First, this idea of being “normal” is quite a quagmire. I see all three of my own births as normal, and I know that at least the first and third may not be considered “normal” by a good deal of people. It is easy to list some things that are normal for home birth, however: eating and drinking during labor, movement, use of coping tools including water or massage, balancing rest and activity if there is time, and the baby comes out the vagina with mom’s efforts and goes straight to her chest where baby eventually nurses and continues to bond with mom. But what about long labors? Or precipitous labors? Or labors that come and go for a full week? Or an unassisted birth? Or the easy posterior birth? Or a difficult posterior birth with the baby rotating? Or a mom who doesn’t realize that she is in labor until the baby is coming? Or long pushing phases? How about a baby born en caul? Or a mom who spends a lot of time at a particular dilation but continues to make other forms of progress at this dilation?

So in teaching normal birth I decided to draw upon my Birthing from Within skills and mentor birth class to midwives. Why? Because the vast range of normal birth or even others’ experiences of birth are not necessarily viewed from a normal direction. Ok, so what I’m saying is that even if I could figure out some ranges of what constitutes normal birth, the paradigms we use don’t necessarily come from those who believe in normal birth. For instance, teaching the stages of labor sources from a particular cultural paradigm (and, yes, I’m still going to teach it as a particular perspective). For the stages of labor, we are using dilation as the demarcation between first and second stage. If we aren’t checking mom, do we call those initial grunts second stage? If not, what if she births her baby quickly? How about the initiation of active labor? Was that 4 minutes apart for contractions or 3? And what about the 5 minutes between contractions and then the baby was born? Do we just ask mom and she can call the time she thought it seemed active? It can be frustrating fitting normal birth into paradigms that may be less than normal or fitting. (See more information at http://midwifethinking.com/2010/12/22/stages-of-labour-and-collusion/ )

Using the labyrinth seemed the appropriate addition to the module as far as a paradigm for labor. And although I think it is important to look at what that experience might be like from a birthing mother’s point of view, we also must look at it from the midwife’s point of view. For every birth that we attend, we are walking this labyrinth as well. Our threshold might be getting woken up in the middle of the night by a phone call instead of contractions. Our journey into the labyrinth may also include acclimating to the birth space. This could include washing hands, doing vitals, and setting up supplies. But it also includes how the room feels when you enter it. What sounds do you hear? What do people’s faces say? How are you grounded in your own body? And how are we going to truly be present with mom during her gates of fear, doubt and unknowing, for that is commonly a part of a woman’s journey. How are we going to be able to play all of the roles that midwives play during this journey? The ascent out of the labyrinth will also be a different journey from the mother or the family. For the midwife will mostly likely exit the labyrinth much more quickly. Although there might be various births that you take into your next one or lessons learned that stick with you as you grow, we generally exit births as we finish the postpartum care and touch back upon them as we see the mother for another pregnancy or just to touch base. And as the mother is walking her worn path, we too are walking a path that our preceptors and mentors have walked and midwives from many many years ago and many places have walked.

So next week at school, I plan to have some “normal” birth story telling before breaking out some models of newborn skulls to discuss sutures, fontanelles and molding. I’m hoping to have them access some memories from normal births and have them think about how they were in their body at a particular moment. How did they feel and know that things were normal? What around them told them it was normal besides the information written down on the paper? Maybe they arrived and things seemed crazy and mom was “losing it” but they still knew things were normal. How was that? Was it because their preceptor or the mom knew it was normal? Anyways, just some ideas to add to our midwifery curriculum as we already have a cellular repository for normal. We can draw from obstetrical models and learn from those, but we can also look to tradition or create or own.

