Look What They've Done

It began with eroding trust in community midwifery, an ancient lineage of women supporting women supporting women, chosen by the village for their skilled hands and divine guidance. Unsafe, unclean, ignorant they said, scared of anywhere women could be and men could not…

Then you could only be a midwife if you went to their training schools, studied under their rules, wore their badge, swore allegiance to them. Insurance only granted for one path of medicine, one way… monotheism and monomedicine. Doctor as God. Diligently erasing the sacred, the autonomy, the precious bond between women like a natural forest is razed to the ground.

It’s progress. It’s safer this way. Trust us.

My own grandmother in the sixties after three home births, told by them she must go into hospital for number four as at 29 she was considered geriatric.

My mother, two abusive hospital births and one home birth only achieved by ignoring everybody else in the room.

I think the world is waking up to the fact that we’ve been sold a damn lie, with the induction wards rammed with everybody there for their “safety”, isolated from family like animals in a testing facility, left to languish in a climate of fear and misinformation and I’ve been saying for years now -

Women are in an abusive relationship with the NHS.

Like a domineering partner who cuts off all your other relationships so you only rely on them, then has you reduced to gratitude for the scraps of support they throw your way.

I’ve been holding space for stories of abuse for years now and the words that fall from my lips are now “shocked but not surprised”. How else to contain the outrage and simultaneously the deep knowing that this is happening everywhere to women? That these stories are not unusual but they are also horrific?

This morning I feel heartbroken that the only option right now for women in Cardiff is a high risk consultant ward or birthing alone. The smoke and mirrors game “they” are playing with women. And undoubtedly somebody will read this and make a comment about staffing and being grateful, to which all I can say is… trauma bonding is real.

All empires must eventually fall.

Ahava

Jenny x

Just A Woman

I'm just a woman.

Just a magical being through which souls seek birth and rebirth.

A highly intuitive converser with other realms and dimensions.

A sensitive barometer reflecting back to you your level of integrity.

Is it my fault you don't like what you see?

Just a woman.

A primal goddess, devoted wife, loving mother, vengeful destroyer

My sensitivity is a gift, if you will use it. I sicken or blossom, rage and wail or sigh in ecstasy in accordance with how you treat me. A bundle of life force energy. Shakti.

My heart holds a thousand poems, my tongue a thousand ego lacerations. I command respect like a thunderstorm, a tornado... a nun.

Just a woman.

Lately I feel like a gorgon, like my gaze could kill a man - can't meet my eyes. Babies think if they cover their face the mother can't see them.

Just a woman. Arms full of blood and roses. Eyes full of tears.

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