Dedication to Dillon, son of Lauren and Dave, born December 8, 2023

 

I remember being an on-the-spot, mid-wife assistant at my first birth …unplanned, unprepared not even realizing there was a pregnancy amongst us. We were three, riding out into the Kimberley, far northwest region of Australia, scouting for a dream my partner at the time Warwick had, for walking the territory with Aboriginal elders. He was an artist himself encouraging the artists within the tribes there and they had adopted him into their dreaming.

 

We stopped, as was custom, for a “billy”, a large can of bush tea over an open fire. Just then as we sat, the camel I was riding cried out, heralding her next move…which was to lie down onto the ground and pretty quickly begin giving birth. The camelero called us over engaging us with each of her legs to gently pull this being forward into life. Wow – that is a moment, as you can imagine – baby camel in our hands –love…presence…

 

Water is life, birth is life, love is life, even arriving sometimes without anticipation, expectation, or preparation!

 

It was during those years as well, that I witnessed my first human baby born in a birthing room, Paris, France. Leboyer and his team had welcomed me in to see what gentle birth was all about…to share what I had learned thru much time spent with Igor Charkovsky in Russia, who was the inspiration and guide for a waterbirth revival there in the ‘80s. I say revival, as Igor shared how these ways of birthing in water were natural, ancient, shamanic in Siberia, and ours to rediscover. It was a blessing all around, to be with the baby and parents, during these sacred moments. I was invited to be part of the continued relationship, immersion, and water training that Igor insisted on, it was nothing less than simultaneously transformative and confirming for me. Seeing the couple in France welcome the baby into this world, water to water,

 

 it was their dream come true and somehow mine as well.

 

Before then, other than my own entry into this world, being born seemed both beautiful and traumatic even when things went well. It seemed no mistake to learn that people, therapists and the kind, like Stan Grof, spent years assisting people to actually recover from such. Reliving birth experiences during Holotropic Breath work and other such rebirthing ceremonies was healing for many. Training with Stan and serving as one of his first interns, I experienced and witnessed first-hand how the breath work was so extremely helpful in moving thru and beyond some of those first moments of passage. As this is a water planet, it has long since made much sense to me to begin the passage going from the water in a single mother’s womb to the waters and womb of Mother Earth. Such a thought may lead to a call for a waterbirth, or simply to have the baby in water as soon as possible …

 

I always related and felt what better birthday gift then to swim into the arms of the earth mother and confirm one’s belonging therein.

 

Since those years I have been blessed to witness as well as be a guide, or perhaps better named mid-wife, to many different kinds of births. Without my own biological children, I focused on the many young ones needing attention more than a mom and dad might be able to offer. There were always ones in need of community, connection beyond the blood family, some loving care, some with a single parent, some wanting an auntie, a godmother or an elder. There were those that had had rough childhoods or been orphaned in some way.

 

Co-creating village in modern society seemed and still today, seems essential.

 

In my late 20’s, I came to learn the importance of initiation experiences, another birthing moment in life at different ages. Sadly, missing in modern culture, it has too often been erased, due to the repression if not genocide of Indigenous cultures. After stumbling thru my own self-initiation, I searched for those who knew something about these ceremonial passages. I was blessed to be with numerous Indigenous elders as well as Stephen Foster and Meredith Little, who were just starting the School of Lost Borders, offering a bare bones ceremony for people of different ancestries and backgrounds. There I was able to experience the benefit of a sacred container, the support of guides as well as a community, even if only made up of others participating.

 

Community can be experienced and remembered in our bones if we are given a taste.

 

After going thru a series of my own initiations, I continued as a student of ceremonial ways, mentored by all who came, tuned and taught time and time again by and in nature, apprenticing in the circle ways, fasting each year in the high desert lands of the Eastern Sierra. Only after many years, did I gradually come to the giveaway time and begin to serve as a guide myself, in rites of passage.

 

A Rite of Passage — this is where rebirth can take place, where a connection with ancestors can deepen, as well as a severance from what truly does not serve a prayer for wholeness, the wellness of all beings. For some, it is the time to recognize and move beyond cultural conditioning and for others, an opportunity to truly participate in co-creating the world in which they want to live. I see people return from the mountain, the desert, the land and water, time and time again, marking new beginnings. It may appear as a confirmation of birthright, a remembering of our true nature and purpose. Such initiation can offer a newfound freedom from early, or even recent trauma, thru a ceremonial time facing death. One is often able to let go fully of old stories that no longer serve, of conditioning that has too often limited the fulfillment of dreams. And perhaps even more important than the individual prayer, most often there arises a deep sense of belonging to this earth, this water planet. Thru that love, then, the care for it and all its creatures flows more naturally. With a new sense of who they/we truly are, there is an awakening to who they/we are here to be.

 

Similar to any such moments in life, whether on a mountain, in a temple or maybe with a teacher or guru, we are blessed when grace arrives. The “don’t know mind” has arrived at last.

 

And there is no one I know who does not need to incorporate, come down from the experience on the mountain, literally. Post-partem depression can set in when one returns to this world of everyday “chopping wood and carrying water.”

 

I am able to see, hold, offer, and support this experience in part because I go, too, for such a ceremonial time each year …I need that severance time, for what no longer serves, and to enter a threshold moment of beginning again. Returning “home” slowly, the incorporation time, helps me and all embody and embed what we confirmed or simply remembered in our cells. It’s a long walk home and beginning again each day supports that journey. Whether we were born with and into love or came in under the most difficult circumstances, we are blessed to have so many possible moments of birth throughout our life. And then there is the passage of death, truly a birth yet again. Birth and rebirth maybe continues on and is this biggest mystery I choose to honor.

With gratitude…

 

 

  • By Blaise Pascal

Why do atheists have to say that one cannot rise from the dead?

Which is the more difficult, to be born or to be reborn?

That that which has never existed should exist, or that that which has existed should exist again?

Is it more difficult to come into being than to return to it?

 

 

Solstice RAP 2023: Mirror Inside and Out

A remembering for me …

Solstice storm, huge thunder and lightning

 so much dying, so much fighting

What to do? Say or see?

Show the way for us to be

Fighting for place, for land, for home

we continue to kill our very own

When will it end, when will we sing

The song, the story we need to bring

Waters rising, tornado warning,

drought to floods, nonstop storming

Roads closed…new pathways made

Some of our structures washed away

Asking for guidance, help, an image

Calling on ancestors in every lineage

Awakening souls thru the night

 restoring relations, returning with light

Prayer and action every day

what else is there now to say

deeply in the waters “not knowing”

 as the sacred fires will keep on growing

yes to grieving, yes to mourn

the veils between the worlds deeply torn

opened, with death – a chance to see

our new world is soon to be

A tiny part within this human race

Thank spirit, the divine, nature, grace

Adapting species in the waters of earth

May we awaken – as we give birth