Free Range ~ Freedom and Responsibility in the Homeschooling Family

In Progress~ Really. I didn't get it here by Thanksgiving...too much going on this last week. But I am almost done with it, and it will arrive soon! I made a quick trip to the UP this weekend and I've had a lot of work to do since returning but this post will be debuting within days and it will, I hope, spark some interesting thoughts and ideas for all of you so, yeah, "soon" is the new immanent....M.

Time Out.....

Hello everyone! As you've no doubt gathered, I'm having some trouble finding the time to finish my blog posts. I am back in classes and internship duties full time and, of course, have a family to tend to and my writing here and elsewhere has taken a bit of a hit for it. I will be completing the posts' I've begun drafting sometime soon but I'm not sure when. In the meantime, I'll leave up what is here and perhaps do some poetry, or short pieces again just to stay warmed up! I hope everyone is enjoying the beautiful Autumn we've had this year ( at least in the midwest ) as I have. I can't believe how the time has flown since summer; I am aghast at the realization that Advent, and the "Christmas Season" starts in just over two weeks. How is that possible? But there it is.

So, as our old friend Garrison Keillor says "Be well. Do good work. And keep in touch."

Michelle

God is Always Doing a New Thing and So Am I...

Hello everyone. If you look closely, I hope you'll see that the renewed spirit and purpose of my little home in the blogsophere finally taking shape. After spending many months sorting through my own life, trying to discern the "true callings" from the dead ends, working through all of my friendships and relationships to gain a new sense of freedom, peace of mind and genuine enjoyment, love and support, and sifting through my own quirks, quarks and non-negotiables to find a better "center" I feel as though I've finally landed somewhere I want to be. I feel "sustainable" once again!

If you read through my newly re-written profile, you will get a sense of the streamlining that has taken hold for me and also what you will likely see written here and in most ways, it won't be very different. I will continue to write about birth, death and all the life in between whether that time is short or long. I'll still bring you poetry and ideas that might challenge, bewilder or irritate but infused within this writing, I hope to encourage and support, first and foremost, all of our attempts to bring meaning, depth and spirit to our lived experience. I think much of life is about trying to find the 'one thing necessary' as Jesus put it; that pearl of great price, the heart and soul of everything that happens to us. I hope that my writing makes traveling what can be a very muddy, mucky and bumpy road just a bit easier, or will help you make some sense of it here and there, perhaps to give you a little sense of direction. Every once in awhile, we all need to be pointed towards our "True North" and I very much hope I can provide a little bit of that.

I'm off to Chicago for the weekend. Tomorrow afternoon, my 18 year old daughter Emma and I will head down to the "Windy City" to visit our dear friends there and to allow Emma to visit the campus of Northwestern University where she hopes to transfer to study Journalism. I love Chicago and my daughter is a wonderful traveling companion so, I anticipate a fun trip with her and a lovely visit with our friends.

I've been steadily writing posts and editing and deciding which things to post when; I'll also have my new "blog background" with new pictures, next week at the absolute latest. My husband promised to help me with that project and I've pencilled him in for mid-week!

Thank you to everyone who has continued to read and comment here over the several months of my reflection on...everything. I know that there have been a number of "false starts" here, or what looks like them, but they've been trial balloons for me, seeing if something really fits, or doesn't feel quite right. Authenticity and transparency have been my watch-words and getting to both of those requires a lot of hard work. I've truly had to consider, and reconsider, almost every area of my life, checking in deeply to see what still has life, what needs to be released, what can be re-envisioned and what truly has to remain with me if I am to do "...work that is real" in my life.

This is the "mid-life passage" that we all hear about and wonder whether it will happen to us. It will, but it doesn't have to be a "crisis" in the negative way our culture portrays it. It is a powerful, difficult and quite wonderful time but it requires a perseverance and tenacity that I can only liken to laboring to give birth as it is very much a time of laboring to give birth to a roomier, more expansive personality that is willing to sit in some comfort with paradox, ambiguity, grief, and acceptance of the fact that, at mid-life, we really know that some loose ends are never going to be tied up. Some friendships and relationships are not going to survive and others have to be dramatically reworked if they are to become more genuinely rooted in order to flower and bear fruit. Mid-life is the ultimate "hero's journey" and if we do it right, we end up energized for living out the remainder of our lives with a more coherent, flexible and sturdy self to offer to the world. We begin to more easily keep our perspective; the little irritations and aggravations of daily life no longer throw us off track. We know that the moment, good or bad, will pass. It becomes a whole lot easier to just "chill"! Our goals shift; we begin to think about legacy, about what we want to leave behind. At some point in the process, we know that we are through the thick of it, that we are ready to embrace our full maturity; we can accept the wisdom our lives have given us and begin seeking after how we will give it away. We develop the heart (the courage) to give everything we've learned, all the gifts of our lives, to help others so that we can rest in the knowledge, on our death beds, that we did our part to leave the world better than we found it. This is an amazing time of life; it's the "fullness of time" and I am truly in love with my life, my "Tribe", my family and friends and with all the possibilities that lie ahead.