As birth workers in this culture, we have different challenges that we must mediate for ourselves as well as the birthing family. We must wear different hats as we interface between the outside world and the inside world of the birthing mother. The space of the birthing mother is one that we hold sacred. It is that space where we move right into the present one step at a time (even if it may seem like one step ahead). Wiping mom’s brow, feeding her, helping her partner connect with the process, staying out of the way, listening, feeling, moving things around in the best order, cleaning things up so they aren’t in the way, freshening everyone up, rubbing her back, shaking her hips, cheering, encouraging, giving privacy, witnessing, and in some cases lifeguarding. It is the soul space of birth that we can feel in our bones.

I was asked to teach some midwifery classes at a local school on medical terminology and charting and documentation. So, the Birthing from Within part of me just couldn’t put it out there as dry and lecture material. I had to find the other part of our brain material. Why did all this matter to midwifery anyways? And this is when I thought of “Sealskin, Soulskin.” Ok, so its not exactly Clarissa Estes’s (Women Who Run With the Wolves) interpretation of the story, but it works for me. Here we are as birth workers in this soul space that feels like home, but we cannot always stay there, even being at the birth. In an ideal situation, mom would be able to stay in this space and never leave it. But as the midwife or the doula, we must move out of this space and be the medial woman. We must also know how to move through the potential obstacle course of interfacing with the medical community and family members and possibly the general culture. Part of our challenge is not forgetting why we are doing what we are doing and not to forget what it feels like to be completely present with birth no matter how a woman births.

Yet being the medial woman is not always easy. It might just happen that we leave our home, climb out of our skin and accidently get lost during interface. We can lose our skins while we are mediating. We can move away from that conscious presence at birth. We can lose our eyesight slowly though the years if we don’t return. The desires and requirements of the culture and world may leave us far away from home. Our original soulskin, seemingly lost. And that is why we rely on each other in community or even that part of ourselves to call us back to our true nature before it is forgotten. Before we dry out.

It is with this that doulas and midwives are really cut from the same cloth, just different parts of it, different specialties, different responsibilities of different weights. But we are the medial women who usher between the soul world and the established culture. We move in and out of birthing space and weave in and out of charting and documentation or tactical decision making or gathering of information or even emergency measures. And this is the development of our craft/s providing women with the support they need in pregnancy and birth and even postpartum. The support they need in birthing by cesarean section. The support they need to birth uninterrupted at home. The support they need navigating a natural hospital birth. The support they need however they birth by choice or circumstance. Nuances of our crafts may have changed through the years, but being present with the bare bones of birthing – that is something that we must hold dear and protect together.

I mean, not a lot has changed in several hundred years as far as the birthing body, right? Well, that is somewhat true, but not really. First, today, I’m not going to write about food, but food has definitely changed and can change our bodies! Second, several hundred years ago you wouldn’t be sitting on your office chair relaxing and reading this. Several hundred years ago you wouldn’t be caught in Southern California traffic in an SUV with bucket seats for a few hours a day. Several hundred years ago you wouldn’t lean back on a couch watching movies for a few hours. Our society’s architecture is designed to help our stressed-out bodies and minds feel as if they can relax. Yet, in this process of supporting our bodies, there is a potential that our babies may not rotate into the best position for birth.

My first interest in alignment of the body, gravity, and birthing was sparked at a midwifery conference that I attended in Oaxaca in 2002. Being a doula and a student midwife, I knew that when women had back labor, if you gave them back pressure during contractions, some of the intensity could be relieved, and the mother would most likely be able to cope. But as a midwife pointed out at the conference, this only helped the symptoms of mom laboring, it didn’t change the cause: the baby’s position. It was at this conference when I learned about the rebozzo. I learned about shaking butts, sifting bellies, and squeezing hips for purposes of moving baby or for postpartum alignment. And although I’m no expert as far as the various ways to use rebozzo, it is a tool I carry and find quite useful. I see it as an essential part of my birth kit.

Fast forward to Optimal Foetal Positioning and Sit Up and Take Notice. Ok, these books also talked about preventative care in our modern world. These books created an awareness of how our SUVs or our furniture was not only creating more posterior babies, but it was also about how to change what we were doing for better positioning. Spinning Babies has now stepped up a notch and combined this knowledge with using gravity and various positions to assist before and during labor to help rotate the baby. One of the most useful tools in rotating the baby during labor is a mobile mom.

