As I sat on a flight from Singapore to Tokyo, Japan on my way home from our Advanced Eat Pray Doula Workshop in Bali, I was filled with so many emotions. My eyes welled up with tears, tears of sadness and tears of gratitude. From the news that Paris had suffered attacks to reaching my son and his girlfriend who were in Paris was only minutes- yet felt like hours. In my inability to comprehend the extent of the tragedy, I moved to get dressed in slow motion. Hearing my phone ring, my son’s voice – my heart expanded with love and gratitude. Yet, soon learning of all who were lost, my heart ached. I imagined how so many parents were not receiving a text and call back. How our lives can change in an instant.
Walking out into the hot sun, the Balinese smile at me with their whole heart, wishing me good morning. Life in the small village goes on and yet we all feel the connection continents away and send our prayers and healing thoughts to Paris.
I am reminded why I have come to Bali, to support midwife Ibu Robin Lim’s work to bring gentle birth to all. To welcome our babies with respect, love and connection. It is so simple and yet eludes so many to come into the world with these 3 aspects and yet that is what we all long for all our lives- respect, love and connection. Out of our desire to share the model, that Ibu Robin and the midwives of Bumi Sehat birth center created, we birthed our Eat Pray Doula workshop so that birth keepers around the world could come join us in Bali to learn and experience the beauty of gentle birth, to join our growing circle and be inspired to birth it forward in your community. This years circle of women did that and more as we laughed, cried, healed, shared, learned and transformed, celebrating a connection, sisterhood that will stay with us forever.
I can’t help but wonder if the young men who killed so many and then themselves in Paris had a gentle birth? Did they have the opportunity for love, connection and respect in their first minutes, hours, days and years? How would the world change if every baby was conceived in love, birthed in love and lived with love? I wish for all humans to be welcomed to the world into gentle and loving birth spaces.
What the worlds need now is Love. Love Heals, Love Nurtures and Love Connects us.
I have my ring tone for my phone set to the Beatles “All You Need is Love” as in my morning gratitude I am always thankful to my family, my friends and the circle of birth keepers, yes You for your love! I am sending you my love.
At Eat Pray Doula, our circle spans the world of doulas, midwives, doctors, nurses, healers, mothers, fathers, partners and all who share a passion to improve the world one MotherBaby at a time. We live in different communities, countries, cultures, speak different languages and practice different religions, but those difference slip away when we like the Balinese smile with our hearts, share our passion and our love. Together working to make the world a safer, gentler place thru gentle, loving, pleasurable birth.
Just thinking of each of you fills my heart with gratitude and love as we unite around the world with healing love. I hope today you will “Imagine – imagine all the people, sharing all the world, you may say I am dreamer, but I am not the only one, I hope someday you will join us, and the world will live as one”
On this Thanksgiving – I am thankful for you! Thankful for our connection, for our collective prayers and vision of One World filled with Love, Love for every MotherBaby, Every person to be respected, welcomed, loved and to feel your connection to those you love, to each other and to our circle.
Please share your love, write a sentence of your love and gratitude below.
Let’s spread love and healing, as love has no limits, love expands and expands.
Wishing you and your loved ones a Happy Thanksgiving.
Amy Neuhedel of The Cord podcast illustrates well the Eat Pray Doula Bali Workshop & reveals the secret ingredient.
I am so grateful for the safety of my space right now, but as we have seen, that can change in the blink of an I. I am sending my thoughts and prayers for healing to all of the families who had lost loved ones in the senseless attacks in Paris, Mali, and elsewhere in our world. I cannot even begin to comprehend how such things happen. And, Yes Debbie, I believe with all of my heart that gentle birthing, in love, and respect surrounding the woman who is laboring to birth her baby has to be a fundamental key to change.
On a happier note, I am so thankful for the blessings of family, friends, good health. I am blessed with the ability to connect with families in a deeply profound way though education, love and compassion. They can think of me as their personal trainer for birth, mind, body, and spirit.
I am building the possibility of strong bridges for families to travel on, to have conversations with their care giver about what matters to them, what they VALUE.
It is my prayer that someday my granddaughters and their children to come, will give birth safely, surrounded by whom they wish, in whatever venue they feel safest and cherish those moments forever. Oh, and writing their birth stories and sharing them with their daughters, so the they too, will know that they are made perfectly able and capable to birth and feed and care for their young…
Rant over, lol…my favorite song if I need a little happiness is “Happy” by Pharrel Williams. I love to put up you tube and clean, put my make up on or just dance…happily.