In closing, I want to dedicate this post to the memory of Ann Sterling, a Michigan Midwife who died this last Monday, after a long and heroic battle with Cancer. She was a rare and very bright light; the most truly humble and self-effacing person I ever met, or hope to meet. She was a quiet, deep and contemplative soul who, in the words of another local Midwife, "was a pioneer in bringing "normal" back to childbirth in Michigan". Her passing provided a fitting context for my realization of how precious life is, how little time we have to do "work that is real" and that benefits others. She was not yet 60 years old and left a husband of 40 years, children, grand-children and a very grateful Michigan Midwifery Community ~"May light perpetual shine upon her, and may her soul, and the souls of all the departed, rest in peace".

Have a blessed and lovely weekend!

Your "Kneelingwoman", Michelle

Escaping from the Ghetto of Like-Minded People!~ Trust Yourself

Dear Readers: I know that some of you were expecting a different post here; I have written a piece on what I call "Commonsense Parenting" and it probably has some good stuff in it but I'm also really struggling with offering up anything that seems to feed the beast of what writer and publisher Eric Utne calls "the ghetto of like-minded people" and that has led me to this post, first and foremost and then we'll see about the other one; maybe we don't need it.

On the last page of the current issue of the "Utne Reader", there is a listing of things that Utne hopes will manifest over the next 25 years. Among them I read this:

"Americans will put the brakes on the growing tendency to "amuse ourselves to death" with constant electronic entertainment (laptops, TV, video games, iPhones, etc.) Instead, we'll grow increasingly interested in the Other--people who are truly different from ourselves, not just those on the opposite side of the globe but the people living next door and across the street as well. We'll use social networking not to find people who are like us ( creating what I call ghettos of like-minded people), but to find people who are unlike us. And we'll invest the time getting to know them until we realize how similar and connected we are after all."

Reading this quote really brought me up short because, of course, I share these sentiments and I also feel increasingly skeptical and, frankly, bored with the prevalence of 'groupthink' in society and organizations. It can't be lost on too many people that we are a very polarized nation, so much so, that I recently heard CNN commentator David Gergen remark that he had become seriously concerned that "this country has become ungovernable." Now, if any of you know who David Gergen is, you know that this is not a guy prone to throwing out the dramatic one-liner--he's a very serious chap with impecable credentials and a quiet affect one could almost call flat. I was quite stunned by his comment and it has led to several weeks of thinking about the way we, as a country, have divided ourselves up into ever smaller, narrower cohort groups that increasingly seem to demand not just conformity but unanimity; it becomes very, very hard to disagree without being censured by the group, or dismissed altogether. Even within Churches, there is a line drawn between those parishes or congregations that are deemed "liberal" and those thought to be "conservative" and I don't recall ever hearing that kind of demarcation in a religious setting as a child or young adult; it's a very recent phenomenon.

I think that Eric Utne rightly terms these groupings of like-minded people "ghettos" because they become places where there is little creativity or energy beyond promoting the ethos of the group, or protecting it from "outside" attack. A large part of my work in the area of "Commonsense Birth and Parenting" is committed to encouraging women and parents to avoid online "communities" and forums devoted to very narrow issues that seem to attract devotees' who require strict adherence to a particular parenting idea or ideal, to the point where any deviation from the path to "perfect parenting" is ridiculed or criticized, often very cruelly, and people are NOT encouraged to think for themselves although there is always this interesting little codicil called "making your own choices" but it assumes a quite strict and limited hierarchy of possible choices with those falling outside the groups' norms viewed as "not choices" or, if chosen, made in abject ignorance ie. those who don't believe or do things a certain way "just don't get it" and the group is "better off not absorbing their negativity". Never mind that there are often good ideas to be found outside our limited internal palette of operating instructions and many, if not most of those, will come to us as a natural part of becoming real flesh and blood friends with someone. It comes of asking the neighbor for her thoughts, or a woman at Church, or in the grocery store or at work. It comes of being open to real people and to the continuity and trust that arises out of having to take them in fully, as whole persons, not as faceless, nameless "ideas" coming through a computer screen that can be taken in as emotional, intellectual or spiritual fast food, leaving the undigestible portions to be dumped into the "trash" with the touch of the keyboard.

Online forums and communities are often intolerant, biased, over-focused on a single aspect of concern or interest and offers up a lot of very, very questionable "data" and information as incontrovertible truth. They are the antithesis of independent thought while claiming to be places of "freedom" and "choice". They aren't. They're ghettos. They are places that shut down real dialogue and lead many, many young women and parents into a kind of frozen despair not to mention addiction to electronic communication which is becoming a very real and pernicious danger for a lot of people. Spending hours on a computer, roaming around the ether looking for a 'fix' of "advice" or "wisdom" or the "answer" when someone has a house with children in it and those children are being left to their own devices except to be screamed at when they interrupt mom or dad while they indulge their "addiction" is unhealthy to the core. It doesn't have to be porn addiction to be dangerous and degrading. Being addicted to approval, being addicted to the attention that comes from having an "online" personality that becomes popular or even controversial, can take a person down the path of addiction and with the same end result as every other addiction! There are people who become depressed or anxious when they aren't getting 'fed' by the computer, when someone isn't responding to their posts or comments. If you feel a little "empty" without a computer-generated "fix" take notice and put the whole thing on 'pause' until you figure out what the emptiness is really about, and what you really need to fill it; I can promise you that it isn't going to be filled here on the computer.

