July 2013
Sacred Heart charism, Janet Erskine Stuart and the calling of EcoBirth
I recently lead our San Francisco Religious of the Sacred
Heart Associates group on an exploration of Chapter 5 of Janet Erskine Stuarts
biography: The Noviceship. The Second
call. A Great Renunciation. We used her quotes that were given to us in a
lovely packet at the last RSCJ Spirituality Forum to help us ponder aspects of
the chapter. We discussed what we thought of the words mortification, humility,
purity of heart, prudence, as well as, zeal, vanity, perseverance, joy, duty,
consecrated life. It was a rich discussion, as they usually are with us. But I
had a special connection to this dialog and sharing: since I started as an
Associate, I have been attending to my calling around “EcoBirth”. It is a word
that has been given to me and it represents all the strands of my life, soul
and heart. I am looking at Janet Erskine Stuart’s life to try and understand
what a vocation is and what it takes to live it, as a model for my effort to live
my vocation with EcoBirth, whose vision is relating earth and birth-caring for
one natural life so we will all be well.
“Without silence no
real purity of heart, no real devotion to the Holy Spirit, can …be heard in the
talkative mind” We discussed the emptying of our egos as purity of heart, so we
can hear our calling and be who we are called to be. This idea connects me to
the charism of the Sacred Heart and supports my devotion to the embodied
sacredness of all life on our Mother Earth, which I see as grace from the Holy
Spirit.
“Real zeal is courageous and
invulnerable, because unselfish and self-forgetting. It can be put to any kind
of work; it is indefatigable and never says 'too much'; it is persevering; it
never gives in.” I want to learn this
holy zeal, in order to change the world to a better place for my grandchildren,
contrary to what it has become, in particular on my watch, over the last 30
years. I vow to protect the Future Generations with fierce protectiveness.
“To be a joy-bearer and a joy-giver
says everything; it means that one is faithfully living for God and that
nothing else counts, and if one gives joy to others we are doing God's work. ..Joy
is the most heavenly atmosphere found on earth - we ought to cultivate it as a
duty always.” So interesting that joy is a duty but also allows us to live
faithfully now. I have been faithfully pursuing the guidance of EcoBirth for
the last four years and I will be joyfully presenting My Personal Environmental
Story, a personal narrative connecting my environmental lineage and legacy to
the true story of my place in life, at the RSCJ Spirituality Forum this coming
July in Atherton, CA.
I see Janet Erskine Stuarts life as
consecrated to love of God and I want to imitate her duty, zeal and joy. I will
depend on the Sacred Heart to hold me in its steadfast embrace so I can
consecrate myself to following my vocation. “ ..our zeal is the overflow of the
love and grace that God has given to us in prayer”. I pray to hear and follow
my calling, to recognize my communion of saints, in which I now include Janet
Erskine Stuart, and to in any way possible, to repair and regenerate our Mother
Earth and all her creatures, my kin, through my efforts with EcoBirth and my
consecration to its vocation and spiritual path.
June 2013
A Womans Story
Our true story is about the extraordinary connection in
ourselves that goes all the way back to the first stirring of life
gathered on this earth. We were born from our mothers, they were born
from their mothers, and we were formed from bits of their bodies all the
way back to the first amoeba- there is still a small bit of that life
spark in us. We could not be here without all this lineage and heritage;
we are dependent on their living and giving. It is a wonderful story of
relationship based on love and compassion, unbreakable, freely given.
We have just lost our connection to our Mother Earth and to ourselves
and our fellow kin, but becoming aware that we are all in the same
interdependent living system is hopeful, faithful and so biologically
real. We have since the beginning of time, given our feminine, maternal
gifts to our children, with no thought for payment. That instinct for
offering ourselves will be found again-to reclaim our rightful place in
the order of life. We are not lost or truly harmful to our following
generations, we are their life-givers. And I chose to work with a fierce
passion to make right this world for my grandchildren, and your
grandchildren. I trust in my connection to my mother and grandmother,
and I see my relationship to all kin in our world, on our earth, in our
cosmos, with a gaze of love and compassion. I look to receive that gaze
in return, with an open, wounded heart, vulnerable and strong.
