Birth in sovereignty, connection and resilience
Sovereignty. Connection. Resilience.
These are the concepts that guide me in how I strive to live, and work with food and land. But lately, my life’s work has begun to shift, and expand to include new realms, ones of birth work.
Birth, where it all begins.
Birth, a passage every one of us has travelled through to be here today. Yet, most of us hardly know a thing about it. How can this be? Isn’t birth after all one of the most basic and ancient knowings of our human-creature ways…
Dad asks me recently: “So how did you go from fermentation to birth work? I know it’s all related somehow…”.
Of course it is pops!
I spent most of my 20s trying to glean many hands on skills, from building shelters, to wiring solar, to growing food, to identifying plants, then how to preserve that harvest, and so on … one thing would lead to the next. I was thirsty for knowledge, but also just trying to get back to the basics. And now, it seems as though I have arrived full-circle back to birth.
These aren’t special skills. They are simply skills for living as humans on this earth. They allow us to be part of the great web of life that too many of us have already lost touch with. They also help us peel back the curtains of “easy and convenience”. On the other side of said curtain awaits the fullness of life in all its nuances of light and dark, and usually the true cost of things. But when you are fully planted in the realness of things, you can think for yourself! And make decisions to create a life of your own integrities!…beyond what the over-culture may try to tell you.
I know many of you here may already know all this and live it yourself. But have you ever REALLy thought about birth? How to bring in the next generation in a way that truly supports life to thrive?
In today’s culture of “collective forgetting”, birth is a skill that has already been lost by many. Birth is often pathologized, hospitalized, medicalized, tests and machines know best, protocols and interventions trump all. There’s a time and place for medical assistance, but not most, and definitely not all. But many women don’t even know they have options…
So what if I told you there was another way?
A way, that’s led by a mother’s innate knowing.
A way, that simply allows the matrix of birth (already coded in our physiology) to unfurl.
A way, to grow life and birth outside of the system.
A way, to birth surrounded by family, with other women, or even alone.
A way, to birth in deep connection.
So here I am planting this little seed, and just maybe if it blooms for you one day, you know where to find me.
I am a birth keeper.
I support birth as the beginning of life in sovereignty, connection and resilience.