I don't want to be anyone's "answer" to life's problems. I don't want anyone to think of me as having their answer, at any rate. Your answers about how to live out your pregnancy, birth and raise your kids or anything else that's important to you is found only within your own heart and mind. You can read all the books and scan the computer looking for something that resonates with you but at the end of the day, you have to get back to the real work of living, loving and being with real people; your own family. Your mate. Your kids. The computer provides an easy escape from the stress while allowing us to believe we're doing something productive ie. we're "looking things up" or "researching our choices" or "getting information". What we're doing, most of the time, is just sitting there, starting and typing because we are afraid to live our real lives because something in them isn't working. Maybe the marriage isn't really working, or perhaps the choices you are making about raising your children aren't really true and good for you. Home schooling can often become a trap for parents', especially for mothers, if they are doing it out of some idea that "really good, really cool parents" home school. Or you use a particular home school curriculum because your friends do. Maybe you need to put your kids in school. Or, if they're in school, maybe you need to take them out. The point is, you won't find those answers online. You'll more than likely only find more confusion, or you'll find a group to do your thinking for you and then wonder why you are so depressed and feel as though you've 'sold out' to someone else's ideas.

I'll end here with what I will call a little "admonition": I'll continue to post things here for as long as anyone wants to read them but I won't write "advice" articles. You don't need my advice. You don't need my "wisdom". You have your own. I'll write about what I've done and how I've lived it out but that isn't meant to be prescriptive, and shouldn't be taken as anything but my writing about my life. If you do anything at all with my writing, my ideas, let it be in the area of leading you inward. I hope that every post will contain some word of encouragement to "go deeper" into your own inner knowing, your own lived reality. As Educator Parker Palmer says, "Let Your Life Speak" and don't live inside the "ghetto" of the like-minded. Ask the questions that move beyond labels and ideologies to where people really live. Get out there into the world and let go of needing to find people who "think like you do". It's the people who don't think like you do who stretch your boundaries and inspire your growth. A little bit of agreement with others gives us a temporary security; offers a cup of warm comfort on a hard day, but too much shuts us down and limits us into living very unchallenged lives. Remember the old Socratic dictum ~ "The unexamined life is not worth living". That means challenging your beliefs and asking questions from all sides, not just that which feeds your ego and do realize that ego is what is involved if you find yourself making decisions not on the best interests of your children and family,but on what allows you to "feel" a certain way about yourself as a parent and even more so if part of that 'feeling' involves feeling that you are, or will be, "better" than other parents. Be careful! You're heading down a slippery slope.

If you love and enjoy your children, you are a good parent. If you love and enjoy your own life and ideas, then relax and get on with it. Don't let this machine keep you from the hard work of sorting out life's mysteries and predicaments. A computer is a tool to be used wisely, but it's a very seductive tool that can start using you.

Now, shut me off, turn off the computer, stand and stretch, and go outside!

Michelle.

In the Good Old Summer Time ~ Just a Little Post Script before We all Dive into Autumn

Hello everyone! Over the next couple of weeks, I'll be reconfiguring this blog, making some changes in it's general appearance within the framework alloted by 'Blogger', adding some new and updated pictures of my family, or perhaps just some recent photos' of "Summer Places"; I haven't decided. My school/internship season started up again this week and so the busy months of Fall and Winter are fast approaching once again. My daughter Emma turned 18 yesterday so I am now the proud mother of two "adult" children! My oldest son, Stephen, will turn 21 in January and with Hugh almost 15, and Mary turning 8 in two weeks, I am rapidly approaching a very different season in my life. My mothering journey has been long and varied; I've experienced all of the normal, mundane and quotidian happenings and I've gone through some very unusual and difficult situations. There is not much about marriage and family life that I've not experienced in some way, and, I am happy to say, successfully worked through. Very little of what women's lives are about is lost on me, yet I still retain that greater sense of mystery, awe, and the deepest respect, towards what we, as women, are, and can be, even in a society that still fights us every step of the way. I've lived a very full life and I've done my best to live that life out loud; I've never tried to hide any of it, the good, the bad and the unbelievably ugly has always been right out there. I'm a private person, but I'm not secretive. I have always been willing to share whatever I could of my experiences within the boundaries of protecting my loved one's as much as possible from my failings, always hoping that something I had experienced and learned from could help someone else. As I move forward in my work, and part of that is my writing here, I hope to be able to continue an ever more honest, authentic and I hope, prophetic and visionary exploration not only of what "is" but of what can be, for ourselves and our world. I hope to become more courageous in my increasing concern for the poor and marginalized in our society; I hope I become a thorn in someone's side, a nagging headache, a pebble in the shoe and a genuine, big time pain in the ass for someone, for anyone, who could be helping others' but isn't. I hope, even more, that I can be given the grace of exhortation and encouragement, to those who have a heart for the poor but who, like me, have been timid, or uncertain that they had any gifts or abilities that could be of any use. I sat on the sidelines for a long time because I didn't think I had anything to offer; I was also a little too content to allow myself to believe that those "other" people with real do-gooder credentials were taking care of everything and I'd probably just be in the way...it was an easy excuse. All of us can do something. All of us, any of us, can work first to deepen our awareness of those who are too easily hidden, of those who have no voice, by listening to that powerful voice within us all that tells us, clearly, that we are all One and that we are our brothers' and sisters' keeper. We all know it and once we know something, we are accountable for the decisions we make about that knowledge; once we know, we have an obligation to act on behalf of those whose concerns are committed to our care. I hope that my writing here becomes more daring, more willing to make the effort to follow the Way wherever it leads me; I hope you'll all come along for the ride!

