Quotes, stories, poetry and art to inspire your birth experience.
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“Birth is the sudden opening of a window, through which you look out upon a stupendous prospect. For what has happened? A miracle. You have exchanged nothing for the possibility of everything.”
– William MacNeile Dixon
“In every newborn child God reveals Himself”
Indian saying
Thank you Sa and Paul and Rasika.
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Birth is as safe as life gets.
Harriet Hartigan
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“Out beyond the idea of
wrong doing and right doing
there is a field
I’ll meet you there.”
~Rumi
Thank you Hillary.
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untitled
by Jennifer Bardsley
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Bella’s Birth
I close my eyes, remembering….
Now I feel the protective aura of light, see the brilliance of saturated colors and every detail in focus: his encouraging blue eyes with smile lines in the corners, the massive cottonwood out the window, sweet laughter from Katy drifting to my consciousness, the way the little dust fairies float through the sunlight. Without doubt, fear, pain, held in the arms of God.
But I see beyond my eyes too~gifted for a few moments with second sight. I can see, or is it feel? my little one, small, sleepy, waking now, determined, surrounded with a red glow and a strong pulsing of life. The sunlight is finding its way through my bare belly, warming us both to the soul. Soon, she tells me. Yes, soon, I agree smiling.
But I don’t want to skip to that next moment, that rush through my body, forcing her to leave, forcing us to separate. I could live forever in this moment, the tree, the light, the laughter, God holding us both only one, encircled beyond the boundaries of linear time. Swallowing tears even now, longing for that sublime perfection.
Monday morning, September 14, 1998
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Sometimes being a doula means simply bearing witness.
From Rumi
Flowers open every night
across the sky as the peace
of keeping a vigil
kindles the emptiness.
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“Mother”
by Jennifer Bardsley
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(Edouard Debat-Ponsan)
(Mary Cassat)
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For Lucy: She Lived in Hadar, Ethiopia
3.75 million years ago / Great Mother of Us All
For Lake Turkana in Kenya / where it all began?
The fat face of the moon swollen with sorrow
Sends her regrets; licking the surface of the river,
she separates salt from sand, mist from fogeat the tension in each. I come, walking
between the waves balancing my genes,
my atoms, resisting the moon’s advances.I will you a tear surrender to the sacred
Sun all else, cunning night cannot hold me
In the dark cradle of his journey.The fat face of the moon, pregnant
with reason, smiles through a thicket of glaciers
while this belly (this belly?) impersonates history.Where are you, Lucy? come,
dance with me, once last dance,
Lucy before the sun swallows you And I must flow with the mist
Add the residue of my tears my tongue
To this most ancient of waters This river creeps between the barnacles of my smile,
This river pierces my fresh ploughed fallows,This fickle carcass, supple, constant
Lug history in the shifting tracks of her borders.
Nomadic one vanquish me in the hard perfection of your shadow,Mighty one you flex and the captured moon quakes
Great mother of us all protect these bones
Testament to your grave arrangements Tell me, where are you from?
(sing) take me to the water Where are you from?
(sing) take me to the water Where are YOU from?
(sing) take me to the water to be baptizedRemembering my birth.
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