So last time Gail Tully came to town, I thought, “I’ve read that spinning babies site and how much more could I learn?” I took the class anyways, and there is so much more to learn. I have to admit, I am biased since I’m already a sucker for gravity and birth. I’m already excited about the smaller things that we can do to prevent unneeded interventions in the birth setting. But this time, I’ll be there paying attention to the nuances of rotation and body mechanics. I’ll be paying more attention to when to use the trochanter roll or the Walcher’s position. I’ll even be lucky to pick up some aspects of cranialsacral.

Finally, I also want to mention that it doesn’t stop here. Optimal Baby Positioning isn’t just for pregnancy anymore. I recently took an online course called No More Kegels, a class from Katy Bowman of the katysays blog, and realized that the positions that we encourage in pregnancy are for long term pelvic floor health. Imagine that!

The architecture of our society along with gravity really does change the way our body aligns, the muscles we build, or can even torque the ligaments that hold it. The architecture of our society and the way we move through it can also be set up to heal our body, make it stronger, or at least allow our baby to rotate into the best position possible.

Another time I will say something about my dad’s grandmother (who I knew) and her mother (who was a midwife), but now I’m going to go back on my mother’s lineage. I never knew my maternal, great grandmother. I had known that my grandma was German and that her family had been quite strict. Born in 1904, my grandma had grown up on the farm in northern central Missouri. It was not until I had become a midwife that the stories began to come in about her being a midwife. My great grandma, Wilhelmina Catherine Haik, attended births in her community and was seen as the local midwife. If someone was having a baby she would be called to help out and would ride over in a horse and wagon.

My grandma told me the story of how when her younger brother Edward was born, all of the siblings lined up sitting down in the other room of the house quiet. They didn’t dare make a noise. She was little and she remembered her father coming out to tell them he had been born. All of them had been born at home. Yet, my grandma, who my kids call Mina, decided she didn’t want to marry early or live on a farm. Instead, she “up and went” to college in the 1920s and became a secretary. It was not until she was 37 years old that she married my grandfather. At 38 she gave birth to my mother. That was a big deal then to have a first baby in the 1940s. However, she did what any modern lady in 1942 would do, she went to the hospital. She had no memory of how the birth went since she was completely knocked out. She did remember, however, wanting to hold my mom who was in the nursery. My mom would be crying and they would bring her to Mina. Once in Mina’s arms she would fall asleep instead of nurse, and because she was only given so much time with her, they’d come get her again. My mother birthed my sister in the 1960s asleep as well. She awakened to a pretty little package of a daughter. Six years later, in 1971, things had changed.

I was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico on December 10, 1971 at Presbyterian Hospital. The Christmas shopping season was drawing near, and my mom, a day overdue, was induced so she could be ready for the holidays. For my birth she was induced but advised to have an epidural which would cut the pain but allowed her to remain awake to witness the event. The epidural, however, hadn’t taken effect when I was born. The process wasn’t clean or comfortable. The nurse held up a mirror so that my mom could see me coming. That wasn’t a good memory for her. Why would she want to see that? When I was born, I was set directly on my mom’s chest. My mom wasn’t ready for a baby all covered with goo. She let the nurses know that she’d been through quite enough, please take her away.

Ok, so I wrote Imprint 16 years ago, and today I have so much more empathy for my mother. How shocking it would have been to really want a birth experience to be neat and tidy and contained. Then she got a raw, messy, non-anesthetized experience. I do know she got to have my dad there for my birth which she said was a relief (he wasn’t allowed in labor and delivery in the 1960s). Oh how relationships shift and change, and oh how we carry so much with us through life as well. There have been many things that I’ve done in my life that have had this shock affect on her – even down to the way I birthed my children at home. But now I’ve learned, everyone has a threshold. People have different experiences, fears, desires, and expectations. What they bring into their life or their birth cannot be trivialized no matter how or where a woman chooses to birth.

