Last night, I had a real moment. Epiphany. Deep thought. Tuned in. God. Goddess. Self awareness. Intuition. All, none, other. Doesnt matter. I have been clogged, ruminating, nesting, hibernating, pacing, thinking, thinking, thinking since about November about things, and last night it came to me, from Eska. I was holding her and she was hugging me, and she told me this. Or it was released. Or whatever it was, this is the message. As clear and true as anything that has come to me in a long long time, so I jumped out of bed to post this post to you all, to share with you the message.
It is okay to love us now. All five of us. it doesnt matter anymore how we were born. It just doesnt. Its time to come back together. All of Joy, walk right through all this fragmentation and injury and broken-ness and just be MamaJoy again. Breast and Belly is dead. It was an angry dark blog and it served its purpose, lived out its life cycle. Homeschool is love is dead. It was a defensive blog to impress relatives and serve as accountability to imaginary officials and it livewd out its life cycle. Hearth and Home is not something to be seperate, it is me and it is life. Everything Joy is not shameful or naughty or less important, it is me. A huge part of me. Its all me.
I am going to use this web address for the new Whole-Mama blog that will be up in a few days, because this is my most popular blog, and there are a few awesome folks out there who have links to this one on thier sidebars. On the other 3 blogs I am going to just direct them to this address.
I am so excited! Excited to be OKAY with the fact that I am all of it. A birth writer, a rock star, a homemaker and a married tandem nursing homeschooling mother obsessed with color and form and Oak trees and xylophones and feminism and sourdoughbread. With Blue hair. And combat boots. And and and and and.....
see you soon.
11 comments:
I think you should keep "B & B" for "Bread and Butter", which really fits, actually. Smile...
Joy, I know I just wrote this to you personally, but it's worth saying here too, I think. I really find myself wondering if what needs to be written about, from a mother with your varying experiences of birth, and healing with/from, birth, is just that: to open a dialogue not about "why certain things in the birth world are BAD, or should be CHANGED" but about the need to slow down, to reflect, to do the healing FIRST, before trying to define, evaluate, figure out, judge and label "what it WAS" as a birth. I know that my own perspective on my births has changed enormously over the years. What I once saw as a "negative" event, or person, at a particular birth, I now see in the light of a larger, roomier perspective that sees why something happened, or understands what was going on with me that I invited/allowed,certain persons to invade my space, or what made me believe I had no real choice.
My experience of reading, over the last year or so, the various conversations and "blogs" on and about,birth, is that so much authentic, lived experience is lost in the morass that has become "birthworld" ( very much like disabilityworld; another favorite topic of exploration for me ) where the locus of power is NOT the women who are having babies but the providers who are fighting a turf war over those same women! Everyone wants their piece of the pie and very, very often, the women are not being listened to at all. Even among those who make the strongest case for being "pro woman" and "pro birth" are, in truth, only "Pro" certain kinds of birth, which they have decided are "best" for all women and there is an ill concealed elitism and dogmatic agenda attached that, in my view, is very damaging to women and parents, overall, not to mention their kids! Women "taking back birth" has not one thing to do with "type" of birth, or provider. It has to do with women getting their heads around what you've just said with some frustration, and pain, but it's a great truth: It really doesn't matter how babies come into the world in the big picture. I have been talking with birthing mothers for 30 years now and I have met not one woman who, after 10 or 20 years of parenting, still views her births as having current, significant, emotional "power" in her life. The truth is, we are not made that way. We suffer multiple "losses" in our lives, many kinds of disappointments and deaths and we eventually heal. People who have lose children to murder, for heaven's sake, heal and grow. It is birthworkers who promote the idea that a "bad birth" will have permanent, crippling effects on mother and child both that create all this anxiety and upset about "type" of birth; it's nonsense. No one should be treated disrespectfully, and no one should be coerced into situations, procedures or interventions they don't want, or need, but the dialogue we have to create around that needs to be divorced from issues of who will profit, who will get the "lion's share" of the birth pie. These are ALL reasons I finally had to leave Midwifery; I'm not willing to continue selling women a bill of goods, nor selling them out...women deserve to know that however they gave birth, it will be O.K. They need practical, hands on help healing and gaining perspective. They are not helped by anyone telling them, over and over, that they have a "right" to feel horrible and to experience themselves as "damaged" because of a disappointing birth. Every young mother needs help to get strong and healthy and to put a broader view on her experiences. You, Joy, are the perfect person to begin to speak to "whole mothering" and I'm right with you! Love, M.
