“If I had to do it again, I would invite more of an atmosphere of accompaniment and camaraderie around me. I would call upon confident women to put their arms around me and rock me and clap hands and GROWL and make me laugh down the fear. Though it was the most painful thing I’ve ever experienced, I do NOT regret giving birth naturally.
One of the downfalls of our excessively comfortable society is the idea that pain is a bad thing to be avoided at all costs. We have built great pharmaceutical empires bent on masking, subduing and eradicating pain, even emotional pain, from our lives. We are taught to view pain as an ENEMY, not a teacher. But pain is the right hand of growth and transformation. Pain is in the history of all human wisdom. The pains associated with menstruation and childbirth, even the emotional pain, are the price of having agency with the bloody, pulsing, volcanic divinity of creation, and they lie at the core of feminine WISDOM.”
-Excerpt from Ina Mae Gaskin’s “Birth Matters: A Midwife’s Manifesta” [added emphasis]
Aztec “Mother of the Gods”, Tlazolteotl, giving birth
Found via http://reclaimingthedarkgoddess.blogspot.com/2010_06_01_archive.html
