January 26, 2011

Postcards

A fellow Birthing From Within Mentor created a postcard exchange for Mentors this winter and spring.  I've agreed to create and send 12 postcards to fellow Mentors and should receive about that many in return as well.  I thought I'd post them here so everyone can see all of them.

Here's my first:


 And here's what I said about it:

This image contains photos of 7 generations of women in my family, the last 5 of whom were only daughters.  Around them I have drawn a tree of life with roots in the earth stretching into the sky, with a moon and stars.  Over it all is a strand of DNA.  “Tara” is the name given by one researcher to the woman my/our mitochondrial, matrilineal DNA comes from.  Of the women in these pictures, my mother (far right in the color photo, baby in the middle photo) is the only one who was born in a hospital, while my grandmother (middle of color photo, left in middle photo, baby in top photo) is the only one who did not give birth at home. . . . Somewhere in BFW, Pam talks about learning our family histories around birth.  I’ve always wanted to find processes for doing this more intentionally with my students.

2 comments:

Carly said...

Thank you so much for being a part of the post card exchange and sharing your blog. Your image and story of the image is very touching and powerful. It make the family history seem deeper when the connection is visual like this. Carly

Dawn Star Borchelt said...

Thanks, Carly!