Our birthright as women is the feminine creative energy present in the peak of our fertility and wellness: conception, pregnancy, childbearing, and nurturing. Power and intuition are inherent in each woman’s body. I love that all of BirthWorks’ lessons, experiences, and interactions honor this creative energy, and acknowledge pregnancy and childbearing as a healthy and natural process. Watching videos such as Birth in the Squatting Position and Birth Day at the workshop inspired me to imagine the powerful, peaceful time of connection that birth can offer. How different might our world be if more and more families had this time of intense connection, challenge, and joy? How different might our homes and schools and workplaces be if filled with individuals who had this opportunity for love and embrace in their first moments? Those are the ideals that inspire me in my life and in birth work.
Making the trip from Cheyenne, Wyoming to Medford, New Jersey for the workshop and beginning the investment in the certification program are steps towards fulfilling my vocation of supporting new families. Attending the workshop was a big step. As an introvert, it takes a lot of mental and emotional preparation for me to be ready to enter an unfamiliar social space. The set- up of the workshop – keeping the attendance to a small group – allowed relationships to form, emotions and experiences to be expressed, and equal talking and listening time.
As I’m a rather bookish type and a birth junkie on my own, the workshop really allowed me to experience positive and stretching exercises in a group setting. I especially appreciated the time of guided meditation/visualizations, as these were new to me. I left the workshop feeling very empowered to begin this journey to help expectant parents get in touch with their own power and intuition.
After experiencing the workshop, my initial feelings of BirthWorks as a positive force in our world were confirmed. The organization exists to see expectant parents embrace their own power and intuition, and this is desperately needed. We - the birth and postpartum doulas, the childbirth educators - are simply facilitators in that process of greater self-confidence and trust. As I look forward to beginning doula services and teaching courses, I am both bursting with potentially life-changing information for families, and slightly overwhelmed at the amount of positive information and stories to share in a limited amount of time. I trust that as I move forward, I will begin to know how to prepare for classes, and also to continue listening to my intuition in the moment to know what topics to address and how to act in the moment.
