Advent: Becoming More Human

jesus placenta

Like so much of female experience, the Christmas story was sanitized for me growing up. There were no bloody rags in our nativity scene, no ancient near-east chucks pads, no entrails of Jesus’ placenta, no milky nursing shirts of Mary’s… just a shiny, clean and often strangely Nordic looking baby Jesus, Mary (fully clothed) and Joseph. Where were the midwives?

My parents did a beautiful job integrating the Jesus story into our family Christmases growing up. They’d make a birthday cake for baby Jesus and recreate the nativity story using our stuffed animals at the foot of our Christmas tree. I am sure that I participated in some Nativity plays growing up, though the memories have since faded. And looking back with what I know now, I am sure there are valid critiques to be made of our celebrations, but I know they were pieced together with earnest hearts.

As a pentecostal, low church lady I never heard of Advent until my college years. Through an Evangelical Covenant church in Rhode Island I attended that featured an excitable young pastor who wove midrash readings of familiar texts and Bono references together, the frenetic Christmas productions of my youth were replaced with votive candles, a darkened sanctuary and four weeks of meditations on waiting. Waiting for the birth of Jesus and preparing our hearts for the gift of God made flesh. I cozied up to ideas, this “new” old thing, Advent, like my hands wrapped around a mug of cocoa.

I now work at a Catholic College and imagine my colleagues groaning at this low church spin off of the Church calendar that mainline Protestants and Catholics have faithfully kept from generation to generation, practicing great self-control in a consumeristic American culture to not have any Christmas decor in the sanctuary until Christmas Day itself. It reminds me of my years growing up in Austria, where it was not Santa who delivered the gifts, but the Christ Child. And Christmas trees weren’t hastily sawed down mere hours after wiping Thanksgiving dinner crumbs from the corners of our mouths, but with great giddiness and secrecy put up on Christmas Eve Day while fathers would take the children ice skating and mothers, in the great patriarchal dance, bustled their asses off to create Christmas magic by the time they returned.

Advent was an idea.

But when I first became pregnant in December of 2015, Advent became embodied.

advent in my body

We had planned to become pregnant a month later than we did, but my fumbling new knowledge of the Fertility Awareness Method brought Parker Simon’s embryo on swiftly, right before we left for a trip to Europe we had been saving up for for years. This was the trip where I would bring my husband across three countries to visit each school I attended and house I grew up in.

The nausea struck four days in, while visiting our friends in Vienna. My dreams of bottomless glasses of cheap and brilliant Austrian wine vanished and my nostalgia for all my favorite foods met the pall of the beige feeling of overwhelming nausea. By the time our Christmas Eve in Paris rolled around, I had completely forgot that it is essential to check if Air BnBs in France are smoking free and, of course, ours decidedly wasn’t. Our nights were filled with panicked googling of the effects of second hand smoke on an early pregnancy and the compounding nausea that resulted from our failed attempts to cover up the stale, yellow, smoke stench. Not quite the romp in the Parisian bedsheets I had been envisioning.

Did Mary experience this kind of nausea? Or worse yet, was she one of those blessed women cursed with the never-ending barfs of hyperemesis gravidarum?

We’re told that she visited Elizabeth who was six months along. Did Mary throw up the moment she got there? It would shine a new lights on the famed greeting:

41 When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the baby leaped in her womb, and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit. 42 In a loud voice she exclaimed: “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the child you will bear!

Kind of makes you feel like Elizabeth is that one friend who feeds you a lot of toxic positivity when you’re pregnant. “All that matters is a healthy baby!” “Oh, enjoy every moment.” EVERY. MOMENT. DAMNIT.

The sanitized nativity that I grew up with made this Jesus story far more divine than it was human. And yet we’re told he really did embody both.

As my pregnancy continued and I grew rounder and the nights became more unbearable, the crushing realization that I had made a decision there was no turning back from greeted me every day as I struggled to tie my own shoes.

God’s entrance into the world through a whole uterus, a whole pregnancy, a whole postpartum, confronts us with the reality of being human.

becoming more human

There’s so much we don’t know about Mary’s perspective on this whole thing. But what we do know is that she was an unwed, Brown, young woman in the shadows of an empire that literally was coming for her (see Herod’s decree to murder young boys in attempt to take her own son; the political battles and census driving her and Joseph to flee as refugees). We know now that they were Palestinian Jews. All this conveniently overlooked and untold in my white churches growing up.

What I am learning about Advent is also what I am learning about whiteness: that in an attempt to dominate, control and sanitize human existence and human stories, we (the oppressor and descendants of oppressors) have lost touch of actual humanity. Human capacity. Limits. Rest. And in our frenzy, we see that play out year after year.

Capitalism drives an overwhelming narrative beginning in late October to amass more and quickly and cheaply, being woefully disconnected from the vulnerable labor force behind our glutting pocketbooks. In a hubristic attempt to become like God: all seeing, all knowing, all powerful (see: history of slavery in the US, indigenous genocide, our military presence around the world), white folks become less and less in touch with our bodies— the bodies that God wanted, through this Advent, to baptize as sacred, meaningful, beautifully human.

That’s why I’m so passionate about pregnancy and birth, because it forces us to be distinctly embodied. Pregnant people can experience briefly what the most marginalized among us experience daily: we are forced to reckon with our human-ness. My houseless neighbors feel the cold crack of the pavement underneath them, sleeping. My Black neighbors move with a target on their melanated backs. My trans* neighbors experience heartbreaking dysphoria and perhaps restorative euphoria when they are able to transition. My undocumented neighbors move between systems and institutions in constant fear of their bodies being removed from their homes.

Indigenous theologian, Randy Woodley, challenges the Western religious notions of perfectionism, born of a Greek obsession with being without flaw. Instead, he proposes that perfection is about our role, living fully into the role that Creator God gave us, which is to be human (see Erna Kim Hackett’s Advent series posts for more on this).

Here’s what I’m learning this Advent about becoming more human:

• If my neighbors are not experiencing love from me, that reveals that I am not loving myself well. The two are intricately tied

• My body was built with real limitations: a need to hydrate, sleep, move and be nourished. When I ignore these cues, I experience death in my body and my relationships

• When I learn of the experience of those in marginalized bodies and we envision a world created with them in mind, it’s actually a world that is better for us all

• The invitation of Sabbath rest seems to have a lot to do with reminding us of our human role and God’s cosmic role and to know the difference

However you find yourself this Advent as we turn the corner to Christmastide, may you find the gift in a God who takes on flesh, who lived as vulnerably as teeny fresh babes do, and that your God-given limits are there to preserve a neighbor-loving humility in you and right relationship with self, with other and with Creation.

I’ll leave you with a poem that deeply moved me and that I’ll be sitting with during the twelve days of Christmas:

Go slow
if you can.
Slower.
More slowly still.
Friendly dark
or fearsome,
this is no place
to break your neck
by rushing,
by running,
by crashing into
what you cannot see.

Then again,
it is true:
different darks
have different tasks,
and if you
have arrived here unawares,
if you have come
in peril
or in pain,
this might be no place
you should dawdle.

I do not know
what these shadows
ask of you,
what they might hold
that means you good
or ill.
It is not for me
to reckon
whether you should linger
or you should leave.

But this is what
I can ask for you:

That in the darkness
there be a blessing.
That in the shadows
there be a welcome.
That in the night
you be encompassed
by the Love that knows
your name.

+Jan Richardson

Ezer Mom: I switched providers at 37 weeks pregnant

If you follow us on Instagram, you’ll know that we’ve been doing a deep dive in the differences between the midwifery model of care and the medical model of care for pregnancies in the USA. We discussed the merits of changing providers and what might lead you to do so for the best possible birth outcomes. You can find that information on our IG highlight “switch.” Beyond describing how you’d go about making the switch, I wanted you to hear it from a mother whose done it herself, and at 37 weeks pregnant, no less. Holleigh’s birth was one I graciously got to attend during my certifying process as an SMC Full Circle Doula. She wanted an unmedicated hospital birth but needed to switch providers at the very end of her pregnancy to see that happen. Here’s my interview with her:

Tell us about your pregnancy and how you found the first provider you went with: 

I was already with my first provider for about three years before becoming pregnant.  Each time I went in for prenatal check ups things looked good every time without any red flags or concerns throughout the pregnancy.  I found this first provider through a recommendation by a friend who went to that practice for yearly check ups (but had not yet experienced a pregnancy with them at the time).

What were some red flags about your prenatal experience that made you begin considering a switch?

A few months before this pregnancy, I lost my first baby around 12 weeks.  While talking with my provider after an appointment, I realized there was a significant miscommunication between the ultrasound scheduling and the doctor which was never clearly addressed or acknowledged.  Additionally, the bluntness and lack of professionalism or empathy with which we learned about our loss from the ultrasound technician was jarring.  

During this pregnancy, all the visits went well.  They were short but professional and informative.  Around 34 weeks I inquired about using a room at the hospital connected with the provider that I heard it was a good option for mothers hoping to have an unmedicated birth.  She informed me I have to have a midwife to use the room, and asked if I was hoping to have an unmedicated birth.  When I told her yes, her response communicated that she did not believe that could be a reality for me despite not having any complications, which was discouraging to say the least.  I knew in order to have the best shot at the birth I was hoping for I would need a team that was on board with me and supported me in what I wanted, and I wasn't confident I would have that with this provider.  It was my previous experience with this provider in combination with the hesitancy and lack of belief in my birth plan that made me consider a switch. 