This summer was bountiful for me and for my family. As Benjamin and I have adjusted to this new way of being parents to grown up kids, we've also found a new life and spirit in our marriage; we are more of a 'couple' now than we were even as younger married people. We've really never been without babies and young children in our lives so this time of having long stretches available to be together as two people who love each other; being able to have more quality time to ourselves, more privacy, more and deeper conversation, has been a great blessing and a wonderful awakening for us. I think that many if not most long lasting marriages have these moments of realization that the "happy mistake", as I call it, that two people who were very different in personality and temperament, turned out to be the gift of a lifetime as we've found our grounding in shared values--our faith, our lifestyle, our core beliefs about the ultimate purpose of life--and within those shared values were the seeds planted and tended in the rich soil of experience that allowed us to stay together through tragedy and challenges, and to find a much deeper, more intimate and devoted love at what we hope is only the 'mid-way' point. We also know that we've been very, very lucky. It's a sweet season. We're having those meandering and wistful dialogues about the things we want to do when the kids are all grown and out of the house. We want to go to Europe together so that I can walk the Camino for my 60th birthday and visit my ancient roots in Scotland. We want to spend a long summer on an RV ( yeah, really ) traveling the country and seeing all our far away friends and meeting new people. We want to continue growing and improving our little urban homestead here, and we want to spend more time in the UP and in several places in the UP, not just our usual haunts. We are looking forward to our children's marriages and to grandchildren. It just all looks good out there to both of us and in the meantime, there's today, and tomorrow, and next week all to be lived fully and enjoyed. There are people to care for, and about. There is work to be done, not only that of making a living, but of doing all that can be done to make the world a better place for others.

The rejuvenation I've experienced this summer came at no small cost in hard work, time, energy and even money. I worked hard during my Retreat, praying and meditating on long-held attachments and relationships that needed to be released if my life was to have the room in it for new projects, deeper friendships and new life. I had to go through the painful process of saying good- bye, not only to worn out vocations and even some personal habits, but to people I've loved, being forced to admit that the relationships had, in truth, ended some time ago but had not been properly laid to rest. We've all been there, I think. You wake up one morning and realize that you haven't really talked with someone in a very long time; perhaps you still "stay in touch" but it no longer feels real? Yeah...those. Well, I had a couple of them hanging around and I finally surrendered to the reality that we had come to a place where we were talking past each other and weren't really connecting with any intimacy or real awareness of one another. We had become a "habit" but nothing more. I had made a few efforts, over the last year or so, to reanimate and anchor the relationships but no one can do that unilaterally and either my efforts weren't explicit enough, or simply weren't welcome. Either way, the conclusion I had to reach was that there was no real relationship left and that further energy in that direction was just taking away from relationships that were clearly leading me towards growth and more genuine closeness. I've been increasingly drawn to developing those friendships where I feel a sense of shared "mission"; the sense that we are committed to the same ideals and inspired by the same sense of need in the world. I very much need to locate myself within that circle of wise, caring and committed people if I am to learn to work less as a "lone wolf", which has always been my fallback position, my comfort zone, to work in collaboration with people and groups working hard to make important, indeed, critical, changes in our world. In the wake of making the effort to finally end those relationships that were draining energy away from both of us, I felt such an opening in my heart for new friendships that have already enriched my life in myriad ways and given me a sense of hope and vitality. I've also renewed some very old connections and that has been simply wonderful. The summer was rich, for me, not always easy or pleasant, but as I sit her on this last day of August, I'm very, very pleased with what the last 3 months have brought into my life. I don't think I've ever felt more grounded or peaceful overall, even within the context of my menopausal Crony-ness. I feel no need to 'change' anything, I just want to keep going...

So, I'll probably not get around to writing anything new, although maybe I'll find a poem for you all, until I can get my pictures in and the blog looking a little smartened up! Enjoy these last weeks of warmth and the plentiful harvest of a long summer season of growth and joy!

Peace,

Michelle.

This is Your Brain on Menopause...