I think you should keep "B & B" for "Bread and Butter", which really fits, actually. Smile...
Joy, I know I just wrote this to you personally, but it's worth saying here too, I think. I really find myself wondering if what needs to be written about, from a mother with your varying experiences of birth, and healing with/from, birth, is just that: to open a dialogue not about "why certain things in the birth world are BAD, or should be CHANGED" but about the need to slow down, to reflect, to do the healing FIRST, before trying to define, evaluate, figure out, judge and label "what it WAS" as a birth. I know that my own perspective on my births has changed enormously over the years. What I once saw as a "negative" event, or person, at a particular birth, I now see in the light of a larger, roomier perspective that sees why something happened, or understands what was going on with me that I invited/allowed,certain persons to invade my space, or what made me believe I had no real choice.
My experience of reading, over the last year or so, the various conversations and "blogs" on and about,birth, is that so much authentic, lived experience is lost in the morass that has become "birthworld" ( very much like disabilityworld; another favorite topic of exploration for me ) where the locus of power is NOT the women who are having babies but the providers who are fighting a turf war over those same women! Everyone wants their piece of the pie and very, very often, the women are not being listened to at all. Even among those who make the strongest case for being "pro woman" and "pro birth" are, in truth, only "Pro" certain kinds of birth, which they have decided are "best" for all women and there is an ill concealed elitism and dogmatic agenda attached that, in my view, is very damaging to women and parents, overall, not to mention their kids! Women "taking back birth" has not one thing to do with "type" of birth, or provider. It has to do with women getting their heads around what you've just said with some frustration, and pain, but it's a great truth: It really doesn't matter how babies come into the world in the big picture. I have been talking with birthing mothers for 30 years now and I have met not one woman who, after 10 or 20 years of parenting, still views her births as having current, significant, emotional "power" in her life. The truth is, we are not made that way. We suffer multiple "losses" in our lives, many kinds of disappointments and deaths and we eventually heal. People who have lose children to murder, for heaven's sake, heal and grow. It is birthworkers who promote the idea that a "bad birth" will have permanent, crippling effects on mother and child both that create all this anxiety and upset about "type" of birth; it's nonsense. No one should be treated disrespectfully, and no one should be coerced into situations, procedures or interventions they don't want, or need, but the dialogue we have to create around that needs to be divorced from issues of who will profit, who will get the "lion's share" of the birth pie. These are ALL reasons I finally had to leave Midwifery; I'm not willing to continue selling women a bill of goods, nor selling them out...women deserve to know that however they gave birth, it will be O.K. They need practical, hands on help healing and gaining perspective. They are not helped by anyone telling them, over and over, that they have a "right" to feel horrible and to experience themselves as "damaged" because of a disappointing birth. Every young mother needs help to get strong and healthy and to put a broader view on her experiences. You, Joy, are the perfect person to begin to speak to "whole mothering" and I'm right with you! Love, M.
I think you should keep "B & B" for "Bread and Butter", which really fits, actually. Smile...
Joy, I know I just wrote this to you personally, but it's worth saying here too, I think. I really find myself wondering if what needs to be written about, from a mother with your varying experiences of birth, and healing with/from, birth, is just that: to open a dialogue not about "why certain things in the birth world are BAD, or should be CHANGED" but about the need to slow down, to reflect, to do the healing FIRST, before trying to define, evaluate, figure out, judge and label "what it WAS" as a birth. I know that my own perspective on my births has changed enormously over the years. What I once saw as a "negative" event, or person, at a particular birth, I now see in the light of a larger, roomier perspective that sees why something happened, or understands what was going on with me that I invited/allowed,certain persons to invade my space, or what made me believe I had no real choice.