I just heard of research that said that a mother’s laughter makes her breastmilk healthier for her child- - there is really nothing more miraculous than that! We can change the world with love and laughter and it will respond with health, happiness and true acceptance of our rightful place in it.
I just heard of research that said that a mother’s laughter makes her breastmilk healthier for her child- - there is really nothing more miraculous than that! We can change the world with love and laughter and it will respond with health, happiness and true acceptance of our rightful place in it.
May 2012
Submitted to San Francisco Listen to Your Mother for Mother's Day, 2012
Maternal lines-My Environmental Lineage and Legacy Story
I am a sixth
generation Californian, my grandparents raised my parents in San Francisco and
my son is raising my granddaughters here. When I was growing up there was
nothing better than being in my Irish Clan-Parties, gatherings, social life- we
were in a whirlwind at all times. So, I
have some strong personal connections to this very place we are in. But my
sense of belonging to San Francisco has suffered disillusionment and fills me
with anxiety now. Being a mother was my most earnest desire and birthing my two
children was the most empowering and exciting experience for me. And raising my
children was a focused endeavor to enable them to be good productive people.
But when I fulfilled that personally assigned mission, I started thinking about
the shape of our world and what kind of place my grandchildren would live in.
I have brought some props to show you a little
about my increasing awareness of what is happening to our world, in a very
personal way.
This is the
brochure that I picked up at the Marin County Fairfax EcoFest some years ago
and this is the precious perfume bottle that my mother gave me as a “coming of
age” acknowledgement, it has been on my bureau for decades, really.
But now I
understand from this brochure that it contains chemicals that are correlated
with cancer and hormone disruption that can affect fetuses, especially in the 1st
trimester. When I looked further into it, I found out that Chanel #5 was
invented in 1923, when my mother was an adolescent and I distinctly remember
the lovely smell of it because she used it every day. It is associated with my
love for my mother and hers for me, but she had breast cancer when she was 38
and I was just two.
So recently, I started wondering about the perfume and my
mother’s cancer, and then I started wondering about my sister’s birth defect of
an unformed hip bone, her early puberty, obesity and death from cancer at age
52. What was happening here? Was it just that my sister had weak self control
or could this significant part of my mother’s life have caused involuntary harm
to her and my sister?
What other
parts of our growing up time could have been adversely affecting us? What other
products that we used could be unsuspectingly causing us harm? How about the
chemicals in our kitchen flooring, in our toys, or DDT in our food? How about the mercury in the San Francisco Bay
from the gold mining? How about the lead in the paint in our adorable San
Francisco Victorian house.? Or How about the waste from the WW11 war
manufacturing here in San Francisco and thrown into the Bay until the 1970’s?
Then I realized, obvious! Two generations
can be affected during my pregnancies, as my grandchildren’s eggs are being
formed in my daughter when she is gestating in me.
Then I went
on a search for what my daughter and new granddaughters are encountering today-
ubiquitous chemicals and toxins in all the natural, free and necessary gifts
from Mother Nature- our air, water and food. I quickly realized that all them
were adulterated now.
At the same
time, I noticed the change in birthing in the US- what happened to the back to
earth birth movement that we promulgated in the 70’s and 80? - it was replaced
with corporatized interventions that were not necessarily warranted vs the risk
endured by the babies. With the
realization now about the multi-generational affects from our environment, I
also started wondering about what affect our birthing practices could have on
our children’s health? Would the toxins in our bodies actually affect our
capability of giving birth? I learned that our children are pre-polluted in our
wombs- now that is really wrong! EcoBirth came to me as a context to understand
what we need to be conscious of in our world today.
The word EcoBirth has
integrated many strands in my life- my feminine qualities, living a faith-based
life, connecting to my lineage, unique to place and time in San Francisco, and
my primary, immutable, relationship with
Mother Earth. I see birth as the metaphor for transformation and
creation that if honored, will create a paradigm shift in our culture’s
consciousness.