Hello everyone! I'm back from my final vacation of the year and beginning to look forward to Autumn. I know, I know... Summer hasn't even started in some parts of the country, including here in the Midwest which has endured ( or enjoyed, depending on your perspective ) one of the coldest summers' on record. Our week in the UP was notable for being quite warm until the tail end of the week when it began raining with temperatures in the 80's which then dropped precipitously down into the 50's by the time we left on Saturday morning. The shift in the weather mirrored my mood and mind set as I began the inevitable process of having to think forward a few short weeks when my final "Internship" year will begin, along with classes, and papers to write, and now, people to "listen" to as a Spiritual Director. I've been blessed by having already had people come to me for Direction; I am taking this as an affirmative nod from God, which I very much need right now. Almost every other aspect of my life has been in a state of rapid change for the last 4 years. First, I had to deal with the immediate grieving period after the death of my son and all the fall out that occurred in my marriage and family from that event. Then I made the decision to answer a vague "leading", to use the old Quaker term, to pursue training and certification as a Spiritual Director and to do Graduate work in Theology to top it all off. I stopped attending births as a Midwife and, as my last post more than amply suggested, came to find more questions than answers in how that vocation shaped me, and is shaping itself and how, or whether, I still fit in it anywhere. Most days, I don't feel an easy fit with anything. I wake up on one side of my life, and end the day on some other island of myself, in some other valley of feeling, thought or imagination. Inspiration comes and goes and mostly, I just watch it arrive and depart without stirring a step in either direction; I neither grab it and work with it, or do anything to stop it's leaving too soon. I am often indifferent in my relationships with people; even though I love my "tribe" as I always have, I often just can't muster the energy to invest in anyone too deeply. At the same time, I enjoy people much more, and far easier, than I ever have in my life. I am more easily amused and more content to just be in the moment with whomever I happen to be with and that's a great blessing to me. I hold on loose; what a trip! I am told by my wiser, older sisters' that this is Menopause; this is my brain, heart, and soul, on Menopause.

Menopause has also made me lazy. I don't get anything done on time, or at least I haven't done so this Summer. When I made the decision last year to essentially take the Summer off from any outside obligations, I meant it! The downside is that my Menopausal brain hasn't had much to focus on which has allowed it to just kind of shut down. I forget...everything. I have packages lying around within easy eye sight of where I am sitting that need to go to the post office and on to their new homes. I have two assignments due on Thursday evening for the start of my internship year and I haven't even considered getting to work on them. I will get everything done, just not very quickly. I'm not very happy with this aspect of my "Change". I am assuming that it won't be a permanent addition to my personality as it is very foreign to me but I think it's a necessary passage. During my Retreat earlier this Summer, I worked a lot on my long time issue with having an over-developed sense of responsibility. It's only been in the last couple of years, for instance, that I've taken a book to read on vacation that wasn't, in some way, a "text book". I've finally begun reading for pleasure again after a long, long time of not reading much of anything I couldn't validate as "necessary" to my continued intellectual, or spiritual, growth. Now, I did include a lot of really fine literature in that discipline but my focus was not on enjoying the reading, or taking in the story or characters--I read to feed my addiction to knowledge and understanding because not knowing, or not comprehending something in it's entirety felt very threatening to me. I had learned to fear "not knowing" and had bought into the idea that if something "bad" happened in my presence, it would be because I failed to "know" something. There were a lot of very good reasons why I came to believe this, but letting it go was a major part of my healing in the last few years and oh my goodness! am I glad to see it gone! I had no idea what bondage that had been for me until I set it down!

Sometime in the last year, I began reading poetry once again, and short stories and some new fiction and had the wonderful experience of recalling what it was like to be 9 or 10 and reading new books, or finding new words to wrap around a feeling or an experience. All of this has been very, very good stuff for me~it's also very good for my Menopausal brain because poetry, in particular, creates an emotional cadence, a heart connection, with what is being expressed that straight prose just doesn't do for me right now. I've had great luck settling my mind down by reading poetry, or Scripture, and through a lot of contemplative prayer and deep relaxation; these exercises seem to almost mystically realign my thinking and emotions so that I can wake up and make clearer decisions, be more present with people and with any luck, will even help me finally get my packages to the post office!

This next week, I'm going to re-configure this blog space a little bit. I have some wonderful photos' from my UP vacations places to share, and new pictures of my family and maybe I'll change the format around a bit. I think I'm able to write again folks'. I've managed to put something up here all Summer, and I'm happy I was able to do that but time away from this has helped me to settle into this final "phase" of growing into my Crone role over the next couple of years and I have plenty to say about a great many things so, stay tuned. I'll be up and running over the next few weeks and I hope to continue to hear from you all as I write it all down!

Peace,

Michelle.

