From God Sib to Gossip

I want to share a story with you, shared with me by Rachel Reed in her book Childbirth as a Rite of Passage.

In contemporary vernacular a “gossip” is someone, usually female, who talks openly and callously behind the back of their friends or acquaintances, taking pleasure in their pain, controversy or hardships and sharing freely what ought to be kept close to the heart.

What I learned from Rachel Reed, it that “gossip” is a shortening of the phrase “god sibling.” In the 1700’s in Western Europe the term “god sib” was used to refer to the women that would attend births in groups. They would accompany the labor and birth and visit regularly afterward, taking care of the household as the mothers rested with the new baby. These women would have been the relatives, family friends and wise women of the village.

Birthing was women’s domain in this time, and one of very few places women were let alone to practice their medicine and enjoy each other’s company with relative freedom. Rachel describes how the writing of the time reflects that these women would not only care for the pragmatic, they would celebrate! They would party and laugh and take joy in the new life and the mother when she was well. They would take over household tasks on her behalf, changing the atmosphere of the home for some weeks or months into a more collective environment. God sibs are the western European keepers of traditional postpartum care.

So what happened to them? How from god siblings do we end up with gossips of modernity? How do we end up home for weeks of early postpartum isolation, with a visit here or there and no one to feed us, touch us, cry with us, feed us, bathe us and teach us? Well, no big surprises here, the male church patriarchy did’t much like the idea of women behind closed doors, celebrating, sharing their lives- no doubt casting devilish spells while they were at it! Seriously, though, the church outlawed the practice. Out lawed the care for women by women and the slander campaign on god siblings lives on in the word gossip today.

I think this story has a lot to do not only with postpartum care, providing us proof that women of European descent do have a tradition to turn to, buried and obscured as it may be, but also this story has to do with women. It helps us to see how the hurt that was done to our ancestors lives on through us when we embody the archetypes that were never true to women, but imposed upon us in order to control and separate us. It helps us to see that the fear and competition we live through among ourselves as women in this culture is a story literally burned into our psyche- burned at the stake, burning in the wrongness of a lonely birthing room, a postpartum alone.

Knowing this story gives me strength. It sharpens my edges a bit, not to harm or blame or shame, but to protect what my heart knows is true, to prune the vines that have a strangle hold on my easy, open, natural love for my fellow woman. This is the part of me that knows that the struggle that women experience with their bleed, with their mothering, with their eldering through menopause, isn’t “just the way it is” or some curse for our original sin. No, the struggle is the absence of our togetherness, it is proof of a successful campaign to cripple women.

I am strengthened because with stories like this, I am nourished for the return. Return to birth room, the apothecary, the menarche ritual, the sexual arts, the celebration, the sisterhood.