And that consciousness would realize that we are
all related, that our planet home is an extraordinarily perfect balance of
natural cycles. That we are caught in web of a story that separates us, gives
us a false sense that we are disconnected, unrelated, isolated. Not true.
Our true story is we were born through real bodies-
our mothers body, from her mother’s body, back and back- we contain bits of all
of them in our bodies from the very first spark of life on earth. It is a
wonderful story of relationship based on love and compassion, unbreakable,
freely given, maternal love. We have just lost our connection to our Mother
Earth and to ourselves and our fellow kin, but becoming aware that we are all
in the same interdependent living system is hopeful, faithful and so
biologically real.
We are not lost or truly harmful to our following
generations, we are their life-givers. And I chose to work with a fierce
passion to make right this world for my grandchildren, and your grandchildren.
I trust in my connection to my mother and grandmother, and I see my
relationship to all kin in our world, on our earth, in our cosmos, with a gaze
of love and compassion. I look to receive that gaze in return, with an open,
wounded heart, vulnerable and strong.
I just heard of research that said that a mother’s
laughter makes her breastmilk healthier for her child- - there is really
nothing more miraculous than that! We can change the world with love and
laughter and it will respond with health, happiness and true acceptance of our
rightful place in it.
March 2011
Testimonial for the Collaborative on Health and the Environment’s Environmental Health Primary Prevention Training Program
Molly
Arthur: “Your environmental health
training opened my eyes to the possibility that I might be an advocate for a
cleaner, safer world. I felt responsible for the toxins that my grandchildren
are now ingesting and wanted to better understand how that was happening. Your
training outlined what the implications are for our species being immersed in a
toxic soup and it was not pretty. But I felt more empowered by having the
language and scientific knowledge so that I could clearly advocate for the
environmental health of my family. I have used your training to support the
launch of an organization that I believe will improve the environmental health
of all of our children and grandchildren. The dedication and devotion of your
scientists, Ted Schettler,MD, Science Director from Science and Environmental
Health Network and the Collaborative for Health and the Environment and Sarah
Janssen, MD, Senior Scientist, Natural Resources Defense Council, impelled me to try and take steps to get their
message to a larger audience in our culture. Thank you so much for this
grounding in the clear reasons behind why we must take responsibility for
working to clean up our world—so our mothers’ bodies can be healthy first
environments and our children will be raised in a safe, non-toxic world.” She
leads a group called EcoBirth, which is a coalition of organizations and
individuals who cherish our beloved babies and Mother Earth, including women
who want to consciously change our culture’s story to compassion for the
environments of Earth and Birth—to impel social change to sustain healthy,
caring humans and a healed earth home.
Spring 2012
Published in Green Body Green Birth, by Mary Oscategui, The International Maternity Institute
My Story to EcoBirth-Women for Earth and Birth
I have lived in Marin
County for over 20 years, raising my family, making a living, growing into myself.
It has held me in a beneficence that broods o’r my heart and is manifest in the
beautiful Mt Tamalpais. My Grandmother wrote poems at the turn of the century
about this decidedly feminine mountain, now I get to still walk on its curving
breast and be nurtured. All four of my grandparents lived in San Francisco and
raised my parents in The City. My Grandfather used to come to Marin County in
the summers at the turn of the century- 1900s- together with his large Irish
clan to stay in their wooden, rustic cabin. And his side of my family came here
after the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake for refuge. He told me of swimming in
the local creek in Kentfield. So I have some strong personal connections to the
place where my husband and I raised our two children. And truly it was not so
long ago that my relatives felt happy to swim in local creeks, but now I would
not let my grandchildren swim in the local creek because of my fear of toxins
in it.
I started thinking about
the shape of our world when I was done raising my children and had fulfilled my
personally assigned mission of raising them to be good, productive people. But
I noticed that the world had drastically become a worse place for humans and
any species to survive and thrive. I became conscious of the ravaging of
ourselves and our Mother Earth when I understood that our expectant babies were
pre-polluted by our own bodies[1]
and that our birthing was dismissed as inherently risky and frightening, rather
than nature’s way of sacred creation. This is a brief story about my increasing
awareness of what is happening to our world, in a very personal way and a
growth of my commitment to do something about it.