How many weeks pregnant were you when you made the switch and tell us how you navigated it (were there phone calls to make? did you book an exploratory appt with the new provider? how did you choose who to switch to? how did you have the convo with your current provider about leaving?etc):

We made the switch at 37 weeks, but started the process of exploring other options at 34 weeks.  I heard of this new provider from two friends who both went through pregnancies and births with him and had great experiences.  After being encouraged by our doula to explore other options if we were considering it, I called the new provider shortly after the conversation about my birth plan.  We set up a time to meet the new doctor about 2 weeks later, at 36 weeks.  In the meantime, we scheduled a visit to the new hospital we would be delivering at if we did switch.  When we had the meeting with the new provider we talked about their values, what would or would not be different in terms of care if we did switch, and any questions we had.  After a week, we decided to switch and made an appointment with the new provider.  I called my current provider at the time and let them know about the decision, and it was a much easier and quicker conversation than I anticipated.  They transferred my files to my new provider and I started my appointments the next week.

What were some of the mental/emotional barriers to making the switch and how did you overcome them?

I was worried that it would be too late in the pregnancy to switch, or that somehow I had an obligation to continue with my doctor at the time, or they would be upset if I left.  I also was wondering if it would be more stressful to switch and easier to keep going where I was, and maybe plan to switch sometime after the birth. With encouragement from my partner and our doula, I decided to at least try and set up the necessary appointments to get all the information we would need in order to decide if we wanted to switch.  We had a good experience visiting the hospital and found out they have experience with moms with a similar birth plan to the one I had, which made me feel good about where I would deliver.  The meeting with the potential new provider went well also, and I appreciated his transparency in saying there probably wouldn't be a difference in quality of care, but in the culture of the hospital and practice.  Since it was really the culture and not the quality of care we had reservations about at the other provider, we ultimately decided that the new provider and the hospital would be a better fit for what we wanted.  My certainty in the process we used to make an informed decision, and the belief that this decision was best for us, gave me courage to overcome the barriers I had about leaving and starting at a new place so late in the pregnancy.

Were you happy with your choice to change providers? What was different about your experience with the new practice and how do you think that changed your birth outcome? 

Yes, I was very happy with my choice to change providers.  The experience with the new practice was more personal, more enjoyable, and overall more positive than the previous provider.  I do not think I would have been able to have the birth I wanted at the other hospital and with the other provider.  The new hospital seemed more familiar working with similarly minded moms and with a birthing team including a doula, and the nursing staff was great.  The new provider encouraged me to follow my birth plan, supported me throughout the laboring, and personally checked in the following days at the hospital.  When I needed to return the day after getting home we were able to reach the provider after hours and I was able to get in and out of the hospital.  I believe the birth outcome, being able to follow my birth plan, and the care afterward were due to the new practice and hospital.

How did your partner process this switch? Did they have reservations and how did you work through those as a team?

My partner supported the decision and encouraged me when I needed it in order to continue the process of gathering information.  He was also uncertain about if it would make the end of the pregnancy more or less stressful.  We both agreed it made sense to at least check it out, so that's what we did.  He came with me to the hospital tour and to meet the new provider.  We debriefed after each one and then both as a whole and discussed pros and cons.  He was an emotional support by going to the appointments with me and also a thought partner in the decision making process.  We decided on what we both felt most comfortable with.

What advice would you give to pregnant moms who are on the fence about changing their providers?

If you are even considering it, it is worth it to gather information and set up a meeting with the new provider, as well as the hospital if that would change as well.  That way you can feel like you know what your options are and can make a more informed decision either way.  Even if the experience of the new provider was worse, I would feel confident of how to go about changing again if I needed or wanted to, and would probably have a better idea of what to ask about or look for the next time.  

Holleigh, Zach & Adelaide

the birth that is happening

I’ve started using this mantra with families:

I am showing up to the birth that is happening

Not the birth I had etched into my mind.
Not the birth my mom wants me to have.
Not the birth the nurse hopes I’ll have.
Not the birth I heard about on that podcast.
Not the birth my friend had.

This can feel so counterintuitive when you’ve just been coached to prep and plan and envision your body birthing your baby. And not one ounce of that preparation is wasted, because it got you to this moment, the moment your body is actually activated and all those processes you studied and heard in stories over and over are now happening to you.

Why is this mantra so important and what can we learn from this birthing posture for our life right now? Our pandemic life?

The way that birth flows is the free passageway of oxytocin to move from your brain to the rest of your body, generating uterine contractions that dilate your cervix and push your baby down. We know that oxytocin can be blocked by the secretion of stress hormones like adrenaline and cortisol when your body goes into fight/flight/freeze.

Love cannot flow through us if we refuse to surrender to it.

This doesn’t mean handing over your birthing choices once you’re in it, not at all. What I am talking about is that internal willpower that either flows with reality or fights it, especially when reality looks different (not harmful, different).

As I watch mothers birth their babies and see how their bodies engage this internal battle (a wince of the lip here, a scrunching of the shoulder there, followed by deep vocalizations and a limp body as she consciously moves with the contraction instead of against it), I walk back into my daily life reminded that while I am not birthing a baby, I am making near constant choices to flow with reality or to dig my heels in against it.

I’ve been sad lately. Like, probably circumstantially depressed, as many of us are as we navigate the ambiguous losses of this season in isolation. I have been in a metaphorically LONG pregnancy in regards to figuring out what this new life post-full time ministry looks like. I had hoped to launch effortlessly into greener pastures, but the pandemic disrupted all of those processes and prospects.

The shifting landscape around me is so constant and so foreign, I can feel the waves of anxiety and stress wash over me.

And my own home, my body, has softened and expanded and broken out as a response to the stress, becoming a foreign land to me. I find myself trying to somehow finance an entire new wardrobe of clothing without in-store try-ons or reliable income. Can you relate?

It’s been difficult to locate myself. Who am I without a team to pour into? Without a reliable paycheck? Without moving in the world in my old body? Without human connection for weeks on end?

Surrender to the birth that is happening.

I fight with this reality everyday. My life looks nothing like how I thought it would six months ago. So much of my self-concept feels fuzzy and raw and vulnerable with all of the reliable go-to’s of affirmation suddenly gone.

There are moments, like a prenatal appointment with a new family, or a phone conversation with a dear friend, that fill my lungs with air and remind me that I am still there, tucked inside this squishier frame. For a fleeting moment I actually believe what I know cognitively to be true, that my circumstances do not define me.

Maybe it’s turning thirty, maybe it’s COVID, but I am experiencing a very different evolution of myself that is hard to reconcile with the past. Sometimes I take a deep breath and imagine my arms opening wide up to gather all the versions of myself into a big hug, and to make room for this new iteration. There’s room for you here, too.

The extremes are so staunch that it’s very easy for me to taste the bitter cup of resisting reality: the lethargy, the hopelessness, the depression. And then on the days when I can lovingly look at myself and say Hey Erin, you’ve never been unemployed in a global pandemic before. You are just 9 months into launching a business. Can you be kind to yourself? Can you nourish yourself? Can you move your body? Can you call a friend?

In many ways, my life feels like a fresh postpartum period right now. I measure success in millimeters, not feet. I applaud my choice to drink water, practice gratitude, go for a walk.

On my best days, I am showing up to the life that is happening.

Not the life I envisioned when I felt stuck in my last job.
Not the life that some very curated Instagram accounts seem to live.
Not the life that others might assume I would be living right now.

The life that is happening.
The chronos of this time where God hides in plain sight.

God comes to us disguised as our life.
+ Paula D’Arcy

May God come to you disguised as your life. Your pregnancy. Your birth. Your postpartum. We are always in a process of gestation, birthing and recovering. May we be ever so kind to ourselves in the unfolding of it all.

#worldbreastfeedingweek: The joys, the woes, the Christ

Three days postpartum I texted my best friends a picture of my nipple. It felt weird to do it at first, but my 24-hours-into-first-time-parenting-exhaustion threw social norms to the wind.

Like.

Heart.

(…)

BF1: Totally normal

BF2: Yep, that’s normal Erin! Should go away in a few days

Me: Phew!

Is this normal?

The blisters on my nipples: normal, for now. The twinge of pain with each initial latch: normal-ish, but wait and see. The blood? Common, but not normal as in okay, seek help!

The first weeks and months of breastfeeding are a crash course in a suite of parenting skills that become essential:

1. troubleshooting

2. finding resources

3. advocating: for you and for your kid

It’s branded with the misnomer natural because as most parents who have breastfed will tell you… it doesn’t really come naturally. In a classic Jedi move of the crucible of raising small children, sometimes it is thorough preparation that allows you to surrender to whatever reality you’re handed and learn what it is you really want. Take a scroll through #worldbreastfeedingweek and you’ll find heroic tales of trial and error, disappointment and forgiveness, exhaustion and isolation. Here are my best tips to launch you into your own breastfeeding journey:

control the controllables

That’s a phrase I use often when I’m prepping parents for childbirth and beyond: attend to what you can and surrender the outcomes. There are actual ways to prepare for breastfeeding and to set yourself up for confidence, assurance, and trust; and then, having done those things, you rest and surrender because nothing can prepare you for the particular child you birth, circumstances thrown at you postpartum, and how your body decides to react.

Here’s what you can control:

• Join a breastfeeding support group on Facebook
  why? You’re going to have one hand available in the postpartum to scroll and scrawl out desperate posts with likeminded moms to help you troubleshoot all the things, and it’s better to have found your people ahead of time so that they are simply a click away

• Attend a (virtual?) La Leche League (LLL) meeting
  why? Especially if you’re a first-time mom and don’t have many friends who have kids, it can help simply to be in a room of women breastfeeding (or on a Zoom call with them, heh). You can expect to see babies of different ages, including toddlers, breastfeeding, and you can observe how moms are holding their nurslings, what positions they are feeding in, are they using a cover or not? And you can listen to the questions they’re asking, the mini-crises they are sorting out. It puts flesh on the concepts you’re reading about. Here’s a local and virtual breastfeeding support group option from Healthy Babies Happy Moms

• Take a breastfeeding class

  Many hospitals offer them but there are also independent courses you can take. If you’re in Rhode Island or Southeast MA, Kaeli Sutton is a gift to birthing people and she offers a course called The Nursling: Breastfeeding and Bonding through her organization Open Circle. You could also check out Milky Mama’s Breastfeeding 101

• Read or at least buy a breastfeeding book. I recommend the Bible of LLL resources The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding
  why? You can browse the chapters and get a sense of the common issues you may face in a breastfeeding relationship (they can be boiled down to: supply issues and latch issues) and familiarize yourself with a book that should simply chill by your bedside ready to go for when you’re nesting postpartum.