My experience of reading, over the last year or so, the various conversations and "blogs" on and about,birth, is that so much authentic, lived experience is lost in the morass that has become "birthworld" ( very much like disabilityworld; another favorite topic of exploration for me ) where the locus of power is NOT the women who are having babies but the providers who are fighting a turf war over those same women! Everyone wants their piece of the pie and very, very often, the women are not being listened to at all. Even among those who make the strongest case for being "pro woman" and "pro birth" are, in truth, only "Pro" certain kinds of birth, which they have decided are "best" for all women and there is an ill concealed elitism and dogmatic agenda attached that, in my view, is very damaging to women and parents, overall, not to mention their kids! Women "taking back birth" has not one thing to do with "type" of birth, or provider. It has to do with women getting their heads around what you've just said with some frustration, and pain, but it's a great truth: It really doesn't matter how babies come into the world in the big picture. I have been talking with birthing mothers for 30 years now and I have met not one woman who, after 10 or 20 years of parenting, still views her births as having current, significant, emotional "power" in her life. The truth is, we are not made that way. We suffer multiple "losses" in our lives, many kinds of disappointments and deaths and we eventually heal. People who have lose children to murder, for heaven's sake, heal and grow. It is birthworkers who promote the idea that a "bad birth" will have permanent, crippling effects on mother and child both that create all this anxiety and upset about "type" of birth; it's nonsense. No one should be treated disrespectfully, and no one should be coerced into situations, procedures or interventions they don't want, or need, but the dialogue we have to create around that needs to be divorced from issues of who will profit, who will get the "lion's share" of the birth pie. These are ALL reasons I finally had to leave Midwifery; I'm not willing to continue selling women a bill of goods, nor selling them out...women deserve to know that however they gave birth, it will be O.K. They need practical, hands on help healing and gaining perspective. They are not helped by anyone telling them, over and over, that they have a "right" to feel horrible and to experience themselves as "damaged" because of a disappointing birth. Every young mother needs help to get strong and healthy and to put a broader view on her experiences. You, Joy, are the perfect person to begin to speak to "whole mothering" and I'm right with you! Love, M.
I also wonder if there isn't room for an expanded and enlightened role for "postpartum home helpers" that gets away from the "doula" idea. I think that promoting "normalcy" around birth and getting women the help they need means getting away from "politically correct" terminology that implies that only women who had a "bad" birth need "postpartum care" beyond the first, few days and that said care must include some kind of "grief/loss counseling" for the supposed "tragedy" of having had a disappointing birth ie. a c section. Maybe all women who have just had a baby just need help--hands doing stuff around the home to help the mother as she deems necessary--NOT all women need the armchair psychology of someone in their space who thinks they need "sympathy" or "healing" from their "experience". Not everyone does. Nor does the woman need to be "enlightened" and "educated" about "the truth" if she, say, had a c section and is fine with it. We need to create care for families that is about individual women and families and leave the "birth dogma" at the door!
WOW...I have NO idea how you ended up with this one post 3 times but feel free to ditch 2 of them! The last one is a different comment; sorry.
Woohoo! Way to go, Joy! The fantastic, awesome Joy I know is back and raring to go. I can't wait to read the new blog. And by the way, I have learned and grown so much from reading what you write. All of it. The positive and the negative. The perky stuff and the down in the dumps stuff. The birth stuff and the homeschool stuff and the just being Joy stuff. Good for you!
It's always fun to start out in a new direction. I just hope that you don't get rid of any of the old stuff you've written, because it was a part of you too and I'd hate to lose that!
YAY for new beginnings! This is gonna be great! :D
You are just WOW. I know, you're some lady I don't even know, whose blog I creep on the internet, but I think you're so incredible, and I love how real you are and your stories, and your passion. You rock. Whatever direction you take your blog in, it will be you and it will be real, and I'm excited and look forward to reading more...
Yey! I look forward to your new whole blog! I love all of your blogs and to have them all in one will be sooooo cool.
YAY JOY!!!
I'm glad Eska was able to help you with your defining moment, for lack of a better term. :) I love all your blogs, you're not afraid to post reality. Can't wait to see your new blog!
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