Healing Thoughts.Editor - On the Ozmidwifery List the subject of discussing a caesarean experience came up. This is one of the most important ways of healing from any trauma attached to a past experience Ð talking to empathetic people, yet itÕs often thought better to ignore the trauma and focus on the positive outcomeÉ What do you think? "Lots of women, including myself, have a horror story to tell, and it's important to work through it. I'm sure Jackie at Birthrites can help you with thisÉÓ Rhonda responded: I feel that I have dealt with it and didn't think that all my postings were based solely on my experience however, I can look at it as a learning experience in my life and do still think of it as an event in my life. Am I meant to forget that my son was born - maybe he was plucked from the cabbage patch or hatched! What really annoys me is this attitude ~ if a woman refers to her Lovely empowering birth even 12yrs after that experience she is praised for the memory and people are happy to hear it again and again and I hear of my sister's stories often and other women I know will often mention parts of their births during conversations about childbirth. However, if a woman recalls even part of her traumatic experience in a message less than two years after that experience it is "Oh get over it" This is across the board - I have notice this in many groups of women in many settings - women who have had empowering and good experiences will speak happily about their births many years latter and it is accepted by all. A woman who has dealt with her trauma and can finally recount and speak about her birth experience for what it was is told quite clearly that she should heal or get counselling. Does healing mean forgetting that it happened? Does healing mean that you should never speak of it again? So all women should just heal from their birth experiences. Perhaps if I were at playgroup or school and a mother began to speak of her wonderful childbirth I should shake my head and say, " Get over it." or "Perhaps you need counselling". I wonder what sort of reception I would get?? I just wonder who has the problem - the others who cannot bear to
listen to the fact that childbirth is not always wonderful and empowering
or the woman who is able to speak or write about it without crying
and without grieving and without pain and most of all without the
feeling that it is a taboo subject. So sorry to be the taboo, it is
so hard to speak about various issues of birth without relating it
to one's own experiences - whatever they are. Perhaps that is why
these things have continued to happen and change is so slow - because
everyone just shuts up about the bad and therefore it just didn't
happen. If it didn't happen then we really do not need to change anything. *********************** Rhonda: I think you have opened up many issues that are (in my humble opinion) key to the worldwide crisis in childbirth. One of these and perhaps one of the more poignant is the difficulty women have in supporting each other when the other's experience doesn't fit with our world-view. (I don't know if men also have this problem, not being a man and so often hearing it as a women's issue, but it just could be a human issue). I have to get ready to get to clinic right now so I can't elaborate too much, but I am trying to write my senior paper on the origins of horizontal violence amongst midwives (which of course will extend to their clients). I am amazed at the horror I hear when I mention the word "violence", so I just want to say that silencing someone can be a violence - to them. I know that you were not complaining about the midwifery care that you got, but when we read about it, we can't help but see that it was less than we (hopefully) would have provided (albeit it was in difficult circumstances). At least for me, it is easy to provide optimal care when that is your caveat, the expectation from your client and your supervisors. When you are expected to provide minimum care (whether for staffing, cost effectiveness) everything/everyone suffers including the care provider. So, that is a major question arising from this: how do we provide
optimum midwifery care in very difficult circumstances? I think this
applies to nurses as well, because nursing care is not what it once
was either. Support for each other and our clients/patients is one
answer. ********************************* ÒDoes healing mean forgetting that it happened? Does healing mean that you should never speak of it again? So all women should just heal from their birth experiences.Ó Actually I do think that healing is essential... But healing is not forgetting. The stories we tell each other about birth are essential teaching. I feel that the journey is about finding the lessons to teach other
women. So that is someone else was in your shoes they might not repeat
the pattern but find another way as a result of the lessons that other
women have told them. This is kind of clumsily put. I can't work it
better. ********************************** ÒI feel that the journey is about finding the lessons to teach other women. So that is someone else was in your shoes they might not repeat the pattern but find another way as a result of the lessons that other women have told them.Ó The setting up of Birthrites has healed me... As much as it is possible to heal from the trauma of my children's births. I found a purpose for them having happened, a life purpose in helping other women avoid an unnecessary c/section(s). You see I believe that there is purpose in everything that happens to us, and that it is only when we can't use those experiences to help ourselves/others (the empathy and understanding gained from 'having been there' is unmeasurable) that we feel helpless, frustrated, angry, etc. When we do something positive in response to something negative that happened to us, then this action (in itself) removes a lot of the negativity that we associated with the bad past experience. Making a difference, for someone else, or for yourself, is healing. Ignoring what happened may block off the emotions but they don't go away, and you don't grow as a person. We limit our potential when we don't use our life experiences to better our society... This is why people sue (a whole other issue, I know) because in seeking some recompense, and some protection from a similar experience happening to another, the litigator has 'taken action'. This action may seem negative, but I actually consider it to be positive,
for both the litigator and society if it improves a current situation
that may otherwise continue to traumatise people. I could go on forever,
just thought I would add my thoughts to Sally's. ********************* |