  My main critique of this particular book is the militant tone in the introduction as they make their case for breastfeeding. It’s complicated:

  Breastfeeding was forced onto enslaved Black women at the expense of their own babies in the 17th & 18th centuries. Then white women took it back when slavery was abolished. Then midwifery was systematically erased in the 19th century and as hospitals and OBGYNs took on more of maternal care, formula was invented. In the 20th century, formula was pitched as the best way to feed a child and breastfeeding forced into the shadows or labeled “dirty” and a marker of lower economic status. The feminist revolution brought women into the workforce more and we thanked God for birth control and formula and breast pumps.

  Our mothers (Boomers) were raised in the peak of formula advertising to the shaming of breastfeeding. It’s complicated. So, I get LLL’s desire to form an apologetic for breastfeeding, but I also hold how damaging that can be to have an all or nothing attitude that puts mothers’ mental health on the chopping block and casts shame onto moms who supplement with formula or choose formula altogether. See how the pendulum swings in history? Now most hospitals have robust breastfeeding education programs that don’t seem very inclusive of moms who choose to formula feed. Sigh. It’s a lot. Can God find us in the middle of all this mess?

cracked nipples and the christ

What better way to encounter Creator than in the very trenches of early postpartum? Your leaky body and leaky eyes and leaky gut and leaky heart are primers for spiritual encounter. Why? They’ve stripped away your illusions of self-sufficiency. They’ve forced you into need. Your newborn baby mirrors your inner child and you remember that just as you respond to baby’s cries and offer food and rest, God responds eagerly to you.

Our God-made-flesh meets us there in our soiled bedsheets, reminding us that our bodies image the gender-full God who nourishes us and to whom we are securely attached and bonded through no special intention of our own. Breastfeeding my own children gave me new metaphors to hold onto for my own relationship to God. The mystics wrote a lot about suckling at the teat of Christ. They really did. And the Scriptures make note of this special relationship that only those with breasts can know:

But you are the one who pulled me from the womb,
    placing me safely at my mother’s breasts.
10 I was thrown on you from birth;
    you’ve been my God
    since I was in my mother’s womb.
11 Please don’t be far from me,
    because trouble is near
        and there’s no one to help.

+ Psalm 22:9-11

Maybe these Psalms can also be in arms reach for you in those early postpartum weeks:

“Can a woman forget her nursing child,
    that she should have no compassion on the son of her womb?
Even these may forget,
    yet I will not forget you.
16 Behold, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands

+ Isaiah 49:15-16

a breastfeeding benediction

May you, mother ezer, nestle into God’s nourishing presence
May you find neither judgment nor expectation there
May your secure attachment to God not become another relationship to pour into, but a well from which to draw sweet water
May you find freedom and peace in the shape of your journey feeding your children
May you dodge the bullets of comparison and shame
And, because you are human, when the forces against you threaten to topple you, may you speak to yourself the way Mother God speaks to you.
As your baby nestles into the familiar smell and cleave of your chest, and their heartbeat syncs up with yours, and their body goes limp from satisfaction and rest, may yours do the same as Amma/Abba beckons you to stop holding your world together, and exhale in Holy Rest.

Amen.

P.S. Check out artist Kate Hansen’s Madonna and Child series of art here: http://www.katehansen.ca/madonna-and-child-project.html

30 Things I've Learned in 30 Years

Today I finally turn 30 years old, the age I’ve longed to be since I first felt the dissonance of having an old mind in a young body. I mean, I was the college freshman with a flowery poster on my wall that read:

If they come for the poor and innocent and do not pass over our bodies, then cursed be our religion.

…Yeah. I’ve been pretty intense since day one.

This weekend my beloved, Chris, put together as many quarantine gestures of love as he could and I had a dreamy Saturday celebrating my birthday in the sunshine. Today is overcast and a Monday, and I am eating mini peanut butter cups in bed and that’s just how shelter-in-place life unfolds lately.

This post is a bit of a break from the usually birth-y goodness, but I wanted to stretch myself to write down 30 things I’ve learned in the last 30 years. Things about life, hope, grocery shopping, suffering, travel, painting my nails. You know, the stuff of life.

Here goes.

1. Love is still the central thing

   I’ve spent a lot of time trying to outpace love. Like, the mandate to love my enemies, to love my friends, to love my neighbor, to love myself. Surely, I thought, people would better be served by my being useful to them. Turns out that haunting scripture really is true:

   “If I speak in tongues of human beings and of angels but I don’t have love, I’m a clanging gong or a clashing cymbal.  If I have the gift of prophecy and I know all the mysteries and everything else, and if I have such complete faith that I can move mountains but I don’t have love, I’m nothing. If I give away everything that I have and hand over my own body to feel good about what I’ve done but I don’t have love, I receive no benefit whatsoever.”

   Love really does a gut-check on our motivations. I’ve lived service without love and it is resentment. I’ve lived leadership without love and it is manipulation. I’ve lived marriage without love and it is contract. Love’s still the central thing.

2. Slowly picking off your gel manicure will harm your nail-beds all the time, every time

   But I’m still too cheap to return to the salon to get them removed. Maybe in my 30s I’ll finally implement the cottonball-tinfoil trick at home.

3. Meal planning really does keep the grocery bill down

   When we first got married our grocery budget was $300 a month. Now it’s double that. During quarantine that’s what I spend in one trip to the store. Pre-quarantine, I learned to meal plan every week and became so much a part of our life that I didn’t understand grocery shopping without it.

4. Speaking of bills, I can now discuss our budget without crying

   I used to cry at every budget meeting when we first got married and we held them weekly. Lord, have mercy. I entered marriage with a lot of baggage around money and scarcity and shame. Now I love the idea of stewarding our resources and having agency over the impact we can make with funds. I still don’t love budget meetings, but I don’t cry at them anymore.

5. Everything worth treasuring in life takes WORK, or at least intention

   Sex, friendships, good parenting, staying fit, healthful meals, keeping your immune system strong, financial freedom, generosity, community. ALL THE THINGS. So. much. work.

6. I’m just a double-chin kind of gal. Always have been.

   I used to try to lose a lot of weight to rid myself of my round face, but I’ve always had a round face even with a slender body. It’s really freeing to see yourself as you were made and surrender to it.

7. It is liberating to be honest with yourself about what you do and do not like (read: Julia Roberts)

   Remember that movie Runaway Bride? And how Julia Roberts doesn’t know how she likes her eggs because she spent years deflecting to the men in her life and their preferences? Now, I’ve always been a bit salty and opinionated so I wouldn’t say her struggle has been my own. But recently I did start getting honest about simple preferences and quirks that as an Enneagram 3 I always clung to in order to appear more appealing. Lately, I’ve been practicing blunt honesty with myself and it is so FREEING. I DON’T LIKE LONG THEATER PRODUCTIONS THERE I SAID IT.

8. Great Love and Great Suffering

   I write about that often here. Father Richard Rohr says that great love and great suffering seem to be the biggest forces that lead to human transformation. I couldn’t agree more and they often have a cyclical relationship: great love that leads to great suffering that leads to great love. Understanding suffering as reality and not a curse or something good people are spared of has been so helpful to fall more in love with a God who deeeeeply identifies with our suffering and enters into it. Mmm.

9. Ask for help, ask for help, ask for help

   I sort of walked out of the womb saying “Thanks, but I’ve got this.” Maybe it was the years of fundraising my budget and salary that finally broke me, but it’s been so healthy to learn how to ask for help. My friends know I am still working on this, but it honors the humanity of others to rely on them and not promote yourself as an indestructible force who does all the helping and needs nothing. It’s also simply not true. Ask for help.

10. Your clothes are meant to fit your body not the other way around

    Like, oh, I don’t know, 99.9% of females, I’ve been socialized to scrutinize my body, never relaxing into its softness and constantly pinching it towards perfection. Following women like @thebirdspapaya online who are on these public and radical journeys of accepting their bodies has been really transformative. It started with the “no fat talk” move in the early thousands and I am grateful it has continued to take root in my life. I still hate that female bodies typically experience more variance than male bodies when it comes to sizing up and down and up and down, but I am learning to release the numbers on the clothing I buy and surrender to multiple Saver’s or Target visits so that my clothes serve me. Not the other way around.

11. Purity Culture is the curse that keeps on giving

    Oof. I am a 90s kid through and through. I was televised taking a pledge of sexual purity at some large Christian gathering when I was 12. My dad bought me a purity ring (it really was lovely, though). I didn’t have sex until I got married. And then I learned that I had something called “vulvodynia” and all that awesome married sex I was promised by terrified Evangelical adults went <POOF> and what followed were years of literal, emotional and spiritual pain to make sense of the sexual nature of my body. I am entering this decade excited to continue to learn about my sexuality and how God made our bodies. I feel more free than ever. I am sad that I was never “allowed” to see myself as a sexual person, where I was having sex or not. It has me thinking and plotting for how I’ll raise my boys. And that includes having really good water-based lube in our medicine cabinet!

12. I don’t call God “He” anymore

    Don’t freak out. Take a breath. I just have found “He” to be too limiting a pronoun for a God that of course exists beyond gender and human constructs. “He” actually became a painful word through broken relationships with men. I do truly appreciate the Father metaphors of God, but they are simply metaphors. And human brokenness did not stop at Bible translation committees. Google the names you see in yours. Chances are they are 90-100% male and white. And that means they can only translate out of one lived experience, when there’s such a richness of diverse experiences through which to read the text. Right now I go back and forth between addressing God in my prayer life as “Amma” (Mama) or “Abba” (Papa) and I’m drawn to the more gender neutral but powerful Creator God. Birth also scrambled all that for me. I needed a God who could identify with that distinctly female physical experience. And I am grateful that God was there all along.

