The Disclaimer

I have very many things to say that may upset your professional training, understanding, or personal experience of our current birth culture. There is a part of me that would like to spare you any emotional turmoil. But the healer in me, the realist and the revolutionary knows that you must be confronted with different to feel what you’ve suppressed. I understand that from discontent comes change. I trust conflict because it ultimately brings clarity and grows and strengthens the ranks of those who seek different.

If I say something that makes your brow frown and your heart sting, I ask that you take a moment to examine that feeling. Turn inward to feel the tension in your body before you begin to respond. If you’ve had a difficult experience that caused emotional and physical pain but your emotions about it were explained and justified away by yourself, your family or your physician, I ask you to bravely sink into your disappointment and guilt. Often there was another statistically proven option; another road you could have taken that would have prevented your difficulties and heartbreak, and it was not presented to you. Your individual needs and feelings deserved to be honored over the requirements the birth industry needs to run smoothly. Allow yourself to mourn the losses a flawed system has cost you, because they are huge, no matter how trivial they were made to seem. You deserved better. So let’s change things together. Let’s educate ourselves to prevent more of the same, to protect our sisters, our friends and our daughters from the pain so many of us endure.

I say no more uninformed birthing women. I say no more to leaving this singularly important experience of womanhood in the hands of doctors over wisdom and intuition. I say no more numbing, erasing, and silencing. I look forward to openness, transparency, trust, freedom, messiness, sexiness, inclusiveness, safety, and equality in our birth experiences.

I look forward to changing the future of birth by your side.

#disclaimer #activism #doula #progressive #birthtrauma #collectivism #sisterhood