The beginning of my story of feminine embodiment and relationship to my womb might sound familiar. Like most young girls growing up in our times I received no education in connecting to my cycle, my fertility and its power. When my first bleed came I was not initiated into a wisdom tradition of any spiritual relationship to my womb and my newly cyclical body. My womb's own voice was drowned out by all of the cultural transmissions I did receive, about the necessity to keep my bleed and cyclical inner life a secret, especially from boys, lest I be labeled something so horrible as “hormonal.”  When I became sexually active I had an IUD placed because I wanted to be able to have unworried sex with my boyfriend. As most women/girls do, I lost my bleed and any (at least apparent) cycle. Three years later it was time to have my IUD removed, I was in college in California and had already been drawn to a strong developing sense of spirituality. At the time my spiritual life lived mostly in the air - the faculties of the mind, and what parts of us are beyond the physical body. I was guided by mental learning and the incredible sacred power of psychedelic plant medicine. The day my IUD was removed was the first time I heard the voice of my womb and I knew in some significant but distant way that much of my spiritual life would reside within the body. I became enthralled by the beauty and complexity of my cycle and all the ways I changed through it. It was deeply intuitive to me to honor my bleeding time and to be present with my blood- I was even drinking it at the time!

 

In this era in college, through my explicit education as well as my frequent psychedelic journeying, I came to understand the many layers of human violence and how much more could be possible for us. Thus I had begun deeply sitting with the question-  How do we change the world? I came to an answer for my contribution through reading a feminist history book, “The Serpent and The Goddess”, the beginning…BIRTH. If the first moments of life happened in a wild, embodied and peaceful way then perhaps the whole world could be different. 

 

When I graduated from college I began to pursue this calling. I studied to be a childbirth educator and doula with Birthing from Within and haven’t stopped studying the wonders of the womb since. That was in 2020 so it was sometime before it became possible for me to actually attend births. Many things coalesced around the first birth I ever attended. My now husband and I had just a few weeks before taken a massive leap of faith. We had moved into a new space with the intention of starting a small experimental intentional community, complete with supportive relational living and a big garden growing all of our plant foods and medicine. And, I was unexpectedly pregnant. Bouncing on the moms birth ball and watching in amazement as she labored in the birth tub, I felt the littlest spark. It was just 10 or so days from conception, likely the little life was not yet even nestled into the wall of my womb. 

 

This is all a story of great depth and meaning, that I’m working to do justice to over on my substack. But here what I’ll say is that forces far beyond myself were leading my husband and me. We decided to consciously release the pregnancy, that it wasn’t our time to walk fully through the transformational gates into parenthood. That experience of deeply conscious at home abortion and subsequent postpartum was itself deeply transformative to me. I learned so much about birth and what I needed to be to support women through this amazing rite of passage. I continued to attend births as a doula and simultaneously I was being continuously initiated by what had moved through my own womb. Over years, and still now in ways, the purpose and the alchemy of the abortion was unfolding. My husband and I were healing lineage patterns that could have been the imprint of our line together and we had received the gift that it did not have to be. My relationship with my lineage and my body expanded into many new areas of healing and I began to deeply prepare for motherhood. 

As for the births- attending births within the medical system, often in hospitals, was both soul fulfilling and heartbreaking. The magic of birth in some ways was untouched and I was able to be deeply present with the lessons that Birth bestows. With the help of my education from Birthing from Within I was able to connect profoundly to the psychospiritual layers of walking into the mystery and uncontrollable power of the childbearing process and found that its mystical curriculum applies to all the experiences of womanhood I've had and really to spiritual health overall. It struck me as deeply true what I had thought when I knew very little about birth- that in fact, it is a central aspect of our humanity and respecting its wild nature would bring us far-reaching healing. 

 

Simultaneously though in the context I was walking with women birthing I  was witnessing things that were deeply wrong. The frequency to which births unfolded in ways that included interventions that were both undesired by the mother and unnecessary as I understood it medically was shocking. I wanted so much more for the mothers. Eventually, I found an amazing traditional midwife to attend births with as her assistant and student.  And finally I was getting to witness birth as I knew that it could be. The mothers in full animal intelligence and the care providers protecting the process as it unfolded. Remarkably (and obviously) a very low percentage of these mothers needed interventions of any kind. I am so grateful  to have received this embodied comprehension of what birth can be and the beginning of my midwifery education which I intend to return to later in life; and, I am so grateful to have come into intimate contact with these incredibly wise mothers who had found paths toward inspiring healthful births. 

 

My husband and I decided to move from our little community in California, back towards our homelands of the east coast and we are circling in on calling in our first child.  With all this change came a calling to shift the focus of my work. It occurred to me that the last years have prepared me in a special way to provide powerful counsel to maidens- especially those who know they see motherhood in their not so distant future. The flow of my path has stretched out my initiation into motherhood, I have walked through the first gate into pregnancy and decided not yet to continue to the next, out of pregnancy and into motherhood. Yet all this while I have been sitting at the altar of and studying motherhood, postpartum, birth- what’s ahead for me as a maiden. I’ve come into contact with secrets of how these phases are related to each other and theories on who the “healthy maiden” really is, both for herself and for her community. There is untapped magic and juiciness to the maiden phase itself AND what is present in it directly impacts how one's transition to motherhood will occur. Which brings me back to that original sparkling purpose, the desire to bring more health to our species by supporting women to birth in vital, flowing, conscious, human animal power. The foundation of those births is laid years before and thus the work ought to begin with the maidens, just as it has for me!  

 

I am so excited to experience the next fruits of these years of insights in my own life as I soon take on the unknown path into conscious conception and pregnancy. I pray that the unfolding of my work continues into evermore clarity of heart and reverence of the mysteries it surrounds. Thank you for reading my story! If something inspired you, reach out!I hope our paths may cross and that their weaving may bring healing to you and our sacred world.