The Language of Conversion: Midwifery, Health Care and Real Work

Hello everyone! The following post is very long; please be patient! I want to preface your reading of it by saying that this is not intended to be a resurgence of writing about Midwifery. I have no intention of writing on that topic with any regularity but these issues have been on my mind for a very long time and have blended into the core experience of this season of my life~reflection, remembrance, and ultimately, renewal. The mid-life passage for women, the experience of menopause, is more than a physical or biological process. It is, as herbalist and "Wise Woman" Susun Weed terms it, a "complete metamorphosis". In that spirit, then, comes a contemplation of Midwifery, and Health Care Reform and the way the two seem to parallel each other as I watch both unfold and dovetail in some very interesting ways. As is always true, for any writer, much here is autobiographical and personally iconic in the sense of being part of the interior reality of the person experiencing and observing. These are my thoughts alone, my heart, my mind, my ideas. They cannot, and should not be, attributed to any other individual or group. That said, pull up your chair, sit back and here 'tis:

In the Tuesday, August 11, 2009 New York Times, Maureen Dowd began her Editorial by quoting from the movie 'Fight Club' which, if you recall, starred Brad Pitt and earned itself a critical and pop culture following several years ago. She quotes the following as the "7th rule of fight club" which is that "the fight goes on as long as it has to". I have spent a considerable part of my summer watching the health care debate unfold and, as a Midwife, albeit one on a long sabbatical, or semi-retired, I've also watched Midwifery struggle to be included as a viable "Health Care Profession" in it's own right with varying degrees of success. What has held me somewhat captive, and brought me to the point of finally writing about how I view all of this, is most certainly seeing that "the fight goes on as long as it has to" exists alongside another maxim that seems to demand that both sides utilize the same tactics as the other while simultaneously denying that they're doing so! Both sides in the health care debate make ample use of both fear and distortion of facts to win adherents and I can't help but become frustrated and annoyed with it, especially given the fact that nothing seems to be changing; the fight just goes on...

I became a Midwife because nearly 30 years ago, I came across a book called 'Spiritual Midwifery' in the public library of the small, northern town I was living in. The book inspired in me, and in a generation of women, a vision of local, women-led and family centered maternity care that looked like the kind of healthy, community-based care we all wanted to see manifest in the world. I saw something in those stories of birth and the possibilities inherent in truly experiencing the process, as transformative and life altering; it gave me a sense of vocation and a desire to serve women and families that has remained with me my entire adult life.

I was in Nursing School, happy enough with my studies and very much wanting to be involved with women and birth but having seen and assisted with a series of very medically managed births as a student in the hospital, I really felt that I couldn't continue to participate in something that seemed inherently wrong; there was a quality of violence to all of it that seemed to have it's roots in something alien to what I thought birth was about. I raised goats and I had seen that animals give birth quite easily and I'd never seen a goat lady lie down on her back with her legs in the air in her efforts to birth her kid! I somehow understood that birth was something women just knew how to do and that it probably made sense to attend birthing women the same way you attend goat ladies: leave them be, let them get on with it, but be ready to help them if something really goes awry. So, time and a lot of study and training with different Midwives and Nurses and even a Physician or two all went on, and eventually, I was a Midwife. I knew I was a Midwife because women were asking me to attend them, were calling me with questions about birth, babies, breast feeding and almost everything else that comes up in a woman, and family's life and living and I was giving them the information, support and help they felt they needed. I had older, more experienced Midwives tell me I was "ready" and I had a few that didn't agree with that assessment, but ultimately, it came down to me and the families I served. I would never have said "yes" to anyone if I felt I wasn't qualified. This was back when we in the Midwifery community seemed to think that women themselves knew something about birth. We thought their knowledge was valid. It was a very organic process and one I trusted as implicitly as I trusted birth itself. That doesn't mean I trusted birth to always go well; as with all things in Nature, it has some wayward wildness built right into the process that one has to be prepared to deal with, and to me, the most important part of my training had to do with having very good assessment and emergency response capabilities and for that, my Nursing School education and training were invaluable and life-saving and I have to admit that the acquisition of those skills came to me entirely through Nursing, not through any of my Midwifery preceptors or training. It wasn't that emergency skills weren't considered important, but the available technology, in terms of resuscitation equipment, for instance, simply wasn't there or available in the home setting. We carried oxygen and were trained in CPR but that's what was available and, remarkably for those who now hold that home birth requires bigger guns, it worked pretty well! When I read 'Spiritual Midwifery' as a young woman, and then set out to learn how to become a Midwife, I truly believed that such a system of maternity care would be utterly transformative in the lives of women and communities! I was on fire with the "Gospel of Birth" and like all converts, I drove everyone crazy with my endless talk of birth and Midwifery; all conversational roads led to one or the other, in those days, and I'm sure I was a bit of a bore but, that's conversion for you! The beautiful thing is that we were having far more success at converting others to our thinking in the late 70's-80's than we have since the early 1990's and I think much of our relative inertia has to do with the fact that we've dropped the "transformational" talk about birth and traded it in for the talking points typically used by the "opposition". The tools and tactics being used to advance Midwifery as a profession are the same as those used by our perceived "enemy"--the AMA, or ACOG, or even ACNM-- all the big money, big lobby medical hard drivers who, with the insurance companies, create the monopoly over what we refer to so blandly as our "Health Care System". It sounds so benign; it sounds healthy doesn't it? But it isn't. And when we as Midwives use the same strategy of defamation, criticism, exaggeration and hyperbole, not to mention outright distortion of facts, we accomplish little and we invite more of the same.

