moving madness and emptying the nest

For your info, we are moving next Monday, so my office has been packed away into a multitude of boxes too heavy to lift (full of books). My good friend Shelley helped me pack on Friday, or it might have taken me a week just to finish the office. I start reading stuff, deciding whether to throw or keep or recycle......I still have essays from my BA at Concordia (belatedly returned to school in 1986, graduated 1996 with an MA in English).

The house is looking very disorganized with piles of stuff and boxes half open everywhere, as I flit from room to room. I think the best part is finding old kid's drawings or pictures of them in pre-school, and not being able to remember that far back. Was it only 12 years ago we moved here? Now they're bigger than me, and choosing careers, off to university soon (not yet, though, not yet!). A big dose of nostalgia in all these boxes....and a lot of the past to let go of. That seems to be a theme, ever since Kripalu weekend with Marcela Lobos, cutting away the past, letting go of negativity, welcoming the present; welcoming joy. I'm surprised by how joyful I feel about this move.


Three of my sisters came up from Ottawa on Friday to help me pack, (first we sang a lot, and drank a few bottles of wine).... and it's been very comforting to have help, something I never would have asked for, if people hadn't offered. A 5-bedroom house one has lived in for 12 years, and grown 2 kids in collects alot of 'stuff'. The theme is 'empty empty empty' and that's what we're doing - Nova and la Fondation Quebecois, plus a few nephews and nieces are inheriting what can be reused. It's good to know that as we are ending that 'childhood and baby' phase, they are just preparing their nests for future little ones.

Speaking of little ones, I think the cats are starting to wonder if we've taken leave of our senses.....and perhaps they will have a hard time getting used to the new place, so we'll have to keep them indoors for a few days. They love this house, this yard, this cedar hedge full of birds.
We loved it too. The only reason we are moving is for an excellent view of the water and sky....otherwise we would have stayed put. Except for the lake, the cedar shingles, the calmness of the sky in the morning mist. I guess this is a rite of passage too, this letting go of one phase of parenting and where we lived it out, and welcoming the new phase, (almost empty nesters).

So, pardon my absence for a while from this blog, I'll be taping, stuffing, dragging, and re-organizing in the new place until next week......and back at ya, sometime in November.

hasta la vista,
jenn/musemother

Rites of Passage

Just spent the weekend chanting, drumming, rattling, dancing with Marcelo Lobos at Kripalu, in the Sacred Passages workshop.

Coming home is always interesting - I was in a peaceful state, a kind of 'zone', driving through the mountains with blazing red and yellow colour along the road, with my friend Debra. Then I arrived home to an empty house - everyone had gone out to a hockey game, and left me a note. I noticed the spaghetti sauce I had made was still in the fridge, so I prepared some noodles and ate, before listening to a new CD I'd bought there and falling asleep.

It was a rite of passage weekend for my son, turning 18, and three parties later (Friday night until 4 a.m. at our home) he had a very gravelly voice over the phone when I called on Saturday. My daughter, 16, was even allowed to participate in the party, and all his friends loved her. (News for my son, your sister is a cool person to hang out with!)

So he was drinking, dancing and partying - and I was chanting, drumming and celebrating my womanhood. There were 30 women there, forming a circle, holding the space for each other as we entered the spiral, or danced our darkness away in the fire, or bathed in the lake to wash the past away and welcome the present moment, as well as the future. We dressed up, put make-up on each other and acted 'silly' in some of our old 'mother voices' opinion. We danced until we dropped at 11:30 p.m., after a full day of ceremony. We birthed a new self, said good-bye to an old way of being. We entered the birth spiral to be transformed. And it was good.

We hugged and said good-bye on Sunday, with sparkles on our skin and lavender scenting the room. We thanked Marcela and her helpers for providing the sacred space and the structure to hold us safely as we journeyed. It was very simple, much lighter than I imagined it would be, the warmth of laughter and tears and women's faces holding me up. It was exhausting to dance and sing all day, but how liberating!

