Midwifery is unsustainable.

I have heard this statement coming from the mouths of experienced midwives; whether I am just hearing it, or whether people have been saying this for a while, I don’t know.

I totally agree.

Midwifery as it’s being done by most women is unsustainable. It’s a dying profession, this weird half medical-half sort of holistic thing that we’ve come to know. I know that for me , even doing what I think is a “different or better” version than the average midwife, that this is not a role that can be sustained. By most, and not for long.

Midwifery as it’s being done by most means one midwife, on call constantly, with a nervous system and body out of balance, without the support or appreciation from her community that’s needed. This common version of midwife is very out of balance; both individually and collectively.

Most midwives barely have time to shower much less work on their own trauma, and most don’t earn enough money attending women to buy them “space” to do much else.

This doesn’t mean I think there shouldn’t be midwives, or midwifery education.

(And I definitely don’t think it means throwing it all away and disregarding the ancient arts and skills of this work…by becoming a pretend midwife/overnite midwife or birth keeper).

I DO think it means that if we don’t expand our vision of what midwifery is and how women learn it…that it is doomed to extinction.

Change is here, in all areas of life, and this is one of the most pressing changes on my heart.

Birth is a study of life. Life is a study of ourselves. The study of ourselves is so much about how we connect with Source. Dare I say that “true midwifery” is really the study of life, and how we fit into the Cosmos…with a focus and affection for this initiation called birth.

Birth is about so much more than skills. Or even babies. Birth is about how our life force incarnates, and what it takes emotionally, physically, mentally, cosmically and spiritually for that mother to bring THAT baby here.

And midwifery isn’t only “walking with women”.

We must know ourselves deeply, we must find our connection to Source, we must be acquainted with ALLLL the mysteries and blood mysteries in life to elevate the archetype of “Midwife” to something that’s going to stick around.

We are expanding our own visions here at Indie Birth and will offering more wisdom to those that resonate with this.

Oxoxo
Maryn