13. Simply speaking the truth isn’t enough

    Folks, especially right now, will not be able to separate your words from your body, your context, and any influences they assume are driving you. We are all formed by our context. I naively set out in my twenties to speak true words to all sorts of people and they often did not respond to those words as I had hoped. This has led me to consider what it means to be more tactical with the truth God entrusts me to preach. I’ll report back at the end of this next decade.

14. Integrity and Integration have the same root

    After becoming a mom and having the illusion of “balance” slap me upside the head, I began longing for integration. Meaning, I wanted the Erin who existed at work to resemble the Erin who showed up at home. I knew I couldn’t give 100% to both callings, but I could keep working to allow what is done in secret to mirror what is done on Instagram. Integrity… becoming a woman whose yes means yes and no means no. A woman who handles funds honestly, who gives her husband the same kind of active listening as she does her clients. Integrity is the word God gave me for 2020 (yeah, I guess I do that thing) and I am eager to pursue integrity and integration in this next season.

15. New wine needs new wineskins

    Change processes matter. You can’t expect a system that has produced one result to magically produce another. I am committed to the slow, long-game work of developing wineskins for new wine.

16. People’s prejudices are their project, not yours

    Growing up in an alcoholic family system makes you think you can actually change other people. But you can’t. And yet for the better part of my twenties I was drawn to the tireless project of changing folks who hadn’t indicated any desire to change. I spent a lot of emotional and spiritual energy on this project only to realize that I am not the Holy Spirit and my time could be better spent tilling soil that desired to be nourished with rain.

17. Boundaries

    Which leads me to boundaries. I had none, I’ve developed a lot. It’s changed my life. It has been a joy to figure out more of who I am and who I am not. What behaviors I can tolerate and what behaviors I cannot. Boundaries have helped me love the dearest and nearest ones in my life. The kind of love that doesn’t turn into resentment (like I mentioned above). When I was a child, I didn’t have much agency to put up boundaries. It took a ways into my twenties to reckon with the reality that I had way more agency than I thought as an adult. Lovingly and gently explaining those boundaries, though never perfectly, has led to the first-fruits of true transformation in some of my most far-gone relationships. Praise be to God.

18. Embodiment

    I grew up in a culture that praised the mind. I climbed the academic ladder and then spent 8 years working higher education-adjacent. Finding birth work as a doula has been a saving gift for me to learn how to be in my own body, focus on my breathing, my strength, and then in turn to help other women get grounded in their bodies. I’ve loved rediscovering Jesus and the body. A theology of the body. And the story still just being told of how women’s bodies preach the gospel over and over and over.

19. You don’t have to carry the conversation

    WOAH. BIG NEWS FOR EXTROVERT. I don’t have to make sure everyone in the room is at ease. As an empath, I sense allll the emotions and then used to take on responsibility to manage others’ emotions. To ensure they were having a good time. Feeling engaged. Charmed. One day, for real, I just stopped. I stopped talking when the conversation lulled. I took a deep breath and smiled. The other person continued on or maybe they didn’t. The silence wasn’t death, it was silence. It wasn’t my fault, it just was. And it was kind of beautiful.

20. Women are strong

    That’s all.

21. I like going places to sit down. I just want to sit down.

    Team lazy mom. I want to go to a park and sit down. I want to watch my kids play while sitting down. It’s probably why I am still nursing a 20 month old. I just want to sit down. It’s the only way he’ll let me sit down.

22. Just keep going

    I penned those words and hung them up in my office. They sustained me through three very trying professional years. I am so glad to be learning endurance and perseverance.

23. Surrender to the waves

    Ah yes another birth metaphor. You will feel more pain if you fight it. Surrender. One of the greatest lessons of this past decade.

24. You can be the first to name it

    Meaning, to speak of the thing no one else wants to. To name the friendship dynamic that’s been looming, unspoken. To name the uncomfortable team issue. To name the glaring injustice. It’s part of how God’s made me, and that’s okay.

25. Evolution is not only okay, it’s part of God’s creative pattern

    Birth, death, resurrection. Birth, death, resurrection. Repeat after me. It’s okay to change your mind. It’s okay to apologize and try again. It’s okay to end up somewhere you never anticipated (literally, relationally, theologically, etc.)

26. You won’t solve every problem you’re aware of in your lifetime

    This is tough for us prophets out here. We see everything (or so we think). We want to heal it so badly. But we are one human in a constellation of humanity. One generation in a very, very long story being told. I live in the paradox of urgency against injustice and perspective and humility that I am no Messiah.

27. Prayer is an ongoing conversation

    And I’m at it all day, but I often didn’t consider it prayer. But it is prayer. It’s beautiful.

28. God is reality

    Amen. God doesn’t need to be conjured up. God doesn’t only peek out when you play “Oceans” on your iPhone. God is always present, always moving, always accessible in every part of a person’s life and day. God is. Amen.

29. Play and fun are required to run the marathon

    Coming full circle from the beginning of this post, I have had a thorn in my side my entire life and that is that I take myself entirely too seriously. But I really do LOVE to have fun. It’s been a joy to discover the concept of “pleasure activism” and badass womanist scholars leading the way who understand how crucial it is to not let shame govern the story towards liberation. We can play, we can laugh. We must. Or we will snuff out way too soon.

30. It really is true that to truly love others, you’ve gotta love yourself.

    I love myself. Heck, I like myself. And my ability to extend compassion and grace to myself is allowing me to extend way more to Chris, to Parker, to Cedar. To love them. Not hold long accounts and high standards. To enter into rest together. Thank you, Jesus.

If you made it this far, wow. You’re great. That was a lot. But I am lot, and I love that about myself. I love you, too. I can’t believe how many genuinely rad people I get to call mine. I think I am walking into this decade with so much more gratitude. I’m entitled none of it, all is gift. Thanks for being here and for cheering on a new decade.

EASTER: I Have Told You These Things

The Cross, A Crown of Thorns and a Cup of Blood

Weeks before the birth of my second son, I sat down for a “listening prayer” session. I had been intentionally prepping for Cedar’s birth with way more mindfulness and prayer. I was reading books like Jackie Mize’s Supernatural Childbirth and even invested in a course that encouraged women that childbirth does not have to be filled with suffering, but could be “heavenly” (which to this instructor meant possibly pain-free, certainly empowered and trusting the process).

The instructor encouraged us to spend some time sitting with the Holy Spirit around our upcoming birth, asking God specifically if there’s anything God wanted to say about this birth: any scriptures, any images or words to prepare us. I love this type of prayer and regularly employ it with my clients.

I settled on my bed with my husband, took some deep breaths and got very quiet, asking God to give me a word, an image, a scripture— anything God wanted me to be prepared for with Cedar’s birth.

As clear as day I saw a crown of thorns and the eucharist, a cup of blood.

I shuddered.

Let me try that again, I thought. That’s really intense.

I asked God to confirm if that was the image God wanted for me.

Again, a cross, a crown of thorns, and a cup of blood. I think I laughed nervously. Those images did not conjure up the peaceful, empowered, mostly pain-free home birth I was envisioning. Was this really what God was telling me?

 But I have said these things to you so that when their time comes, you will remember that I told you about them.

In the Gospel of John, chapter 16, Jesus goes on and on about how his disciples will suffer because of their loyalty to him. He also explains the entire Easter plot ahead of time to them. He tells them he must leave, but that he’ll send the Holy Spirit to be with them. He literally tells them “I have much more to say, but you can’t handle it now.” He tells them to not worry because, though he must leave, he will return again. And then look, he draws upon our bodies and our story as birthing women as the perfect metaphor:

19 Jesus knew they wanted to ask him, so he said, “Are you trying to find out from each other what I meant when I said, ‘Soon you won’t see me, and soon after that you will see me’? 20 I assure you that you will cry and lament, and the world will be happy. You will be sorrowful, but your sorrow will turn into joy. 21 When a woman gives birth, she has pain because her time has come. But when the child is born, she no longer remembers her distress because of her joy that a child has been born into the world. 22 In the same way, you have sorrow now; but I will see you again, and you will be overjoyed. No one takes away your joy. 

Finally, Jesus encourages them that he has conquered all things. He foretells that they will be hiding in their homes, afraid. Just as I wrote in our last post, he tells them they’ll leave him alone, but that he won’t really be alone because The Father is always with him.

He tells them EVERYTHING!

And yet they still doubt what they are hearing. They don’t trust that these words are true and they cannot fully understand the scope of what Jesus is telling them until they’ve lived through it.

It was the same for me with Cedar’s birth.

The Voice of God Splits the Cedars

the dim lights in our bedroom

the fall candle burning

clutching my holding cross

the contractions coming and going like waves, the downward pressure so overwhelming, causing my prayer language to bubble up and spill over with each surge

the scriptures I asked Chris to read over me

the voice of the Lord is over the waters; the glory of God thunders, the Lord thunders over the mighty waters. the voice of the Lord is powerful, the voice of the Lord is majestic. The voice of the Lord breaks the cedars; the Lord breaks in pieces the cedars of Lebanon. 

I knew God's might broke the cedars. I did not know God would use Cedar to break me. 

—

The Wednesday night before Cedar was born, I had one final prayer experience. I was 41 weeks and 3 days into this pregnancy, and heard:

The Bride has readied herself
Now go for the the joy set before you.

These are words spoken before Jesus faced the cross. He had to endure the cross for the joy set before him. God was setting me up for the intensity of Cedar’s birth every step of the way, and lo and behold I went into labor the following evening.

—

We labored from 7:45pm-1am in a manner I can only describe as ...heavenly. My birth playlist was leading us through worshipful songs, Chris was reading scriptures over me as the Spirit led me from one passage to another. I experienced the contractions as strong sensations, but no pain. It was such a special time together, intimate and quiet.