And so, back to the home, the cooking of meals, the washing of clothes, the keeping of sacred space inside this smaller circle of four. I feel different. I feel closer to the seasons, to the fall, to mother earth, pacha mama. I feel more. And that's a blessing.

happy new year to those celebrating Rosh Hashanah,
musemother

Women's mysteries

I am off this weekend for a special workshop with Marcela Lobos at Kripalu Centre in Mass. It's called Sacred Passages - here's a brief description.

In this weekend with medicine woman Marcela Lobos, you will move through the stages of the journey from maiden to mother to sage in a conscious and sacred way. You will participate in and explore all the passages of the sacred feminine, from puberty to menopause, learning to gracefully enter your years as a wise elder. Women at all stages of life are invited to come discover a more fulfilling and authentic experience of yourself and your life journey.

Can't wait to come back and tell you all about it. Should be something very useful on both a personal level and for my future workshops with women.

All I know so far is we need to embrace our feminine cycle, our women's mysteries with curiosity, reverence and compassion for ourselves. Any symptoms or energy blockages are really messages from our bodies, signals that we must tune in to and listen to to discover the underlying truths, our real story, written in the body.

Let's free the wild woman within, the naturally, spontaneous lover of life, the balance seeker, the true voice - unsilence the wisdom, let it speak up and give our lives their true meaning.

I'm looking forward to this new adventure, and promise to share it with you on this blog.

take care now,
musemother

ps a wink and a nod to all those participants at the Lecture last Tuesday - I appreciate your coming out to hear more about the feminine mysteries, and for joining the circle to share your stories

September Nights

A short story

September is a month of abundance - flowers, foliage, full moon...and tonight the pale orange Harvest Moon looms large on the horizon – Katie and I are in the back yard at dusk. "Let’s write a story about the moon wearing a Pumpkin mask for Halloween," I say. "It should be in October, that pumpkin moon, shouldn’t it, mom?" says Katie. With cooler nights yet still warm days, September sun gilds the air. Brown-eyed Susans, purple coneflower and pink-tinged hydrangea are drooping under the weight of such fullness (a bumper crop, a bellyful of flowers, if we could eat them).

The garden this time of year is riotous with purple Sage battling the cucumber vines growing up the cedar hedge, and something brown I thought was yarrow. The garden is too full of bees buzzing so my girl won’t dine outdoors. ‘But it is the best season, the finest weather’, I say, but she refuses to eat on the patio.

‘Come join me on the swinging chair,’ I call to her now, but she only alights a moment, jumping over the wet grass in her pristine white socks, then flits over to the trampoline. Ugh, a fat spider sits weaving. She screams and goes indoors.

‘Mom, you are my idol,’ she says later that night when I invite her into my bed for a snuggle. When I ask why, she says ‘because you have everything I want – a nice house, two kids (gorgeous kids like me) and a good looking husband’ (he is cute, isn’t he, I said) ‘and you’re so full of love’ – (‘Oh, but I whisper under my breath, you will be less cranky and impatient than me.’ ‘Yes, of course’, says she.)

Kissing Katie good-night is never short and quick -- she kisses my left cheek, then my right cheek, reaches up and places her arms around my neck in a deadlock, plants another kiss on my lips then up to 30 more kisses if I let her -- all over my face. Butterfly kisses with eyelashes, Eskimo kisses with noses rubbing. Nine-year-olds are good kissers. Sometimes I get impatient and want to get to my own bed where glorious sleep will envelope me. Sometimes I sing, K-K-K Katie, beautiful Katie....

Her other favourite drawing-out-bedtime routine is “Guess how much I love you mommy?” where we outdo each other with incredible numbers – as many as there are stars in the sea, as many as the blades of grass in the whole planet, as much as the distance from the earth to the moon. This usually goes on for as long as I can stay awake, standing in the doorway with one foot out the door, or until my exhaustion starts to show and I try to ease out with a quick good-night.

