“Do I want to be well?”
What does it mean to choose a life in service to women as a midwife, and not identify with the persecution and suffering of the ones that have come before? What is a midwife without burn out, without fear, without poverty, uncontrollable? What is a woman inviolable? She is in her Nature. That is something I am sure of, though realizing it is the work of weeding an ancient garden; you know the rose is in there somewhere, but the vines and brambles are generations deep.
“Do I want to be well?” Wanting to be well would require me to forget myself as a victim. It requires me to forgive the past and take accountability for the present. To actually be here now, be with what is. It requires me to exercise my power. Do I want to be that powerful? Do I want that much accountability for my own life and the lives around me? Do I want the weight of agency? Am I prepared to enter into the subtle dance that takes place between creator and created? Am I able to let go of my identity as one or the other? Can I handle the paradox of sovereignty; that to be sovereign is to be crowned by a higher power?
One stream I am swimming up right now is that for midwives, the struggle to be payed a living wage for our work is real. Capitalism has done a really good job undermining the value of the care professions, of women’s work. So much so that many of us don’t feel that the 100+ hours we spend with each family preparing for and recovering from birth are worth being payed for. When you break down the numbers for output and input in a midwifery practice, you might as well count the birth itself as a free service. And the only outlet for midwives who are prepared to honor their profession, value and skill is to ask more of families. For the burden to be laid at the feet of the new family is so grossly typical of our individualistic, industrialized culture that most midwives don’t want to participate in it. We would rather attend you for free than make that burden yours. We are up close and personal to the numberless ways the burden of a sick society falls on women and children and don’t want to be perpetuators.
The stereotypical midwife suffers through this drain on her life force, shows up more and more to make up for the internalized “not enoughness” proves the “man” wrong about her weakness and insufficiency by driving herself straight into the sludge of burn out and broken relationships. I see this and I don’t want it for myself. I also feel how well rutted is the path of martyr. How fresh and wild is the alternative.
I am asking myself “do I want to be well?” Can I forgive the old stories, can I forget everything I thought I knew about this path? Can I make my miracle, a dance with God and Grace and Guidance, a Golden thread through the brambles, a path of abundance and dignity for the midwife?