Over the hours, though, my labor slowed and slowed and, bizarrely, completely halted at 1 in the morning. We were so confused. With Parker's birth, labor hit after our castor oil kicked in and it was fast and furious until his arrival. I felt really disappointed and defeated. We blew out the candle, turned out the lights, and lay down to try to get some sleep. 
--

30 minutes later I bolted up out of a dead sleep. We're talking drooling, mouth open sleep. I wouldn't say I heard the voice of the Lord, but I had this deep sense of communion and connection with God and this resolve:

Cedar James is going to be born tonight. 

I was experiencing no labor, but I got out of bed and swayed back and forth on my birth ball. Out of nowhere, contractions starting coming 3 minutes apart! I was in active labor! Again, no pain. Intensity, yes, but no pain. 

I had this stunning spiritual experience of Mary on my left and Elizabeth on my right midwifing me through my labor.  Call me crazy, but it was this unbelievable gift from God to be in the presence and legacy of two women who birthed two men who changed the course of human history. And in my mind's eye, they were smiling at me and cheering me on. 

It was at this point that Chris asked me if I needed support.

I remember being embarrassed because I was not experiencing pain, so I assumed I was not in active labor. I thought we had called them prematurely. My midwives laugh because to them it was incredibly clear that baby would be with us soon. Already this labor was much longer than Parker's- 8 or 9 hours. Still incredibly short in the scheme of things, but I was done. I wanted this baby out of me. 

We transitioned to the tub, and those hours felt agonizingly long. It didn't feel like my labor was progressing, I couldn't find a comfortable position, and as I started to feel the urge to push, baby's heart rate was dropping. The midwives were asking me to switch positions with every contraction to see if we could settle into a happy position for mom and for baby, but that totally threw me off my game. With Parker's birth we were totally ignorant to what was going on in utero, and I just birthed my baby. With Cedar's birth, I was so grateful to have the proper team in place, but I felt ungrounded. 

Ultimately, I began to panic and shifted into what I can only call "rugby mode" (I played in college), and began prematurely pushing HARD. I was pushing on an anterior cervical lip, not fully dilated. But l was done. I wanted him OUT.

Cedar's final pushes came in a position that felt very vulnerable to me. I birthed his head, and then had no time to pause and push slowly. He literally shot out of my body. 

I thought I was dying. The pain was excruciating. This was completely different from the intensity when Parker came out of me. I was shrieking and couldn’t catch my breath. I didn’t feel grounded, I felt like a wild animal out of control.

The next hours are a blur in my memory, with an agonizing hour-long repair on my bed, clutching my newborn and whimpering with each stitch.

The Pascal Mystery

Cedar was birthed on a Friday. I cried out at the peak of my suffering, like Jesus did on the cross. My God, My God, why have you forsaken me.

All day Saturday I felt disillusioned and confused. What just happened to me? Did I just fail at birth? I did all of that preparation for a peaceful, empowered experience and I was miserable, exhausted and truly suffering. I couldn’t locate God on Saturday. I felt a dull, gray scrim between me and the Divine.

By the third day, Sunday, I woke up with my fleshly newborn next to me and peace filled my bedroom. I remember the sun streaming the through the windows as I tossed over all that had transpired in my head.

Truly, by the third day, I felt a resurrection hope rising in me. God gently reminded me of all the words he had given me leading up to Cedar’s birth. He had told me these things. I didn’t trust what I was hearing, and I could not have comprehended how those words were going to play out in real time, but God was preparing me.

Resurrection

I wrote these words in an iPhone note on the Sunday after Cedar was born, three days later:

The voice of the lord splits the cedars
But Cedar and the voice of the Lord split me

And I wondered if I had been forsaken 

But I think the answer is no, that tests and trials and sufferings are building in us full maturity 

I believe we can experience birth without suffering - I think those are foretastes of the coming kingdom 

I also think that sometimes birth looks more like the cross: we are broken open and we bleed and we walk through the pain to see new life on the other side 

I am finally able to look through the birth photos with joy and not pain, fear or shame 

The spirit hovered over the waters 

Now, 18 months after living those days I can see so much more clearly how Cedar’s birth was marking a distinctive season in our lives. Cedar was born in September of 2018, and 2019 was one of the hardest years of my life so far, filled to the brim with suffering on every level: my mental health fell apart, my extended family went through some of our darkest days, I experienced professional conflict and alienation to an extent I hadn’t yet known. It is through those painful experiences that I came to cling to the birth-death-resurrection cycle that I write of so often here. And it is through those experiences that birth work as a doula found me and brought me so much healing and life.

I was seeking God more closely than ever in the weeks leading up to Cedar’s birth, and it led me to the cross.

I used to think of the cross as purely transactional: Jesus had to die to free us from our sins.

I now see the cross differently. I see a God who suffers. A God who also cries out fearing abandonment, yet trusts that meaning will be made out of his suffering. And I see a God who comes back to life, re-charting the direction of all of our suffering towards total redemption.

I haven’t known how to explain Easter to Parker, my 3 and a half year old, this year. I just keep saying over and over “Baby, God makes everything new. Everything that has been bad is going to be made better.”

Everything bad is being made better.

Happy Easter, friends.

Week 5: The Risk of Birth

The Risk of Birth, Christmas, 1973

This is no time for a child to be born,

With the earth betrayed by war & hate

And a comet slashing the sky to warn

That time runs out & the sun burns late.

That was no time for a child to be born,

In a land in the crushing grip of Rome;

Honour & truth were trampled by scorn—

Yet here did the Saviour make his home.

When is the time for love to be born?

The inn is full on the planet earth,

And by a comet the sky is torn—

Yet Love still takes the risk of birth.

I stumbled upon that poem while my client was laboring last Tuesday night. I always bring a copy of my favorite anthology of poems to my births penned by the Patron Saint Madeleine L’Engle (or at least, that’s how I regard her. She is my patron Saint, my spiritual mom, and my kindred spirit). How fitting, I thought, as my dear friend labored away, bringing her first child into the world during this pandemic.

As a birth worker, I’d been feeling a rising anxiety as I was watching the hospital policies change by the hour. Would I be able to attend her birth? Would her husband be able to be there by her side? It is no small trauma to ask a woman to birth alone. Women may require privacy in birth, but not isolation. The very comfort we find with God is that God is present with us in the midst of suffering. To send a woman alone to face her hours without trusted loved ones holding presence is a frightening prospect that too many women have already lived as reality.

Last week was the fifth week of Lent 2020. The theme? Called to die.

How eerie that COVID-19 is peaking in the US during Holy Week. Thousands of people died last week. More will die today. The reality of it all is crippling. And yet, this reality is crashing into yet another reality: Jesus’ journey to the cross.

Let’s read the week’s passage together, shall we?

23 Jesus replied, “The time has come for the Human One to be glorified. 24 I assure you that unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it can only be a single seed. But if it dies, it bears much fruit. 25 Those who love their lives will lose them, and those who hate their lives in this world will keep them forever. 26 Whoever serves me must follow me. Wherever I am, there my servant will also be. My Father will honor whoever serves me.

27 “Now I am deeply troubled. What should I say? ‘Father, save me from this time’? No, for this is the reason I have come to this time. 28 Father, glorify your name!”

Then a voice came from heaven, “I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.”

Women who have birthed might feel that text viscerally. In the dying we bear fruit. In every birth I’ve attended thus far, including my own, there is a climax of unbearable pain or supernatural levels of pushing power before the baby is born. We must die to live.

What about all of those people dying from COVID-19? How are they experiencing new life? This is where the gospel of Jesus keeps me grounded and hemmed in behind and before. Easter reminds us that every dead thing will come to life. If not this moment, in the moments to come. If not in this reality, in the realities to come. If not in this world, in the world to come. Jesus reminds us that God is a suffering God who redeems our suffering by entering into it and making meaning of it.

We will see those who have died again in risen bodies.

I know this is intense stuff, but it’s the story I anchor my life on. And on a long enough timeline of grief and process and pain, their deaths will resurrect something new in us. And that counts as new life too. Again, as my beloved Father Richard Rohr says, great love and great suffering are the things that transform us. We will be transformed by this collective suffering.

Birth, death, resurrection.

Birth, death, resurrection.

And the world spins madly on.

This is the risk of birth: that in bringing forth life we walk to the brink of death. Or in daring to love someone, we open ourselves up to searing pain when they die. The trauma of people dying in isolation right now is very real. And it is also real that they are not alone. God is present in every prison cell, every birthing room, every ICU with a rhythmic knell of a ventilator. God’s presence hovers over the waters and brings peace over chaos. Meaning out of the meaningless.

Yes, we are called to die. But our limited understanding of death is as flimsy as the veil between a newborn baby inside its mothers womb mere seconds before she gushes out into new, completely other-worldly, life.

We are called to die…Yet love still takes the risk of birth.

The Weepies. Deb Talan and Steve Tannen have sung me through the aches and joys of my life. I’ve listened to them so much in these past weeks because they immediately conjure peace, nostalgia and calm. This song is an anchor for me when times feel out of control. Brew yourself a cup of tea, find a quiet nook of the same walls you’ve been staring at for 4 weeks and take some deep breaths as they sing you to rest.

Weeks 3 & 4: Coronavirus, Toxic Capitalism and Hope

coronavirus

How’s that for a blog title?

Wow.

My dear friends, this is certainly not how any of us thought 2020 would go. And yet, as James Finney says,

what’s in the way is the way

Here we are, caught up in liminal space together against any of our wills (though, if we’re honest, how often do we willingly enter mystery and in-between anyway). Everything I started Ezer Birth Collective for seems to be live in this time: grappling with what is out of our control, finding that through the despair and anxiety we can sense God’s still small voice, encountering Presence and Power in the process, surrendering to productive pain that leads to new life (social distancing, anyone?).