I picked a brochure up at
the Fairfax EcoFest a few years ago that said something was wrong with having
perfume on our bodies[2].
I thought about the precious perfume bottle that my mother gave me as a “coming
of age” acknowledgement which has been on my bureau for decades, really. But
now I understood from this brochure that it contains chemicals that are correlated
with cancer and hormone disruption that can affect fetuses, especially in the 1st
trimester. When I looked further into it, I found out that Chanel #5[3]
was invented in 1921, when my mother was an adolescent and I distinctly
remember the lovely smell of it because she used it for her frequent social
forays. It is associated with my love for my mother and hers for me, but she
had breast cancer when she was 38 and I was just two. I started wondering about
the perfume and my mother’s cancer, and then I started wondering about my
sister’s birth defect of an unformed left hip bone, her early puberty, obesity
and death from cancer at age 52. I wanted to learn more about what a hormone
disruption[4]
was and what it was doing in my mother’s body and whether it may have created
my sisters bone defect and even had influence on the rest of her vulnerable life
story.
My sister, Patty, appeared
to be the most beautiful, intelligent, funny and creative member of our
extended clan. But her potential was stunted and ended much too young. Was it just that my sister had weak self control
over her addiction to smoking and food? Or could the involuntary absorption of
this particular synthetic chemical (perfume/phthalates)[5]
in my mother’s life have caused harm to my sister in utero (during WWll, 1945) and
impacted her later in life during her puberty and even her adulthood? Then, I realized,
obvious! That Patty’s and my genesis, our eggs, were actually formed in my
grandmother’s body, in my mother’s body, when my mother was eagerly expected as
the first baby of the growing Fay clan[6].
Whew, what was happening in San Francisco in 1912? How do I figure that out?
I talked to experts
involved in environmental health and delved into internet search. I did not
have to go far, just to the EPA and other governmental websites- the most
documented toxins were heavy metals: mercury left over from the Gold Rush
mining[7]
and lead paint in all our lovely Victorians[8]:
very specific results from living right here in San Francisco. I pulled out our
family albums and written histories. Turns out that my male ancestors were
involved in Western mining[9]
and in retail-a paint store in San Francisco in the 1890s! Geez. I was
discovering that my heritage was not just genetic but environmental too. Our
immutable connection to our ancestors was manifest not only through our genes,
like our red hair and freckles, but in
our health vulnerabilities and susceptibilities, just because our ancestors
were in San Francisco, exposed to the reality of life there and then, which
contained mercury and lead toxins.
I
still have the crib that my grandmother told me she kept close by the side of
her bed so she could pat her babies to sleep, comforting them when they cried.
She was given that crib by her mother for her first baby- my mother. My
grandmother had 7 babies, but one was a stillbirth, which still grieved her
when she and I discussed it when she was in her 80’s. Now I realize that that crib was undoubtedly
painted with lead paint, -which causes physical and neurological disorders, as
well as behavior, learning and intelligence problems in children. I was rocked
in that cradle as an infant too, and it was passed onto me with such love from
my mother, who sewed new pink satin lining and bows for my two children
embracing sleep in this special, precious heirloom. This crib has come to
symbolize to me the adulteration that involuntary poisons can do to our lives,
even when we are offering love and connection to our beloved babies. How does
this ignorance of harm come to be a part of my lineage- why does my story get
corrupted by these inadvertent, unknown substances in my life? I was getting
fierce in my search, this was not right, that I was passing onto my children
and grandchildren harm that I knew nothing about but had invaded my body and my
life.
I wanted to know about how
we were birthed too, because I wondered if birthing practices could have just
as much effect on our health, as these ubiquitous chemicals, because after all,
the first environment is our mother’s body, which I thought was pure and
unadulterated and now I find is not. I read my mother’s baby book, a treasure
filled with my grandmother’s wispy handwriting. My mother was born in one of
the first maternity hospitals in San Francisco, the building is still there (now
condos) on Van Ness and Broadway. If chemicals ingested by breathing and
drinking could be harmful, what about the drugs given during birth?
