Waiting for Change

Hi Birth Peeps,
So far just two votes for the year's theme.

Whether Fifty Ways to Change Birth in Our Culture or Birth as a Heroine's Journey is chosen.... we have to begin at the beginning... we have turn our attention back before the birth, even before conception and pregnancy.

Everywhere there is talk about changing the corporate medical model of birth. There is a sense of futility and frustration because the medical model is a very big Dragon, symbolically speaking. It is fed with billions of dollars and entrenched in an old system. No matter how passionately an individual swings her "sword," her truth, counter research and logic, seems pointless; she begins to believe her sword is merely a toy in the face of such a huge system.

My son, Sky, was telling me various ways social change can come about. As a society, we are passively oriented to power. We believe that the power to bring about change begins at the top and trickles down. In this mindset, we "wait" for change to come from authorities, whether that is a political or religious leader, or a medical expert. We wait for those at the top to see the light and do the right thing. We are in a sense "followers" and "waiters." We grumble down below, but do not realize our power in numbers. And so we wait.

The dominant model or belief in a culture does not necessarily need to change first from above. Change is (non-violently) forced when the majority of people say, "No mas. We don't want this anymore, We won't take part."

The system is a product of everyone's participation.

Change can come through a gradual chipping away at the foundation. We don't need to "behead the leader" or knock down doors.

But we do need to begin with understanding. Tolstoy wrote:
"To understand everything is to forgive everything."

Pam

Pam