dilated peoples

a love story.

I am constantly in awe.  I think of the cells that come together and the microcosm inside of me that exists in a constant hum – life buzzing to make up this body…and then recognizing my own being as a microcosm, a part of something larger, something infinite: a collective.  And I, in my entirety, am simply a humming element as well.

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The science feeds the romance. 

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And a co-mingling occurs as my curiosity and adoration leads me to a place were evidence and intuition hold merit.

birth.

It is a constant play between the seeking and the knowing, the wonder and the being, the calculations and the mystery.  I have a deep respect for different perspectives when it comes to birth.  In this intimate space where culture, science, and spirituality often play together and influence the care received by its participants (mainly mother and baby), there are so many variables to consider…and we are not stagnant objects.  In the space that is birth, which seems to me to be most miraculous and yet most normal, dichotomies evaporate.  Intellect and intuition converse in a dialogue without the need for power struggle.

For me it is so easy to get caught up in the equation and the critique.  Like learning a secret code, there is this feeling of importance.  I am transformed into a know-it-all five-year-old stuck on her small perspective, because I can wrap my hands around it –and possess it in a way.  But then I am reminded in a gentle (and sometimes not so gentle) way that the more I know, the less I know. 

Even our interventions as care providers are sometimes arbitrarily executed, cloaked in science, but in fact are not scientifically rooted by best evidence.  If we intervene in the name of science, I believe best evidence should support our actions. 

And so I continue to read, attend conferences, and listen.  My goal is to support women in the best way I know how…mostly by just recognizing in them the strength they have at their most powerful and most vulnerable state of being.