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.

It Sucked and Then I Cried

It Sucked and Then I Cried: How I Had a Baby, a Breakdown, and a Much Needed Margarita by Heather B. Armstrong

This was a much lighter read than most of the other stuff I've been working through.  Irritatingly at times.  But it's also a vivid description of what it's like to be inside postpartum anxiety and depression.  I chose it because I'd read Armstrong's posts about her second birth, which she did very differently from her first, and which she was a lot happier about in a lot of ways, and enjoyed them.  I'd like to read something more about postpartum mood disorders that's more forthright - the humor and sarcasm maybe gets in the way a bit for me in this book - but this was definitely a fun read.

My favorite line:  "Whose brilliant idea was it to protect the world from these diseases by JABBING BABIES WITH NEEDLES?  Why were we covering light sockets with protective plastic coverings when doctors everywhere were poking infants with sharp, disease-infested objects?  Parenthood makes no sense."  (p. 187)

Having Twins and More

Having Twins and More: A Parent's Guide to Multiple Pregnancy, Birth, and Early Childhood by Elizabeth Noble with Leo Sorger, M.D.

I chose this book for the Postpartum & Birth reading I needed to do because I know from talking to parents of twins that the postpartum challenges everyone experiences are magnified tremendously for parents of multiples.

This book was an interesting mix of data (or at least reference to data) and assertion.  Noble quotes LOTS of research, but in a kind of random-seeming way (i.e., quote anything that seems to support what you want to say, rather than a review of all possible research on the topic you're discussing - see this fascinating article about the fallacy of medical research in general, much less when you're trying to prove a point.)  And she obviously has some pet theories, some of which I think make common sense (eat more), others not (dairy is evil for everyone).

It is informative though, for someone like me with no direct personal experience with parenting twins or more, about what that experience is like.  I'd like to read something more evocative on the topic at some point, because this book is only informative.  Even the side-bar quotes from parents are pretty dry.

Since I don't have twins and am not pregnant with them and I leave the book feeling kind of scared of the whole idea, I imagine it might not be a confidence builder for someone actually expecting twins.  I think I wouldn't necessarily recommend this book to parents, at least not as a primary source.

Birth: she does include photos and the story of a successful, term, homebirth of triplets after cesarean, which is undoubtedly pretty cool.  Otherwise, none of the birth information was particularly new to me - she's basically saying, try to find someone who will support a vaginal birth because it's better for you and the babies - even better if it can be as natural as possible.

Postpartum:  again, her general gist is that parents of multiples will need LOTS of help or disaster may overtake them in the form of stress, divorce, depression etc.  This is useful, and there are some ideas about how to cope, but I imagine that I'd learn a lot more from the Internet in terms of tricks to try and gadgets to buy if I were expecting multiples.

After Miscarriage

After Miscarriage: Medical Facts and Emotional Support for Pregnancy Loss by Krissi Danielsson, published in 2008 is another for my "Pregnancy & Birth" reading list.  And again, I chose it because pregnancy loss is not something I know from personal experience (at least, not yet - and at least, not directly - I do know friends, family members, and clients who have had losses.)  I appreciated that this book was written in a very personal style; it's not a clinical description of phenomenon or even a "all about it" kind of book, although it does include both information and advice.  Rather, it's a sort of compilation of reference material and acknowledgement of emotional struggle, and briefly, a description of the author's own miscarriage experiences and her emotional responses.  Best of all, it manages not to be patronizing (I think), which I can imagine it would be only too easy for a book on this topic to be.

Everything Conceivable

Everything Conceivable: How Assisted Reproduction Is Changing Our World by Liza Mundy, published in 2008.  I chose this book as one of my Pregnancy & Birth readings for my certification because assisted reproduction is just something I don't know about from personal experience - and I'm sure I've already worked with families using assisted reproduction as a doula and childbirth educator, whether I know it or not.

Actually, I know I've worked with families using assisted reproduction since I was a young teenager; one of the families I babysat for then was a single lesbian mom who eventually had 6 children, 4 or 5 by birth and 1 or 2 by adoption.  The ART she used was pretty low-tech as far as I know.

I learned a lot about how modern ART works, what the options and possibilities are, and what some of the pitfalls and challenges may be.

Favorite quote: "Urologists . . . have refined microsurgery to the point where if a man has a pocket of motile sperm anywhere - if, for example, the majority of his sperm are dead but there is live sperm in one tubule - they can retrieve it and use it.  They're like the SWAT team of reproductive surgeons, trained to get the hostage out safely.  (In military hospitals, these are actually called 'commando extractions.'" (p. 74)

The Water of Life: Initiation and the Tempering of the Soul

The Water of Life: Initiation and the Tempering of the Soul by Michael Meade also took me a long time to read (like the last book I blogged about).  But this time it was because this book is incredibly rich, like the dense gingerbread cake I made this week, with nuggets of intensity in it, like the dried cranberries I stirred into the cake.  I could only read a little at a time, just like there's still a lot of cake left because I can only eat a small piece at a time.