Life in the age of Coronavirus.

I have had two births on my calendar for March 2020. I made it to the first, in the first week of the uptick of COVID-19 cases in the US. I attended her birth on a Tuesday, and was not allowed to return to her hospital bed by Thursday. Now, I wait by my phone for a beloved friend to call me when she is in labor, and we do not know if a shelter-in-place will further disrupt her plans.

If ever there were a time to engage our Ezer roots, it must be now. Remember, women, that you were not created frail and ruled by fear. You are given God’s own name for God-self, a reminder of how God protected Israel as a warrior in battle, and if you find yourself pregnant, about to birth, or freshly postpartum in this battle against Coronavirus, you can rest assured that God has created you with strength and power to take it to task.

In times of great anxiety and uncertainty, we become aware of what was always true: we desperately need Jesus. We need the indwelling, fresh anointing of the Holy Spirit— not once a week at a church service— daily, hourly, minute-ly.

I have been very overwhelmed by the sudden switch to spending long days at home with my boys. It’s the very ground that Satan used to taunt my postpartum depression and anxiety, and it triggers all of my mental health buttons. I’ve been asking God for a simple image to usher me quickly into God’s abiding presence, and here’s what I saw:

Myself, in the fetal position, snuggled into Mother God’s womb, attached by the eternal umbilical cord to God’s ever present strength, endurance, love and energy.

When I feel the walls caving in around me, I close my eyes and summon that prayer image. It has been so deeply restful and helpful for me in these times.

toxic capitalism

I am a Three on the Enneagram, and I have read that America most readily reflects the unhealthy drives of Threes and Sixes: an addiction to progress, success and achievement walled off by self-preservation and a need for security. If that is true, then this moment we are in is one giant crucible for the personality of our nation. We are conditioned to produce and consume, produce and consume, ever increasing with no respect for our limitations and human capacities, let alone our groaning earth collapsing under the pressure of it all. I’ll call that toxic capitalism. The sudden halt of our surging systems sends us all spiraling.

I know this feeling well, as it’s exactly what my first maternity leave did to me. I have noticed our inability to stop and face our limits, even now. The internet allows us to attempt to march forward, though for most the math isn’t adding up: hourly wage workers cannot pay for their rent, two parent households have lost 40 hours of childcare but are expected to continue their work, perhaps at an even more urgent clip. Single parents are expected to work from home with no childcare whatsoever, small businesses given no options but to try to innovate on the spot to make ends meet. Capitalism in this way is so dehumanizing. It ignores our limits, it ignores God’s command to cease from working and it creates a scarcity mentality that says you are essential, keep grinding.

hope

I want to remind us of the Easter mystery we are racing towards: that death does not have the final word, and that Jesus reminds us in his body that God’s creation is always cycling between birth, death, and resurrection.

I think of our healthcare workers laboring on the frontlines, and I remember Paul’s words,

Death is at work in us so that life is at work in you.

I get that we are living in a weeks-long Saturday, between the stinging bite of Good Friday’s death, and the uncertain hope of Resurrection Sunday.

Like the disciples on the road to Emmaus, we may feel despair as we reflect on all that has happened, having hoped that things would turn out differently.

As I often must remind my three year old Parker when he impatiently, desperately begs to skip to the end of the movie, or for me to get from the kitchen to his placemat with his snack in less time than is humanly possible,

It is coming, my love. Have patience. You must wait.

When panic overwhelms you, or despair creeps in like morning fog, please stop. Ask God for an image to anchor you. Maybe for you it will also be the womb, floating peacefully in total security, fully known and fully loved, eternally connected to the Source.

May this time remind you that you are not what you do. You are a human being. God is with you. As you wash the dishes for the third time that day and slowly move from room to room around your house, remember that God’s posture in chaos is rest and new life (check out Genesis 1-2 if you’re unconvinced). Jesus is asleep in the boat through the storm.

We must wait.

Psalm 130

A pilgrimage song.

130 I cry out to you from the depths, Lord—
2 my Lord, listen to my voice!
    Let your ears pay close attention to my request for mercy!
3 If you kept track of sins, Lord—
    my Lord, who would stand a chance?
4 But forgiveness is with you—
    that’s why you are honored.

5 I hope, Lord.
My whole being hopes,
    and I wait for God’s promise.
6 My whole being waits for my Lord—
    more than the night watch waits for morning;
    yes, more than the night watch waits for morning!

7 Israel, wait for the Lord!
    Because faithful love is with the Lord;
    because great redemption is with our God!
8 He is the one who will redeem Israel
    from all its sin.

resources

Bonus Podcast Episode from Richard Rohr’s Another Name for Everything:
Finding Peace in the Midst of a Pandemic

Audrey Assad’s cover of The Middle (Jimmy Eat World)

Week 2: Expectations

Then Jesus began to teach his disciples: “The Human One must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, chief priests, and the legal experts, and be killed, and then, after three days, rise from the dead.” He said this plainly. But Peter took hold of Jesus and, scolding him, began to correct him. Jesus turned and looked at his disciples, then sternly corrected Peter: “Get behind me, Satan. You are not thinking God’s thoughts but human thoughts.”

After calling the crowd together with his disciples, Jesus said to them, “All who want to come after me must say no to themselves, take up their cross, and follow me. All who want to save their lives will lose them. But all who lose their lives because of me and because of the good news will save them. Why would people gain the whole world but lose their lives? What will people give in exchange for their lives? Whoever is ashamed of me and my words in this unfaithful and sinful generation, the Human One will be ashamed of that person when he comes in the Father’s glory with the holy angels.” Jesus continued, “I assure you that some standing here won’t die before they see God’s kingdom arrive in power.”

Mark 8:31-38

The battle of love and fear

A part of the way I approach my doula work as a minister is always assuming God is already at work, and like a child lost in the woods, delighting in each breadcrumb I discover as they lead me home.

The more I have witnessed women birth, the more I am convinced we are only beginning to scratch the surface of what the female body in pregnancy and birth can teach us about Reality, about God and the mysterious ways God works in the world.

Consider this, in the birthing woman’s body lies a battle between love and fear.

The physiological reality unfolding in her body is a dramatic display of powerful hormones. Oxytocin, the love hormone (the hormone we all excrete when we orgasm, laugh, experience joy) is the force behind the powerful uterine contractions that force baby down into the pelvis and eventually out of her body. At any time in this process, the threat of adrenaline and cortisol, our flight/fight response hormones of stress and fear, can slow and even completely stall the process. When a birthing woman perceives a threat, these powerful hormones release and cause blood to move away from the uterus and into her hands and feet: to fight or to flee.

Love and fear.

Is this not our most primal battle as humans? It certainly is a spiritual battle God speaks of throughout the Scriptures. Why must God continually reassure Israel with the refrain Do not be afraid, Do not be afraid?

God made us. Our bodies, our sinews, our flesh, our muscle, our sophisticated hormonal responses.

God knows that our Reptilian brain will cause us to make decisions out of fear, but when we know that we are fully safe and secure, we can make meaningful choices out of love.

There is no room in love for fear. Well-formed love banishes fear. Since fear is crippling, a fearful life—fear of death, fear of judgment—is one not yet fully formed in love.

1 John 4:18, The Message

Expectations

There is another important truth we can glean from a birthing woman. Uterine contractions are a productive sensation that leads to new life. As I coach mothers time and time again, when we perceive that sensation as a threat and double down on our resistance, we will experience more trauma. Uterine contractions are other-worldly in their power. They overwhelm us, yes. They can scare us, for sure. They remind us instantly of our infinitude and lack of control. But if we can find a way to surrender, we can ride the waves of this productive pain to new birth, new life.

This is where our theme for this second week of Lent enters.

Acceptance vs. Resistance

We see in the text from Mark that Peter, the passionate disciple, is struggling immensely with his expectations of what Jesus, the Messiah, would accomplish and how, with the clashing reality of Jesus’ terrifying words that he must suffer and die for new life to burst forth.

Peter, so sure of himself and so committed to his internal narrative of how this all would go down is said to scold Jesus, to which Jesus replies, “Get behind me, Satan. You are not thinking God’s thoughts but human thoughts.”

Damn. That’s harsh, Jesus.

I identify with Peter real hard throughout the Gospel accounts. He continually struggles to hold his vision with open hands. Every time Jesus challenges him, Peter initially resists, ultimately causing more trauma and pain when confronted with information that contradicts his expectations. Cutting off the ear, the three-time denial, the moment of fear as he realizes Jesus has led him into open water where he can only fully trust the Lord and the subsequent sinking in response to that fear.

Expectations vs. Reality. That’s where God gets me every time.

Surrender

I am embarrassed to admit it, but I have not learned this lesson well at all in my adult life. In every major season of life transition, I have encountered a stretch of time in which I could only trust in God’s timing, will, and manner; where my options for what I could control and try to hustle into reality had run out. And every single time I have thrown a tantrum like my three year old.

Chris and I had decided we would marry, and now it was on him to propose. Those weeks of waiting exposed the nastiest side of me: passive aggressive comments about timelines and venue booking deadlines, frustrated date nights, anger.

Surrendering to reality would have saved me weeks of anxiety, tension and frustration.

Fast forward five years and 10 days past Parker’s due date, I had done all the things to naturally induce labor (sex, nipple stimulation, eating dates like my life depended on it, long walks, etc.) and every night that I would wake up to pee only to realize I had not gone into labor, I melted into a desperate tantrum in the bathroom with God.

Surrendering to reality would have saved me weeks of anxiety, tension and frustration.

Fast forward two years and 9 days past Cedar’s due date, and Good Lord I was at it again! Pity parties, anger, helplessness.

Surrendering to reality would have saved me weeks of anxiety, tension and frustration.