Recently, I came across Clarissa Estes’s version of “La Mera Mera” in The Dangerous Old Woman (CD #4). This story is about legacy and really hit home about the connections of generations. In some ways we are thousands of years old in how we birth our babies. We carry with us the knowledge from one generation to another in our body of not only birthing but bonding and child rearing and struggle and pain and grief and happiness. We carry with us burdens to unload and wounds to heal and love and nurture so that we can return to the woman inside all of us which is whole. But to acknowledge this whole woman we must also acknowledge the wounded part of ourselves. Because wounds were never really talked about by most of my family, I really don’t know what many of the intergenerational wounds may be. I can only hope I can pass on the tools and potential to my children to heal such wounds (or new ones that may occur) and the appreciation of finding a healthy balance. And and some point far, far, far away when or if I become a grandmother, I will be thinking of the legacy of birth and nurturing that I can pass on to my granddaughters and grandsons. How will I fashion them a legacy necklace, an appreciation of the sacred in life, that can be generational? How can I reclaim my legacy necklace that I may have thrown unknowingly into the waters of the lake?

On a final note, I wanted to mention how amazing it is that a baby girl that is born has all of the eggs it will release in her lifetime inside of her body. That means I was carrying the egg/s of my grandchildren when I was pregnant. Yes, I was caretaking my grandchildren in some off-hand way when my daughters were inside of me. Amazing, absolutely, amazing.

Who is truly responsible for the rise of the cesarean birth rate?

The consumers and birth advocates are taking responsibility to rally. Pregnant women, doulas, grandmothers, midwives all stood out in the cold that day to notify the world that change needed to happen. The researchers are taking responsibility, they are showing that the maternal mortality rate is climbing and the neonatal mortality rate has stayed the same since the 1980s. Research is showing that only 30% of obstetrical practice is evidence-based. Some evidence is not being followed. But who is responsible in evidence based implementation? As far as Mary Birch Hospital for Women, It doesn’t matter that Scripps La Jolla has similar statistics. It doesn’t matter that Mary Birch may be a trendsetter or have 6% of high risk patients delivering there. What matters is that as an institution they have power to create change – and they aren’t doing it.

Right now they play the powerless card. Powerless because of many myths regarding the increasing cesarean birth rate…myths that they probably actually believe (see below). I could start by telling them to hire midwives to lower their cesarean birth rates or have an in-house birth center. And what happened to that doula program? That would surely work. But let’s offer some more “obstetrically traditional” ideas to Mary Birch as far as what they can do to lower their rates. I’m interested in assisting them in finding solutions. It’s a human rights issue.

First, educate the mothers during pregnancy as to the risks and realities of induction of labor for both the mother and the baby. This involves breaking down informed consent line by line (initialing bullet points) into parts to show that the family understands the risks of induction or a cesarean for both mom and baby. Document what alternatives were discussed and offered as well.

Second, all inductions should not be “offered” unless “necessary.” Ok, we hit the gray area. I’m not expecting Mary Birch to follow my belief system on induction or what I would say was unnecessary, but the least they could do is follow obstetrical “evidence-based guidelines” as an institution. This means that even some of the “high risk” women that deliver there would not be induced. For a more in depth report check out: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1471-0528.2008.02065.x/full 

Third, doctors don’t have any incentive to advocate for a vaginal birth. The hospital and the birth attendants get paid more for a cesarean. However, financial incentives could be given to individual doctors or practices when they lower their cesarean birth rate. Doctors that already have a low rate (below a set amount, let’s say 20%) can be rewarded as well. In hospital privileges of some sort could also be given when a doctor’s rate is lowered.

