#14 continued: Nurturing & Mentoring Our Birth Peeps

Good Morning Birth Peeps,
Today we continue considering Change #14. It is a fundamental change that must begin if birth in our culture is to truly heal and change. Otherwise we can only continue to rearrange the furniture in house built on a cracked foundation with a leaky roof.

The One that answers the Call to the work, training, or Ordeal, is not yet “the healer” or the “hero.” Rather it is the Child part of us that answers “yes.” The Innocent, Magical, Rebellious Child in us does have (and must have, in order to undertake the Ordeal of training,) a romantic notion of “the difference she’ll make,” how she will “save” others from the trauma she lived through, or whatever it is. In many cases, perhaps all cases, it is the wounded part of us in search of our own healing and understanding that undertakes the hero’s journey (in the name of helping or saving others). During our training, we also call on the Adaptive Child part of us because that part makes a “good student,” who gets all the assignments done, checks off the lists, gets our evaluations in…. almost on time anyway.

If we, as a culture, are to truly begin mentoring and initiating our Birth Peeps, we must understand deeply that every Birth Peep (and parent) begins this initiation-journey in her Child, and if she is mentored and guided to do her personal work, she has a chance of completing a (holistic) course in her Huntress-Love Warrior--and beginning her service to parents from a more intact, whole, centered place--not in her wounded, orphaned, exhausted, rebellious Child.

Consider that in our birth culture, many of our Birth Peeps (from doulas to doctors) complete training and immediately enter their professional work in a state of double wounding (the unhealed wounding that Called them plus the unhealed wounding from a course that demanded much of them but did not guide their personal growth). Because of the emotional, physical, and psychic demands of working in hospitals and clinics—which in the West rarely has any Mercy or personal growth support program in place for its worker-bees--it is almost certain that the already tender inner-Child of the new birth peep is destined to experience a triple wounding.

In the West, Birth Peep training is top heavy: we value, and therefore focus primarily on, “evidence-based” material, techniques, performance evaluations and outcomes, and being objective (i.e., impersonal, professional, in-service to the client or corporation—but not in-service to ourselves).

And yet, the real work in birth is holistic. The real work requires heart, soul, ego-strength, and a personal recapitulation (self-awareness) process to evolve spiritually and emotionally with the work, and not be perpetually exhausted, wounded, and slowly dismembered by it.

The image I want to leave you with today is this:
For birth to really change in our culture, Birth Peep training, certification and/or re-certification must welcome the Child and deliberately nurture, grow, and mature the Huntress-Warrior-Healer. The "Ones Who Know"(i.e., the Sage Fools who have made the Return themselves) must answer the Call to "heal the healers," not only in training but throughout the Birth Peep’s career.

Tomorrow we will continue Change #14

In-Love,
Pam

Copyright © December 2010, Pam England. This material cannot be reproduced without written permission.