There are lots of bits of this book I love and want to come back to in different ways in different contexts.  (Some to note: "The Spell", pp. 88 - 91; )I think as a mother of sons, it will inform my view of their needs as boys and becoming men.  The direct application to working with fathers and fathers to be as a childbirth and parenting mentor is not so obvious to me, but I'm sure it is there and will come out.

One thing I noticed was how drawn I was to the stories in the book that came straight from the author's experience.  Much of the time he talks in general about how various men react to the stories (folk-tales) that form the skeleton of the book, and that's valuable and useful.  But what really caught my attention were the few direct stories where he spoke in the first person about his own life.  That gives me pause as I think about how I use stories with parents (and others in my other roles in life).  We are told not to share our own experiences, or if we do, to camouflage them as someone else's.  I understand why; it can be hard for someone to hear truth if it's about me, especially if they have any issues with authority figures or women or whatever.  But on the other hand, I think sometimes it is a betrayal of the role of mentor or elder not to claim my own experience, share it for what it is, and then allow those who are listening to make of it what they will.  The old stories, the archetypal stories, are extremely powerful in part because they let people see themselves in whatever part of the story they need to at that moment when they are listening.  Personal stories, elders' stories, are also powerful and sometimes perhaps we should share them.  The middle ground, the framing, is not so powerful (albeit useful and important to do, with light brushstrokes.)

The Craft of the Warrior

The Craft of the Warrior by Robert L. Spencer took me a long time to read.  It was boring.  It was pedantic.  It was analytic.  There were also nuggets of great stuff every so often.

Having just finished it, the great bit at the front of my mind is the very last two pages, where Spencer discusses how to know if you've found a good teacher for yourself in your Warrior journey.  It's a beautiful description of what to look out for, and what to look for, and how to know when to stick with a teacher despite feeling overwhelmed and anxious.  Therefore, it's also a good description of what not to be, and what to be, and how to stay present for a student who is overwhelmed and anxious.

I wavered back and forth in this reading between thinking, "but I don't want to be a warrior - this isn't my path!" and "so much of the warrior's path is part of the recovery and spiritual paths I've taken in my life so far, isn't that cool!"  There is much that honestly doesn't appeal to me about the language and paradigm of warriorship.  I am not attracted at all to altered states of consciousness, "personal power", "freedom", etc.  But it's not the actuality of these things that isn't attractive - it's the . . . marketing of them.  When I read carefully and try to understand the essence of these aspects of warriorship, that essence is something that I seek and value, in slightly different ways (mostly) than any of the warrior paths Spencer is describing.  I seek serenity.  I seek awareness, acceptance, the ability to act.  I seek a path with heart.

I don't tend to seek "a mentor" much of the time.  Rather, I tend to seek a community qua mentor; a circle of elders or peers who have walked or are walking the path I've been set on, to guide me as a collective.  I wonder if this is a more feminine form of discipleship than the male teachers and authors Spencer is digesting describe.  I wonder what a consciously feminist description of warriorship would read like.  I am aware that quite a lot of what Spencer describes seems to me like it would work quite well for the men and boys in my life - the appealing aspects of warriorship as he describes them are things that I do think would appeal quite well to the masculine mindset of the males I know best.

Favorite quote (actually from Nelson Zink):  "You see, when you don't do what somebody wants you to do, that's rebellin'.  But if you do what you want to do then that's revoltin, and Boondoglgle is a revoltin' kind of mule.  He don't care so much what you think is right as he does about what he thinks is right.  Rebellin' is when you want to hurt somebody and revoltin' is when you want to help yourself.  So in a funny way, rebellin' is when you say 'no' and revoltin' is when you say 'yes.'  Rebellin' is when you fail at revoltin'.  Mules are famous critters for rebellin', but Boondoggle is famous because he's a choice-makin' mule."

Close to the Bone: Life-Threatening Illness as a Soul Journey

Close to the Bone: Life-Threatening Illness as a Soul Journey by Jean Shinoda Bolen, M.D.

My mother-in-law has given birth to five babies, miscarried one, and has been present at the births of at least 3 other babies.  She has also been present with at least 3 or 4 people as they died.  She always talks about how the processes are so clearly the reverse of each other - watching the life come into a baby as it starts to breathe; seeing the life leave a dying person as they stop breathing.  I have not been present at a death, but what she says makes sense to me.  

This isn't a book about birth or dying, exactly.  It's about the process the human soul goes through preparing for either birth or - Bolen's main focus - death or recovery from serious illness.  In some ways, there isn't a lot of difference between preparing to die or preparing to live or give life.  It's a preparation for change from one state of being to a different state of being.

There are many passages in this book I feel enriched by and know I will use in different ways.  This is one of my favorites:  

"I hope that I can die well - whatever that may mean - when the time comes. . . . When I was pregnant and knew I would be going into labor and delivery for the first time, I also hoped I could do it well.  I did not really know what it would be like . . . Just as I wanted a natural childbirth because I wanted to be conscious, so do I want to be conscious at the moment of my death.  Some people want to be asleep when they die, just as many women want to be unconscious when they deliver babies.  Also, I wanted my newborns to come when they were ready to come, just as I hope to die when I am ready to go."