Fourth, when a doctor’s induction rate consistently correlates with weekends and holidays, the cases need to go to a hospital committee for review. Induction and birth should not be done for convenience factors. There have been health care systems and hospitals that have worked at improving their bottom line and reduced the induction and cesarean birth rate at the same time. Intermountain Health implemented a protocol to avoid unnecessary inductions:
“When an expectant mother arrived at the hospital for an elective induction, nurses completed an electronic check sheet that summarized appropriateness criteria. If the patient met the criteria, the induction proceeded; if not, the nurses informed the attending obstetrician that they could not proceed without approval from the chair of the obstetrics department or from a perinatalogist—a specialist in high-risk pregnancies.”

Fifth, we need to look at such healthcare systems and trials that have proven to lower the cesarean birth rate and maintained quality of care. Mary Birch can learn from those who have already done trials to successfully lower their cesarean birth rates. For instance, Oregon Health and Science University is implementing changes that include encouraging VBACs, giving opportunities for a trial of labor for vaginal birth after 2 cesareans and instituting policies for vaginal breech birth. The head of the Maternal and Fetal Health discusses the robust program for encouraging VBACs: “About three out of four patients are able to have VBACs,” Pereira said. “If you don’t have that policy, then all four of those patients are going to end up with a repeat section.”  Also, The White Paper which was produced by the California Maternal Quality Care Collaborative recently released detailed a summary of suggestions of how the cesarean rates could be reduced. Reducing inductions, implementing payment reform so that doctors would be rewarded for quality improvement, encouraging VBACs, and implementing patient education were all suggested.

Wait, didn’t I just write about that?

Myth #1: more women are high risk at their hospital than others (accounts for 6%) Myth #2: There are more cesareans because of fertility drugs and the incidence of twins. Reproductive technologies have improved since the early 2000s and there are less twins being born from women using these technologies. Myth #3: older mothers have driven up the cesarean birth rate. Actually, this may have partly been true, but according Eugene Declerq, the average age of mothers has not increased since 2003 but the cesarean rate has. Myth #4: Babies are bigger. Actually this is false, they have gotten smaller mostly due to induction of labor before babies are able to reach maturity. Myth #5 Mother’s want a cesarean, but after a national poll of mothers, this group of women equalled less than 1%. Myth #6: Induction doesn’t increase the cesarean birth rate. A first time mom being induced has a 50% more chance of having a cesarean if she is induced as opposed to not being induced. Myth #7: Vaginal breech birth isn’t as safe as a cesarean. Guess again, the original Hannnah study has been refuted. Please suggest more myths, I know there are more out there…

http://managinghealthcarecosts.blogspot.com/2011/06/hospital-improves-maternity-care-and.html

http://www.oregonlive.com/health/index.ssf/2011/07/ohsu_effort_aims_to_reduce_the.html

http://www.cmqcc.org/resources/2082

http://jogc.com/abstracts/full/201003_Obstetrics_2.pdf

http://www.amnestyusa.org/sites/default/files/pdfs/deadlydelivery.pdf

In any case, something is quite appealing to me about home birth midwifery history here in the states . My interest might have started in attending births and realizing how much instinct can be part of labor support and midwifing. I’m sure my interest was aroused in discussions with my midwife, Abby, or even when Jeannine Parvati Baker came and visited and gave a workshop when I was a young mom. My interest also shows up when I realize that my experiences as a birthing mother were part of the local San Diego home birth history that occurred before midwives had been licensed. Also my interest peaked in attending the Midwifery Today conferences, one in Oaxaca, the other in Oregon. Many of the midwives there have so much to impart as far as history – including the history of midwifery prior to it being institutionalized or professionalized. I attended the Midwives Alliance of North America (MANA) conference in Monterrey, California 2-3 years ago, and the midwives of that region put on an opening ceremony that integrated northern California’s midwife history with storytelling. It was poignant. The stories telling. You can still order a copy of these stories at:

http://ww5.aitsafe.com/cf/add.cfm?userid=7932753&product=MA-T44ab+AudioCds&price=10.00

No matter how professionalized direct entry midwifery becomes or even doulas become let’s not forget where it all started. It started at home with mothers refusing to go to the hospital. It started with mothers taking initiative and responsibility to birth their baby autonomously and to support one another birthing. So here I’m am going to start posting articles that I find about homebirth from California. Many articles from this time period are missing, feel free to send me copies and I’ll post them up here as well.