Earlier in the swinging chair, I had bowed my head, tired after battling insomnia the night before, and said a silent prayer of forgiveness to my mother, having suddenly come face to face with my own similar shortcomings – and not having the heart anymore to condemn us both to coldness and bad feelings for the rest of her life. Thus, I assuage my guilt about being a rebellious teen-age daughter, and hope my prayers for her happiness will ensure my own happiness, and that of my daughter as she enters the pre-teen years.

Just for tonight, I let myself be cajoled and held by Katie. I know she fears being alone at night in her own bedroom. Even though she is supposedly big enough to sleep alone, I am too tired to fight her off and send her back to her room. All day she has wooed me in a flurry of drawings, poems and scribbled notes on scraps of paper: Je t’aime maman! Passionate, headstrong Taurus foil to my passionate, stubborn Scorpio. So just for tonight, I let her stay a bit longer, hug her and tell her that she’s gorgeous!

By the time she’s fourteen, I know those kisses will be rare. We'll be missing that abundance.

Interview with Bella, Part 3 Power in the Passage

Part 3

Musemother: Do you think women who are not yet mothers should hear our birth stories? Or is it part of the rite of passage to ‘not know’? Some women are afraid to give birth after they hear the particular challenges in childbirth, tearings and rippings and long painful labours. What do you think? And what do we tell our daughters?

Bella: I think there is a time and place for women who have not given birth to hear birth stories. Though they will not truly “know” as in initiation, they can serve as a way of opening possibilities for all the varied ways of giving birth. To tell our daughters and sisters and friends our own birth story is to honor the connection of all birthing women everywhere, that we do not do this alone. Every birth is unique and it is also true that we can find strength and support in knowing that as we birth, so too have the women who came before us and so are the women all over the world birthing with us as well. This holds much power for some women.

Perhaps the question then becomes, not if, but how. Different cultures have different traditions. Here in America at least we seem to have a tradition of recounting horror stories to women at their own baby shower. Along with presents and cake and punch, we tell bits and pieces of our own birth stories and those of our friends and neighbors and they are likely to include a level of warning or danger or misery. The woman who labored for 72 hours or who tore so bad she never really recovered or had a mean doctor or had the baby in the car. Or stories our told about orgasmic births and the underlying message is that if only this woman will give birth the “right” way, she too will have such an experience. It is disconcerting to say the least.

So, how do we tell our birth stories to the women in our lives in a way that does not set out a certain way they must give birth or a way that threatens them with everything that could wrong, but rather offers women a glimpse behind the mystery of childbirth? I would offer that birth stories be shared as a hero’s journey, as I wrote of above. When we tell women birth stories in this way, we are not telling them how to do it or not do it, nor are we saying it is such a complete unknown all she can do is be afraid and wait. We are rather saying, “Here is the labyrinth I walked, the journey I embarked upon. It is sacred and it is personal. May you find here and take from my words what will serve YOU, as you walk your own path, cross the threshold of your own labyrinth, and in doing so join all the women walk not for you but with you.”

Musemother: I experienced pregnancy and childbirth as a great awakening. I did not always want to be a mother, having been little mother to seven younger siblings. However, once out of the labor and childbirth with my son, I wanted to crow to the world! And nominate every one of my sisters-in-law for sainthood, in fact every woman who had given birth. How would you describe the spiritual aspect of birth as a rite of passage?

Bella: I think I have touched upon this in some of the other questions.
I will say here, that what Spirit and even spiritual, means is very different for different women. For some women giving birth is a deeply spiritual experience and they would describe it as such. For some women their faith in a god or higher power plays a large role in their experience of birth and offers support and strength. As a doula, I have come to hold deep respect for the many faith traditions that guide a woman in labor and childbirth. And I have come to experience even that nameless sense of spirit. My work with women is to explore what spirit means to them and to explore ways this might bring power and comfort and meaning to their experience. And yet, some women are not comfortable with such terminology and shy away from birth as spiritual experience. I honor this as well.

