An Invitation

I am here to invite you into the sacred mystery of birth.

I see so many birth preparation courses marketed as "no nonsense, just science" and I believe this comes from our collective witch wound and our longing to be accepted as legitimate by patriarchal culture... and I am sure it is an effective marketing strategy. There are so many who are only just stepping into the mystery but are also afraid of becoming "woo", that denigration of wise women.

I am here to invite you into the sacred mystery of birth.

I could break making love down into "just a science". We could talk about falling in love as a chemical reaction, a biological imperative to reproduce. But no... I want to share with you about birth in the same ephemeral, transcendent way we experience a kiss.

Two people who just happened to meet and fall in love. You cannot explain how they came to be in the same place at the same time. I want to tell stories of connection between mother, partner, doula, others in attendance, how we are on an initiation pathway together, traversing an alternate dimension. Whether we all are aware of it or not. The whole experience orchestrated by the soul of the baby who is coming to earth. The wisdom in it.

I am here to invite you into the sacred mystery of birth.

The right words said at the right time... unexplainable. The dreams that manifest in the unlikeliest of places... the feminine wisdom that weaves it all like a tapestry and only afterwards do we see that the wonky threads shine like perfection on the other side. It is there we see the limitations of the science, where it turns out it was only the means to an end. Because the soul was in charge.

I am here to invite you into the sacred mystery of birth.

Pictured, myself in the nightdress my mother gave birth to me in. My past life trauma became my birth trauma and mother wisdom was fed to me as a child like spoonfuls of garlic honey. Wisdom that was both bitter and sweet, and made me strong in soul to bear it all.

I am here to invite you into the sacred mystery of birth.

I love the streams of consciousness from being ill. In everything, there is a gift.

Ahava

Jenny xxx

I was born to be an ancestor

I was born to be an ancestor.

At first they might light candles for me,

Remember my death day

Recall my features in a new babe born.

If I’ve raised them well they will remember to ask me for help,

When they’ve exhausted their living resources.

I hope they see the missal in the jenny wren that swoops

Through the garden.

Hope they receive my messages sent by stream, wind, stars.

When what remains of my body becomes nourishment in the soil for them

I also will disintegrate into tales told to daughters in fragments,

When the sound of my laugh no longer remains in living memory.

There was a woman, they’ll say,

Who took her children and ran to safety, who gave the most powerful no

Those in authority had ever heard.

Chosen to witness souls re-entering this world, carried on wings, helped by useful hands.

Will they feel me in the darkness in their desperate moments?

Will they forgive me my living mistakes?

When the traces are gone, will I choose to return?

Ancestor to myself, my granddaughters with the gift of spirit wings and useful hands

As they welcome the babies, singing my soul back again.

The Unknown

Being a doula means living in the unpredictable and the unknown. All humans must face and accept that they are not in control of how events in their lives unfold, but to work in birth means to live in that crack of awareness so you feel it acutely and constantly. To be a birth worker means you need patient friends or a patient partner, those who have also accepted their day may be interrupted by a “My client…” that will change the shape of that date, day, weekend. The amount of love and preparation that goes into one baby’s arrival, that you would never even consider… all invested in that new life being born as gently and surrounded by as much loving support as mama and baby require.

For me being a doula means always having a candle burning. For the families who come into your experience, for the women you may have never even met in person, who bring their story to you. It is being priestess of home and hearth, wearing red bracelets round your wrist. It means hoarding tender secrets and truths like a gentle, soft breasted and bellied dragon. When my teacher Ana Otero was asked what advice she would give to women looking to start their own spiritual business, how she did it herself, she answered “I pray.”

Already this weekend I have posted a placenta pack to a client who has rebooked for her second baby (one of my favourite things!), had a beautiful conversation about planning a mother blessing I will be space holding for (another one of my favourite things!), and agreed to be backup on-call for a dear doula sister of mine who is currently having her own experience of accepting things that are not in your control.

All those things interspersed with preparing meals, washing dishes, having conversations, going to the market, poking round the charity shops, hanging out washing. The landscape of my day could change in a minute, as indeed your could too. I am, as ever, in that crack of awareness.

Ahava and blessings,

Jenny xxx