I want you to meet one of the many exceptional guest teachers in the Ecstatic Birth Practitioner Training, Sokhna Heathyre Mabin.
A leading edge visionary of sacred fertility and creativity, Sokhna is a woman who stands for all women, for mothers, for babies, for LIFE.
As a doula of color, and one developing doula programs for her community, Sokhna intimately understands the challenges black women face in the birthing room and what long term solutions look like, solutions that include:
What an incredible time to be ALIVE!
To be in our collective Re-Birth.. contraction by contraction.
As we birth, the intensity is real:
Our collective heartbreak at hearing yet another black life lost to police brutality,
The waves of anger and rage at a culture that perpetuates the disempowerment,
The sensations of guilt and self-loathing at our own complicity, &
Grounding into commitments to do better, individually and collectively.
I can see these expansive pieces beginning to emerge… in myself, in our community, in society at large.
I’m getting a little tired of all this talk about how we can survive the pandemic. How about you?
Yes, survival is a basic requirement to live but I don’t want to live to just survive. I want to live to THRIVE.
The desire to THRIVE is full of implicit privilege when many people are struggling to survive. This has always been true, even in our pre-covid19 reality.
Feeling guilty about our privilege serves no one. Keeping ourselves stuck in survival mode serves no one.
I believe it is our RESPONSIBILITY to thrive and use our privilege and responsibility to create the change we want to see in the world, to bring our gifts to our children, communities and clients.
The low bar of SURVIVAL has governed our medical system in relation to childbirth for too long. Ironically, all the interventions designed to help us survive actually create WORSE outcomes, not better, when they are overused.
The women who are raising the next generation of humanity deserve better… they deserve a system that holds a higher bar, one that allows them to THRIVE.
That is not greedy or selfish or unrealistic… quite the opposite. What no one is talking about is that the very conditions that allow a birthing mom to thrive address and TRANSCEND survival.
We are deep in labor now… no one really knows how long it will last, how intense the contractions will really get, and what will be birthed through this all.
So what can we do now?
Option A: Check out.
This may work, but the agitation is still there… underneath the numbness. We may find temporary relief, but then what? From my experience, it will continue to arise with greater and greater volume until it deafens everything else in an effort to be heard… not fun.
Option B: Connect.
In Ecstatic Birth, connection is the heart of everything… preparing, laboring, accessing our deepest most primal feminine wisdom. It is through deep connection and presence that we can access unparalleled levels of Ecstasy even in our most challenging moments. I choose B.