Wow, I found out that something
called Twilight Sleep[10]
was used early in the 1900s, particularly in hospitals, administered by male
doctors. So, my guess is that my grandmother received it. I spent some months
reading up on the possible implications of drugs and birth practices. I found
this study that concluded:
“Adults
who met diagnostic criteria for drug addiction were about five times as likely
as sibling controls to have received three or more doses of opioid and
barbiturate drugs within ten hours before birth.”[11]
It appeared that drugs did
affect our babies. I know that my mother was “put out” during our births,
happily she said, and of course, we were not breastfed, which actually is such
a strong basis of connection between mother and baby and an indicator of their future
health. So what were we fed, if not the perfectly balanced and evolved
nutrition from a mother’s body? I found a copy of the take-home instructions given out by the hospital
in 1945 on preparing a formula of the right mixture of dextrose maltose and canned,
irradiated condensed milk with a note “You may continue to give your baby
Irradiated Carnation Milk after weaning from the bottle. The same good
qualities which have helped make your baby a strong healthy child will continue
to help him through all his growing years”. So ironic, I discovered an old magazine
ad displaying lead solder being used in infant formula cans - we were given cow’s
milk, sugar and lead for our nourishment, instead of the health supporting,
immune resistant mother’s breast milk. Perhaps
my mother’s generation of birth practices contributed to the addictions that
80% of my extended family suffers from. I recently realized that I was addicted
to sugar, not surprising really, considering what I ingested from the hazardous
cans of baby formula fed to me.
My
home was a wonderful San Francisco Victorian, with whistling, shaking windows
that let the fog in, and a lot more toxins that increased in the 1950’s as a
result of the synthetic chemical industry and agri-business development. BPAs,[12] part of
the phthalates family of chemicals, were introduced to my home in personal care
products such as soap, shampoo, hair spray, deodorants, and fragrances.2,
new household items, marketed through the wonderful little TV box, and in the pesticides that transferred to my
body from the vegetables and meat that I ate. We always had cheap meat, bread
and frozen vegetables for dinner and a sweet dessert!. The soda I drank could
have come from the spring that was used by the local bottling company, just 3
miles from Hunter’s Point[13] toxic
chemical stew which was dumped until 1970 over the sides of the ships that have
been built for war here since WW1. Our old plumbing pipes were probably lead,
and the vinyl flooring in our kitchen probably contained phthalates. The
accumulation of these toxins in my body could have affected whether I could get
pregnant and have healthy babies. Early life exposure to phthalates holds the
greatest risk for harm and prenatal exposure to very low doses can have
irreversible, lifelong effects. More recent studies link phthalate exposure to
early puberty in girls and suggest that females are affected in other ways that
may increase the risk of breast cancer. [14]
I
was relieved of my anger at my sister at this point, it came to me that it is
very possible that her addictions to smoking and food/sugar/flour- her
lifestyle choices, were probably not the main reason she had what I considered
an unproductive life. It was likely that the influences of her environment in
utero, and during our childhood, all involuntary interventions in her natural
development, were largely responsible for her vulnerable health, lack of mental
resilience and early death by cancer. I grieved the extinguishing of her bright
laughter, ribald humor and wry perspective on life. I miss our belly-laugh
times together, remembering our shared family challenges together that were so
funny when recounted by her acerbic and outlandish humor.
I learned more about the
history of lead in our world and mercury in our ecosystem and the ubiquity of the
over 80,000 new synthetic chemicals in our lives. It appeared to be an old
story: that making a living, like my male ancestors did to support their
families and pioneer a new land here on furthest Western edge of the US,[15]
perpetuated harm to their families, but benefited industries that used
complicity and duplicity and plain old criminal acts to prop up their profits. An
industry even grew up in the medical care offered to women and babies, which
now is associated with over 60% of hospital admissions. [16]What
happened to the back to earth birth movement that we promulgated in the 70’s
and 80? It was eclipsed by an industry that leveraged women’s desires to be
liberated- from pain and perceived risk, to being drugged during their baby’s
births. The painlessness vs. the increased adverse affects to mothers and
babies has been glossed over for the sake of an institutional status quo and
for profit. The number of maternal deaths and infant deaths from our health
care system in the US is a shocking testament to how interference with the
natural order of things can take an dramatic toll on our current and future
well being.
