CAUTION: With this blog entry, I become an equal opportunity offender. If you have ever been born or have ever given birth, you may be offended by this article.
Emergence is about how each of us got here.
The word, “Emergency” is born of what happens at birth. There’s no holding back an emerging baby; it’s the most immediate NOW we know!
TADA! Ready or not, world... Here I AM!!
Turns out how we get here is really important.
Were we conceived consciously or in a drunken stupor? Were we “planned” or “Plan B.” Was there tenderness or violence or both in the act that brought us here? Were we conceived in woman or invitro? (In glass; as in petri dish.)
Did we grow in an emotionally stable and healthy space with great “womb service?” Did we squeeze the umbilicus trying to stop the flow of toxic substances like smoke, alcohol, drugs or environmental poisons? (There are ultra sound pictures of babies doing that!)
Did we get to release the hormone that says “Now, I’m ready,” or was labor induced or spontaneously premature?
Were we given a warm welcome or born into a frigid, bitter battle zone? Born under the influence of drugs or without drugs? Was mom ecstatic or terrified? Was dad there; if not, where? Who ARE these people and where are my real parents?
Some ways of being conceived come with a seed kernel for an avalanche of feelings (and mysterious physiological cell memories) we’ll later have to dig through in order to extricate our tender self and thus, get on with the business of living our dream; our purpose in taking on a body. So much time is wasted.
Studies have been conducted correlating violence perpetrated against babies at birth, even by well-meaning medical personnel, with violence and dysfunction later in life. The same correlations are noted for drugs administered in labor with drug use later in life.
At two years of age my friend Kitty and I swallowed morphine and had to have our stomachs pumped because we were turning blue as the morphine arrested our breathing. Kitty’s grandmother was caring for a patient and had the pills in her bag. We got into the bag and ate the medicine like candy.
What a coincidence! My mother was given morphine and ether during her labor with me. At age five, I knocked my front teeth hard enough to require their extraction under anesthetic with (guess what) ether. I won't even list the number of recreational drugs I dabbled with as a young adult in an effort to understand the original numbness I experienced just when my legs were getting ready to help mom push me out. We were both drugged and met somewhere up on the ceiling (ether does that to moms and babes) where we watched Dr. King as he tried to revive both of us.
Recapitulations like these are common. As we try to heal from any particular insult to our mortal flesh, our intelligence attracts scenarios that will (perhaps) help us resolve the initial hurt. More often than not, what happens is that we simply accumulate another bit of snow around our particular avalanche’s seed kernel.
Not ONE of us had an ideal birth because there is no such thing. Anyone who claims to be able to provide us with a pain-free, fear-free, tear-free birth is a charlatan of the worst ilk. Steer clear of those who believe they have a monopoly on "The Right Way to Give Birth.”
Much as we’d like to pretend otherwise, birth is arduous for emerging babies under the best of circumstances.
The longest journey we’ll ever take is only about four inches long. The duration feels interminable because of compression. Not only are there physical forces which bear down on the child emerging into the world, but each parent is accompanied by her/his ancestral lineage, so there are at least fourteen people in the birthing room in addition to the emerging one(s) - not counting friends, doulas, midwives, nurses or doctors. There’s a lot of pressure brought to bear from the masses of folk present!
We have ancestral lines reaching back to time immemorial. If you count ONLY the birthing mom and dad, their parents and grand parents, that makes fourteen folk! Some of those people did good and honorable things; some did things that were far from heroic. As far back as we can retrieve family stories, we’ll find current events mirroring those of antiquity - particularly the stories that have been concealed and not healed. It is common to have repeat dates of tragedies in a family history. What a coincidence! History repeats itself until the historical event is healed retroactively. We CAN heal forward and backward in time. We don’t have to pass on what was handed to us. We can pay the healing forward.
No one comes through life unscathed. Why bother to put into words ideas that may make today’s mamas and papas feel guilty for the kind of birth they handed to their offspring? Why not accept the status quo and fiddle while Rome burns? Why not enjoy the time we have left before our welcome on earth wears out and we’re evicted from Eden? Why would I try to convince you if I didn’t believe it were so - that one way we can clean up the mess we’ve made of the world is simply by becoming conscious of how we welcome babies into it?
I believe we can wake up from the delusion under which we are living - namely that our birthing practices in the United States do not cause grave harm to the planet. I believe we can turn the tide and re-empower women to give birth rather than coercing them to succumb to rigid protocols that may interrupt the birth dance and set in motion a cascade of interventions which, though well-meaning, do harm to moms and babes. Broken bonding is reparable, but not so easily. A drop of prevention is worth an ocean of cure. Bonding with our babies is among the most important things we can do to give them a securely attached start.
We are fortunate that there are ways to resolve our birth trauma and that there are practitioners in the world equipped to help us do that. I’ve been very lucky to find some of the best and to study and work with them. I’ve been privileged to witness the ordinary miracle of healing in so many people of all ages.
2012 brings a quickening. Each of us is being called to stand for what we know in our hearts to be true and to stand with all humanity to usher in a new dimension of thinking; a lighter way of being on Earth. We do not need to agree with everyone; we need only to stand in our truth and keep an open heart.
Action seems to be the antidote to feeling poisoned or imprisoned by the past. Our actions this year may have more immediate relevance to our collective future than during any other year of our life.
My personal action seems to be to rally folks to make changes in how we welcome our next generation.
What is YOUR call to action?
Here’s what the Mayan Elders are saying about December 21, 2012: (click on seri-worldwide.org link below)
With thanks to Dave and Patricia Rudolph for sending me the link.
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