Inanna, Queen of Heaven and Earth: Her Stories and Hymns from Sumer

Inanna, Queen of Heaven and Earth: Her Stories and Hymns from Sumer by Diane Wolkstein and Samuel Noah Kramer

"He put his hand in her hand.
He put his hand to her heart.
Sweet is the sleep of hand-to-hand.
Sweeter still the sleep of heart-to-heart."

p.43

That's my personal favorite stanza in the poems :-)

This is a rich, textured, complex text - both the translated poems from ancient Sumer, but also the commentary.  I enjoyed it.  It makes so much more sense than the very cryptic version I read on-line more than a year ago.  I'm also glad to have read more of the context of the Inanna's Descent story we use in Birthing From Within classes.

I want to tell Inanna's story many more times so I get it more and more deeply!

The Transition to Parenthood

The Transition to Parenthood: How a First Child Changes a Marriage, Why Some Couples Grow Closer and Others Apart by Jay Belsky, Ph.D. and John Kelly.

This was a fascinating read in many ways.  I think as a married person with children I could hardly help but reflect on my own marriage and parenting in reading it (fortunately, my husband concurs with me that our marriage has improved since we had children, rather than declined.)

One question that occurred to me right away was to wonder about the diversity (or lack thereof) of the population Dr. Belsky's study was based on.  Although he talks about differences in parents' ages, religious views, and educational/work backgrounds, he doesn't ever mention race or sexual orientation.  Or, except by inference, class or financial status.  It's also disconcerting to me that he does not take into account the birth experiences of his subjects (something I would expect to bear some relationship to the outcomes he is interested in.)

After a while, though, I realized that another question I have to ask is about generational change.  Dr. Belsky's study was conducted with couples in my parents' and parents-in-law's generation.  I think some things have changed in the last 30 years that have some bearing on his study findings, especially in the realm of gender role expectations.  Of course gender role expectations are still relevant to marital satisfaction; but for most of my peers, there are (sometimes subtle, sometimes not) differences in how those expectations were formed and play out compared to our parents.  Unless we grew up in or have chosen a fairly extreme social conservatism of one sort or another, it's rare for any of us (male or female) to be unrepentant Traditionalists about gender roles.  The vast majority of us are some sort of Transitionalist or Egalitarian, and there is probably more variation in what those two terms might encompass than there was 30 years ago.

I'm convinced of the importance of the new parenthood transition - but maybe not a lot wiser about how to help it positively in situ.

Labyrinth of Birth: Creating a Map, Meditations and Rituals for Your Childbearing Year

Labyrinth of Birth: Creating a Map, Meditations and Rituals for Your Childbearing Year by Pam England.

Hurray, it's finally out!  I've been waiting for this book for a couple of months and I'm so excited that it's finally here (note to self: go write review on Amazon . . .)

And it's wonderful.  I have already been using the LabOrynth (birth labyrinth) in my childbirth classes and with doula clients.  I've even shared the model as applicable to all kinds of transitions with my religious education colleagues.  But I found lots of things that will enrich my sharing in this book.

Things I especially like:  the Mother and Child labyrinths from the Hopi people.  The Animal Labyrinths of the ancient Nazca people.  A picture of a pregnant woman with labyrinths and spirals drawn all over her body, making me want to try that as a mehndi pattern on a live pregnant woman.  A deeper understanding of the footprint part of the LabOrinth.  Awesome description of Ovarian Breathing.  For whatever reason, the whole section on death & rebirth. the LabOrinth Birth Story.  Inspiration to make myself a clay labyrinth.  And Most of All: the collection of "seeds" in the back of the book!

The quote that calls to me:

"It is an act of humility to ask the Mother to take your grief and pain because it is too great to heal by yourself."  (p. 82)

The Everything Toltec Wisdom Book: A Complete Guide to the Ancient Wisdoms

The Everything Toltec Wisdom Book: A Complete Guide to the Ancient Wisdoms by Allan Hardman.

I am not especially drawn to the Toltec path.  I'm not particularly bothered by it; I agree with many of its tenants.  But I don't see myself as enslaved by my mind, very much anyway.  I don't feel a great longing for freedom that I don't have, most of the time.  Maybe this is because I was raised by someone interested in personal and spiritual growth, who shared many of her learnings with her children.  And I was raised in a faith tradition that values each person's search for truth and meaning, without directing one path or one right way.  And as an adult, I've done my own spiritual work, pretty intensively, for over 12 years.  Maybe all these things have gotten me somewhere. I am aware that I am still growing and learning and strongly desire to keep doing so.  But the metaphors of the Toltec Masters aren't particularly evocative for me.

I think the most useful thing for me about this book is the last chapter: a description of a spiritual journey through Teotihuacan - which is very evocative.  I love seeing another path into the mystery, and how it marches along and diverges from others I am familiar with (Innana's journey to the underworld and twelve step traditions, especially.)