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Twenty-two years ago, I bought a copy of Spiritual Midwifery at the original Big Carrot, a small wooden floored health food store on the south side of the Danforth. The book was filled with pictures of long haired hippies and accounts of their birth stories. It blew my mind. When I finished it, I knew that someday I wanted to give birth at home with midwives. Two years later, I did. Ina May’s presence in my life has continued. My midwife, Mary Sharpe, is friends with her, and Isabel Perez, my back-up over the last eighteen years, trained as a midwife with her and worked with her for four years before coming to Toronto. When I was just beginning to attend births, Isabel and I drove down to Tennessee in a van filled with midwives and midwifery students to take part in a conference that was hosted by Ina May and the Farm. I learned a ton and felt like I had had a little taste of living American history.
Isabel and I did a much easier drive to Ottawa a couple of years ago to hear Ina May speak at another conference. There was a whole new generation of young women with their men there, some of whom had yet to have babies. Ina May was able to connect with them and they with her. It’s a very inspiring bridging of the generations and one that is essential to the continued transmission of feminine knowledge and wisdom. As I have gotten older and my daughter has become a woman, I am more aware that we all need to keep passing on what we know. We all have a responsibility to be teachers.
Ina May has a wonderful sense of humour and a very down to earth and crystal clear way of communicating. She hasn’t been in Toronto in many years so this is a rare opportunity to hear her speak. With Isabel Perez, Lisa Caron and Lisa Doran have organized this event. They are doulas and mothers and healers and writers and they are doing a wonderful job of passing the wisdom on.
I am very moved to be part of this book. It is a collective creation about birth written from a doula’s perspective. It will be going to press soon!
As doulas, we have an intimate experience of love in the purest sense of the word. Love as the force that brings us here and binds us as one. We bear witness to this force and to the obstacles that are put in her way. Our way. Life’s way.
Fellow doulas Lisa Doran and Lisa Caron edited and authored and nurtured this work. More details to follow!
Heart of Birth 