God comes to you disguised as your life

Those are the words of author, retreat leader, speaker, playwright and psychotherapist Paul D’Arcy. God comes to you disguised as your life. God is your life. God is not hiding in plain sight waiting for you to find her. God comes to us as the various tensions, releases, circumstances and relationships we encounter every day. My futile attempts to make my life happen on my terms have always landed me frustrated, breathless and tired. In recent years, I have found it helpful when confronted with Reality that confounds my expectations to take a deep breath and surrender to it.

As James Finley beautiful says “What’s in the way is the way.”

Peter was so deeply concerned at Jesus’ prescription for himself. But Jesus was God. He knew exactly how this profound act of love needed to go down. Peter saw Jesus’ approach as unnecessary, inconvenient, and frankly, wrong.

Again, we find that birth is our greatest teacher. The way we birth is often the way we make love. It is the most intimate, revealing act that helps us gain a glimpse of the Reality of how we truly see ourselves, how we love ourselves; how connected we are to our bodies, how willing we are to trust and surrender to the moment.

It is natural to try to fight labor the moment it becomes intense. I remember a particular active-labor-contraction with Parker that sent me groping the wall of my bedroom like a wounded animal. I needed to find a grounding position that would allow me to trust God with my body, and to take the waves as they came.

Peter mistook his expectation as reality. Jesus corrected his skewed view.

What is the productive tension you are tempted to resist in your life this week? In your resistance, are you finding that you are experiencing the greater trauma of trying to take control? What might it look like to practice surrender to your current circumstances, to the season that is taking longer than you thought it would, to the contractions of a Loving God who wants to birth something new in you?

Embrace God’s paradoxical invitation today:

All who want to save their lives will lose them. But all who lose their lives because of me and because of the good news will save them.

May we lose our lives in all the right ways.

Bertrand Bahuet, France

Week 1: Wilderness

“About that time, Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee, and John baptized him in the Jordan River. While he was coming up out of the water, Jesus saw heaven splitting open and the Spirit, like a dove, coming down on him. And there was a voice from heaven: “You are my Son, whom I dearly love; in you I find happiness.”

At once the Spirit forced Jesus out into the wilderness. He was in the wilderness for forty days, tempted by Satan. He was among the wild animals, and the angels took care of him.”

+Mark 1: 9-13, CEB

As my son, Cedar, was crowning I felt like I was being split in two. God’s spirit descended on me, pronounced Cedar born and me alive, and then I was thrust into the wilderness. The postpartum wilderness. Slapped once more with the shocking limits of my capacity, the long days followed by long nights, the oozing fluids and bloody tissues, the forty days of steady hormone drops. Satan tempted me hard. Violent, invasive images of harm befalling Cedar climaxed one day at home alone with the boys. Both my then-two-and-a-half-year-old and four-month-old were screaming their faces off at the same time. I remember standing in my kitchen, unshowered, hair a mess, spirit crumpling, holding my fussy baby while my toddler angrily begged for more of me and I thought I could just throw Cedar down the stairs. Then there would be one less demand on me.

“…as it stands, motherhood is a sort of wilderness through which each woman hacks her way, part martyr, part pioneer; a turn of events from which some women derive feelings of heroism while others experience a sense of exile from the world they knew.”

+Rachel Cusk

That was one year ago this month. February 2019. I swiftly found a psychiatrist who put me on Zoloft for anxiety and began weekly visits with a wonderful therapist who specialized in postpartum mental health. I almost entered a day program for women and their babies suffering in this way.

Wilderness: the place where your identity is tested, where the evil one taunts you, where the angels take care of you.

For many of us, the fourth trimester and all the months that follow in the postpartum period can be described as a wilderness.

Both times, I experienced a glorious first week postpartum, filled to the brim with oxytocin at its finest: obsessed with my new baby, stroking his hair, sniffing his intoxicating head, kissing his fleshy, lanugo-covered body.

And both times I began to slip into depression and anxiety around four months postpartum, after the immediate support died down.

This wilderness exposed the worst of me. I felt purpose-less, benched from my other “more important” duties in society, so angry that often the most I could show for my days was a once empty dishwasher now filled with myriad cheerio-caked bowls.

Was this really my life?

In the lowest of lows, a poem spilled out of me:

my life is littered with

trains and toy cars

and various

shopping

bags

filled with books and old

receipts

with creeping despair

and dust bunnies

with calendar reminders

milk-filmed pump parts

laundry

re-washed thrice

neglected and forgotten,

victim to the Groundhog days

I am living.

My laptop screen is cracked

and mirrors

my

sanity.

Overwhelmed.

Jesus, can you be even here?

I need help.

My weeks feel like

homes

of cards

and one

small

detour or

departure

sends them all

down

down

down

like my head into my hands.

I know the work I must do

to climb out of this pit

But the mere thought of sinking fingers into

clod

and mustering my unused muscles

to climb

or crawl

upward

leaves me defeated

Can someone get down here and help me out?

Can someone get down here and help me out?

That’s how it feels, sometimes, in the wilderness.

Here are some notes from this week’s text that bring me deep comfort:

1. God was the force behind this entrance into desert. If God’s behind it, God is in it. God has made it. It cannot exist outside of God’s presence.

2. Wilderness almost always follows a declaration of identity, a new birth. In every season of my life when God births clarity in me about who and whose I am, a season of testing follows. This could be seen as cruel, sure, but this is also science. We are in late February. Farmers have been growing seedlings indoors in warm and loving environments to become sturdy plants that can be planted outdoors after the first frost. There is a gardening term called hardening when you take that little 1-2 inch seedling that has just shot up out of the earth and you carefully, deliberately expose it to the harsh elements. Why? The resistance forces the roots of that little seedling to grow thicker, deeper and more resilient so that it can truly flourish and multiply 30, 60 and 100 fold. The postpartum period tests our new motherhood, it reveals all the things our identity rooted itself in before it was completely disrupted by this new life, and it will force you to put your roots deep into good soil to come out on the other side alive, strong, persevering and resilient.

3. The angels tended to Jesus. While it doesn’t say that God-God-self walked with Jesus into the wilderness, God did not send Jesus alone. When I am in wilderness seasons, God’s familiar location in my life feels hauntingly empty. I feel exposed and naked, and very vulnerable. But God sends angels to tend to me. Something of the divine, yet qualitatively different; Supernatural strength and help to remind me to be rooted in God (as the story goes in other Gospel accounts, Jesus stays rooted in the Word, which is of course the Christ, and stands firm in his identity).

   Your angels might looks like 200mg of Lexapro or Zoloft daily, paired with angels of psychotherapists, angels of midwives who call you regularly to check in, angels of praying mothers who text you Scripture verses, and angels of praying best friends who take you out for a beer and remind you that this too shall pass, angels of partners or husbands who practice presence and take the screaming baby while you catch your breath, angels of liturgies written thousands of years ago so that you don’t have to scrape for spiritual and emotional energy that simply is not there. The angels will care for you in this crucible of the desert.

Here we are, approaching the first Sunday of Lent 2020.

Tell me, friend, are you in a wilderness? What are you observing? How are you feeling? How is God sending angels to tend to you?

Resources:

This song literally carried me in my postpartum period with Cedar.

If you live in Rhode Island, Connecticut or the Boston area, this was how I found my therapist and I think the platform is my favorite yet for finding good mental health care. It’s a beautiful user experience, the therapists post introductory videos of themselves and pictures of their office so you really know what to expect ahead of time and of course you can filter for your type of health insurance, various specializations you’re looking for (PTSD, grief, postpartum etc.)

ZENCARE

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Ash Wednesday: Great Suffering

“Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

Embodied

In a true display of privilege, I didn’t need to think of my body until I became pregnant. I had never been hospitalized, never broken a bone, never encountered any limits on the capacity my body had to bring me to and fro, to breathe in and out without assistance; my body was a convenient vessel for the rest of my life.

That is until the beige, sticky pall of nausea began somewhere around 8 weeks.

And then the hemorrhoids that plagued my sedentary life.

The electric round ligament pain as my belly grew.

Pregnancy forced me to face my bodily existence every day. It forced me to confront my limitations, which is really my humanity.

Lent does the same.

It’s a six week stretch, beginning with Ash Wednesday that sets the tone of the ultimate humility: we are not God. We will die. We are dying. We choose death (that religious word sin). We are so deeply dependent and it kills us. The rest of the year we might entertain the illusions of our control and self-sufficiency, but Lent is one giant social experience in radical honesty.

“I am not okay.”

“I chose that vice again, and I am sick to my stomach.”

“I need help.”

We always carry around in our bodies the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body.

2 Corinthians 4:10

I know that Paul was speaking in metaphor. But I’ve always sensed that women can put flesh on those words better than anyone.

There are leaders among us every day, women who have carried death in their bodies.

Those who have miscarried, birthed deceased babies, lost their children within those fragile first weeks.

They are the ones who live with no illusions of control. They have tasted the bitter cup first hand that life is and then isn’t. That’s the truth of being human.

Just this week Vanessa Bryant eulogized her thirteen year old baby girl and her lover, Kobe.

They were and then they weren’t.

Fragile

“Human existence is so fragile a thing and exposed to such dangers that I cannot love without trembling.”

+ Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace

So fragile a thing.

I think for some of us, the boundary lines have fallen in such pleasant places that we truly forget that life is neither guaranteed nor owed. It is truly a gift.

The numbers do not deceive us:

1 in 3 women will have at least one miscarriage in her lifetime.

1 in 36 women will experience 2-3 miscarriages.

At age 20, 20% of pregnancies will end in death.

By age 40, 40% will.

We don’t have consistent parameters for early loss, those pregnancies that end before life could be detected with a Doppler. Estimates are between 50-70% of positive pregnancy tests end in death.

There is no standard of care for how to talk about loss.

Some providers refer to a fetus, a missed pregnancy or the dreaded clinical term, “spontaneous abortion.”

Every year in the US, 26,000 babies are stillborn, dying post 20 weeks gestation.

That’s 1 in every 160 deliveries.

71 families will be told today that their baby has died, and the stillborn rate is more than premature infant death and SIDS combined.