We've taken to saying things like "Midwives are Specialists' in Normal Birth". I always thought that birthing women themselves were the rightful owners of that claim. We state that using Midwives "reduces" medical interventions and c-section rates and increases rates of breast-feeding. It's easy enough to "reduce" interventions that you simply never use at a home birth. Home birth, not the Midwife per se, reduces the need for intervention as a relaxed, happy, well-nourished and loved woman in labor doesn't need much more than support, and a quiet environment that allows her to do her work. Childbirth is something women do, not something Midwives do, beyond their own time as birthing women. Much of the reality of these claims has it's basis in the demographic we serve: largely white, middle-class women who have self-selected to pursue an alternative birth and parenting experience that includes midwifery or doula care, natural birth and breast feeding, baby-wearing and all the rest. None of the claims we're making can go beyond the home birth group which is still only 1-2% of the population in the United States! We regularly attack the medical profession for the evils they, and the rest of the medical-industrial complex foist off onto the American people yet we decry their attacks on Midwifery and accuse them of fomenting"turf wars" or of creating "monopoly" both of which certainly exist as part of the problem but we are not doing anything truly productive of being part of the solution by simply continuing to fire back with more of the same. Again, women and families are the people stuck in the middle of what is, let us be honest, a "turf war" all the way around; we are just as guilty as anyone else of wanting to claim territory, and make money, off the sacred ground of birth and family.

When I say "let us be honest", I am not trying to couch a criticism of anyone; I'm suggesting it as a starting point. We used to talk about "telling women the truth about birth" but we no longer seem to want to do that because the "truth" is, women don't routinely "need" Midwives to birth well, any more than they routinely require obstetrical help. Now, I think Midwifery brings with it far more than a set of skills, it brings something even more valuable to the life of a young birthing woman and family; relationship, knowledgeable companionship and support. The truth is, only in an emergency are anyone's clinical skills truly critical to the outcome of a birth from the standpoint of safety. The experience of the birth has everything to do with another set of skills and an orientation of character in the birth attendant, but the clinical skills that determine safe outcome, while requiring sufficient knowledge and practice to be used efficaciously, are, in the home setting, only rarely needed so, present and accounted for they must be, but beyond that, it's other more intangible qualities that make a Midwife a good, healing and appropriate attendant for a woman's birth.

Most of the births that I've attended have required me to do a whole lot of ...nothing. Nothing. I sat somewhere nearby, always attentive--mind, heart, hands and equipment always at the ready but I stayed away from the woman and family while they were doing their essential "real" and sacred work of ~ creating more family! Only rarely did I need to do any "labor support" or make any real suggestions. I did hours and hours of education and real "birth talk" during the months of prenatal care; by the time we arrived at the labor, the mother and her support people knew the drill, they were ready. I regularly checked the baby's heart- tones and performed other exams only as needed to affirm ongoing health and well-being in mother and baby. I monitored the environment, I kept things organized and focused. I maintained a calm, gentle and encouraging demeanor and helped out with whatever the woman needed to keep working--food, drink, a touch, a smile...I rubbed the dad's shoulders, and brought him a cup of coffee, or spelled him so he could take a break...I reassured the waiting grandmothers and other kids. When something truly needed to be done, when the rare complication occurred, I acted and did whatever was required to restore the situation to health and wholeness, including transporting to hospital if I felt it was necessary or desirable for that mother and baby at that time. It was humble, and very "real" work and I never asked it to be more than that. The woman gave birth, I assisted and helped out. Nothing more, nothing less. I don't need, or want, "insurance reimbursement" for those simple, homely tasks of loving service. I accepted payment from my clients in cash, or barter whenever it was something truly needed by me and my family. I worked for nothing, more than once. Midwifery is a life-work and a calling. It's not a business nor is it, when it involves home and family, truly a "Health Care Profession" as our current system defines the term. We are not "Specialists" in "normal birth". How can we be? We "let be". We support and assist. If we are practicing medicine in the home, then perhaps that requires something else, some other kind of Midwife, and some other kind of Midwifery and I have no quarrel with that view. But we are taking away, bit by bit, the cultural and lived norms of Midwifery that I've described and by borrowing from the language and cultural values of Medicine, such as "Specialists' in Normal Birth" and all the rest, we are implying that their system is superior and to be emulated.

Why do we believe that women can no longer be told the truth? Why are we trying to re-complicate birth in another direction? Money? Power? Status? What's the real reason we want to be regulated and licensed and certified and stamped? It's not because birth now requires something beyond what we were doing before. It certainly isn't because women have changed and I am sure that the essential nature of birth is what it always has been. We need some support from the medical community to ensure safety, that is true. We need back up for those rare complications requiring medical intervention. We need ready access to medical services when women need something outside the parameters of home care but a license and insurance money aren't necessarily going to bring those things to us and I'm not sure that ever more docile capitulation to the medical model, as evidenced by adopting their language and cultural norms does anything but lead to the idea that birth IS a "medical event" requiring more than support and back up from medicine. As we inch ever closer to the medical model in the way we talk about our work, we change the dialogue, we mute the crucial differences in our world view and culture. Language ALWAYS frames the debate and our attempt to utilize the language of those who we've identified as our oppressors, is backing us into a corner and more to the point, it not the transformative language of conversion.

