when she was asked

How long he'd been dead

She said "Not long enough".

All folk said

She was canny

A witch.

My granny Marion

Left her very first baby

And sold her breastmilk

As if to say, the only one

Who profits off my commoditization

Is me.

She left this reality eventually.

Yelled incantations and curses down the phone

Saw and heard things

That nobody else could see

Thought medicine was poison

A belief which ended her life.

Why am I still so scared?

They say blood never lies

And I smile Winnie's smile

My spells and my blessings for

Mary, Marian, Marion

My spite and my rejection

Of what is expected of me

My life has become a conundrum

Of

Which

Witch?

- Jenny Wren