Many of of us as midwives are looking to traditional midwifery and the birthing mother’s wisdom thiemselves for ways of learning natural and normal birth. This is wise. However, we are in a time period that we can also forget what happened yesterday in our own backyard in midwifery, doula work or labor support.

I’m going through old files this week and opening a part of my life as well as others’ lives that I haven’t seen for a while. It really inspires me to (re)member much of what I’ve taken to be a part of my history of birth and motherhood and realize that it is part of me. Going through files, I find memories of my own midwife for my son, Abigail Odam, for she had given me files and articles about birth from when she was a young mother and midwife. I find pieces of history of birth resurgence of the 1970s. I looked through Imprint: from conception through motherhood. It is a 75 page zine that I wrote back in 1995 when I was a young mother documenting my journey through motherhood inter-spliced with interviews from Abby as well as obstetrical history. It even has the local cesarean birth rates by hospital which has been on all of our minds as of late especially as Mary Birch (Sharp) has moved beyond 43% (in 1995 it was 31.2%).
Oh how much I’ve grown since then. Yet, there is something about being in that moment / time period that has magic to it and has much to teach me in this moment as well. It is raw, real, unapologetic, unfettered, alive. It is self-expression, art, feeling. So, I find that it is time to start taking part of this history and these moments and putting them in my current context.
I haven’t really kept this blog section up before now. And as births slow down for a few months, we’ll see how it goes. For it is time, as a midwife, as a mother, and as a woman to reconnect and speak up about what is going on in our community and our world.

THE SPIDER ON PAGE 1:
So here I begin, at page 1 of Imprint, just having last week read Charlotte’s Web to Nilaya (my 6 year old). I cried the last few chapters as she wondered why I could barely move on to the next line. She didn’t know what I know as a mother. She too will cry someday if she were to read it to her child. I cried for the beauty and the sacrifice of Charlotte. This spider who is intelligent, small, and weaves her magnificent webs. The spider who knows that she will die after she makes her egg sac. She knows that she will have to release her control, that she will no longer be able to directly influence the matters around her. Yet, she will leave her legacy. She reminds me of the intuition that whispers in our ears and as with a yearly cycle continues may die and slowly grow again.
Oh, yes, page 1 of Imprint, it is very simple:

“PART 1: From the Beginning

‘This is what I am: watching the spider
rebuild – “patiently, they say,

But I recognize in her
impatience – my own -

the passion to make and make again
where such unmaking reigns

the refusal to be a victim
we have lived with violence so long

Am I to go on saying
for myself, for her

This is my body
take and destroy it?’

[Natural Resources” Adrienne Rich]

As a culture at large, we have ignored and relegated menstruation to advertisements for tampons or pads or jokes about PMS. But what do we have to gift future generations that highlight the power of women, young and old, throughout the life cycle and throughout their menstrual cycle? I feel, as in birth, that the bodies of women have cycled for thousands of years. Women have walked the path knowing their power at that time in the month, knowing where and how to re(source) as well as how to support other women on this road. The footsteps of the path have been worn so that the prints are still tangible but unseen. Throughout different cultures there have been groups of women who taught other women or girls this information. Some of them such as the College of Hera and in medieval society were secret, others especially in indigenous cultures were revered. So, how can we backtrack to finding the secrets of our inner world and its relationship to our outer world? Finding pieces to a puzzle can be difficult if we don’t know what the puzzle looks like. However, ideas I have of how to piece together lost information of women’s power include: looking at metaphors of nature that reflect changes that we already know occur in the body and extend them to ourselves, looking to old myths and folk stories for the hidden knowledge of all the parts that make us whole, documenting our own experiences inside our body as feeling, sentient beings curious about what is going on around them, and creating practical and empowering models for embodying empowerment.