In
1985 my daughter was born at a birth center with the new version of a midwife
in California, Certified Nurse Midwife. We did a major remodel of our house
while I was pregnant with her. She grew up in a house built in the 1950’s, and
we did another major remodeling while living in that house. She would have ingested lead dust from the
paints released during the remodeling, as lead was not banned in house interior
paint until 1970 in the US. Our house is very close to the main artery into our
town: we breathe the fumes from the 24 hour car traffic which contains
methylmercury[17]-a
persistent version of mercury that gets into our air and water.
She ate the food I
prepared for her, chock full of pesticides, PBDE’s and PCBs. I know there were
a lot of pesticides on our vegetables and fruit, I did not know that BPA, a
hormone disruptor, was in the cans, in the vinyl lunch box she took to school
and in the storage containers we used which have been associated with thyroid
disease, obesity and diabetes, endometriosis, uterine fibroids and infertility,
and immune-related disease, such as asthma or allergies. We lived on cheese and
tortillas and pizza. And fish sticks- our favorite! Damn that mercury is in the
fish I fed my children for so many years.
We loved our hamburgers
and spaghetti too- wow, hormone growth promoters[18]
were in our beef and I did not know that early exposure for my daughter could
change her gene environment which may basically re-program her body’s
resilience, reproduction and metabolism later in life. And she would not get
nutrients from the processed foods and genetically modified fake foods that I
fed her like Cheetos and Cheerios. Recently an article came out with research
showing that GMO toxins are in babies in utero[19].
The altering of the very foundational components of our lives, the poisoning of
our food, -our seeds and soil – the free gifts of our Mother Earth- really gave
me pause, because I learned that we could be compromising the structural
integrity of our bodies and bones and brains by this, and inadvertently passing
it onto two generations of our beloved children and grandchildren.
And I did not know that
flame retardants were in our sofas, which are called perchlorates and currently
found in many commonly consumed foods and beverages, including lettuce, milk
and produce, according to FDA data. This hormone disruptor can impede the
iodine needed by the thyroid, which can have an effect on early brain and
nervous system development in fetuses and children. Mother’s breast milk can
concentrate this chemical and it can be passed onto nursing infants. “Most of the toxic pentaBDE ever made is still in furniture
inside our homes and schools,” Penta-BDE contamination of the environment is a
“chemical time bomb” on a huge scale according to Dr. Susan Shaw, Director of the Marine Environmental Research Institute (MERI).
“Given the demonstrated toxicity of pentaBDEs, the prospect of diminished
intelligence in children and reduced fertility our population looms in our
not-too distant future.” [20]
I bought some simple kits
at Cole Hardware on Polk Street and tested their rental house’s water and
interior paint. I checked the water report, there is chloramine and fluoride added
to it,(which is not a great thing for a pregnant woman to drink), but generally the San Francisco Hetch Hetchy water from the
Sierra is pure enough to not warrant special reports to the EPA. [21]
I found specific
neighborhood info on an EPA site, that the local elementary school where my
grandchildren would be attending, was found to have lead-penetrated soil from
the old school’s paint that was torn down and replaced. I want to test their
house garden soils now too, before they start growing their own food there. [22]
I learned so much more
about the history of birth in the US, and its sordid story.[23]
Are we even given the freedom of choice on how we may want to birth in our
technological, corporatized birthing practices today?
