I'm overwhelmed.
The blessing that came my way today is my sign, really the culmination of the task I've had at hand- pave way and open space for the gifts of the universe to unwrap themselves for me. Over the past year I've had two major break ups (three if you count a business partner), I moved out of my first home, quit (and got fired from) a few jobs, stopped taking classes, and opened my heart. I surrendered my sense of control, of beating my life into submission, and learned to just be.
You know what happened? Pregnant moms started to call on me.
The Goddess (or who/whatever you will) made it unmistakably clear that serving the rite of birth is what I'm supposed to be doing.
People often wonder how I got into birth in the first place. Well, my interest in women's health happened on accident- I went to Plan-It X Fest in 2006 where there was a workshop on self cervical exams put on by DC's Down There Health Collective. I was blown away. I went home from Bloomington with an arm full of zines, including Alicia non Grata's Take Back Yr Life and Hot Pantz. That was how I first was introduced to herbs, the idea of inducing your own miscarriage, and not using tampons anymore. I was 18 and it felt good to be a woman.
When I moved to Denver, I had no inhibitions about teaching a free school class (if these ladies could do it, so could I!) So for six months every week I taught a class called Positive Menstruation. It was wonderful. It resulted in the safest space I had ever been in, a lovely fluidity of topics from feminist spirituality to anatomy and physiology. We talked so much about how not to get pregnant using the Fertility Awareness Method that it didn't occur to me (at age 20) that birth was part of this circle I was a part of. I first learned what a doula was through my tribe of women there but I didn't feel called to that until I was pregnant myself.
All the while, in the back of my head, through births, talking with women about their most intimate details, getting emails asking me questions from what kind of vibrator to get to difficulties with arousal and heavy menstrual flow, receiving phone calls from women in crisis, and seeing a clear need for holistic, understanding, compassionate health care for women and their allies, I've had a dream of what my practice would look like. How can I best serve people? I need somewhere that people (women, genderqueers, and men) can come for workshops, to buy supplies, to receive consultations and services such as screenings and pregnancy tests. I need somewhere to teach natural birth control, childbirth education, and herbal intensives. And by somewhere I really have thought "something". I just want this dream to turn into a thing. To manifest. I don't know if as my business, as a non-profit, or as a collective. I just know that this is what I want to pour myself into and that there is a need for it.
Today I was given a space for it.
I have access to two beautiful yoga studios, plenty of storage space for educational materials and medical supplies, and the potential (if we grow) to move into an office space of my very own- one that I could see my clients in, do treatments in... It's in a beautiful house which held a Buddhist temple there for the past several years. The woman that owns it wants to see this happen (almost) as badly as I do. I can't believe it. I have to believe it.
So now the pressure is on. If I don't make it happen, some karmic apocalypse will have me for dinner. Lots of decisions to make, lots of energy to give to the design of this project.
I need help.