The relationship with the earth and moon leads us into discovering ourselves through the world around us and through metaphor. It is through cycles that we can learn much about our body. Recently I was mentoring a class on the menstrual cycle and the title of the class was “Living the Seasons.” This in itself seemed a great metaphor for cyclic activity and although it wasn’t always consistent with menstruation and the body, it definitely played out most of the time. Winter became menstruation. Fall became the proliferative phase. Summer became the ovulatory phase. Spring became the follicular phase. Of course, the seasons, we have all experienced those, even while living in San Diego! But through some mindfulness about our experience with the seasons, let us think about what menstruation and winter have in common. For instance, temperatures go down. Leaves, if they haven’t fallen already, fall. The nourishment for what is living comes from deep within the earth absorbing through their roots. The animals hibernate. The inner world is incubating. This is not unlike the emotions and the physical traits during menstruation when the body sheds the uterine lining; the uterus empties itself and becomes barren. At the same time, this part of the cycle is essential for the seasons to come. It is essential for renewal. Emotionally a woman can look deep to see how she incubates her inner world. She can look to see where her roots are established and what is already there to nurture deep inside. The earth can then begin the rebuilding of spring just like the uterus begins to prepare a bed for new life. Estrogen acts almost like sunlight in its anti-depressive effects. The woman usually feels more social and interactive. Soon summer comes and flowers are blooming and going to seed. It is a time of heightened arousal, a time of fertility. Soon comes fall and the flowers die and leaves begin to change color. This is a time ruled by progesterone, a natural sedative. And yet, if implantation does not occur in a woman, she continues on to breaking down her hormones so her body can return to winter. The leaves have dried up and have fallen; emotionally this might be a time of retreat. We can go through similar scenarios using lunar cycles which are quite appropriate due to the fact women’s cycles on average last 28 days and have traditionally correlated with the moon. Life cycles can also be used as well. For every month outside of pregnancy, the woman experiences renewal, possibility, recession, and death. Natural cycles in the world around us hold potential for us to piece together more clues to our empowerment puzzle.

Old myths, stories and folklore also use the cycles of nature and creativity as templates, but they also have different ideas and connections to offer. Jungian analysis of the story moves beyond the direct narrative. One can see the individual psyche in Jungian analysis as being multiple characters in the story. That means that in “Little Red Riding Hood”, the young girl is part of you, the wolf is part of you, and the grandmother is part of you. Together these components make a whole psyche. The development of these parts of you interacts in relationships with meaning. Many stories including “Little Red Riding Hood”, which derived from “Little Red Cap”, have been changed along the way and have many variations due to generational interpretation. At the same time, clues to the initial lesson or intention of the story still exist. Looking throughout different cultures, stories have deep meaning. Through stories, the psyche is more likely to learn and be less defensive. Stories use metaphor and archetypes that our brain recognizes and opens to in a different way than a lecture or didactic lesson. Other stories that have to do with creative cycles of life include the story of Demeter and Persephone, Innana, and even La Loba. Although La Loba does not seem like a life cycle, it does describe the transitional journey out of the labyrinth from winter to that of the wildness of summer and rebirthing the wild feminine. There are so many others that I have still to discover. This is where we turn to the keeper’s of the stories and cultures with live oral traditions for connection.