I believe that women want to hear real language about real life; real talk about birth and babies and marriage and family life. I don't think we are going to "sell" them with "certification" and "licensure" or anything else beyond the simple title of "Midwife" and defining that in the clearest, most down-to-earth way possible. Calling ourselves "Specialists' in Normal Birth" just obscures the truth we've always held about about birth and women and robs and disempowers birthing women to have yet another set of care providers take away what is rightfully theirs. We must be very cautious about betraying the trust that women have placed in Midwifery for what may yet be proven to be ill-gotten gains. The entire enterprise risks becoming about something other than ensuring the dignity and authenticity of Midwifery as a form of service to women and families. Jesus spoke to people about conversion, about living life within a different value system and he used transformative language that still spoke to people as people. He talked about birth, and children, and planting seeds and raising crops. He talked about sheep, and goats! He rejected the codified, legal language of the Priestly class of Israel to inspire people from the mountain top with words that went to their hearts as people who wanted change and understood that the way forward was not to emulate the ways of the oppressor!

We are all looking at our "Health Care System" and watching the scream-fest-town-hall-so-called-debates on the same and wondering who will be included and who left out. Midwifery wants to be "in" but what will Midwifery lose in the process? What will birthing families lose? What might they gain if we just continued to talk in real, earthy and inspiring terms about the true nature of birth, women and families? What might the term "Health Care" come to mean if we all turned our backs on the current system, one that does nothing to promote true, lasting, sustainable health and well-being in people and communities to create something truly grass-roots and genuinely healing? What if a good, whole and local foods diet was "prescribed"? What if Yoga, Meditation and Contemplative Prayer, Psychotherapy, Spiritual Direction, regular "Retreats" and Massage were written on the little piece of paper we walk out with at the end of an appointment with a "Healer"? What if home birth, attended by whomever the parents' deem desirable, competent and needed, were a simple norm with medical backup provided as needed without all the other stuff attached to it? All of these actions would promote true, and long-lasting health to individuals and communities but who has the courage to stop the screaming, name-calling, baiting, and conflation of the arguments on all sides to get calm and quiet and truly prophetic with new, creative ideas?

"Health Care Reform" has to happen, and we have to make sure that everyone has access to needed care but who will then decide what kind of care is needed and which is simply more lucrative? No one on either side of the aisle is suggesting a complete overhaul of a system that doesn't actually promote or foster, "health". Both sides prefer to maintain much of the status quo; the dithering is all about who will pay for it, and who will hold the power and control in the end. The "system" will remain as it has for decades. I'm not convinced that any of this is "change we can believe in." I don't want to see Midwifery, in particular, "home birth" Midwifery co-opted into this "filthy, rotten system" as Dorothy Day would have put it. I want us to be far more proactive about speaking against the system as it is, with all it's built in failures and injustice and seek then to place Midwifery~as the holistic, healing, family-centered response to the needs of Mothers' and Families, of Women, that it is~at the center of a wholly new and truly healing "Health Care System".

Make no mistake, please, I love Midwifery and I love Midwives. I have never met more stalwart, courageous, generous, visionary women in all my life and I revere some of these women more than I can tell you; I am not in any way trying to obstruct anyone's plans or hopes. I do feel that Midwifery as I knew and practiced it has gone by the wayside. I no longer feel able to work freely as a Midwife, I feel constrained and limited by the political and legal wrangling around it all. I want to continue to be a Midwife...not as part of a large, impersonal "system" and not to receive reimbursement from what I consider to be unethical and immoral insurance companies; I want to be able to continue being a Midwife for those families who want my services so that we can work together to have a nice, family-centered birth in their homes. Plain and Simple. Nothing "Specialist" about it. I want women and families to take back ownership of birth, and family life. I do not want to be part of misleading women~again~ that someone else, anyone else, knows more about how to give birth normally than they already do. We, as Midwives, need to embrace our former claim as "Guardians of Normal Birth"; our own language, values and culture. Our way has a beauty and dignity and yes, a womanliness to it that the medical model can never enhance or duplicate. We need not be ashamed of who we are and we shouldn't be "hiding our light under a bushel." We are the Guardians of Normal Birth....Birthing Women are the Specialists.

Perhaps the "fight goes on as long as it has to" and it certainly seems that this fight will go on for some time to come but as battle after battle is pitched and the weapons are drawn, and both sides keep points, and plan strategy and throw out more criticism and more rebuttal and counter-criticism--who wins? And the truth - that women are the specialists of normal birth- is buried under the arguments and the war mentality and if they don't get that message, if they don't understand that they are the one's with the power and the choice then what happens to Midwifery doesn't matter. The language of conversion can generate enough hope and power to overturn an entire country, we just watched it happen in November of last year. Positive and life-altering rhetoric backed by facts and substantive, values-based debate is what changes minds and lives. We need to find our own language and our own way of framing Midwifery as a transformative social good because that's what brought most of us, Midwives and Mothers, into the fold in the first place.

Until next time...Michelle.