There are too many
interventions to the most natural development of human evolution- bringing life
into the world. Babies are subjected to increasing numbers of cesarean section
deliveries(in US+30%)[24]
and antibiotics, both which seriously hinder the child's ability to culture the
essential flora in its gut. These children are at a higher risk of developing
allergies and asthma later down the road, as well as other chronic conditions,
including ADHD and autism.[25]
I worried that we had so altered our body’s natural capabilities, that we may
have even compromised our body’s ability to birth. I realized very personally
that we embody the ravages that we are perpetrating on the Earth, our Mother
Earth, who gives us her free gifts of air and water and soil. We have corrupted
these gifts and now they are us, our bodies and legacy. There is no gated
neighborhood to which we can retreat for protection from modern life’s polluted
air, water or soil.
I am a grandmother now, of
twin girls. I found it hard to wait for their arrival. I did not have the same
physical, embodied relationship with them that I had with my own two children,
yet my feeling for them is intense and emotional. Our relationship is immutable
and life-changing for me. I knew that their lifeforce was growing in the dark,
protective womb of their mother- which contained all that they needed. But I knew
from pulling together this story of my environmental lineage and legacy, that
they could be influenced by outside forces, not by the conscious will of their
mother, nor by any truly rational choices of our culture, but just as
immutably, by me and my ancestor’s personal actions, choices and ignorance. I
realize that how I live on this earth is what my granddaughters will inherit. Their
changeable physiology creates a responsibility on me, because I would never
want an action that I do to harm my grandchildren. I understand that my
relationship with my all-encompassing Mother Earth somehow is immutable too,
just like my relationship with my granddaughters. And I feel that my Mother
Earth who holds and nurtures me and feeds me is beneficent. She would not want
to harm either, yet she accepts what is happening to her, with involuntary surrender.
I live within and enable the perpetuation of a system that harms our world and
our babies. This became an existential dilemma for me. How do I live in the
real world, hold to the faith and conviction I have in the beneficence of our
existence and not drop into despair and hopelessness?
The word EcoBirth came to me in the midst of this search, it
has come to integrate many strands in my life- my feminine qualities, living a
faith-based life, connecting to my lineage, unique to place and time in San Francisco,
and my primary, immutable, relationship with
Mother Earth. I want to take responsibility for the shape that our world
is in now, by seeing the hope and love that is needed to enable the next
generations to heal it. I do not have the answers for them, but I can try to
hold the space to allow them to find those answers, by seeing the truth of what
is happening now, processing it in my heart and naming it in public. I see
birth as the metaphor for transformation and creation that if honored, will create
a paradigm shift in our culture’s consciousness.
And that consciousness
would realize that we are all related, that our planet home is an
extraordinarily perfect balance of natural cycles and that caring for our one
natural life will enable us all to be well. That we are caught in a web of a
story that separates us, gives us a false sense that we are independent, alone
and in charge of our own destiny, with no need for anyone else. Disconnected,
unrelated, isolated. Not true.
Our true story is about the
extraordinary connection in ourselves that goes all the way back to the first
stirring of life gathered on this earth. We were born from our mothers, they
were born from their mothers, and we were formed from bits of their bodies all
the way back to the first amoeba- there is still a small bit of that life spark
in us. We could not be here without all this lineage and heritage; we are
dependent on their living and giving. It is a wonderful story of relationship
based on love and compassion, unbreakable, freely given. We have just lost our
connection to our Mother Earth and to ourselves and our fellow kin, but
becoming aware that we are all in the same interdependent living system is
hopeful, faithful and so biologically real. We have since the beginning of time,
given our feminine, maternal gifts to our children, with no thought for
payment. That instinct for offering ourselves will be found again-to reclaim
our rightful place in the order of life. We are not lost or truly harmful to
our following generations, we are their life-givers. I know that that wicker
crib was a hard and tangible part of my inheritance and my legacy to my children;
I know that that Chanel #5 is still on my bureau, symbolizing all the love
given and harm perpetrated; I sleep next to it every night. But I chose to see
the respect and acknowledgment that my mother was giving me when she gave me
that meaningful gift. And I chose to work with a fierce passion to make right
this world for my grandchildren, and your grandchildren. I trust in my
connection to my mother and grandmother, and I see my relationship to all kin
in our world, on our earth, in our cosmos, with a gaze of love and compassion.