My own personal feelings are that birth has a spiritual aspect and yet not always in the ways that this word is assumed to mean. For example, a home birth is not more “spiritual” than a hospital birth, a vaginal need not be more “spiritual” than a cesarean birth. “Spiritual” need not be divided from the earthly matter of blood and the body. A spiritual birth is not one in which a woman transcends such things but rather these very elements of labor and childbirth become the means through which she herself is born. This is a return to a more Feminine way of viewing spirituality. It is not about transcendence towards the sky, but a descent into the earth where life begins.

At its core I would say that birth is spiritual in that it is a transformation. A woman is still herself once she has given birth and yet she has also become entirely new. She has become the bearer of life. Whatever one’s personal feelings and beliefs are about Spirit and spirituality, that we can as women grow and birth life takes us beyond the realm of our understanding and into the terrain of mystery.

Musemother: It seems there is a very loving and accepting way of accompanying a woman in labour and childbirth being described by Pam England and on your web site. How can one reestablish a sense of the sacred in women’s bodies? It seems that we are so far away from ourselves and far away from trusting our bodies. So much complaining during pregnancy, so much fear surrounding childbirth.

Bella: As a doula, accompanying women in childbirth, my work is not to show her the way. It is not within my realm or power to reestablish for another woman a sense of the sacredness in women’s bodies, namely her own. This being said, many women who are pregnant and preparing for birth begin to ask themselves these very questions. They do not feel they trust their body and do not know how. They feel disconnected from that part of themselves that they sense will be needed to give birth. And so such matters are often explored together.

Perhaps we are not so far away from ourselves as we feel. We are always here, living in our bodies. Though we may feel we do not “know” our bodies, they remain present. So, perhaps the question then becomes, how do I listen to my body that is already present and communicating with me? How each woman goes about this will be different. Pregnancy itself can be a time of awakening where we learn to listen to subtle changes and shifts, feel our baby move inside of us, feel tethered to the earth in our bodies that seem to take over and do their own thing. This experience of feeling more fully “in” our bodies during pregnancy can ripple out way beyond the weeks of gestation.

It is also worth exploring what we mean when we say we should trust our bodies. To be unsure of yourself and your body is normal. Many women who claim to trust their bodies and therefore have nothing to worry about, assume that trusting their bodies means their birth will unfold they way they want. That if they trust their bodies they will birth vaginally or without interventions or in water or at home. If these things do not happen then the message becomes their body has failed them. There is an environment of guilt and shame over the body that women breathe in every day. And every time we tell a woman that if she trust her body she will be promised a certain outcome, that if she does enough prenatal yoga she will receive the birth she has planned, we feed the judge and activate the victim. It is not her body that is the problem but the voice within her that is making judgment over what her body has done or failed to do.

What are we trusting when we say we are or want to trust our bodies?

Perhaps our bodies are sacred in part because of their vulnerability. We are both remarkably resilient creatures and also our bodies will at some point, whether in childbirth or at a different time, break down or not do what we want. When trusting the body comes to mean believing the body is more than human, we can unconsciously breed distrust.

Trust is not to be confused with control. We do not control birth. We can influence it and work with it, but we do not control it. When trusting our bodies comes to mean if you only trust your body you will control how your birth goes, we can so quickly become rigid. And birth requires surrender, yielding, letting go. We soften as our cervix softens and thins, expand as our body expands to push a baby out. Giving birth is about opening and it is difficult to open when we are set on controlling outcome.

