Coming Full Circle

Have you ever felt that you were on a secret journey, a path that was planned well in advance without your awareness and choosing?  Somewhere along the way you seem to stumble upon that road, sometimes it is straight at places, sometimes it takes sharp bends and curves, sometimes it is bumpy, sometimes smooth.  That has been my journey.

Caregiving, healing, nursing has been a part of my life story since early childhood.  It is a hard path to be on as you constantly risk losing yourself and expending all your life energy pouring yourself out to others.  Healer, heal thyself.  So important to remember.

I knew I wanted to be a midwife when I was in my early twenties.  My undergraduate nutrition work kept bringing me back around again and again to where health starts for any individual, at conception, in the womb, in the early formative years.  The groundwork is layed.  The cellular coding and memory are embedded.  The call of the midwife whispered ever so gently at that time.  My young, confused, searching soul did not listen.  I had more to learn yet.  So, I went on to graduate school focusing my energy on the early work of those pioneering the field of maternal-infant attachment.  I felt on a deep internal level that touch was the foundation for all learning.  I became a certified infant massage instructor at that time and met some amazing women in public health nursing.  They left a huge impression on my psyche.  More time passed and I plunged into an assistant position with a local midwife.  Birth.  The rhythm and sway of a woman as her body brings forth new life.  More impressions left on my psyche.  Then my own two precious babies were born from my body, in my bed, into my heart.

I also journeyed on various spiritual paths.  I spent many years amongst the Swinomish of the North Coastal Indians.  I became attuned with the lifegiving sustenance of the cedar, the salmon, the eagle.  The Red Cedar Circles that I participated in taught me the stories of these peoples, their history.  I learned through the sound of the drum and the chant of their song of their journey from living on the land to being torn from the land as youth and brought to missionary homes where their names and language and clothing and beautiful, sleek, long, jet-black hair was ripped from them.  Then, how they were returned to their land, stripped of identity, lost, confused, not knowing which world they really belonged to.  It can all be heard in the drum and the song.  It tells the story.  The drum.  The heart beat of Mother Earth.  Johnny Moses and Fred Jamison, cousins, shaman, healers. 

A naming ceremony was held for my oldest daughter on our land in the Upper Skagit when she was an infant.  Drumming, chanting, a blessing way was given by Fred Jamison.  She was named in the Swinomish tradition.  Potlatches that I was privileged to attend, private, ancestral exchanges that have continued for thousands of years up and down the Puget Sound coast and through the Northern Passage of Canada.  All these peoples are of one People.  Their potlatches would last for days, weeks.  Gifts were exchanged, one chief trying to outdo another.  Much honor.  Much pride.  A coming-of-age naming ceremony where a youth is given the name of an ancestor to keep that ancestor's spirit alive in the tribe.  And, then, the longhouse with it's low-ceiling cedar structure.  Hot, burning cedar fire, drumming, chanting, like being in the womb of Mother Earth.  Trance-like.  I have been privileged to be a part of all of these as a white woman amongst brown faces.  Privileged.  Honored.  Blessed.

Many of us become very practical in our thirties.  The work of the adult is to be productive, to be generative.  Many find their productivity developed in the work place and growing a family.  So it was for me over the next 15 years.  As I nourished my babies at my breast, cradled them in my arms, carried them on my back, slept with them snuggled against my body, watched them emerge as distinct and unique individuals, I grew.  I grew in my wonder of this cycle of life.  I surrounded myself with other women who shared my love of parenting that is aligned with our human biology.  I learned from them.  My sisters.  My teachers. 

Eventually, our children grow.  The mate that we chose to give us children may or may not be the one to see us into the span of the next part of our journey.  In my case, this was not to be.  I chose an individual who carried with him the legacy of my abusive childhood.  I changed that life story to some degree through my life course, but not enough.  Healer, heal thyself.  Those thoughts kept echoing though my mind and heart.  Caregiving can become toxic.  And so it had.

A woman goes through various phases of her life.  I am at one of those major junctions in the road.  Reclaiming my personal strength and power, I have struck out on my own as my children have needed me less and less.  I am coming full circle.  I have returned to reclaim pieces of me that I left behind.  I am a teacher, I am nurse, I am a midwife.  Once again, I was privileged to study at the feet of Diana Moore, infant massage instructor and infant mental health specialist, my same mentor and trainer 20 years prior.  So, too, I have been blessed to once again study at the feet of Penny Simkin and pleased to benefit from all the work she has accomplished over the past two decades.  Again, my work with Toni Weschler has come full circle as well as I work with women who are trying to conceive at a time when conception is severely threatened.

And, now, my early roots amongst the natives of the Northwest is coming full circle.  While raising my daughters, I embraced Christianity, as manifested in the most ancient expression of that Faith, walking in the footsteps of Christ and his early followers, modeling First Century teachings.  I have given my daughters a strong, moral foundation in the Truth of God's word.  I have reparented myself through it's healing balm.  And, I have made numerous treks down to the Southwest over these past two decades to witness the marriage of my Christian faith amongst the Navajo people.  Full circle.  It is time.  It is where I am meant to be.

And, so, a merging of my outward life with my inner life, my life work with my spiritual foundation.  Do you believe in serendipity?  Do you believe there is a pre-destined purpose to our existence?  That all of our life experiences are part of a bigger plan?  Do you believe we all have a life calling?  I am beginning to.