I look to receive that gaze in return, with an open, wounded heart, vulnerable
and strong.
I just heard of research
that said that a mother’s laughter makes her breastmilk healthier for her
child- - there is really nothing more miraculous than that! We can change the
world with love and laughter and it will respond with health, happiness and true
acceptance of our rightful place in it.
[1] EWG Report || BodyBurden 2 - The Pollution in Newbornswww.ewg.org/reports/bodyburden2/study coordinated by the Environmental Working Group that found an average of 200 industrial chemicals and pollutants in umbilical cord blood from 10 babies ...
[1] Houlihan
J, Brody C, Schwan B. 2002. Not Too Pretty. Environmental Working Group.
Available: http://www.ewg.org/reports/nottoopretty
Colborn T, Dumanoski D, Myers JP. 1996. Our Stolen Future: Are We Threatening Our
Fertility, Intelligence, and Survival?—A Scientific Detective Story. New York: Dutton.
[1] Baby boys and
pregnant women are two groups especially vulnerable to hormone-disrupting
effects of phthalates. Alarmingly, these are precisely the groups whose high
level exposure to multiple phthalates has been extensively documented (Adibi
2008; Sathyanarayana 2008; Silva, Barr 2004). Phthalates cross the placenta
into amniotic fluid (Silva, Reidy 2004); they are also transferred from the mother
to the infant with breast milk (Main 2006). A child’s exposure to these potent
anti-androgenic chemicals starts from the prenatal stage and continues through
the formative early years. As a result, the exposure of children to phthalates
generally exceeds that of adults (Heudorf 2007). Infants, with their small body
size, and different behavioral patterns from adults, are most at risk from
phthalates. http://www.ewg.org/node/26052
[1] Exposure to gene-altering
substances, particularly in the womb and shortly after birth, “can lead to
increased susceptibility to disease,” said Linda S. Birnbaum, Director of the
National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and of the National
Toxicology Program. “The susceptibility persists long after the exposure is
gone, even decades later. Glands, organs, and systems can be permanently
altered. There is a huge potential impact from these exposures, partly because
the changes may be inherited across generations. You may be affected by what
your mother and grandmother was exposed to during pregnancy,” Birnbaum said. Such exposures can disrupt the way that genes behave, according to both
animal and human studies. These changes, in turn, can be passed on to the next
generations. http://www.environmentalhealthnews.org/ehs/news/epigenetics-workshop
[1] (Nyberg, Buka, and Lipsitt
2000). Evidence-Based Maternity Care: “What It Is and What It Can Achieve “
Bt
Carol Sakala and Maureen P. Corry ,Co-published by Childbirth Connection, the
Reforming States Group, and the Milbank Memorial Fund, October 2008
[1] 1. Sakala C, Corry MP. Evidence-based
Maternity Care: What It Is and What It Can
Achieve. New York: Milbank Memorial Fund,
2008.
Available at: www.childbirthconnection.org/ebmc/
2. Hamilton BE, Martin JA, Ventura SJ. Births: Preliminary
Data for 2007. National Vital
Statistics Reports 57(12) Hyattsville, MD: National Center
for Health Statistics, March
2009. Available at: www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr57/nvsr57_12.pdf
3. Levit K, Wier L, Stranges E, Ryan K, Elixhauser A. HCUP
Facts and Figures:
Statistics on Hospital-based Care in
the United States, 2007.
Rockville, MD: Agency for
Healthcare Research and Quality, 2009.
Available at: www.hcup-us.ahrq.gov/reports/factsandfigures/2007/TOC_2007.jsp
4. Russo CA, Wier L, Steiner C. Hospitalizations Related to
Childbirth, 2006. Rockville,
MD: Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, 2009. (HCUP
Statistical Brief, 71.)
Available at: www.hcup-us.ahrq.gov/reports/statbriefs/sb71.pdf
5. Andrews RM. The National Hospital Bill: The Most
Expensive Conditions by Payer,
2006. Rockville, MD: Agency for Healthcare Research and
Quality, 2008. (HCUP
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