A Return to the Village

Imagine you’re not one of those women who has spent her whole life dreaming she’d become a mother. Imagine you enter into your first pregnancy while living hundreds of miles away from your family, in the middle of the most challenging year of your life. Imagine feeling that there could not be a worse time to get pregnant, having just made a significant career change one week prior to taking a pregnancy test and incredulously reading the “positive” result. Imagine not feeling entirely positive about that positive, despite being a healthy and fully functional 31-year-old in a loving and supportive partnership, with abundant resources at your disposal. Imagine spending a full 24 hours trying to decide whether to keep the baby, only to realize that trying to make that decision was like trying to decide whether to continue breathing air, then cautiously settling into the nine months ahead like settling into an airplane seat with the awareness that this could be a bumpy ride. This was my experience of entering into pregnancy and motherhood, and just one example of the many nuanced and multi-faceted ways that someone enters into this most mysterious and most organic transformation of their lifetime.

 

Regardless of how we find ourselves pregnant—whether through the extensive, rigorous process of in vitro fertilization, or entirely by accident, blindsided by it—there is so much commonality between what we need to get us through it. Support. Love. Nourishment for the body and the soul. Empowerment. Knowledge. Guidance. For me, the easiest way to consolidate and summarize these needs is: a return to the village. When I was exploring why I sometimes felt so ungrounded and lost during my pregnancy, I realized that I was missing the feeling of being surrounded by a community of elders and other women who had been through this overwhelming experience and could both literally and figuratively hold my hand through it. My aunts and female cousins were in Austria, my mom was in Pennsylvania, and my best friend was in New Orleans. When I asked my midwives if they knew of any pregnancy support groups they said the only thing they knew of was prenatal yoga. I was already going, but the 30-second check-ins at the beginning of class weren’t enough for me. I was craving something deeper, a circle of women, a space to show up fully in my rawness, my vulnerability, my uncertainty.Birth Love Family is the foreseeable village so many of us are longing for, in pregnancy and way beyond into the reaches of motherhood, which lasts for the rest of our lives once we bring children into the world. Becoming a family starts in pregnancy and birth and immerses the parent(s) into a constantly evolving and changing process. There is nothing that could possibly be more centered in love, and more enhanced by community support. Because so many of us are finding ourselves living in environments that are far from a village of elders who have been through it (or even other friends who can relate!) there is a significant missing link in the process of growing and raising healthy, happy humans. Women’s circles set to the phases of the moon, mental and physical health resources, speakers, retreats, and festivals are just some of the offerings available to those setting out on the journey towards more fulfilling expressions of parenthood and family life. By plugging into the Birth Love Family community, and the abundant resources available here, new families are able to lay the foundation for thriving together, for the benefit of all!