We don’t talk about it. Therefore, we don’t expect it. Therefore, when it happens to us the weight of silence is unbearable.

Pain Demands to Be Felt

There’s a line from John Green’s young adult novel The Fault in our Stars:

That’s the things about Pain, it demands to be felt.

Do we believe that? Do we live that?

As I am more and more exposed to a woman’s body in birth, I find this physiological truth fascinating:

If a woman fights the sensation of pain that comes with contractions, she will experience the process as unbearably painful and even traumatic.

If she has tools, support, and presence to surrender to the pain, she will progress.

Pain demands to be felt.

And that’s where Ash Wednesday enters. A day of communal permission to feel the pain: the pain of our suffering, the pain of our sin, the pain of our mortality.

Please, instead of shrouding the mothers in our midst who have experienced loss with that deafening silence, can we approach them this time? Can we ask them about their story? Say their baby’s name?

We might find that they are our leaders into lament, into feeling the pain that demands to be felt, into remembering our true humanity. And, as Audrey Assad sings,

See what you've lived through
So you can grieve it
And draw it towards you
Catch and release it

---

The following is a letter my dear friend Beth wrote to her stillborn daughter, whom she and her husband Brandon lost at 19 weeks. Her name is Annie Hesed (which means “an enduring love”), and Beth and Brandon have developed the most beautiful rituals to integrate the suffering of Annie’s death into their family life. Follow her @bethbgoad to read more about Annie’s death and how Beth is living with this grief.

Dear Annie,

A year has passed since the first and last time I held you in my arms. I remember so much of the day we met you face to face and feel robbed of a lifetime of memories. Your delicate body, fearfully and wonderfully made, was so strong. I measured your foot against my thumbnail so I’d always remember how small it was.

This year was not what I had imagined. There were no matching dresses with Maggie. I slept through many nights and woke up feeling disappointed I wasn’t a sleep deprived mother of an infant.

It is a privilege to be your mama, Annie, even though I have so many unanswered questions. When I am sad about your absence in our family, I try to remember all the pain you get to avoid on earth. I remember you’re with my own mama and smile thinking about you helping her with her heavenly garden.

You are loved, sweet girl, by so many, and perfectly, by our Heavenly Father.

Love,

Mom

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In remembrance of Annie Hesed Goad, born May 22, 2018 at 10:54PM, 66g and 5.5 inches

Resources

Adriel Booker’s Grace Like Scarlett

here’s an excerpt:

Grief expands the soul and exposes our need, but it also expands our heart to receive love and be changed by it. This becoming can make us more whole if we are open to receive (and be changed by) God’s astonishing love. “Blessed are those who mourn,” Jesus said, “for they shall be comforted” (Matthew 5:4). We are not blessed because we are mourning what we lost; we are blessed because we’ve experienced his comfort in the midst of it — that’s the blessing. Suddenly the brokenness has been transformed into the blessing. He doesn’t simply want to rescue us; he want to remake us. How stunning!

Podcast “Still A Part of Us” featuring the stories of parents of stillborn babies

Audrey Assad’s song on grief Shiloh

WEBSITE LAUNCH!

Welcome to Ezer Birth Collective.

I would like to tell you a story.

I was driving in my car on a sunny autumn day sometime in 2019 around my beloved neighborhood in the Southside of Providence, Rhode Island. I was chatting with God about our city, our friends, this unshakeable feeling I had that I should probably become a birth doula.

All at once, I sensed this concept download into my brain and my spirit. An idea about a collective of women offering birth and grief services grounded in God’s presence. It would incorporate some way to practically impact the unjust birth outcomes we were seeing firsthand in our city, in the wake of the completely preventable death of Lashonda Hazard. She was a healthy, black mother, pregnant. Admitted with stomach pains, she continued to update her Facebook feed on the lack of care she was receiving at Women & Infants Hospital. On January 7, 2019 she and her unborn baby died.

Lord, have mercy.

In some ways, Ezer Birth Collective is my tribute to her.

I have my gracious friend Carla, and her sister Lixis, to thank, who not only tolerated, but dreamt with me about what we could actually do to provide moms and babies with adequate care. We went through a few iterations of this idea, and ultimately arrived at a multi-pronged approach. There are already a profound number of women of color leading the charge to close racist birth outcomes in our state. They do not need more white women adding to the noise, more likely they need us to get out of the way.

In my years as a faith-leader, I have studied the racist movements of white Christian missionaries over the centuries, often eager to “help” but completely amiss in their blind spots to their own colonial ways of thinking. They consistently centered their own stories to provide help that often times was neither needed nor productive. They ignored indigenous leadership already on the ground. They shamed non-white practices as inferior.

Lord, have mercy.

I wanted to learn from their mistakes.

Ezer Birth Collective is aimed at stewarding our resources as white women to provide practical, financial support for Black, Brown, Indigenous and Queer doulas and midwives— the leaders already doing this work who could use an occasional $500, $250, $700 gift in their GoFundMe towards their certifications, professional headshots, their grocery budget, a pedicure— I don’t care how the money is used and it is not mine to control or monitor. I call our 50-50 funding model a “Reparations Funding Model,” because that’s precisely what it is. One white woman, and better yet, a growing network of white women’s, attempt to offer financial compensation for the deeply racist and deeply painful history of enslaved Black women who were forced to nurse white babies at the expense of their own, raped by white slaveowners and founded the modern gynecology movement with no consent.

Here I must confess my own hypocrisy. I spent years waving my flag of “white wokeness” with little actual impact. I weaponized my newfound racial consciousness against my white peers and I considered myself an activist without actually helping change any policies impacting marginalized folx. God has been lovingly and ruthlessly keeping me honest. When I was pregnant with my son, Cedar James, my white husband and I arrived at his name as a reflection of the season we sensed God birthing in us. Cedar refers to “God’s trees,” lovingly planted with deep roots, a picture of God’s abundance and delight. James, the writer of that tiny, power-packed book in the New Testament strongly urged us to become doers of the Word. As my husband, Chris, and I have been on an intellectual and academic journey of deconstructing the ways white supremacy has infected us, we sensed that with Cedar’s birth it was time for these ideas to become embodied.

Ezer Birth Collective is one small part of that.

We offer faith-based services to mothers in our area who are more likely to hire and be able to afford doula services while they are not yet reimbursable by insurance. We hope you’ll be compelled by our mission and understand what stewarding $1200 of your income will mean. We will then split every payment at least in half and fund whatever projects our friends of color would like funded.

I love, love, love when God can fill up a pregnant (or a grieving) woman’s experience. I love hosting Christ’s presence and providing crucial information to help you become an empowered participant of your own birth. And I am so excited to be able to highlight the true warriors and heroes already at work in our cities.

So, welcome.

Take time to browse, pass this along to friends as you see fit, and prayerfully join me in creating a future in which birthing white babies economically benefits those who are birthing Black and Brown babies, creating Kingdom like equity where we are so deeply in need of true repentance.

Here’s to imperfect projects, and a lot of heart.

Erin

HEAD TRIAD

Head people, those in the intellectual center, have highly developed mental faculties they use to assess and address everything in life that is experienced as a threat or an assault on their inner state. Head people believe in competency as the cure for instability. Through mastering their environment, head people think they’re able to secure their own self-preservation. Heuertz, Christopher L.. The Sacred Enneagram (p. 93). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.

Type 5, 6, and 7 mamas, these guides are here to help you in such a specifically embodied time as pregnancy and birth. Your discernment through your mind is going to help you discern how to best be in your body.

HEART TRIAD

Heart people are social types who feel their way through life by leaning into their emotional intelligence. Those in the Feeling Center teeter between compulsions for connection with others and comparison with others to validate their own sense of worth… At their core they project their fears through quiet attempts to have their own needs met: Twos want to be loved for who they are; Threes are concerned they’re more admired than loved; Fours worry there will be no one with the particular ability to love them for what sets them apart as special.

Heuertz, Christopher L.. The Sacred Enneagram (p. 95). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.

As a card-carrying member of the Heart Triad, I can confirm that learning to trust my feelings as a way that God has made me to discern God’s presence and will has been incredibly transformational. I hope these Labor Guides help Type 2, 3 and 4 moms to trust themselves in the process.

GUT TRIAD

The Enneagram is commonly organized by the following triads:

Gut

Head

Heart

These “intelligence centers” communicate the primary part of the body through which these types navigate the world.

"Each of these Intelligence Centers offers us a different way of experiencing the loving presence and voice of God.

Heuertz, Christopher L.. The Sacred Enneagram (p. 88). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.

Chris Heuertz says of the Gut Triad, “[They] experience life through intuitive instincts and tactile engagement with their senses… As gut people ride waves of intensity, instead of shaking it off, they often project their energy onto others as an unconscious way of dissipating the constant static noise of frustration they perpetually experience… At their best, gut people harness this energy and direct it through their initiating ability to build a better world; at their worst, it seems everything annoys them.”

Here you’ll find the Labor Guides for the Gut Triad, types 8, 9 and 1. Enjoy!

ENNEAGRAM X BIRTH

During Advent 2019, I (Erin here!) rolled out a really fun project on each Enneagram Type’s perspective on labor and postpartum. I’ve been digging into the wisdom of the Enneagram since at least 2011 and am a giant nerd about it. As I’ve waded into proper birth work, I’ve become curious if certain types make similar choices in labor or face similar struggles or barriers based on their personality. I reached out to the most inspiring community of women I know: the moms I am connected to through my work with InterVarsity Christian Fellowship. They shared their birth stories with me and reflections on how their Enneagram type manifested itself in their journeys. The result are nine Enneagram Labor Guides that I am super proud of. I hope to print these into a cute little book and use them with couples in prenatal sessions. Do you know the Enneagram? What’s your type and how did it (or do you anticipate it) impact your birth?

P.S. To catch up on all the birthy-enneagram-goodness visit our Instagram feed