So perhaps trusting our body is to trust that our bodies will and do speak to us, even if it is not what we want to hear. That our body carriers such wisdom and compassion in its intricate ways of seeking life. That while our body is giving birth it is not the only factor influencing the birth. Given all the factors, those seen and unseen that are playing out in childbirth, we can trust our bodies to respond and communicate to us that which is needed in any given situation. I believe women want to trust themselves, not so much that their bodies will perform on command, but that whatever happens she will not abandon herself but remain present to herself. To know that you were fully present for yourself without judgment, doing whatever you needed to do in any given moment, is to nurture trust, which is another way of saying love.

Musemother: How does a woman reestablish contact between her self and her own inner knowing so she can experience birth as a rite of passage, a spiritual journey? Are there steps a woman can take to begin?

Bella: Come to my class. In all seriousness, there are many processes I do with parents in my classes and my doula clients, many of which I learned in my training with Birthing From Within, and they are too involved to write here. The book and Keepsake Journal explore many of them and do not require one be in a class.

Exploring her own deepest question is a place to begin. What does SHE need to know to give birth? This can then offer a guide for her, an avenue for exploring her own needs and fears, her assumptions about birth and from where she will find what is required to birth her baby.

I also encourage women to look at how they are already living their lives. This will tell them how they will give birth. A woman’s own inner knowing is not reserved for only momentous experiences. How does she make decisions in her daily life? How does she cope when things are difficult or painful or not as expected? What does she find to be of comfort and from where does she call for strength? Look no further then your pregnancy, then now. How did you know you were pregnant? From where does this knowing arise? How did you choose your care provider? And how did you know this was the choice for you? When a woman can begin to see that she already does know, finding her own knowing is not a quest for something out there but rather calling upon that which is fully present in her even now.

Musemother: What would you say to a woman who was unsure of herself and nervous about the coming birth?

Bella: I would say Welcome. Of course you are unsure of yourself and nervous. You’ve never done this before. And even if you have given birth before, you never given birth to this baby. It is always new. And as such, an unknown.
Our fear is not the enemy. And telling ourselves to not be afraid only pushes it underground where it grows and acts out unconsciously. Pam England has said the worry is the work of pregnancy. It can motivate us to learn things we may need to know. It can also invite us to explore our own beliefs about ourselves.

A great many fears are not as much about the thing itself, but about what we think it would mean about ourselves. That if we have to be induced we have failed. That if we have an epidural we are not strong. That if we freak out and lose control we are crazy and others will disapprove of us. So, by exploring these fears we get to hear our own negative beliefs about ourselves and offer them compassion. The judgments are not “bad”. They are simply the way we have learned to protect ourselves. And yet, the words of this judgment are not truth. When we can embrace that we are, always, enough, we begin to mother ourselves. The Mother awakened, we are now living ourselves that which we have to offer our baby.

The thing we fear may or may not happen. But it need not have the power to tell us who we are or are not.

Musemother: What has been the greatest lesson for you from working as a doula with birthing mothers?

Bella: That there is no right way to give birth, to mother. I have seen birth unfold in so many ways, in so many environments and situations and the things that one might think would create for the “perfect” birth do not play such a big factor in determining a woman’s satisfaction and feelings of power in childbirth. There is simply no right way. Women are amazingly powerful and what this looks like is new every time.

And as a doula, it is not my job to make anything happen or to promise any outcome. There are doula who claim this. I am not one of them. My gift is to hold the space as sacred and to bear witness to your own unfolding, to be a face that sees and is nothing more or less then fully present. This is your birth. I cannot do it for you. No one can. You alone must birth this baby, make this descent, enter this labyrinth. You are the warrior here, the hero. And you are not alone. In your moment of fear I will sit with you. In your moment of triumph, I will sit with you. And when, after it is all over and you are trying to unravel the many layers of what took place, I will be here. I will sit with you and welcome you into your own knowing, your mother self, your rite of passage in which you have been in your own way, transformed. --END--

Thanks to you, Bella, for enlightening us on your work, and on the value of Birthing from Within, even for us menopausal women, who are busy birthing our new selves, going through this descent into the labyrinth.

namaste,
musemother