Documenting our own experiences is also key to piecing together history. History is living in how our body and our neural networks have developed. History is alive in the changes that occur in our body monthly and over a lifetime. Documenting the individual also provides the unique perspective on variations of people/s and environments. The Wise Wound encouraged journaling of a menstrual mandala for daily recordings of cyclic changes. Even just a diary of moods and tendencies could yield hints of patterns in one’s own life, and it is through curiosity and intimacy of this information that women could choose to use it to get to know how and when they can achieve a sense of power in the day to day. During one’s cycle, we already know that mood, memory, sex drive, temperature, mental focus, energy, dreams, carbon dioxide concentration, ability to absorb food and nutrients, cervical color, cervical position, cervical size, vaginal discharge, adrenal function, water retention, breast changes, platelet counts, pain thresholds, blood sugar, pH, visual and auditory acuity, and psychic activity vary. This list doesn’t even include the many variations of emotional tendencies and instincts a woman may feel throughout her cycle. Dreams in themselves can link one to their unconscious life and yield clues to learning about aspects of the self that may not be so obvious. In work by Robert Bosnak, dreams and memory can be interchangeable in how they are recalled and elicited. Dream work may be one other piece of the puzzle that links us unconsciously to empowerment. Journaling or just becoming aware of oneself throughout this process not only adds to information for this puzzle to be whole, but it also contributes to the collective consciousness in terms of variations and trends.

Finally, creating practical models of empowerment from a young age through puberty and adulthood can be part of a work in progress. There are two types of models that seem important as far as structures or containers (and I’m open to many more). First, using models of the cycle or of the journey can link today to the past. For instance, the labyrinth encompasses both the cycle and the journey and embodies the physical, emotional, mental and even spiritual experiences of an individual Having used the labyrinth in Birthing from Within classes, I’ve found it to be a powerful tool for familial and personal transformation. It also lends itself to mindfulness which mentors the individual in self-awareness. It is a transition that can only be completed upon reflection and integration of the new situation or new self. Once one walks the labyrinth to the center, they must also walk or ascend the labyrinth to exit and rebuild their transformed self. The second type of model that seems important for self-discovery and piecing together information is through community interaction. Community models could include celebrations of rites of passage/s, acknowledgement and celebration of changes, and grassroots community or collective forums for exchanging experiences. At the same time, I envision groups of mothers and daughters sharing their journeys with one another acknowledging, celebrating and finding their power within. Such sharing also builds communication and promotes awareness of other possibilities and experiences.

So what are the benefits to all of this? Why does it even matter? As we move through life, a person usually chooses to communicate in ways that are reinforced by others around them. In western culture, much of the reinforcement is reflected in interactions with a commercial culture that is heavily inundated with media. Yet, many women do not feel supported by this model, and statistics show increasing levels of depression. Modern medicine attempts to “normalize” women with drugs and / or psychotherapy. While this approach may give a woman what she needs to get on her feet, in general, prevention and support can go a long way to better health especially if it supports the whole woman. Yet, even in this model we are looking towards solving problems for women, when in fact, solutions and proactive connections exist within. When someone is guided to access or pay attention to themselves and to be present with their body in the moment, it has found that not only can someone rewire the brain through mindfulness, but they can find new methods of coping and even better, flourishing.

If someone is interested in attending a rites of passage circle with their daughter ages 11-14, we are currently gathering names for the San Diego area. Contact nicole@artofopening.com if you are interested. Ideas and suggestions are welcome.

Works Cited and references that I find interesting and influential for future workshops, circles and discussions

Cameron, Anne. Daughters of Copper Woman. Harbour Publishing Ltd., Madiera Park, Canada, 2002.

England, Pam. Birthing From Within. Partera Press, Albuquerque: 1998.

Estes, Clarissa Pinkola. ” The Creative Fire”. Sounds True, Boulder, 1991.

Estes, Clarissa Pinkola. Women Who Run With the Wolves. Ballentine Books, New York, 2003.

Gardiner, Colette. Nourishing the Menstrual Cycle with Herbs, Nutrition and Ritual. Blue Iris Botanicals, Eugene, 1997.

Sturges, Cassandra George. “Unleash the Power of Your Menstrual Cycle,” Ezinearticles.com, 2010.

Wechsler, Taking Charge of Your Fertility: the definitive Guide to Natural Birth Control and Pregnancy Achievement. Harper Collins, New York: 1995.