Woman to woman relationships

Having a baby is one of those times when we really need other women. We need their support, love,  kindness and courage. What we don't need is their shame, guilt, worry and criticisms. In my faith it is said that the older women should teach younger women. This is the reachable ideal.

But for a few times in life my own  experience with women in my life has been anything but good and rarely kind. Frankly women still are a bit frightening and I am pushing 50. My mother and I were rivals and not close until I had my own children. My sister and I have spend years not speaking until we have gotten older and maybe wiser. I have had friends that when I made mistakes or changed we were no longer friends. This has all been painful and often I have wanted to build a strong wall of defense so it would never happen again.

Inspite of this I have an wonderful relationships with my daughters and are embarking on one with a grand daughter. I have the privilege of helping many women in that most open of places in a woman's life, pregnancy and birth.  I have had to evaluate and change myself at every step of the way in order for this to happen.

The woman that served in my births drove hours to get to my house in an illegal atmosphere and charged very little to sit with me through pre-labors and hours of labor. She didn't complain when she had to go home when the labor stopped and came whenever I called. She was a woman there for me in my time of need. There were things in my labors, knowing what I know now, maybe I would change and leave alone but I hesitate to bring them up because I was not left alone.

There are many reasons that women help women. Not all of them are nobel, kind or wanted. There are those that control, abuse, take over, stifle growth and all sorts of nastiness in the name of help.  There is a kind of woman that helps a woman to death. Takes over decisions, hovers and treats one like a fool. There is a kind of women that shares, encourages, empowers and loves to help other women with a desire to see a woman grow beyond her help.

Midwifery and motherhood holds a kind of power to bring women into right relationship with each other. It also has the ability to stifle growth and hurt women so badly that it can take them years, if ever, to recover and be able to reach out again.

Our bonds of being women with women have been almost thread bare in the lives of many of us. Many have given up and don't even try anymore. We are wary of each other often with good reason as we have been attacked when we were most vulnerable we needed the hands of those other strong women and it wasn't there.

How we are is how we are. If we are not kind we are not kind. If we help we help. We cannot pick and choose the who of it only the what. What this means is that if we are not kind to that woman, any woman, we aren't going to have the ability to be truly kind to the woman in labor. It is not going to happen. We aren't tigers one day and bunnies the next.

Back to the ideal. Women being there for each other in order that we can teach, learn, share, cry, birth, yell, have a fit, love without shame in front of each other in all walks of our lives.

Relationships with women is not going to be easy we are seasonal creatures and we change often through the month, the seasons and our lives. This is beautiful. There can be stability in change. The strong spirit that was put within us, this is the nurturer that is needed for life.

Women nurturing each other in pregnancy

The other day I had an amazing thing happen. I was driving with another midwife and I received a call that a dear friend had died. I was in shock. This friend reached out a touched my arm and told me how sorry she was.  I was undone. In that moment I realized how little of that I have received in my life and how much I needed it. A few days before I was at a birth and had helped a mom reposition, her hip was killing her. You know the spot if you have had a baby. I began rubbing it as she sighed in relief. Then she looked at me and said "how did you know where to rub, that was just the right spot" a few minutes later she let me catch her baby. I touched a woman in her need and I needed that too.